This information might not be new for you, but it’s a good time to check whether or not you’re covering all the bases with your current online marketing program.

Local search results are about quality, not quantity

When people search in Google for a business in their local area they are not only searching for “what”, but also for “where”.

The “what” is the main keyword that they use, and the “where” can be indicated by a city or suburb name, postcode or street address.

For local searches like these, there are three different ways that your website can get found in Google.

So if you’re targeting business from a specific geographic area around your business location, read on… and keep in mind that getting locally targeted web traffic is not always a numbers game. There might not be many people searching for your keywords in your local area, but those who are equate to quality web traffic because they are searching for what you have to offer, in the area where you offer it.

And the fact that they are adding the “where” to their search shows intent to use the products or services of the business that they select from those they find.

In this article I’ll use a case study of the website of one of my clients. The business is called Italicherry Design Studio and it is located in Traralgon (my home town!), a city of about 25,000 people found in Gippsland, Victoria.

1. Getting locally targeted web traffic from organic search results

The organic search results are the main results in the left hand column of the Search Engine Results Page (also known as the SERP).

If you’ve heard of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), then broadly speaking it covers everything that you do to get your website to appear high up in the organic results.

The list of things that have an impact on your website’s SEO is long, but here are some key areas:

• The keywords that you use on your website and where you use them
• The number and quality of inbound links from other websites to your website
• The way your website is set up.

Let’s look at the first point: The keywords that you use on your website and where you use them.

The screen shot above shows a Google search for the keyword “graphic design traralgon” and the website that we’re looking at ranks in No.1 position out of about 150 websites that use this keyword in their web copy.

So how did we achieve this?

Admittedly web copywriting takes some skill in terms of selecting the right keywords and using them strategically (without overusing them) but it’s also not rocket science once you know the main principals.

The top (purple) line of text in the Search Results reads “Graphic Design | Website Design | Italicherry Design Studio, Traralgon”. (Note that only the first 69 characters or so of text appear in the search results, the rest is cut off, so aim to keep your Page Title around this length).

This text is the Page Title from the Home Page of the website. The image below shows where it appears on the website.

In the next image the keywords have been underlined to show where they have been used in the home page copy.

Where the words are pink, they have been used as link text to link to the page that is specifically about “graphic design services”.

As mentioned above, there are a lot of factors in addition to keywords that help your website rank high in Google. But the keywords are something that you can control so why not make sure you have used them effectively?

In terms of the other factors, the Italicherry Design website was built using WordPress and we used a plugin called the “All in One SEO Pack” to help optimise the site.  The website has also been around for about two years and the owner has been building inbound links at every opportunity so both these factors add weight to the importance that Google gives it.

2. Getting locally targeted traffic from your Google Places listing

To get your business to show up in Google with a pointer on the map of the area where someone is searching for a local business, you need a listing in Google Places.

In the picture below, the map appears at the top of the right hand column, and the details relating to each pointer on the map appear near the top of the organic search results in the left hand column.

You can set up a Google Places listing at google.com/places or if you need help, work with someone who specialises in Google Places listings, like Funky Monkey Business.

Your business might already be listed in Google Places but if you haven’t claimed the listing and added information it might not be complete (or might even include inaccurate or out-of-date information).

To see if your business is there, search for “your business name + suburb (or city)”.

If a listing comes up, click through to the “Place Page” and in the top right hand corner you’ll see either “Owner-verified listing” or “Claim this listing”.

To Claim the Listing click through and follow the steps.

Add as much information to your listing as you can, including photos and videos – reviews are helpful too. Here are Google’s tips for what to do with your listing:

Your Google Places listing is also really important in helping clients find your location on a mobile phone. As the number of searches via a mobile phone is increasing, therefore whether or not your business shows up in mobile searches is increasingly important.

3. Getting locally targeted traffic from Google AdWords Ads

The third way that your website can be found in Google when someone searches for a local business is via the Google AdWords programs.

Google AdWords ads appear in the yellow box at the top of the left hand column of the search results, and also in the thinner column on the right hand side.

