08Nov

Tips for Using Adwords To Save Money on Growing Your Startup’s Website

November 8, 2022 W. Scott Cain 15

When growing a business, you can pour dollar after dollar into having the best and latest tools and features, including your website. However, an attractive domain is useless if no one can find it. Follow a few crucial tips for using Google Adwords to grow your startup without breaking the bank.

How To Use Google Adwords the Right Way

If used correctly, Google Ads can be a powerful tool for business growth. Select keywords that target customers with the best likelihood of conversion. Location targeting ensures you only reach the people you can serve. As you become more adept, refine your targets and focus on more specific keywords.

Negative keywords are essential for your strategy. You don’t want your ad to show up for words or phrases from people not in your target audience. For example, if you sell women’s clothing, add “men” as a negative keyword to ensure your ad won’t appear when men search for apparel.

Stick to a reasonable budget and increase it gradually. The key to success lies in continual testing. As you examine the results of various keywords, ad copy and landing pages, you’ll discover what works best for your business.

Who To Ask for Help Fine-Tuning Your Google Adwords Strategy

Marketing is an essential part of your budget, and you need an intelligent strategy using Google Adwords to complement your website. Look to Integrated IT Solutions for comprehensive solutions for SEO, web development and web design to get your startup off the ground and into the stratosphere.

08Nov

Tips to Increase Website Conversions

November 8, 2021 W. Scott Cain 70

Out of all performance metric factors, website conversions are the most important. They indicate the usability, relevancy, and credibility of a website to target audiences. Businesses need to optimize their website to drive more conversions for a better return on investment. However, devising a step-by-step strategy capable of increasing conversions is easier said than done. Businesses may not find the right set of tactics that can deliver worthwhile results in some cases. This is the reason why; it is better to hire professional strategists and have them steadily increase the conversions with top-of-the-line strategies.

#1. Define goals

Before embarking on a conversion rate optimization journey, it is essential to set goals and have them measured. These goals can be particular actions that would generate certain values for a brand. After defining goals, it is essential to assess them regularly and improve the efforts to ensure better results. Some of the common conversion objectives will include, page visits, click-on elements, custom conversions, and form submits. There are some online tools that enable marketers to create unique requirements and track the behavior of each user to direct optimization campaigns accordingly.

#2. Analyze data

In most situations, conversion campaigns are assumptions that are not backed by any solid data. Marketers have to rely on the results to measure the performance of their campaigns and have them improved. But, constantly tracking data about visitors will provide valuable insights into users and their preferences. For instance, marketers need data on traffic and the sources. They also need abandonment rates for each web page, along with the bounce rate for forms. Information on average order values is also essential for designing an impactful campaign. All these data highlight information valuable to represent an ideal user.

#3. Competitor analysis

One way of ensuring performing better than the competitors is a competitor analysis. Businesses get to scrutinize their strength and weakness by highlighting the strength and weaknesses of their competitors. Moreover, they can even analyze the way the potential customers will perform on the competition website. The data is essential to focus efforts and strategize the campaigns for better results.

#4. Conversion funnel

To fix a broken conversion funnel, marketers need to understand the details of the user journey and find out where they hesitate or drop off from the website. There can be plausible explanations to find out about this factor and have them fixed properly. Marketers can use insights to track the conversion rates of each funnel. This even helps to identify specific stages of the journey where the customers are losing interest. Fixing them would decrease the dropping rates, resulting in boosted conversion rates. One of the effective ways to analyze this factor is by focusing on checkout rates. Studies reveal that an average of 69.23% of consumers abandons their carts. To avoid this problem, websites need to optimize their checkouts pages with simple layouts. This setup helps to retain the interest of users and prompts them to complete the conversions without any interruptions during the funnel.

#5. Value proposition

The value proposition can be simply described as the reason why customers should buy from a particular company. Therefore, businesses should clearly communicate their unique selling points to their customers. They should also tell them why it is a good decision to buy a product or service from them. Value propositions can be defined in many forms like headlines, images, or website copies. Each of these content ideas communicates different reasons why customers should choose them instead of a competitor. By doing so, businesses can make sure to engage with their target audience and influence their conversions.

#6. Critical pages

When a website isn’t showing any real improvements in conversion rates even after repeated efforts, then it is time to introduce some radical changes. Businesses can alter the design of their critical pages and introduce new layouts to impact conversions. They may even use the insights from visitors’ data to understand points that are blocking customers from finishing their conversions. Most high-converting websites use tools like eye tracking, mouse tracking, and click maps to understand user behavior. These tools will also provide insights on the journey of customers in completing the conversions. Through these data, businesses can surely boost their conversion rates.

#7. Foster reviews

Customers don’t convert when they don’t trust. One way of improving trust among audiences is building reviews and testimonials. Websites enable businesses to share reviews from various sources to improve trust and confidence among visitors. Reports show that 58% of customers are more likely to convert after reading reviews.

10Mar

Google Removes Sidebar Ads

March 10, 2016 W. Scott Cain 45

Google Removes Sidebar Ads

Google has recently changed its search results to remove ads from the right hand sidebar. This has been a widely talked about change and will likely have an impact on ad campaigns moving forward. As the right sidebar ads have played a key function in PPC advertising, many are wondering how it will effect Google search results and what advertising strategies will be best moving forward.

