Tag Archives: Online Marketing

AdWords Performance – I Win!

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imageThis is the story of how I beat a Certified Partner at their own game – getting clicks to a website quicker and for less money.

I’m great with , so most of my sites do well over time without advertising, but I use Google AdWords to launch sites, boost their performance and run time-sensitive promotions.

Recently, I was so busy I decided to engage another company to take care of my AdWords campaigns. I figured someone who solely does this for a living has to be better than me too. If they were good enough, they could justify paying for their services.

So I called a Google AdWords Certified company, which I’m not going to name, so let’s called them AW. They said they would audit my own campaign, make some generic suggestions and if I wanted, they were happy to take it over for me.

When I received their report, it was indeed generic. The recommendations came straight from Google’s standard documentation and seemed to ignore what was happening specifically in my campaign, but I thought that was all they had promised, so never mind.

I rang them and agreed they would run my campaign for 1 month, then stop and call me for a detailed phone review. They said I would have to double my budget for the campaign for best performance and pay them $150 for their services. Since this campaign had to do with a parenting workshop, for which each ticket was priced at $250, I figured I would do well anyway, so I agreed.

When I saw the AW-proposed keywords, I wondered why they were all singular. “Google doesn’t care about this”, they said, “It matches singular terms to plural queries. That’s not a problem”.

“OK”, I said, “You’re the experts”.

After a few days, I wondered if I could monitor their progress, so I asked to link the new campaign to my Google Analytics account.  What I saw in the following days was my ads appearing at the top of search pages for their chosen keywords, but very few clicks each day. My budget wasn’t being spent, but my business wasn’t getting any either. My confidence did not improve by seeing a single plural term outperforming every other (singular) keyword phrase by a mile.

A month passed and I heard nothing. I waited a few more days and then inquired about the campaign. It was still going, so I asked to stop and have that detailed review they promised.

… and all I got was this lousy Excel spreadsheet (not even a T-shirt). The sheet didn’t even have a column for the one thing I wanted: conversions – people who bought tickets for the parenting workshop. The number of clicks was oh, so small, no wonder there were no conversions.

“Bugger!” I thought, “I’m going back to doing my own thing”.

To show you what happened in detail, here is a comparison of my first campaign, the AW campaign and my new campaign and you can judge for yourself:

CampaignDaysImpressionsImp/dayClicksClk/day$$/click
Before AW5614,763263.62794.98299.281.07
AW372,15058.11571.5475.841.33
After AW103,005300.5545.455.561.03

Basically, if you gave AW $100 today and told them to run a parenting workshop campaign for you, they would take 49 days to deliver 75 visitors to your site. I would deliver 97 visitors to your site in just 18 days.

Like I said before, I win!

[Disclaimer: I am NOT a certified AdWords partner, but I'm happy to help with your AdWords campaign on a consulting basis or by managing it for you. Contact me for more]

2 More Clients, Anyone?

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How would you like just 2 more client per month? How about just 2 more clients per week? Per day? Per hour? How would that affect your bottom line? Your life?

Too many business owners, when they consider taking their business online, can only think about costs and risks. They ask for detailed quotes and specific explanations of how each piece of work will be done.

What they normally fail to see are the benefits.

But realizing the benefits of an online business is really easy and, once you know what’s in it for you, it’s also easy to justify any cost that will leave you enough of a margin.

So how can you tell what good will come out of your new website or campaign or paid ads?

The first thing you need to work out is how much money you make from an average client. This may seem like a simple question, but for most of the business owners I meet, it’s really hard, especially when their business is new.

Online shoppingBasically, you need to take all your business profits and divide them by the number of clients who have generated that profit for you. If you have more than one line of business or group of products/services, you will probably separate them online, so work out each one of them separately. This will also help you decide what is most likely to be profitable online, so you’ll do that first.

If your business is fairly young, use conservative estimates based on what’s going during the past year of a few months, because that’s the closest you’ve got to the future.

It’s important to take into account any additional value brought to you by your clients, such as joint ventures, referrals, barters, etc, because those are worth money too, although they may be indirect. However, if you want to stay conservative, you can just count cash.

Now you know your client lifetime value.

With this figure, most businesses can quickly see that getting just 2 clients – not per hour, not per day, not per week and not per month, just 2 clients – pays for a lot of Internet marketing. The implication of this is huge:

By taking your business online and getting just a small number of new clients that would otherwise not find you, your Internet-based business pays for itself over and over again!