With AdWords:

• You pick the target geographic area where you would like your ads to be shown*
• You set up a list of targeted keywords and your ad appears when someone searches for those target keywords from within your target area
• You only pay when someone clicks on your ad
• The amount you pay is based on an auction system, and is relative to how much the other advertisers are prepared to pay.
• You set the maximum amount of budget that are prepared to spend per day.

*AdWords ads be targeted specifically to a city, for example Melbourne, or if you add a suburb or city name they can be targeted to a specified radius around that place.

I’ll give more details on locally targeted Google AdWords ads in a future article but until then, if you need help with AdWords, please send me an email.

Got questions about how to increase your locally targeted web traffic? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Until next time

Melinda

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PPS -  Italicherry Design Studio create beautiful websites.

If you’re not happy with your current website, contact Wendy for a free review and recommendations for improving it and bringing it into line with your current branding.

I’m still meeting too many business owners who have invested time and money in their website and online marketing but are disappointed with the results. Unfortunately, it often takes a bad experience to help people become savvy about the questions they should ask before confirming they will work with a website designer, web developer, SEO agency, AdWords agency, online marketer or another web service provider.

To help you avoid a bad experience, here are my recommendations for the questions that you should ask before you commit to working with any web related company…. and make sure you’re happy with the answers too!

1. What experience do you have?

Find out how long the web service provider has worked in their chosen field, and whether the experience was gained working for another company or working for their current business.

2. Can I look at some of the websites that you have provided services for?

This is an absolutely key question. Ideally look at 3-5 websites that show a sample of their work.

When you’re reviewing the work of a web designer:

• Does everything look fabulous and well integrated?
• Are the Calls to Action really obvious?
• Is it easy to find the contact details?
• Does the colour and style of the text compliment the overall design?
• Can you tell that they are an experienced web designer, rather than just a great graphic designer who designs for the web?

When you’re reviewing the work of a web copywriter:

• Does the copy flow and make you want to keep reading it?
• Are the headlines compelling and do they include keywords?
• Have strategic meta tags been added? (meta tags are part of web copywriting)
• Is the copy formatted to be easy to skim read using bold, dot points and subheadings?
• Are links to other pages of the website included?
• Is there a Call to Action at the end of the copy to let readers know what to do next?

When you’re reviewing the work of a web developer:

• Do they create your website to include a Content Management System (CMS), so that you can update your own content and regularly add new content?
• Which Content Management System do they use? It might be WordPress, Joomla or a custom CMS. If it’s a custom system, ask if there is a monthly fee for you to have access to the system.
• Also consider the implications if you want to stop working with that web developer in future; are there other developers who know how that CMS?  This is generally the case for WordPress and Joomla.

When the company provides Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services:

• Find out what keywords they were targeting for each of the websites that you review
• Search in Google for each keyword and see how high up in the search results the website appears
• Find out how many people search for those target keywords
• Have a look at the website; do the updates made for SEO blend with the overall design and look natural?

3. Were these website projects completed on time and within the quoted price?

There can be legitimate reasons why website related projects take way longer than expected and end up costing way more than the original quote. But, if this is the case you need to find out why it happened in order to understand if the additional time and money were justified.

Sometimes timeframes and budgets blow out because the client changed their mind once the project was started, requiring additional work and expense. Or it can take longer than expected for the client to provide key information that is needed to keep the project moving forward in a timely manner.

And sometimes, the web services company:

• fails to communicate effectively with the client
• is slow to meet expected timeframes
• and failed to adequately quote all requirements in order to win the job.

If past projects did run over budget and deadlines, ask the right questions to find out why.

4. Is your quote a fixed price for the project? What additional costs might potentially be incurred and at what hourly rate?

It’s critical that you understand the scope of the project and what is, and isn’t, included in the quote. Also find out what additional costs will be incurred if you make changes once the project has started.

5. Are there any other services needed to help your website meet your expectations?

Often you’ll know someone who is a web designer or a developer and there is an expectation that they can do everything that’s needed to create a fabulous website that brings results for your business. But the reality is that a lot of different skills are needed to create a great website, and it’s very rare that a single person has all the skills that are needed.

