Friday, January 25, 2013

Google AdWords Tips for local business


Google Adwords can be a great advertising channel to boost your online sales. Purchasing ads through Google is a viable option to get your website to the top of Google search results by successfully bidding on keywords. Let us quickly take a look at some effective tips on how to efficiently use Google Adwords for your local business to generate more leads and improve your online sales.

Track your conversions

As Return On Investment (ROI) is going to be at the top of your list, you need to ensure that you keep track of what is giving you the highest conversion in your website. Although monitoring the click-through rates in your website is an important step, you need to realize that it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you are going to monitor only the click-through rates, then it means you’re not utilizing your resources properly. Use Google Adwords to monitor all the e-commerce transactions in your website. Take a detailed look at which area of service or keyword combination is getting converted more and is giving you a higher ROI. For best results, you may also track the non-monetary elements such as downloads, enquiry forms, newsletter signups etc. Identifying and focusing more on the profitable areas is the key to a successful online marketing campaign.  

Manage your ads and bids

Develop ad groups for multiple keyword variations relevant to your services and manage the ads and bids accordingly. One great way to use Google Adwords effectively is to distinguish between the research group and the sales group. That is, a visitor who lands up on your product information page should be treated differently from a person who visits your sales page. For instance, someone who is has done an online research for “treadmill stores in Chicago” is more likely to purchase your product than someone who looks for “best treadmills”. So, you need to vary your bidding strategy according to your target consumer.

Attractive ads

The design of your ad can make a huge difference to your Adwords campaign. Catchy words or images will not only grab the eyeballs of prospects but also get you a high CTR ranking thereby boosting your ad’s quality score, minimizing your cost-per-click (CPC), and guaranteeing your ads a higher placement in the Google search results. This, in turn, results in a high ROI for your website.

Ad Extensions

Ad extensions can support your existing ads for improved results. It is for this reason that most e-commerce sites use product extensions for their ads. The ad extensions will display titles, images, snippets, and prices of your products. It’s worth incorporating seller ratings, call extensions and sitelinks for your ads. Typically, seller ratings work wonders when your ads get a higher rating. The sitelinks can be useful to display additional links pertaining to your area of service and the call extensions are meant for call-to-action purposes. 

Custom Landing Pages

Most website owners make the mistake of directing all their ad links to their home page. This is one thing you need to avoid. Instead, have some of your ad links pointing to your landing page and some of them pointing to the other important pages in your website. It is worth designing an optimization strategy wherein you have specific keywords and anchor texts pointing to your landing page. But ensure that the backlinks are more relevant to their target URLs.

Michael Rae, a freelance writer for www.firsthomealarm.com - offers full home security to help protect your family, assets from burglary and other crimes. adt securitysystems