Of course, every business is different, which is why I encourage you to do the math for your own business and see for yourself, but even if it takes 5 clients to pay for your Internet marketing and even if it takes 2 months to get them, you are going to earn back all your investment in 2 months and then again and again and again every 2 months afterward.

What would this do to your life? Could you take some time off? Could you relax? Could you take the family out to a nice place? Could you fix the deck or upgrade your car?

Come on, what are you waiting for? Contact me

Site Speed

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As inventive as ever, Google is now launching a new version of its crawling and indexing engine. They’ve even given it a name: Google Caffeine.

To the person searching for something, Google Caffeine will seem like plain old Google – the search page looks the same, the results look the same – so what’s so different and why should anyone care?

Well, “under the hood”, Google has aimed primarily to improve two things: speed and accuracy. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Speed

Google has made site indexing a lot faster and improved the speed of listing search results in the new version. Faster indexing allows Google to keep up with the growth of the Internet, especially with social sites, like and Facebook.

Website owners are now expected to help Google index things faster by implementing some coding guidelines that will improve site performance. Faster sites will be deemed better and show up higher in search results. Google has even made special programs available for analyzing site performance and reducing the loading time of websites.

The downside is that non-technical folks who maintain their own sites are now at a great disadvantage compared to professional site builders who keep up with technology. This is yet another reason to let professionals build your website.

Accuracy

Google Caffeine seems to rely more heavily on keywords than the old version. This is not surprising, because it probably helps speed up pre-processing of crawled pages and reduces the size of the Google search index.

This means that do-it-yourself site builders will again fall behind Search Engine Optimization () professionals, who have the know-how to put keywords in all the right places.

Bottom line

Now, more than ever, a professional Internet marketing consultant can help clients rank well on Google Search and get business online. Small businesses that try to go solo and save will end up getting less and less, while those who focus on their own craft and outsource their Internet marketing will benefit.

Portfolio

Here are some sites I have created and/or promoted online, each with its own story. I built them with Internet marketing in mind. As you will see, the results are impressive and have made significant impact on the respective businesses.

Plastic2go – plastic pallets, crates and bulk containers

Plastic2go – plastic pallets, crates and bulk containers Within 6 months of launching this website, inquiries for plastic pallets, crates and bulk containers were strong and steady. While I initially used paid ads to attract targeted , I gradually cut back until I turned off the AdWords campaign completely. Plastic2go – plastic pallets, crates and bulk containers now receives only free search traffic and site referrals, being #1 or #2 in Google Search for every one of its keyword phrases. Even the images from Plastic2go feature highly on Google Image Search for the relevant searches, which means more free traffic.

Despite being a country-specific website, Plastic2go receives inquiries from outside Australia, simply due to its outstanding search performance.

Be Happy in LIFE – life coaching

Be Happy in LIFE - life coachingThis website has been redone 3 times based on its results and feedback from visitors who became clients. The Internet marketing includes a combination of paid ads, and blog referrals. As of the time of writing, it is one of the highest ranking websites for the very competitive phrases “life coach” and “life coaching” on Google Search against well-funded coaching schools.

Over the past 2 years, Be Happy in LIFE – life coaching has been pulling in a regular stream of life coaching, parenting classes, relationship coaching and kids assessment inquiries, building a list of prospects and sustaining this small coaching practice.

Family Matters – parenting blog

Family Matters – parenting blogThis website has received a steadily increasing flow of visitors who come to read the daily parenting posts, subscribe and participate in discussions. Based on WordPress, Family Matters makes posting content easy, allowing for more than one author to contribute and for many people to post comments every day.

This Internet marketing of this blog involves only my time and skill, yet gets thousands of visits per month, advertising requests and loads of syndication opportunities and drives traffic to other related websites. It receives its traffic from search engines, social networks and other websites and continues to do better all the time.

Family Matters – parenting blog appears on the first page of Google Search for the term “family matters” against the government and a movie and in the first position for searches like “positive thoughts for kids”, “positive thoughts for children” and “positive parenting quotes”.

As you can see, these sites are doing extremely well for their owners and operating on a very small budget. The ways in which I promote each website depends on the nature and target market of the site itself, but they are all very well optimized to be found easily, read and navigated easily and perform well for their business.

Would you like similar results for your own business?

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What you don’t know, doesn’t hurt

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You may have heard this saying from people already

What you don’t know, doesn’t hurt you

Well, I’m here to tell you this saying is really wrong when it comes to getting business online.