For example:

• A web designer may quote you to design and create your website, but you may be interested in adding SEO Copywriting to the package, so that you website can be easily found in Google as soon as possible after it goes live.
• Will you have access to a web analytics tool? Ask if a tool such as Google Analytics will be added to your website, or whether you need to find an additional service provider who can help you with this?
• A website developer might be fabulous at creating you a website that looks OK, but lack the design skills to give your website a clean professional look that makes you proud.
• A web copywriter can add keywords to the pages of your website in order to optimise it for search engines, but your search engine ranking is also impacted by the number and quality of inbound links from other websites to your website.

It’s always worth asking the question “Are there are other web service providers who you could engage to help you get a website that meets your expectations?”. It might turn out that you don’t have budget for these additional services initially, but at least you’ll know what your options are and what costs are involved if budget becomes available down the track.

Additional questions for SEO agencies

• What specifically will you do to optimise my website? (SEO covers a lot of different things, including building inbound links, reworking how your website is set up and adding keywords to the pages of your website. It’s important that you understand what your SEO provider will, and won’t, be doing)
• Is there a contract period and if so, how long is it?
• What results can I reasonably expect and in what time frame?*

*Note: I used the words “reasonably expect” because due to the nature of SEO, no agency should guarantee you results such as ranking on the first page of Google.

Additional questions for AdWords service providers

• Are you in the Google AdWords partner program? (if the answer is No, find a company that is)
• How often will you review my ads?
• How often will you provide feedback on my ads and in what format will that feedback be?

OK that turned out to be a lot more than 5 questions, but you can pick and choose the ones you ask based on the services that you’re looking for.

Got questions about any of these questions? Feel free to leave a comment below.

What other questions do you recommend asking before confirming the web related services?

Until next time

Melinda

If you’re not familiar with AdWords, it is Google’s paid search engine marketing program. When set up and managed well, it’s an effective way to bring targeted traffic to your website, especially when it’s competitive to get your website on page one of Google in the organic search results.

Here’s how it works:

• An ad linked to your website is shown on page one of Google
• Your ad is only shown when people search on keywords that you select, that are closely related to your product or service
• You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Some of the principles of running a Google AdWords campaign are similar to the principles of online dating. With some skill and commitment to success, they might just change your life

1. You need to be clear about who you are trying to attract

If you’re not, you’ll attract the wrong people. You don’t want to waste your time and money dating the wrong people, just like you don’t want to waste your time and money getting clicks on your ads from the wrong people.

2.  Tweak your ad until you find the version that works best

In the online dating world, what you write in your profile has a huge impact on who tries to connect with you. Similarly, with Google AdWords, your ad copy has a huge impact on how many clicks you get and how well targeted they are.

AdWords allows you to run more than one version of your ad at the same time.  You can select a Campaign Setting that means that over time the ad that gets clicked on the most will be shown the most. Keep updating your ad until you find the ultimate high performing version.

3. If you want to take the relationship forward, make a great first impression

Generally for a first date, your aim is to look your best and make a great impression (unless of course the date is a dud but that’s an article on someone else’s website!).

In a similar way, when someone clicks on your ad, you want to make a great impression and show your web visitors that they have found what they’re looking for. Do this by directing your ads to a relevant, well planned landing page that motivates your visitors to respond to your call to action.

The web world moves fast. If you don’t have a great landing page it’s far too easy for your visitors to click the back button and move on to the next website.

4. The fattest wallets don’t always win the race

For a first date, some people might plan a flashy dinner at an expensive restaurant.  Splashing money around will impress some people, but it won’t impress everyone. With AdWords, a lot of people think that having a successful campaign means having their ad showing in one of the highest positions.  Although this is a great strategy that allows advertisers with big budgets to maintain high quality ads, in order to maintain a high position, you need to be prepared to pay more than the other advertisers.

In order to stretch your budget further, try bidding the right amount to have your ad shown in a lower position (around 3 to 5).

Ideally you’ll still get a good Click Through Rate and enough targeted clicks to use up your budget each day, but you’ll pay less per click so you’ll get more clicks for your cash.

