Category Archives: SEO
How to get more from your pay per click (PPC)!
Want a way to generate more from your pay per click spend?
Lets run through this scenario together
- You have set up a highly targeted campaign in Adwords (so that your website is listed in the search results for phrases that match your business services.
- You get clicks to your landing page or home page (generally a specific landing page) in your very competitive market place – well done all is going well
- The visitor then views your web page & takes no action, non what so ever (no lead generation or sale?)
- Visitor leaves the site – no sale and money and opportunity gone!
- Your none the wiser either! Frustrating isnt it?
OK, you have done your job, you have generated the interest, you have sent the visitor to the page, but no action is made (ie, no sale or contact made from that visitor) now what?
If the PPC is working correctly does this mean the website is broken or needs to be refined to encourage sales and leads from its PPC visitors. Chances are Yes!, Well not broken but needs work to create sales.
I believe that any site can gain sales, the secret ingredient however is having the entire “sales funnel” correctly aligned around “traffic-interest-activity-analysis” if any of these are failing or not in your sales funnel equation then you advertising is not working it’s potential!
Food for thought isn’t it? If you would like to know how we can help your website generate more from your PPC give me a call some time.
Dave Lemmon
Marketing Director/Owner
021 425692
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Quick steps to SEO greatness
I was working with a client of mine on a project and he happened to mention that his wife was working on a website project to help families become more interested in playing golf.
His wife had being working with an website agency to promote this service and the site has just gone live. He wanted to get this site promoted in search engines such as Google. He sent me the link and asked for my help.
I asked if he would be able to give me some search phrases that his wife would like the site to be found for. He come back the next day and give me five lines of phrases. Out of these five lines the words he gave were very generic and in most cases they were just one word. I then asked him to resend me a list of search phrases that were more specific to what the site was promoting. The next thing I know a page document was sent to me with the note; ‘please take the content for phrases from this document’.
Ok, I reviewed the document and was able to determine some key phrases to focus on and then went about briefing my friend on some ways to help the site get found.
Here were my tips:
- Come up with a load of keyword rich search terms you want to be found for.
- Add these to your home page content and then start building paragraphs of text around these, making sure the content and paragraphs stay within a structure that is still well written.
- Make a headline on the home page that indicates in one good headline what this site will provide to the end users…make the headline all about what’s in it for them and if possible include some keywords that will also help your rankings.
Then I asked him to check his <title tag>, this is an area that the spiders of search engines see and report on but not normally noticed by the average user that views a website page. His title should include these same keywords separated by commas to make it more readable for the search engine spiders.
The next tag to review was the <meta-description>. This is important for rankings and clicks in search engines because this is what people see in the search results when your site comes up. In this area it is a good idea to have a call to action and to summarise what the visitor will find on your site.
Armed with these quick tips you will be on your way to SEO greatness! Good luck!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Website content for your homepage
Three things to look at on your home page.
When you review your website consider this… Most people will for the most part, have never seen or know anything about your business. In fact, for the majority of websites most visitors will probably find them by chance in Google, Yahoo, MSN or by a some other form of marketing of their business.
Ok, so when someone arrives at your site what will they see? Look at your own site for about 30 seconds and answer these questions from the visitor’s perspective.
- Where am I?
- What can I do here?
- Why should I act?
While these all seem really simple questions chances are your website and many other small to medium business sites do a poor job at providing the answers to visitors.
One of the favourites you see on websites is the ‘Welcome To…’. Let’s think about this for a second, you have only a matter of seconds to grab a visitors attention before they leave your site and look elsewhere, so instead of ‘Welcome To Jim’s Shop’ why not consider telling people very clearly where they are, what they can do here and why they should act now.
Let’s consider this, pretend you own a mechanic shop in Waikanae, here is what I would have on my home page…
‘Mechanic Shop in the Waikanae‘ as the main headline on your home page. Followed by a statement such as, ‘where you can have your car, truck and van serviced by our specialised and certified auto mechanics‘. And then something like, ‘Not only do we offer free pickup and delivery of your vehicle, once serviced we offer top quality support and 24 hr assistance just in case you car breaks down in the local area when you become a customer of ours!‘
This not only defines what you do, which tells the visitor ‘where they are’, then moves on and explains ‘what you have to offer’, (specialised and certified mechanics) and then provides them with a solid reason of ‘why they should utilise your services’ (by offering pick up and delivery).
