It starts with an understanding, that there’s a direct link between the success of your business, and your willingness to understand and serve, the needs of your marketplace.

Listen and observe

Even though we have social media accounts, which give us the ability to listen like never before, many small business owners choose to use these tools almost exclusively, to market and network, rather than listen and observe. As a result, many find they are offering something, which there is little demand for.

Listen to your marketplace and look for opportunities. It’s unlikely that peoplewill be literally asking for a new type of service, but that’s NOT what you are looking for. You’re looking for a need, which you can profitably service, through rendering exceptional value.

Steve Jobs and Henry Ford

Steve Jobs didn’t wait until the marketplace started asking for tablet computers, when he reinvented the tablet industry. He knew that people had always liked the idea of tablet devices, but that the old technology wasn’t able to deliver a great experience. He made a judgement call and invested in the development of the first iPad and it was a massive success, which led to a global change in technology.

Henry Ford did a lot of research, on the affordability and likely interest in his initial Ford motor cars, before building them. He famously said; ‘If I had simply asked people what they wanted, they would have asked me for faster horses!‘

We can feel passionately about the value of what we offer, but if there’s no market interest in that product, we’re wasting our time.

• Do the research.
• Grow bigger ears.
• Listen and learn.

Then, focus on providing what people are asking for.

How It Works

When people search your area for the products or services you provide (“restaurants in Dallas”, or if they’re already in Dallas, just “restaurants”) an ad for your business will appear above or beside their search results. Your business will also be marked with a distinctive blue pin on Google Maps, helping it stand out to potential customers.

Who It’s For

AdWords Express is for local businesses looking for local customers. It’s for business owners who want the benefits of a targeted online ad campaign, without having to spend time managing it.

Cost

AdWords Express puts you in complete control – decide how much you want to spend monthly, and you’ll never be charged more than that amount.

Avoid Guesswork

AdWords Express automatically estimates how many people will click your ad when you specify a budget, helping you make an informed decision on how much to spend.

Pay Only for Success

Your ads are displayed next to Google search results for free. You’re only charged when someone actually clicks your ad.

Things to Keep in Mind When Setting Your Budget

Multiple categories. If you decide to run ads for your business in multiple categories, each category has its own budget. Together, this adds up to your total advertising budget.

For example, you own a musical instrument store and decide you want to advertise both the piano and the guitar departments. You create an ad for each category, with a $100 budget for the piano ad and a $50 budget for the guitar ad. Assuming your monthly budget doesn’t change, your total spend for the calendar month will be up to $150 ($100 for the piano ad, and $50 for the guitar ad).

Multiple locations. If you are advertising multiple business locations, you’ll set a monthly budget for each location.

For example, you own three pet stores in Oklahoma. You set a $100 budget for each store. Assuming your monthly budget doesn’t change, your total spend for the calendar month would be up to $300.

Parts of Your AdWords Express Ad

• Ad headline. Your business name will be the ad headline, which is in blue text at the top of the ad. When a customer clicks the headline, she’ll be taken to the landing page that you’ve specified.
• Contact info. The address and phone number of your business as specified in your Google Places account will be listed.
• Business description. Google automatically generates a description based on your Google Places listing, which you can edit in your ad.
• Map pin. The blue AdWords Express pin will appear on your ad. When a customer clicks the blue pin, she’ll be taken to your business location on Google Maps.
• Stars and reviews. Stars and reviews will appear in your ad if your business has more than 2 reviews and a rating higher than 4 stars.

More Info…

Do I Need Advertising Experience?

AdWords Express is easy to use – no experience necessary. Just give AdWords Express some basic information about your business, and Google will use their technology and advertising data to automatically set up and manage your ad.

Do I Need an Office or Store?

All you need is a mailing address. If for some reason you’d like to hide your address (maybe you work at home or have a mobile business) you can easily make it private.

Do I Need a Website?

If you don’t have a website, your ad will direct potential customers to your free Google Places page, which AdWords Express helps you set up along the way.

Where AdWords Express Ads Can Appear?

Google.com. AdWords Express ads are eligible to appear above or next to Google.com search results.

Google Maps. AdWords Express ads are eligible to appear above Google Maps search results in the left hand panel. Your organic Places listing can also appear in search results. Your AdWords Express Ad will not affect your ranking in Google Maps.

Comparing Places, AdWords Express, and AdWords

Can I Use Both AdWords Express and AdWords?