5. Don’t give up until you find your perfect match

Google AdWords success means different things to different advertisers. Sometimes an ad campaign gets results right from the start, but in other situations, you need to be persistent and keep experimenting in order to make get the best possible results.

Different parts of your Google AdWords campaign that you can test and change include:

• The Ad Copy
• The landing page
• The times that the ads are scheduled to run
• The target locations
• Different keyword positions
• Different keyword match types eg broad match and phrase match
• Your daily budget.

If you’re running AdWords and want to improve the quality of your clicks, send me an email to discuss 1-to-1 AdWords Coaching or outsourcing your AdWords management. Chances are you’ll save money in the long run.

Or if you have questions about AdWords, please leave a comment below.

Until next time

Melinda

Help Your Website Draw a Record Crowd

As well as writing articles for this website, and for my business partnership, Grassroots Internet Strategy, I also have a personal blog related to something I’m very passionate about; Grand Slam tennis.

Due to the Australian Open and the lead up events, January is a massive month for tennis in Australia, and hence a massive month for my blog.

In comparison with January 2011 (when my tennis blog was new), my web traffic increased by nearly 1800% (up from around 1000 visits in Jan 2011 to nearly 18,000 in Jan 2012). Here are some of the things that helped me draw a record crowd.

1. If web traffic is important, create a lot of content

I published 32 articles in January which includes articles I wrote as well as guest articles written by others, photos and videos from YouTube.

Some of the Search Engine Optimisation advantages of creating valuable content are:

• Each article you add to your website makes it bigger, which gives it more Google authority.
• Each article gives other website owners an opportunity to link to you.
• Each article can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
• Each article gives your readers a reason to visit your website again.
• Each article includes keywords, which helps your website appear more often in search engine results.

I created a lot of content in a short space of time for an audience who reads as much as they can about the topic in that short space of time but it’s important to note that if your articles are sent to a subscriber list, make sure you meet their expectations in terms of how much content they expect to receive from you.

2. Connect to people who want to read and share your content

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or wherever your target readers are located, connect to as many people as you can and get to know them. This increases the chance they will read your content and share it with their own network.

In the spirit of “do unto others as you wish they would do unto you”, it’s important that you share other people’s content, as well as your own.

And when someone does share your content, show your appreciation

3. Ask for input from the people you are connected to

You don’t need to create all your content yourself. Aside from sharing other people’s videos and guest articles on your blog, you can also create content by compiling other people’s input.

If someone is mentioned in your article, they are probably more likely to share it too

Here’s an example of an article where I compiled tennis fans predictions for what the outcome of the Quarter Finals would be.

4. Anticipate the information that people will search for and have it ready

This is particularly useful if you write articles about an event or activity that a lot of people will search Google for in a limited period of time. It could also work if there are significant changes happening in your industry that a lot of people will want to know about.

Step 1 in keyword research is to use the Google Keyword Tool to research the keywords that people search for. You can also look for clues in your Google Analytics. And, you can also use your own knowledge of your niche to anticipate what people will search for.

See which keywords from past articles have generated traffic from Google and use the information to create new articles focused on related keywords.

For example, I often write articles about the prize money that winners receive for a tennis tournament because I know from the past that on the day of the tournament final, and for a few days after the event, people search for that information.

Have the information published at least a week or two in advance, so that it can be indexed by Google in time for the anticipated searches.

5. Build links with other website owners who share your passion

There is a lot of link swapping amongst tennis bloggers. You’ll see the links to the “Tennis Blogs I Love” in the right hand column on my blog. These are all reciprocal links with blogs that I enjoy reading regularly. I get good referral traffic from these sidebar links where other bloggers have linked back to me.

Find out about new links to your website either from the referral traffic in your Google Analytics, or if you use WordPress you’ll get a notification in your comments (a pingback).  Similar to when people share your articles, when you notice new links to your website, show your appreciation

What other ways have worked for you in terms of dramatically increasing your web traffic?

Cheers

Melinda

• Website Development: How search engine friendly your website is
• Web Content: The quality of your content, the keywords that you use in your content and how you use them
• Inbound Links: The number and quality of links from other websites to your website.

