Google Introducing Credit Card For AdWords Buys

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Starting on Monday of this week, small business owners in the UK became eligible for Google’s newest service, AdWords Business Credit. Essentially, Google created a credit card that can only be used for paying for a businesses AdWords account.

As Ingrid Lunden reports for TechCrunch, the program launched in beta 1400 U.S. companies last year and nearly three-quarters of those companies now use AdWords Business Credit as their “primary form of payment.”

Now, Google shifts its focus to the UK, where revenue in the 2nd quarter made up about 11-percent of the companies total revenue.

The card will carry an 11.9-percent APR in the UK, which is up from 8.99-percent in the U.S. during the pilot program. No annual fees will be included. You may note that this is lower than major credit cards. This is likely because Google intends to make an increase in profits by driving more businesses to AdWords and increasing the investment their, not from interest rates.

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Dispelling the 5 Lies About Building an Audience

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The internet is awash with tips and suggestions for SEO, but there aren’t many articles that clear up those pesky rumors and myths of the industries of optimization and blogging. So I’m here to help tear down those lies people hear and tell themselves about building an audience.

1) Making good content before you have an audience is a waste of good content – This is totally untrue. First impressions are all you get online, and if you are “reserving” all your good stuff for when you have a bunch of visitors, you will never get popular.

It is like selling a product before you’ve made the actual product. If you have just a few people coming to your site but they see good content, they will keep coming back as well as spreading the word. If you have a large amount of people visiting because you are advertising widely, but your content is worthless, they’re all going to leave and never look back.

Yeah, it isn’t fun to make great stuff that only a few are reading, but you have to keep an eye on the future. Great content attracts people eventually, as long as you put in the extra work to promote it. Plus, once you have an audience, they can always still find that great content no one was reading a month ago.

2) Great content will bring an audience – I emphasized that quality content will help attract an audience above and that still rings true, but there is other important work to be done before you’ll gain a crowd. You have to “pound the pavement” so to speak. Neglecting to actually promote the content can end up costing you links in the end.

Rae Hoffman at CopyPress has a full list of strategies for promoting great content, but the biggest emphasis is only push your awesome content. Spending energy on mediocre content won’t go anywhere, but if you can back up your promotion with quality content, you will get the launch you need.

3) Having a unique voice isn’t always possible – If you can’t find your specific voice, then you are doing the wrong type of work for you. Your site will never gain traction if you can’t have your own identity. You need a point of difference, or POD.

Finding your own POD can be as simple as combining seemingly seperate interests into your blogging, such as the girl who runs SkinnyTaste. She was just another amateur photographer who also loved making tasty low fat recipes. Both of those areas are flooded with contributors, but by combining the two into a blog with great recipes and enticing high quality pictures of the food, SkinnyTaste became a contender.

4) I’m not a great writer, so I’ll never be a great blogger – If you have found your own voice or POD, being a technically great writer is irrelevant. Many bloggers would have not gotten great grades in school if they turned in work in the style they blog in because they often make grammatical errors. Readers don’t care however, as long as the writer has a unique voice and interesting information.

5) Once I’ve got an audience, the rest will be easy – Rae Hoffman’s article earlier mentions Perez Hilton in this situation, and I can’t imagine a better blogger to express this point. Perez Hilton became a cultural figure for a short period because of his strong opinions and voice. So where is Perez Hilton now? Still blogging, but his television appearances have fizzled out, and you rarely hear his name brought up anymore. This is because Perez’s blogging became less celebrity journalism filtered through Perez’s voice, and more about why being Perez Hilton is wonderful. His focus left the gossip people were craving, and moved to the benign stories of a psuedo-celebrity.

The point of Perez’s story is once you gain popularity, you can’t rest or slack off. People are coming to you for whatever special information or content you are offering, and if you start slipping that audience will be gone faster than you could ever dream of.

Most of these myths are the type that people tell themselves when they are scared of making the leap into blogging, or the lies people give for why their site is floundering. Don’t let them keep you from getting started making a name for yourself, and if you are struggling, consider whether you’ve found your voice or POD or not.