You see, the Internet is a very BIG place and it keeps cHanGIng all the time, faster than anyone can keep up with, let alone anyone who happens to be busy making products, servicing clients or doing the accounting.

On the Internet, what you don’t know can hurt you. A lot!

For example, say you want to develop a website and all you know is Microsoft Word. You create a simple site that looks good to you and you publish it online. No niche research, no usability design, no speed optimization, no and no dynamic content. Just an online brochure, really. You think, “It cost me nothing and it looks nice. Now, all I have to do is wait”.

WRONG! Your website takes months to be picked up by search engines and sits at the bottom of page 523, never to be seen by anyone, let alone buyers.

What you need is someone who can help you put business sense into your website from Day 1.

But let’s say you got some help and your website looks professional and even includes a shopping cart for your products, but you have not done your Internet marketing research, so your keywords are off and your structure is sub-optimal. You cleverly figure out that AdWords can get you quickly and create a campaign.

BAD MOVE! Your ads will receive low quality scores by AdWords, which means they will appear lower than they should and you’ll be paying a lot more than you should. If that’s not enough, you’ll get the wrong type of visitors, the kind that doesn’t buy.

What you need is someone who can help you put business sense into your website from Day 1.

But let’s say you hire someone to put links all over the Internet back to your site. Surely, this will help bring you site up in searches and get you more business, no?

Nope. It will certainly improve your position, but working outside your site can only improve so much. Incorrect structure and content will still result in a low conversion rate and require a lot more links to make any noticeable difference to your business.

What you need is someone who can help you put business sense into your website from Day 1.

I could go on for a while, but the gist of it is

On the Internet, what you don’t know can hurt you. A lot!

If you don’t do this stuff (Internet marketing, that is) all the time and stay on top of things, you will pay more and get less than you should and make a lot less profit. Why waste time and money and why frustrate yourself? Find an Internet marketer you can trust (I know this great guy) and hire him to get you business quickly and easily from the ground up.

You new Internet business is not far away.

Talk to you soon,
Gal

Social Networking Success

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TwitterIn the past few months, I’ve gone deeper and deeper into . As the Internet evolves, this medium now provides website referrals with implied trust. Basically, someone you “know” recommends something, so you are more inclined to go check it out.

When you sell something online, or just when you want to get your name out, social networking sites can be great promotional tools for you. Here are some of them:

  • StumbleUpon – very quick to bring , but visitors only stick around if you can really grab their attention. Friends and groups are helpful, but once your page makes it into the SU database, it may get propagated by random users who “stumble upon” it with the toolbar
  • Digg – mostly news items and technology, but famous for bringing sites down due to the massive amounts of traffic sent over a short period of time. Requires time to build a following
  • – a “mini blogging” platform, surrounded and supported by a host of applications for filtering tweets, vetting friend requests and grouping friends. Tweets can go to and from your mobile phone while you are away, as well as to and from your website automatically
  • LinkedIn – invitation-only website for professionals and business people, featuring excellent group discussions and allowing you to build business affiliations, create joint ventures and find strategic clients online. Self promotion is frowned upon, so participation and adding genuine value are the best approach

Of course, there are others, like MySpace and Facebook, and the social interaction can quickly take up all of your time if you are not focused, so you must do your homework before choosing the best social networking sites to promote your website, pick the best tools and consider hiring people to help you do the work, while you are busy selling.

I’m doing quite well out of the social scene and getting good content, good referrals and lots of traffic for several of the sites I promote. If you’d like to get my help with your site promotion, let me know.

Happy marketing,
Gal

Latest Seach Engine Rankings

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It’s show (off) time. I haven’t been posting too often because I’ve been busy getting results for my clients, which is as it should be, right? But I can’t just not tell you how well you could be doing right now, so here goes (you can click on each link to run the Google search yourself:

  1. crates – plastic2go.com.au is #1 – this website receives well over 100 significant inquiries every month
    plastic2go-on-google
  2. plastic crates – plastic2go.com.au is #1
  3. plastic pallets – plastic2go.com.au is #2
  4. bulk containers – plastic2go.com.au is #2
  5. life coaching – behappyinlife.com is #4 & #7 – very tough keyword phrase (others are Wikipedia and large coaching schools)!
  6. life coach – behappyinlife.com is #9 – very tough keyword phrase (all others are large coaching schools)!
  7. parenting classes – behappyinlife.com is #2
  8. organic gold coast – celticorganic.com.au is #9 (and listed in business results in #1C)
  9. african connection – africanconnection.com.au is #1 out of over 36 Million results and against YouTube videos!
  10. family matters – ronitbaras.com is #6, ahead of familymatters.net!
  11. middle eastern music melbourne – ashkarmusicanddance.com is #1

Is this good or what?! I’m so proud of myself I’m going to explode.