In a lot of respects you rely on working with the right person to get the web development part right.

The content is the part that you have complete control over. You can either learn the basics of SEO Copywriting yourself (this article on The Minimalist Guide to Incredibly Effective SEO Copywriting is a great place to start) or work with a SEO Copywriter.

Once your website is set up and your copy is sorted, next you need to build inbound links. 

Why are inbound links important?

Having a lot of high quality links from other websites to your website shows search engines that your website is important.

In this interview, Matt Cutts from Google says

Google ranks sites based on popularity. If authoritative sites link to you, you must be good, and therefore you get to the top of the list.

Personally I also think that links count because they are hard to get, and if you put in time and energy to get them, you must be serious about your website being successful

When it comes to building links, how do you find the low hanging fruit?

The list below was inspired by a presentation by Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas on Link Building Basics at the SMX Melbourne conference.

1. By asking

Ask your suppliers. Ask your business contacts. Ask the people that you know.

As long as they have a website (and particularly if they have a website that ranks well in search engines), ask if they will add a link to your website.

2. Through organisations and associations that you are a member of

Many organisations offer a member directory where you can list the details of your business plus a link to your website.

3. By searching online

Look for free directories that list local businesses. Google Places, True Local and Hot Frog are three good ones to start with.

Also check out your local council website. Many offer to list local businesses in an online directory.

4. By creating link bait

Link bait is high quality content that other website owners will be enticed to link to. Have a look at all the content you already have (particularly your offline content) and think about how you could use it, or re-purpose it, and share it on your website.

Here are some ideas for the type of content you can create:

• eBooks and whitepapers
• Videos
• Informative articles
• Interviews
• Case Studies
• Survey results
• Recorded webinars
• Slide presentations.

Attract links to your content by:

• Making sure the quality is high
• Offering something unique that your readers and target audience will find interesting enough to share
• Letting as many people as possible know your content exists by sharing it content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, article sharing sites and wherever else you can think of.

5. By seeking out guest blogging opportunities

Guest blogging involves writing articles for someone else’s blog.  As the author you can add your bio at the end of the article, along with a link to your website.

Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche via social media like Twitter and when the time is right, find out if they are interested in a guest blog from you.

Decide what your best options are and go for it

OK sure, so the first few suggestions might be hanging a bit lower than the final ones but I hope I’ve given you at least a few practical options that you can build into your online marketing plan.

Anything that you do to build links that involves adding new content to your website also helps to optimse it by:

• adding pages to your website (which makes it bigger and adds authority)
• adding more keywords
• giving search engines (and people) a reason to come back regularly.

Ideally, keywords should be used as the link text

Where possible, get people to use your keywords as the link text, rather than your your business name (if your business name is carefully chosen to include your keywords, then its win-win).

For example:

• In this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content, who provides web copywriting services to small businesses.

Rather than:

• In this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content.

And here’s my least favourite link text:

• Click here to read more in this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content.

Until next time

Melinda

P.S. Are you ready to take your website marketing to the next level?

Join the Website Boot Camp and get practical advice about what makes a great website, web copywriting, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress.

We’re talking truly practical tips that you’ll be able to use straight away. It’s all held live and online and will also be recorded for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve  been doing a lot of web copy editing for clients lately. As part of my copy editing services, if the client has a Content Management System I generally also make the updates to the website once they’ve been approved.

Every time I add copy to a website, I take time to format it and make the layout look as good as possible.

Because it’s not just the words that impact how many people read your copy and how much of it they read; it’s also the look and style of the copy.

For example if the words are all the same size and colour, and if they are all scrunched up together, your web visitors aren’t going to be too inspired to keep reading, no matter how great your content is.

This is the copy from my home page, badly aligned and without the formatting:

How far did you get before you stopped reading? I can’t blame you if you didn’t even start!

Although I never question the fact that you need to provide quality words on your web pages, to make the most of your efforts, they should also be nicely designed words.

I’m fortunate to have some great web designers working on my current projects who take care to make sure the copy that’s added to the website looks as fabulous as the overall design.