 

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What You Need To Know About SEO Friendly URLs

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Bad URL structure is far too common of an issue in SEO. It can drag down your rankings, keep your pages from appearing in search engine indexes and destroy ranking authority from any other pages and websites you are a part of.

This is sometimes the fault of content management systems who can build poor URL structures within the websites. Elsewhere, some platforms devise URLs with illegal characters.

Search engines do try to read and index even the most poorly made URLs, but paying attention to your URL management and optimization has its own set of benefits. It’s about time you made sure you are doing your part.

It isn’t difficult to diagnose URL based issues, however. You can check for errors and warnings that suggest URLs are causing the issues, and you can audit all of your URLs for proper syntax.

Google and Bing Webmaster Tools also have reports that reveal duplicate content. From there, you can examine the webpages themselves and their locations. Google and Bing aren’t even the only ones with these types of tools. Plenty of third-party SEO tools can help identify these types of issues. Also make sure to check for unsafe characters.

Tom Schmitz from Search Engine Land has charts to help make clear what characters you should be using and when. He also has many other suggestions on how to solve issues with poor URL structures.

 

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Facebook Introduces ‘Gifts’ To Increase Revenue

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No doubt you’re aware of Facebook’s struggles since becoming a publicly traded company. Weary and wary investors want to see effective ways to monetize the social media giant, which Facebook is currently putting all its efforts into. Jon Swartz reports the latest attempt to increase revenue at USA Today.

In May, Facebook acquired social-gift-giving company Karma and, last week, announced a new service called ‘Gifts’ that will allow users to share gift certificates to retailers through their profile. Interestingly, Facebook plans to start by making Gifts available to a small group of users on the main site and through an Android app. The iPhone app isn’t expected for another few weeks.

This is the 2nd public attempt to increase ad revenue by Facebook in recent weeks. You may remember the recent announcement that Facebook Offers would now require businesses to pay to be included.

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3 Little Known Reasons Your Content Isn’t Being Shared

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Most corporate social media accounts are ignored or unknown. It is possible their audience isn’t engaged, or maybe just not sharing their posts. Either way, they struggle and rarely improve their status.

This is because most sites offer the same tips for getting out there, but they don’t address the real issues hiding behind the scenes that are really keeping you back. This is why we are addressing three less-known reasons your company’s social media pages aren’t getting any traction.

1) Your Material Isn’t Sharable – Very few people will share commercial messages or content. Social media are phobic of direct sales pitches, but the whole point of making corporate social media pages is to eventually sell with it. So what do you do?

You need to make sharable content that promotes your brand, rather than pitching the sale then and there. You want to use social media content to “bait-the-hook”, and once the public is on board, you can try the sale.

There are a few ways you can make sharable content. You can aim to market your product as being extraordinarily useful, but if it doesn’t provide incredible benefits immediately, most people will still view this as a sales pitch.

A better tip is to go for timeless content. The public is usually aware when a company is simply chasing the latest trend, and while it may earn the company some good short term PR, that attention will fade as quickly as it came. Most of all, just make sure your content is simple to spread. You don’t want to dumb it down, but you want your content to be streamlined so that it is easy to grasp.

Most importantly, don’t try to aggressively sell to your customers on this platform. Promote the lifestyle they want to have, and make it clear your brand will help them get there. The rest will almost do itself.

2) Lacking Core Benefit – Incentives are a great way to get others to participate and share your content. It is very easy, you offer them a reward for taking action, and they will be likely to participate in the future. However, this strategy doesn’t always work long term. Instead, try to focus on your audience’s pain points, and position your brand or content as the solution.

You should always be able to answer this question: why should someone interact with me in the first place? You can try to keep your page humorous, but that can take some extra skill and often the legal departments hold you back quite a bit. But, providing relief for problems and pains in your customers’ lives always benefits the audience and gives them reason to engage.

3) You Lack Positioning or Value Proposition – Another question you should always be able to answer, is what makes you unique or interesting? Claiming to be “low-cost” is transparent, and every brand in the market will claim they have the lowest cost value. Even claiming to be “better” than your competition or the “best” in the field read as empty boasts to many consumers.