Of course, the best part is that from all this ranking comes and from all the traffic come leads and sales. Another good part is that this is all free search. There is no cost involved here whatsoever. I did my online market research, I did my magic with the sites, I did my magic in other places and voilà!

Business from the Internet is not far away. Inquire here.

Internet Marketing Fundamentals

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Here are some very important things one must understand before taking a business online. I often explain these things to my clients who are offline business owners already, so I thought I’d post them here as I’m sure many others will benefit from the understanding.

Internet shopping is vastly different from offline shopping

Internet users search for different products and service than they would offline and the use different ways to search for them. Based on this premise, the first step in any Internet marketing campaign is to find out how the online market thinks, what it is looking for and what online niches will be profitable to engage.

Search engines are rapidly losing their leadership in driving

With the advent of and social bookmarking sites, which is the online equivalent of business breakfasts and social circles, more and more traffic is directed at websites from mega-sites, in which there is some built-in mechanism for implied trust, sharing and reciprocating. Therefore, a good Internet marketing strategy examines the online social vibe, as well as search trends.

Website content and structure are critical to having a profitable website

Unable to connect message Bringing traffic to a site that does not convert visitors to business leads is a waste of money. Whether it is link creation, paid advertising or newsletter marketing, having a focused website with quality content reduces the costs and increases the effectiveness of the by at least a factor of 5. Therefore, work should be done on the website itself to prepare it for the off-site promotion work.

The local game is not the same

The Internet is everywhere, so the best online business is one offering products or services to the entire world. Competing in a local arena requires specific focus and a totally different set of strategies in order to avoid getting too much “noise” and wasting money on visitors who will never become clients. Therefore, it is best to acquire knowledge of the local market and possibly couple the online effort with an offline promotion to raise awareness and start a local “vibe”.

The Internet is ever changing

No matter how much effort is spent promoting a website, incoming links will always “fade”, as the number of links on referring pages grows, the number of pages on referring sites grows, the referring pages move away from the top of the referring sites and more sites are created on the Internet. If this is not enough, there is a disruptive change every 18-24 months in the world of technology, which either puts “state of the art” methods in the baseline or makes them obsolete. Therefore, Internet marketing is an ongoing operation, much like offline marketing is.

As always, if you need any clarification on these things or you want my help to take your own business to the Internet, you are more than welcome to contact me.

How to Get Business Online (part 1)

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If you’re reading this, you are most likely a business owner looking to market your products or services on the Internet. So what should you do first? What should you do next? Where can you find more information?

The answer is: right here, of course. Let’s start at the beginning, then, shall we?

Finding a Niche

In the offline world, when customers want to buy something (say a bottle of olive oil), this is what they do:

  1. They go shopping at the nearest mall or shopping center
  2. They enter the store where the product is most likely to be sold (say Wal Mart)
  3. They find the shelf or aisle in which the product is kept
  4. On that shelf, they typically find several types and several brands of their product
  5. They start reading labels and price tags and compare the different options against one another and against their needs
  6. They decide what to buy and add it to their shopping basket, in which there are other, completely unrelated products

Sounds familiar?

In the Internet world, however, things are totally different. When Internet shoppers want to buy something (say a bottle of olive oil):

  1. They go looking for information using their favorite search engine (say Google)
  2. They type in “olive oil”
  3. They take a look at the title, description and URL of the websites listed and consider ways to fine tune their search
  4. They type in a more specific search query (say “extra virgin olive oil” or “cold pressed olive oil”)
  5. They take a look at the title, description and URL of the websites listed and pick out the most relevant sites
  6. They visit only the sites that seem relevant, typically from top to bottom, and stop reading when they believe they have enough information
  7. Now they are ready to buy
  8. They look for sites that sell their preferred choice of olive oil, possibly by searching for “buy cold pressed extra virgin olive oil” or by clicking one of the sponsored links around the search results
  9. They directly “land” on the page that sells what they were looking for and they buy it

Different, isn’t it?

Bottles of olive oil So you see, even if you have a pretty successful offline business selling olive oil, putting up a website featuring all your products on one page or mixing your shopping cart with some history of olive oil or olive oil recipes will get you absolutely nowhere on the Internet compared with sites that have a page dedicated to one very specific thing – cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. One click to get to it, one click to buy.