Here are some copy related things that should be included as part of your web design:

Text Styles

• Heading 1

• Heading 2

• Heading 3

• Heading 4

• Heading 5

• Paragraph

Dot points

• Dot Point 1
• Dot Point 2
• Dot Point 3

Quotation boxes

Link Text that links to other pages of your website and also to other websites

These different styles of text can all have different font sizes, colours and level of boldness.

Obviously you don’t want to go too far in the other direction by having too much colour and variation. This can be distracting and makes your copy harder, rather than easier, to read.

Take a fresh look at your website.

Do the text styles, sizes and colours add value to your web copy and make it look fabulous?

Or do they bring down the fabulous design of your website header and the rest of your website, much like an ugly dress totally detracts from a fabulous hat?

Until next time

Melinda

P.S. Thanks to Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival for inspiring this article. I’m looking forward to seeing hats galore out and about in the city over the next week or so. And I’m hoping that they will be fabulous hats. Fabulous hats that aren’t bought down by ugly dresses… or shocker Barry Crocker fake tan!

To get great results from investing in Google AdWords your campaigns need to be well set up and optimised.

You can either learn to do this yourself or have your campaigns managed  by a Google Qualified Advertising Professional.  If you’re looking for tips to improve your AdWords results, in a recent article I covered 5 Common and Costly AdWords Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

But, campaign set up and management aside, the critical factor in getting value out of your AdWords spend is the quality of your website.

You can have the biggest advertising budget ever but if your website doesn’t cut it once people have clicked through on your ads, they will “bounce” away, effectively wasting the money that you spent on the click.

The page that your AdWords ads are directed to is called a Landing Page.

The best Landing Page isn’t always your Home Page.

You may find you’ll get much better results by directing your ads to a page that is focussed on the information that the searcher was looking for, and that is designed to encourage your web visitors to do exactly what you want them to do.

So how do you do that?

Start by getting advice from an expert!

Here are some tips from Chris Bates of Octoply, who specialises in creating websites that get results.

1.Specificity sells!

Send your AdWords traffic to a landing page that continues with the message from the ad. Keep it relevant, clean, & simple.

Add relevance by using the main keywords from your AdWords campaign prominently in the headline and the text.

2. Ask for the action

Whether it be buying a product online, submitting an enquiry or something else, plan what you want your web visitors to do and always prompt them towards this conversion with a Call to Action.

3. Remove distractions on your landing pages

Don’t give the visitor reasons to exit (remove navigation, external links, etc.)

4. Ensure that perceived value is greater than perceived cost.

Show the value by clearly stating the benefits that the product or service will bring.  Great benefits to emphasise are “save time” or “save money”

Use Testimonials & guarantees used to improve trust & credibility.

Check out an example of a landing page that follows these principles:

TKProofreading

Once you have your website or landing page ready to get some traffic via AdWords, make sure you have Google Analytics installed so that you can find out how well your landing page and website performs.

Want to find out if Google AdWords is an effective way to get more sales or enquiries from your website?

Give the $279 No Risk Google AdWords Trial a go

• The cost includes set up and optimisation of an ad campaign, plus $125 of free advertising from Google.
• At the end of the trial you’ll receive recommendations for future advertising, you’ll know approximately how much you need to pay per click to web traffic via Google AdWords and whether this approach helps you generate more business.

This offer ends on 30 September 2011 – after that the price goes up!

Read the full details about the AdWords trial and if you’d like to discuss the options for your product or services, send me an email or give me a call on 03 9340 9018.

Do you have an example of a landing page that works well with AdWords? Leave a comment and let us know.

Until next time

Melinda

My business partner in Grassroots Internet Strategy, Serena Star-Leonard, wrote a book that was published this year titled “How to Retire in 12 Months”.

The book is about figuring out what you’re passionate about, working out a way to turn that passion into profit and then using the opportunities created by the internet to do just that.

And the cool thing is that every day I work with clients who are having a red hot go at using the internet to create an opportunity to change their life.

They are generally either people who are using a website as part of their marketing plan for their full time business, or people who are employed by someone else while they create an online business and build it up to a point where they can leave their job.