What Is the Change?

Google previously displayed 1-3 ads at the top of each search query. The right sidebar would have ads 4-8, while the bottom displayed 9-11. Now, Google will generally have 3 ads at the beginning of the search results. For “highly commercial queries,” Google will likely have 4 ads at the top of the page. Examples of these types of searches include those for car insurance and hotels. The remaining ads for the page, ads 5-7, will be located on the bottom of the page. This means the total ads on each page is less than it was previously.

Why Would Google Remove Side Ads?

Of course, increased revenue is likely to be a big factor in Google’s decision to eliminate sidebar ads. With fewer ads per page, it is likely that PPC rates for ad campaigns will go up because of competition to get on the first page of results. While many are concerned by the removal of the ads, it is well documented that click-through rates for the sidebar ads are fairly low. In fact, the sidebar ads have the lowest rates of any of the ads on the page, including bottom ads. Another factor is the increased use of mobile devices for searching. In 2015, for the first time ever, more searches were conducted on a mobile device than on a desktop, a trend that will likely continue. A mobile search has less room for ads. Removing sidebar ads creates a similar experience for desktop and mobile users.

How Will This Change Pay Per Click Campaigns?

With less ads per page, there will be more competition for top spots on the first page. Companies may need to pay more to ensure that their ads get top billing. For those advertisers that have smaller budgets for their PPC ad campaigns or are bidding for popular search terms, they may have a harder time getting on the first page. However, it is important to know that sidebar ads, as mentioned before, have a relatively low click-through rate. Bottom and sidebar ads combined only account for about 14% of total clicks. And it is only desktop searches that are affected by the change, which are less than half of all queries, making the impacted clicks drop to 7%, and that still includes bottom ad clicks. If those are removed from the equation, sidebar clicks actually account for a very small fraction of total clicks. Therefore, clicks per page should not change dramatically with their removal. In fact, while the change will affect the number of ads per page, it may actually make the ads that are displayed more efficient and a better value.

How Will This Change Organic Search Results?

Companies that rely on organic search results in their ad campaigns will see their results pushed further down on the page. Of real concern is that, on some screens and with some searches, all organic results may be pushed below the fold, meaning that users will have to scroll down before they can view any non-ad results. This could mean lower click-through rates, although true effects remain the be seen. Google is also adding more organic results per page, up to nine. Many industry experts estimate that these adjustments will not create any large scale change in the long-term. Others, however, are saying that the only real loser with the removal of sidebar ads is the organic search.

How Should Advertising Tactics Change?

Top results on the first page can be expensive and prices may go up with the removal of ads on the sidebar. Advertisers will need to determine if the PPC for their ad campaigns is worth the price. In the end, companies should stress the importance of better quality ads. This includes developing an understanding of customer needs to direct users to relevant and high quality landing pages, create ad copy that is user-centric and target search terms.

If your ad campaigns rely on organic results, you will continue to compete against PPC ads. Ads will continue to evolve, becoming more interactive to capture user interest. Site owners and companies that use SEOs must continue to strive for high ranking results through meaningful keywords. In addition, they will need to stand out among other listings using specific tools that are the right fit for their site, their company and their users.

Ultimately, the impact of the removal of Google’s right hand sidebar ads on advertisers is still unknown. What is known is that Google’s aim is to streamline the user’s experience while continuing its successful PPC advertising. The success will be determined by the algorithms for AdWords and the organic search. Advertisers can use tracking tools to determine how to better their search rankings.

28Oct

How To Properly Optimize Your Landing Page

October 28, 2014 Integrated IT Solutions 27

Importance Of A Properly Optimized Landing Page

Your landing pages for your ad campaign are extremely valuable. Since you are paying for traffic, each dollar you spend needs to generate revenue. If your page is not optimized for the ad, user and service, you can be missing out on lost revenue for you ad campaign. (more…)

18Oct

What Is Retargeting & Why Should I Do It?

October 18, 2014 Integrated IT Solutions 24

Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting campaigns are the best way to get a second chance and a first impression. When running a retargeting campaign, when a user leaves your site they will begin to see display advertisements on other sites that they visit that participate in ad networks. This method is highly effective, and inexpensive. (more…)

28Jul

Paid Search Management

July 28, 2014 Integrated IT Solutions 30

Paid Search Management in Phoenix, Arizona

Paid Search Is Not A Recommendation, But A Requirement Our paid search methodology focuses on one thing, cost per acquisition. We drive down cost per click and focus on intent driven phrases to bring the most qualified traffic to your site.

(more…)

28Feb

Landing Page Optimization Services

February 28, 2014 Integrated IT Solutions 32

Paid search is a low cost advertising platform that can be a huge source of leads, sales and new business. In a paid search campaign the landing page of the ad is often overlooked and can be hurting your bottom line. We put together a wireframe of an effective landing page to visualize how to implement these crucial elements.

(more…)

09Jan

What Is A Quality Score?

January 9, 2014 W. Scott Cain 27

A quality score is a relevancy metric determined by Google that shows how well your campaign is structured for each keyword phrases and dictates how much you will pay per click and where it is positioned by Google in the paid listings. A quality score can often be the difference maker in competitive industries