The upside, of course, is that you can have as many pages as you need on your website, so you don’t have to save. There’s not rent to pay for commercial space by the square foot, no cleaning for the extra pages, only the setup cost. But the returns, oh, the returns!

The difference between having your website listed at the top of the first page of search results and having it listed on, say, page 15, is pretty much like the difference between having a website and not having one. So you must identify your online niches first, and then have your website designed to have dedicated pages for each niche.

Doing this step first makes all the rest of your () possible. If you don’t do this first, you are effectively crippling anything you will do later on.

Of course, being deeply involved in your own business and having an offline mindset, it is best to engage an Internet marketing consultant to help generate ideas and check how often people search for them, because some niches are not worth your effort. Not wasting your time and money on those niches and discovering “golden nuggets” you couldn’t think of yourself will bring you more than enough value to cover anything the Internet marketer will charge. Guaranteed.

Services

Depending on where you are on your Internet marketing or online business journey, Get Business Onlineplease choose from the list below:

  1. “I’m still thinking about putting my business online”
  2. “I want to have a website”
  3. “I already have a website, and I want it to do better”
  4. “I’m happy with my website, but I need more traffic”
  5. “Why should I choose you to do Internet marketing for my online business?”

“I’m still thinking about putting my business online”

Free, no obligation consultation

  • I will answer any questions you may have about taking your business online, show you examples of Internet successes.
  • At the end of this step, you will be comfortable making a decision whether to take your business online.

Contact me to request your free consultation, get great value from me and pay nothing. When you’re happy to continue, consider doing more with me.

“I want to have a website”

Internet market research and recommendations report

  • I will understand your business goals for going online and then perform a thorough analysis of the online marketplace to identify Internet niches in which your business can do well.
  • This includes competitive analysis, search volume checks, keyword phrase generation and other areas, as your business requires.
  • At the end of this step, you will have a detailed report, which your web designer can use to build a powerful website, which will attract search engines and convert visitors to clients (or leads).

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals and invest $595.

“I already have a website, and I want it to do better”

Option 1: Quick website review (FREE)

  • I will take a quick look at your website.
  • I will email you my general impression and some key points on improving the site’s performance as a business tool for you.
  • I will give you my honest opinion about your market potential, market positioning and optimization.
  • You will be able to make an informed decision on the value of my paid service and start using my feedback to get more business (if you know how).

Contact me to request your free quick website review. With no risk and so much to gain, this should be an easy decision.

Option 2: Website review, Internet marketing research and online business recommendations report

  • I will understand your online business goals, review your website thoroughly and recommend ways to make the website perform better and bring you more profits.
  • This includes a review of the design (look & feel), navigation, functionality and performance statistics, as well as online market research, competitive analysis and generation of ideas tailored to your business.
  • At the end of this step, you will have a detailed report, which your web designer can use to update your website, so it will receive more and generate more sales (or leads). Often, having someone else look at your website results in massive value.

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals and invest $595.

“I’m happy with my website, but I need more traffic”

, link building, article marketing, social bookmarking and other website promotion methods

  • I will understand your parameters, agree the best strategy with you and drive more traffic to your website.
  • This service can be delivered based on time, budget, method or performance.
  • Through this service, you will get targeted traffic to your website, which you will be able to link with more sales, more leads and more business profits.

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals, agree the scope of work and budget.

“Why should I choose you as my Internet marketer?”

You will find it easy to choose me for your Internet marketing:

  • My aim is to give you more business. I don’t sell design, I don’t sell hosting, I don’t sell domains and I don’t sell traffic. What’s good for you is good for me, because when you’re happy, you’ll want more websites and you’ll send your friends my way too.
  • I’m not some kid, so your business is safe with me. I’ve been in professional IT services for many years, I’m a parent of 3, still with the same woman for 30 years and you can trust me with your business.
  • If it ain’t gonna work, I’ll let you know. No point wasting your time or mine chasing red herrings if we can both do something useful instead.
  • I have proof that my methods work. I have succeeded in tough markets by doing what I do best. See my Internet marketing results for yourself.
  • I structure my charges so that most of them will come out of your new online profits. You can book as much of my time as you like and ensure you get value all along the way.
  • Making profits online will add to your business’ value and credibility. You may want to check your D&B business credit information and keep track of what your business is worth as your online profits grow.

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