Here are Serena’s tips for how to use a website to change your life.

1. Identify a topic that you are passionate about, and make sure that it is something you’ll be willing to speak about every day.

It’s a good idea to do some research to find out what already exists in relation to your topic, but don’t be put off if something similar already exists. You are what is unique and you are what can make your business stand out.

2. Use the technology that it is available to create a website for the business

There are so many low cost tools available now that it’s relatively easy to get started. Tools like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics and Mail Chimp.

The biggest decision you’ll need to make about your website is what areas will you learn and do yourself, and which parts you will outsource.

Then you just need to get started and keep taking action to make things happen.

3. Build your community and your content

Once your website is set up, you have something valuable to share so go ahead and share it to get the word out.  Create a marketing plan and start implementing it.

Creating content and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be time consuming so work out a plan related to how much time you have, and whether or not you have the budget to outsource some or all of your marketing.

4. Keep on going

Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep marketing. Keep trying new things. And keep building relationships with your readers and people in your industry.

For more details on the steps you need to go through, grab a copy of Serena’s book.

Once you get set up and start effectively marketing your website and blog, you’ll find that it can change your life by:

• Giving you an open forum to express yourself and receive feedback
• Generating opportunities through meeting like minded people
• Generating an income without having to work from 9 to 5
• Giving you freedom to work from wherever you like (as long as there is an internet connection) and whatever time of day, or night, you like
• Giving you the personal satisfaction of doing something you like
• Not having to wake up to an alarm clock (unless of course you want to).

There is a huge learning curve once you dip your toe into the online marketing pond, so if you decide to take this path (or you already are), hopefully you’ll enjoy the challenge.

In addition to the info above, my tips are:

• Accept that you have to put a lot of work in to make your business successful
• Accept that things will probably take twice as long as you expect them to.

In the next few weeks Serena and I will launch the fourth version of our Grassroots Internet Strategy website (5th if you count the free WordPress version that we initially set up). That’s quite a lot in less than two years, even for two website marketing peeps such as ourselves! But it has all been part of the process.

We started by putting something together relatively quickly so that we could get started, and as we’ve learned more and more about WordPress and new methods of online marketing, we continually upgraded the website to meet our needs and capitalise on new business opportunities.

Need some expert input to get you up and running faster?

If you’re ready to find out how to set up a website and create the foundation of your dream lifestyle, check out Serena’s Website Launch Pad course

Google AdWords is a great way to increase traffic to your website, particularly if it is competitive to get your website to appear high up in the organic results.

A lot of business owners set up and run their own AdWords campaigns, which is relatively easy to do.  The hard part is optimising your Ads over time to make sure you’re getting the best possible Return On Investment from your AdWords spend.

Getting a few details wrong can cost you a lot of money!

I work with lot of clients either managing their AdWords campaigns or coaching them on how to optimise their own campaigns.

Here are some of the mistakes that are made regularly, plus easy ways to fix them.

1. Not Linking Your AdWords and Google Analytics Accounts

—Google Analytics shows how each web visitor behaves once they reach your website.

By linking your AdWords and Analytics accounts, you’ll get information like the number of pages viewed and the time spent on your website, broken down to the keyword that the visitor typed into Google before clicking through to your website from your Ad.

—In the long term, having access to this information means that you can pause keywords that bounce and keep paying for those where the web traffic performs better.

To link your accounts:

• Use the same email to log in to your AdWords and Analytics account
• Check that you have Administrator level access to your Google Analytics
• In AdWords, go to the Green “Reporting and Tools” tab, pull down to “Google Analytics”, select “I already have an account” and follow the steps to do the linking.

2. Targeting the Wrong Location

One of the great features of AdWords is the ability to target a specific area. This can be set at the level of Country, State, City, specified radius around an address or a custom area marked on a map.

Setting the target area means that only people in your target location will see your Ad and therefore you will only pay for clicks from people within your target area.