It provides the reader with motivation, clarity of your offer and incentive to take action with you, all of which all help you generate sales from your website.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
PPC vs SEO
There is a debate in the industry around the benefits of using pay-per-click (PPC) adverting instead of search engine optimisation (SEO) as your main source of website traffic. While I feel that there are many benefits of search engine optimisation to me as a business owner PPC can be rewarding in so many ways over SEO.
Here are some interesting points to be aware of;
- PPC traffic converts at 2.03% versus 1.26% for natural traffic
- PPC visitors spend about 10% more money on your site than naturally found visitors
- PPC visitors stay on your site 29% longer than naturally found website visitors
Here are my thoughts on why these stats are as they are
With PPC you control what phrases you want to appear in Google for, with natural search (SEO) you dont have the same control over these search queries. In some strange instances your site might be found for search phrases that are not related to your business at all but the search engines have tagged your website as having content relevant to this.
For example, you can state in PPC that you want to show for a phrase that directly relates to your product, for example “dog collars” and then when someone types in “looking for dog collars” your site comes up at the top of Google ready for that person to click, visit and then buy.
The reason I believe PPC visitors stay longer on your site is that they know what you have is what they have searched for and now want to know more about your website before making a commitment to buy from you. They are just checking you out more before they spend their cash with you…
The reason people spend more from you is an interesting one, is it because the PPC visitor is a more serious purchaser and hence has more to spend than the naturally found website visitor.
My final words, PPC gives you more control on who see’s your business online and where your business shows and doesn’t show. It typically gives your business an instant boost of traffic due to the fact that you can show in google today, tomorrow and the next day as long as you are willing to pay for the traffic you get. PCC also gives you the ability to test product prices, collect feedback and gather really quick information due to the ability to send alot of traffic to your site via PPC advertising. It’s all good food for thought…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
SEO tips for hotels
Here are a few tips to help ensure your listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing are in tip top shape.
Title tag
(Normally shows in the left hand corner of your browser (version dependent))
Make sure your title tag includes a few phrases that you would like to be found for. For example, if you are a hotel in Wellington include these phrases: hotels wellington, wellington hotel, accommodation in wellington, hotels in wellington – and end your title tag with your hotel name and website domain name. This can be a very competitive area to target in search engines so if you have a pool, a fine dining restaurant or something else that may separate you from others, make sure you include this in your title tag along with the search phrases. For example, ‘hotels wellington pool’, this will enable you to stand out to people who are looking for what you’ve got.
Meta-tag data
(This is normally shown on line two in Google results for website results)
Your meta data for each website page should include a call to action along with a short snappy description of what your page has on it. For example, on your pool page your meta data might say something like this: ‘The {name of hotel} offers a fabulous indoor pool that is heated for your pleasure. Click here for more information.’
Content on your page
Your body content should have at least 200 characters on it and should include the phrases or search terms that you would like to be found for. Start off with the content of your pool page, then list the key phrases you would like to be found for that relate to your pool. Build a paragraph or two by inserting the key words into the content at relevant places. Ensure it reads well and makes sense.
Your headline
Ensure the main headline on your page is surrounded by a html format known as H1. An H1 heading format informs search engines that this phrase is important and should be shown in search engines.
Your page names
Make sure your page names are based on what your content has on it. If you have a hotel in Wellington and offer gift vouchers on a page, make sure your website page is called Wellington-Hotel-Gift-Vouchers. This will increase the probability of getting found in search engines.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Online marketing for car rental companies
Discover a marketing plan that grew a rental car business by 1800%.
The Internet is full of companies advertising themselves in search engines as the company to use when looking to rent a vehicle. Yes, it’s a crowded space, and many have gone down the slippery slope of competing for business by cutting their rental costs per day (especially within the car area) where the larger companies have thousands tied up in stock and must look to discounting just to empty the yard! It’s a competitive area and one that must be managed carefully if you want to make a splash. But there is hope, we have managed to find thousands of leads for our clients using our creative marketing models.
Here’s how…
I have been working with rental companies for around five years now and over this time we have tried many ways to find opportunities to grow businesses. We started off like most do, with a search engine strategy to ensure we had all of the ingredients in place for search engines so that they could be found by Google, Yahoo and MSN (now known as Bing).
The method in the early days was to optimise their website and display all products and offers, ensuring they had all their offers and specials at the time nicely placed on the home page. This method worked for a while but we ran out of home page space with these traditions and the sites just become a clutter both to manage and to surf around.
I can only imagine what site visitors thought at the time – we were just overloading them with offers for specials and deals for vans, cargo trucks, cars, people movers, minibuses etc, and it was not working to the levels we were happy with. We then thought we just needed more visitors to the site, so we started an advertising program using Google’s platform. We soon found out that having more people visit wasn’t the solution, the problem in fact was due to the confusion and clutter we had on the home page – people just could not see the woods for the trees!