Google recommend choosing one paid advertising product to start. If you prefer a low-maintenance advertising option, AdWords Express is a good place to start. If you prefer more control over your online campaigns, AdWords allows you to choose your keywords, daily budget, and how much to pay for each click.

Where AdWords Express Is Available?

AdWords Express is currently available in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France. It is currently available on a trial basis in some cities in Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

AdWords Express will use the Google’s proven system to help customers get started quickly and easily with advertising with Google. With AdWords Express, you don’t need to be a marketing expert to create a successful ad campaign.

The specialists researching how people use the Web often discuss the difference between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually use them. When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.

What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at. They see a page like a “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”

We have to learn to live with this fact about real-world Web use:

Fact of life: People don’t read pages. People scan them.

One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.

The exception, of course, is pages that contain documents like news stories, reports, or product descriptions. But even then, if the document is longer than a few paragraphs, we’re likely to print it out because it’s easier and faster to read on paper than on a screen.

Why Do We Scan?

We’re usually in a hurry. Much of our Web use is motivated by the desire to save time. We just don’t have the time to read any more than necessary.

We know we don’t need to read everything. On most pages, we’re really only interested in a fraction of what’s on the page. We’re just looking for the bits that match our interests or the task at hand, and the rest of it is irrelevant. Scanning is how we find the relevant bits.

We’re good at it. We’ve been scanning newspapers, magazines, and books all our lives to find the parts we’re interested in, and we know that it works.

What we see when we look at a Web page depends on what we have in mind, but it’s usually just a fraction of what’s on the page.

So, What’s a Marketer to Do?

The answer is simple: If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.

If you want to learn how to build billboards, more info about web usability, and practical advice in designing web sites the friendly way, get this book: “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug.”

In this post, we talk about how to distribute on your pages the keywords you gather, and how to determine the number of times you need to use them.

Keyword density is the measurement of the number of times a keyword appears on a web page, compared to the total number of words on the page. To determine density, you take the number of words on the page (say, 800) and the number of times that the word appears on that page (maybe 20 times). Divide 20 by 800 to get a density of about 2.5%. Keyword density is one of the factors a search engine looks at when determining whether a web page is relevant to that search.

Frequency is another factor; it is simply how many times a word appears on the page; in this case, 20 times. The combination of frequency and density is the prominence. Higher density and higher frequency lead to greater prominence of the term.

Search engine spiders generally put more weight on the first 200 words on a web page, including words in your navigation, headings, and so on. It is important to make sure that your keywords appear early on the page so the search engines and your visitor know what you are all about from the get go.

The spiders are looking at these three things for keywords:

Frequency: How often a keyword is used on a web page. Any word (or phrase) is considered a keyword if it is used at least twice in the page. The search engines do not include stop words such as and, the, a, etc. as keywords although they may be part of keywords.

Density: Keyword density is like frequency, but it measures what percentage of the total page content the keyword appears. You want a keyword density of 3-5% for a web page for a good search engine optimization.

Distribution: This measures whether the keyword is evenly distributed throughout the page and the site. In general, it is better to sprinkle the keywords evenly through the page in a normal writing fashion. Natural-sounding text is easier to read, and scores better with search engines.

Look for proper keyword distribution when writing your text. Search engine users are getting more sophisticated these days and enter search queries that contain three to four words instead of just two or three.

If you are a good writer, you are going to have to tame some of those habits you learned while writing papers. Good writers are encouraged to use synonyms and rephrase things to keep from being too repetitive. This makes a document easier to read, surely, but it won’t help with your site rankings. For instance, if you want to rank high for a query like “weight loss”, you’re going to have to keep using the words weight loss in your page instead of using this and it and so forth. Use discretion when doing this; otherwise, your page could become unpleasant to read. Your competition is a good way to get an idea of what looks natural to search engines.

Remember that search engines count every instance of a word on a web page. This includes all words in the main content plus that in headings, navigation elements, links, and HTML tags. Here is an example of how you might evenly distribute a main keyword throughout a page that had 750 words divided into five paragraphs:

• Once in the Title tag
• Once or twice in the description Meta tag (in the HTML code)
• Once or twice in the keywords Meta tag (in the HTML code)
• Once in the first sentence of on-page (user visible) text
• Twice in the first 200 words (including the first sentence)
• Once each in paragraphs two, three, and four
• Once or twice in the last paragraph

Remember that there is such a thing as using too many keywords — that is how you venture into the realm of spam through keyword stuffing. There is no guaranteed magic number for keyword frequency or density, but it is a good rule of thumb to keep your keyword below five percent of the total number of words on the page. The better way to do it is to make it sound natural as compared to your competition. Use a keyword too often, and you could trip an alarm on a keyword stuffing filter. Keywords repeated too often also work against user retention and could bring down the conversion rate.

