Pay-Per-Click advertising, like Google Adwords, is a great way to drive immediate traffic to your site—however, there are some tricks in order to be successful. When your prospective customer searches using a search query that matches your search term or keyword and decides to click on your ad, they expect to be taken to a relevant page for that topic, not just to your home page and then forced to find the information they were looking for.
In the video below, Google shares some ”best practices” for creating relevent ads. The tips provided will give you ideas on how to test your ads, which will help drive more relevant traffic to your site.
Use “Keywords” in the title of your ad – The easiest way to improve the performance of your ads is to think about how to make them more relevant to your potential customers. Chose keywords that are specific to your products or services.
Direct your users to the right page – Ensure that the destination URL you use for each ad brings users to a specific landing page which relates directly to their search.
Add a call-to-action to your ads – Try using a call-to-action in your ads, as this will give your potential customers a clear indication of what they can expect to do on your site.
Include unique selling points – Your ad text should make you stand out from your competitors and highlight your unique selling points. These can be products, prices, delivery offers or services that make your business unique, attractive or different. Your customers will choose you over the competition based solely on the benefits that your ad is selling.
Inter-capitalize the ad text – This may sound obvious, but using appropriate capitalization in ads can really have an effect on how they look.
If you would like to learn more ways to improve your Adwords performance, visit Google’s new Optimization Center, which is full of useful tips. Or, if you’d like to have a professional handle your Adwords/PPC campaign, please contact me for a free consultation.
With the tremendous popularity in Social Media, you’re seeing an onset of creative ideas, tools and networks emerge. Many of the social media sites and tools will end up in the proverbial interactive dust bin—however some, those that solve a problem, have a solid chance of survival.
One such site/tool I ran into recently helps you create an online business card of sorts. Before you say something like, “isn’t that what my website is for?” Consider that we’re talking in the context of “Social Media.” If you are a savvy online marketer, you probably subscribe to a handful of social media sites. If so, one of the challenges is how to communicate to your market what sites you’re on and what your address(s) are.
In comes Card.ly…their main objective is to allow you to have your own mini-business card profile, without needing to have any design or programming skills. You can make a “tiny” portfolio online in which you’ll be able to integrate your various networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc.). In addition, you can add a blurb about your business and how to best reach you. You can even choose between many different skins and other features. Card.ly has both a free and paid versions of their service.
2009 has been the year of growth for social media. Twitter alone has grown over 1000% this year! Meanwhile, Facebook continues to push MySpace to the back of the line. What will be on tap in 2010? Social media will get even more popular, that’s for sure! David Armano of Business Week breaks down what he sees as some of the treads for 2010. Click here to read what David thinks are the top 6 trends for 2010 in Social Media.
Remember when Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates of Microsoft did that series of commercials together? I just ran into this again and thought I’d share…it’s worth another look/view.
Whether you’re a web developer or a business owner, we all need help learning new software applications from time to time. If you’re like me and you don’t have the time to take a class at the local community college, or don’t want to spend thousands for a concentrated workshop, I have a solution…Lynda.com! Lynda.com is a wonderful resource for nearly every possible software title there is…from MS Office apps, programing languages, blogging, most Adobe products, to nearly everything in between, Lynda has the training for you. The best part, it’s only $25 per month for unlimited use. You will find the segmented video tutorials a tremendous help in brushing up or learning a new software title. There are also many free videos so that you may take the service for a test drive.
Happy learning and please feel free to share this post from ShubicWebDesign
I ran across an interesting new concept that I thought I’d share. Bulbstorm is a fairly new social networking community site where innovative individuals, experts, and companies come together to share, improve, and market new concepts for products and services.
The site makes it easy for users to share ideas or contribute on the implementation of other’s ideas. The site uses a system of currency, called the WATT$, which users earn by contributing Bulbs (Ideas) or collaborating on other’s Bulbs. Users can restrict access to their ideas (Bulbs) in a number of ways if they so chose.