The question now was, how can we increase our leads and sales without having a home page include all the information needed for each customer type? What we did then was create a new creative marketing model to direct these customers to sites that closely matched their requirements. We did this by using the models below all bundled up into a web strategy:
- Landing pages
- Sales pages
- Advertising with Google, Yahoo and Bing
- Search engine optimisation
- Website Optimiser
- Live support/chat
- Facebook profile & brand advertising
- Automated customer signup process.
Line chart showing growth for one of our clients.
The results not only spoke for themselves, they were almost too good to be true. This marketing method worked and we were able to track the progress of this business and over the course of four years build up the sales from the Internet.
If you would like to know how you can grow your rental company to the levels seen above please contact me using the details below.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
SEO for hotels
How to grow your hotel sales!
While the industry as a whole is a very competitive market there are some that stand out as innovative, creative, adaptable and brand focused. It may seem easy for some hotels that are smaller in size, but there are options for larger hotels to have these traits as well so that they can discover a long-tail of opportunities in the market place.
Over the past ten years I have worked with a number of hotels that were generating more room sales, selling more luxury based packages and exceeding the growth models that others were experiencing.
What I found was that all of these outstanding hotels were embracing the Internet and looking for opportunities and niches for themselves in this market space. One thing that particularly stood out for me was that these hotels were managed by people who wanted more sales from their own website, instead of leaving sales to a third party (all of which charged a very high commission model for each booking generated).
The ones that were growing were really utilising the Internet to drive customers to their own site, while others were just happy to take what they could get from their third party suppliers. Most of these hotels were not interested in rocking the boat with their supply chain – to them it was just easier to use this method of third party booking engines. My thought is that leaving it to a third party to bring in bookings is just crazy, but what can you say or do to change their minds? Obtaining more bookings from their own website to most owners or managers is in the ‘too hard basket’.
So, as I said above, the hotels growing in leaps and bounds had common traits and goals – they wanted more bookings from their own website, and at low or no commission rate.
Here is what I discovered most the successful hotels had in common between 2000 – 2009:
- They invested money into ensuring their website could be found in all major search engines.
- They used the Internet as a advertising platform to bring in more business.
- They had websites that made the process of booking online easy.
- They used an award winning booking system that was designed to blend directly into their website.
- They had invested in email marketing to send updates and special offers to all customers that had been to the hotel before.
Last year we saw a introduction of social media options like Twitter & Facebook and now many of the same hotels that succeeded back in the early 2000’s have rolled up their sleeves again with the intent to get value from these new models of interaction.
For me, social media interaction has an intangible return on investment. After all, it’s all about branding and keeping in touch with others through a medium that people use on a day-to-day basis. The value is blurred at best but the model is available and should be utilised to its fullest if you want to expand your brand awareness.
So lets look at the model from the early 2000′s again, now ask your self as a Hotelier, ‘what do I need to do to keep my business in growth mode though the economic times that we are in?’.
Here is my hit list for growing your hotel for 2011 (taking elements of the 2000 list as well):
- Invest money into ensuring your website can be found in all major search engines (use a specialised resource to ensure you keep in step with the latest tips).
- Use the Internet as a advertising platform to bring in more business – advertise not only in Google, but think Yahoo and Bing as well.
- Get your website into a new 2011 look and feel, look to engage users at the highest level. Make the site easy to navigate and keep the main focus and objectives in the website at all times (keep the booking engine in the design) so that people can book with ease.
- Use an award winning booking system that is designed to blend directly into your website.
- Make sure you utilise a company that specialises in web based booking systems as their major offering.
- Invested in email marketing to send updates and special offers to all customers
- Use the social media to brand and create more awareness of your product offers, use facebook as a medium to advertise offers to all followers.
- Use mini-websites to get in front of direct traffic and advertise these in all of your marketing materials, email signatures and printed business documents.
- Track all activity and report on your investments so that you can visually see if the return on investment is at a high level.
- Make sure your focus is on getting more visitors to your website(s) – the more bookings you get from your own site the more you will save – up to thousands on commissions that are charged by suppliers each and every year.
- Get in touch with a search marketing company that can help you reinvent yourself and your branded hotel with a sound strategy for more growth.