For a commercial Web site, you want to keep customers around so they will make purchases, and you risk driving them away with too much repetition. For an informational or reference Web site, the goal is to have as many visitors as possible stick around and read the information available. Badly written text does not make someone want to stay on your Web site.

Do the search engines measure keyword densities differently? As with all areas of SEO, there is some argument over this issue. Generally, however, there is agreement that Google is less tolerant of heavy keyword usage than Yahoo! or Microsoft. And because all search engines continuously try to refine and improve their spam filters, you don’t want to get too close to the line of what might be unacceptable.

Want to make sure a search engine does not miss your keywords? You can draw more attention to keywords by applying special formatting, such as strong strong or emphasis em, changing the font size, or using Heading tags. Putting them in the page titles (in the HTML Title tags) and the description and keywords Meta tags (also in the HTML code) is also recommended,

Adjusting Keywords

After you optimize your Web site for your selected keywords, be aware that your job is not done. Search engine optimization involves continual monitoring, testing, and tracking. You need to keep track of how your keywords are performing as you go along.

If a keyword is not drawing in as much traffic as you think it should be, or it’s drawing in the wrong kind of traffic (visitors who don’t convert), it’s time to go in and change it. This is why you do a bunch of research into your competition, and to look up synonyms while you are at it.

http://www.beautyproducts.com

You can set up a subdomain called cosmetics, so you URL becomes:

http://cosmetics.beautyproducts.com

Why People Set Up Subdomains

Websites often create subdomains in order to segregate sections of web pages to create a virtual “site within a site.” In the example, the cosmetics subdomain could be used to hold information about specific beauty products that you decided not to include within your main site navigation scheme.

The subdomains are useful in different environments:

Some social media sites automatically create a subdomain for each person who signs up:

http://yourname.wordpress.com

Some companies create subdomains for their different employees:

http://susan.beautyproducts.com

Other sites set up subdomains as a way of separating their content into different categories, like this

http://skincare.beautyproducts.com http://haircare.beautyproducts.com http://fragances.beautyproducts.com

We don’t recommend organizing the bulk of your site content by subdomains, for several reasons we discuss next.

How Search Engines View Subdomains

Search engines consider subdomains to be entirely separate sites. Subdomains endanger your search engine optimization because the search engines do not see the subdomain as part of your main site. They also do not see any connection between your various subdomains. You are taking all the benefit of your inbound links and all of your content, and dividing them across several separate web properties. This is, in general, a bad idea. If you did it anyway, you would need to optimize each subdomain for the search engines separately.

You benefit from using subdomains on your web site only in the following cases:

Large brands. Huge companies can successfully use subdomains to separate their content. They have many pages about each division or product, so each subdomain ranks well on its own. Also, it benefits users to have the well-known brand name in every URL (it confirms that the pages belong to that company). Finally, the multiple subdomains could yield multiple results on a search results page, if several come up for the same keyword.

Totally unrelated content. If you wanted to start a side business selling fashion accesories, you wouldn’t want to dilute your beauty products web site with pages on earrings and necklaces. You could register an entirely different domain for this, or you could handle this new business as a subdomain of your main web site. Subdomains are convenient for marketers who want to use a single main domain and then create separate areas for non related products.

Blog sites provide another example of subdomains. Your blog would be assigned the yourname.wordpress.com subdomain and would contain your writing whithout any relation to other people’s blog.

Secure content. If part of your website content is only available through a logon, it could be set up as a subdomain. Search engines don’t spider content behind a logon, so having it in a separate subdomain doesn’t matter for your SEO efforts anyway.

International sites. Targeting different countries can be done using subdomains. If you don’t have the resources to buy www.beautyproducts.co.uk, or if that domain is already taken, you can target the UK through uk.beautyproducts.com instead.

Your site needs lots of relevant content to reach the front pages of the search results. Splitting up that content into separate subdomains is self-defeating. If you are currently using subdomains as a way of organizing your site content, stop it. Use other techniques like siloing.