To set your target location:

• Go to the Settings tab
• Under “Locations and Languages”, where it says “In what geographical locations do you want your ads to appear?” click Edit.
• There are 4 tabs on the next screen. Generally I go to the “Search” tab, type in the name of the city, state or country I want to target, click “Find” and then select the appropriate place from the selections that Google gives you.
• If you want to target a specified area around an address, go to the “Custom” tab, type in the address, select if you would like the address to show in your ads, add the number of kilometres where you’d like your ad to show and then “View on Map” to see if you’ve covered the suburbs that are in your target area.

The “Custom” targeting feature is particularly useful if you are a business that targets clients from your local area. Often though, because the number of searches for your keywords in your target area can be relatively low, you might need your ads to show in a high position in order to capture the clicks that are available.

3. Directing Ads to your Home Page

If your ads are directed to your Home Page (which often includes a lot of information), your visitors from AdWords might bounce if they can’t immediately find what they are looking for.

Ideally, direct your Ads to a targeted landing page that:

To get this right you need to do some experimenting.

Move your ads up or down by changing your Maximum CPC Bid (while keeping an eye on your Click Through Rate).

It takes some testing to find the right position for your ads where you are paying a lower Cost Per Click than the top spot, but still getting enough clicks per day.  After keeping an eye on your ads for a while you’ll get a feel for the right spot.

5. Not Using Conversion Tracking

If you don’t set up Conversion Tracking it is harder to evaluate the return from your AdWords spend.

WordPress web software is being used by more and more people around the world to create their website or blog.

• WordPress is the most widely used web software, used by over 14% of all websites
• WordPress is the dominant Content Management System (CMS), used more than 54% of the time where a CMS is used in a website.

People use WordPress because it is easy

And I mean “wow”, really easy.  Sure, there are some tricky things that are best left for a developer, but once your website is set up, if you have a bit of knowledge and the ability to search for information online, the WordPress sky is the limit!

I have always been happy with this website, it was set up with a Content Management System that made it easy for me to make and publish updates to the copy.  But as I used WordPress for two other websites, I became aware of some of the things that I couldn’t do easily with my previous Content Management System.

I worked with Tessa Needham Creative to recreate the look and feel of my website in WordPress, which now gives me access to the extra functionality that I want.

Use WordPress for your whole website, or if you need a new blog added

If your website has limitations in terms of you being able to update and optimise your copy without involving your web developer, you could either move all of your website to WordPress*, or, you could add on a WordPress* blog to make it easy to create and share new content.

* There are two different kinds of WordPress website. WordPress.com and WordPress.org  In this article I am referring to WordPress.org

Read more about the different types of WordPress here.

Adding WordPress to your Website makes it easy for you to do things yourself (instead of paying someone else!):

1. Update your copy and add new articles whenever you want to
2. Optimise your copy to help increase your web traffic from Google
3. Embed videos from YouTube so that they can be played directly from your website
4. Add forms from that let people subscribe via email to your updates
5. Make changes to the items that you have in your side column, add things and take things away
6. Let other people share your articles and content via Facebook, Twitter and other social media
7. Add new links to your Main and Secondary Navigation
8. Add a Twitter or Facebook feed to your side column
9. Create “Categories” and “Tags” to help people find your articles based on the topic they are interested in
10. Add Google Analytics to collect data that helps you improve your website.

A lot of the things mentioned above are done using “Plugins” which can be easily added to WordPress to give specific functionality.

WordPress even makes the tricky stuff easy

Because my previous website was quite well established, we also had to do a few tricky things.  So that none of the inbound links I have been building to optimise my website will be broken, we had to redirecting URLs from the old website to the URLs in this website, which are slightly different.  Once Tessa found the right Plugin, this was a straight forward process.

Once you’ve decided that WordPress.org is the right platform for your website, there are a lot of options to choose from, depending upon your expectations and the functionality that you need.  Find out more in the article on Which WordPress website is right for your business.

Granted it took me a while to move all my content to WordPress, but now that it’s done, I couldn’t be happier!

What’s your experience with WordPress?  And what do you love most about what it lets you do easily?

Until next time

Melinda

P.S.  Need help using WordPress and getting familiar with Plugins?

Do it the easy way. Download these FREE eBooks from Tessa Needham Creative.