The way forward is simple: embrace the technologies available on the Internet; source experts that can offer you skills that your hotel does not have in-house; and focus on gaining more sales from your own front window.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Google Adwords
You can use Google AdWords to really grow your business. With a tailor-made account and with some highly skilled management your products and services can quickly be flying off the wall. This ability to get in front of people looking for your services locally and world-wide is just amazing. Having seen the growth myself in our customers, the value and growth can be phenomenal, but owner beware! It can be an expensive area to advertise in if you have the account set up on ‘show to all and spend it all Charlie!’
Here are some tips I have used over the years to help ensure you minimise the expense:
- Keep the keywords to a small number
- Make sure you keep the ads focused on a specific offering
- Keep a watchful eye on your daily budget
- Keep track on the number of conversions you are getting in return
- Last but not least make sure you only advertise to people who are looking for your precise product or service. For example if you sell red apples, be sure you are only targeting people that are after red apples…green apple lovers not wanted!
For more help and advice please contact me on the form next to this blog! Keep advertising!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Google Adwords marketing
Many business owners go ahead and build their own AdWord accounts only to find that they end up burning a hole in their wallet! What may seem easy to begin with soon becomes an impossible challenge, unsure what to do next most people continue to just burn money without really understanding if their account is working for them or not. There is a common misconception that you can add some keywords to your account, come up with an ad for your account and walk away. Here are some golden rules to follow when setting these accounts up.
- Use a professional, seek someone that spends their entire life in this space, it’s a highly skilled area
- Seek expert advise on how to manage this account
- Ask a vendor to manage this, the time and energy you save on having an expert look after this for you will benefit two-fold. It will generate more sales, with less cost per sale and you can guarantee that Google does not take your hard earned cash with ease
- If you can not afford a manager, at least ask an AdWord manager to help you set it up professionally for you.
If you need to discuss your account with me please drop me note anytime….
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO) is the ability to get your website found for phrases that relate to your service or product offering. Many people don’t understand the importance of having a website found or just don’t really understand the value of having a website at all. Having a website and having it listed well for search phrases can really help your business grow not only in New Zealand but also internationally – overseas clients may be looking for products that you have to offer.
There are many companies out there that claim to be experts in this area, but beware, not all search engine companies are good at what they claim to be. Here is what I suggest you discuss before signing up to any search engine optimisation.
First of all, make sure they are based in New Zealand (it helps to have someone local, someone who you can see and talk to in person if need be, to me it just makes sense) and if possible make sure they have some real exposure and experience in this field. Ask for some evidence of their skills and don’t be afraid to ask for a reference from a customer or to see real evidence by asking them to show case there skills by searching for phrases in search engines like Google, Bing and MSN.
Search Engine Optimisation companies are a dime a dozen. Be sure to pick yours with care, and if possible make sure they can also help you make your website a better platform to sell from… after all, getting customers is one thing, but once you get them you need to make sure you are able to convert these visitors to buyers, leads, customers and sales! Until next time..
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Writing content for search engine optimisation
Here are some tips for SEO content.
When it comes to writing for search engine optimisation for websites, what helps me is that I always think about what people might type in Google and other search engines before I start forming structured content on the site. I often look up what people have typed in using the tools available in Google and I also look at websites that are currently in place for search phrases and review the content on their pages.
Once I decide the phrases that I want to be found for, I mix those words with the content supplied by my copywriters or given to me by the customer who owns the site. Here are a few other tips:
- Try using bold content to emphasis the search phrases
- Use italics to emphasise words or phrases
- Add blocks of content with links to other pages within your site to create some links for search engine to follow.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
SEO tips
How to name your pages for optimum search engine optimisation purposes.
Much has been said about optimal ways to name your pages. Having experimented with many conventions over the past few years there doesn’t appear to me to be real standout performance rule for doing so. In fact, its easier to advise you on a few rules to use instead:
- Don’t use id’s or self- generated names
- Try to avoid the use of underscores (it decreases your page readability)
- If you use more than one directory in your website, ensure you use a phrase or search name inside that structure to assist your pages with name relevancy
- Make sure your page names are as closely related as possible based on the makeup of the page content (eg websitename.com/productname/product-page-name).
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
The importance of good copywriting
Good copywriting is essential to increasing the conversion rate on your website.
The text on your website should be appealing and relevant to the visitor, and at the same time include as many key words and keyword phrases as possible to help the search engines find your site.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to achieve. Remember though that you don’t have to start writing the information on your existing website from scratch! Tweak and reword your existing text to include phrases and words that you think people will be searching for to find your site.
One tip I have used in the past is to gather all the phrases you would like to be found for in Google and then do the same exercise for what your product or service offers. Once you have the two lists, combine them both to create a powerful, compelling story for your website.
Have fun!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