You can learn more about domains, subdomains and SEO following the Mastermind Course Curriculum

Some time ago we had several running PPC campaigns in Google AdWords. After working on them for several weeks, an appreciable amount of keywords had achieved quality scores of 7 to 10 with maximum cost per click of between 0.11 and 0.35 cents. For each campaign, a landing site had been built. Each site had 5 to 10 pages with simple information about the products and some comparisons. A couple of sites containing videos of the products. Each campaign was getting 30 to 60 clicks per day generating 1-4 daily sales. The products were mostly Amazon. The campaigns looked promising, the products were young and we were trying to manage them carefully for growing.

Suddenly, one morning, the quality scores of all of them fell down to 1 and stopped showing ads. No notice. No warning. We checked our AdWords statement and everything seemed in order. Why had this happened?

After several unsuccessful attempts to reactive the campaign by adding keywords and changing the landing sites, we sent a question to AdWords support. Four days later we received a reply:

“Dear AdWords Advertiser,

Thank you for writing to us about your ad’s visibility. We recommend that you use the Adwords’ Ads Diagnostic Tool in your account to get an immediate answer to your question.

Once you’ve checked the Ads Diagnostic Tool, review the following list to learn more about common issues that affect ad visibility. 1. I just created or changed my ad. 2. My account has a message about a declined payment. 3. I just created or changed my location targeting settings.” (The list continued with explanations about each one)

We checked each suggestion. Nothing changed in the campaigns. We emailed support again. The same answer three days later. In our third email attempt we received a different answer; it’s a little long, but this information could be useful for your own campaigns:

“Thank you for your email and sorry for your difficulty. I reviewed your campaigns, and saw that the reason why you are getting poor quality score here is that the landing page quality of the websites advertised here is ‘Poor’, as you can see in the Ad diagnostic tool. As per our recent analysis, it is a bridge page. Let me explain to you what we mean by a bridge page and how you can resolve this issue.

Google allows affiliates to advertise with AdWords. However, to provide the best possible experience for our users and advertisers, Google does not permit ads for bridge pages that are solely intended to direct the user to the parent company’s website. We’ve found that pages with multiple ads leading to the same site provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users.

As noted in our advertising Terms and Conditions, Google may refuse any ads or close down any of your ad campaigns at any time, for any reason. To comply with our policies, please choose one of the options below:

Option 1: Refine your web page so that it provides a unique user experience and has an overall unique look and feel. We find that sites have a unique user experience when one of the following is true:

• The landing page for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword ‘electronics’)
• The landing page for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only and the other site focuses on product sale only).
• Any product overlaps on the landing pages are not significant enough to affect user experience.
• The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax).

Option 2: Redesign your web page to offer multiple, competing offers from different companies for related services. For example, a web page promoting a specific book could have links to four online bookshops from which one could purchase the book.

Option 3: Link directly to the parent company site, using the appropriate Display URL. You may wish to contact your affiliate parent company directly to ensure that any changes to your page are in line with your affiliate agreement.

We’d be happy to review any proposed changes to your web sites, and we appreciate your efforts to comply with our policies. However, we cannot offer you detailed or specific advice on your website. We encourage you to work to improve the quality of your site and the experiences you provide users who may visit.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely, The Google AdWords Team”

After changing the sites, a pair of campaigns became active and the others don’t. So we asked for a review. We received this answer:

“Thank you for your patience. I’m sorry to say that our specialists don’t find your landing page competitive enough to be given a high score as of now. You will have to optimize it further to make it more competitive and to ensure that it is not a bridge page.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely, The Google AdWords Team”

At the end of all this, three campaigns were reactivated. A major rebuilt was needed for these sites to avoid the “bridge page” issue. You can still use direct linking to vendor sites (for good products) and landing sites with price comparisons, for example, pointing to diferent vendors with affiliate programs.

“Overall Google has done a great job and there are very few cracks in the system,” said Conductor Inc. CEO Seth Besmertnik. “But spammers are getting smarter and Google needs to keep getting smarter.”

A video from the Wall Street Journal provides more info…

According to Microsoft, the adCenter ads can now reach 163 million unique searchers using Microsoft and Yahoo! sites (including Yahoo! Search, Bing, and partners), providing a sizable volume of 5.7 billion monthly searches.

The ads are now reaching potential customers on Yahoo! Search and Bing. As more Yahoo! advertisers join the auction, it’s important to actively monitor your campaign performance. Take an active role in monitoring and modifying your campaigns to achieve optimal performance results on Yahoo! Search and Bing.

Many of us felt comfortable using Yahoo! Search Marketing. We hope this change brings the benefits announced.