Instead, your social media pages should stand for some set of values or ideas, even if it means making some enemies.

Brad Smith at Social Media Today shares the strategy of Stone Brewery, the largest brewery in Southern California, who announced last year that that they plan a massive expansion so they can brew the best organic ingredients, and accommodate their constant stream of visitors.

You see, Stone Brewery has taken a strong and vocal stance in their way of doing business, openly disparaging light “tasteless” lagers and their consumers. They even take this stance on their bottle labels, and they include this stance in their social media presence.

Being bold and original will gain you customers that are truly engaged in your brand, and find consumers that share the same opinions you do.

If you can address these three issues, you will be much more likely to get your commercial social media pages off the ground, and strengthen your brand. All it takes is being a little fearless and some originality.

 

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New Study Confirms Consumers Want Mobile Friendly Sites

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While I’ve written extensively about why you should have an optimized site for mobile, I’ve rarely directly mentioned the two most obvious points for why you should. Websites that aren’t mobile friendly annoy visitors and it’s bad business.

Mobile users have more immediate needs, and they look for content that is designed to fit their needs.

A recent Google survey of mobile users says that 72% emphasized the importance of websites that are mobile-friendly. However, as important as mobile optimized sites are to users, 96% said they have visited a site that doesn’t work properly on their device.

The survey had 1,088 US participants who own smarphones and use them for internet browsing, and the survey was performed by independant groups.

Roughly three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to visit a mobile optimized site than one that isn’t mobile-friendly, and they are five times more likely to give up on their task if the site isn’t optimized for mobile needs.

Following with those numbers, most customers said they are more likely to buy online when the site they find meets their mobile needs. Unfortunately, 61% are more likely to leave if the site isn’t mobile friendly. Even worse, when visitors find sites that aren’t mobile friendly, they are disappointed in the company itself.

So what are the needs of mobile users? They want sites that load in less than 5 seconds, big finger-friendly buttons and quick access to business contact information. They also want the pages to be designed to fit their screen, and links to the company’s social media profiles.

Basically, they want pages that work easily on a mobile interface, with easily accessible information and efficient designs. Mobile users want to be able to act immediately and most aren’t doing research on their mobile devices. They want ways to make contact and take action.

If your page isn’t meeting these needs, you are probably losing customers.

If you want to read the actual list of what the survey says mobile-users want, read Miranda Miller’s article at Search Engine Watch.

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3 Reasons Google Remarketing is Great For Your Site

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Google Remarketing was recently updated to make it easier to set-up and easier to use. In case you aren’t familiar, Google Remarketing allows you to present users, who were previously on your site, with relevant ads as they continue browsing the web.

Marc Weisinger, of Search Engine Watch, has three key reasons you should be using one of the most powerful tools available to online marketers.

1. It’s Simple and Easy

Previously, implementing the remarketing code was a several step process. Now, you install one simple code in the footer of each page of your site and get on with your day. You can’t get much easier than one step.

2. The Possibilities are Endless

With the universal tag in place, you can use the Adwords interface to target specific groups. How specific? Well, that is up to you.

Want to target only those users who landed on a promotion page? Done.

Want to target only users who added a product to their cart, but didn’t end up buying? Done.

Plus, each new target group you set up gets the benefit of the cookies already stored by your universal tag.

3. Target Positive or Negative Audience

Before starting your next email marketing campaign, use the Adwords interface to target users who click through from your email to your site.

Alternatively, you can instead choose to exclude those users because, afterall, they sound pretty loyal and engaged already. That way, you don’t bombard them with your ads and are sure to instead target those users that may have seen your email but weren’t convinced right away.

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The Cost of Social Media Continues to Rise

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I’ve written before about the hidden cost of social media marketing. While Facebook, Twitter and the like are all free to use, their is the inherent cost of your time to keep your online presence where you want it.

Heather Clancy, of ZDNet, now reports that managing social media for small or midsize businesses often costs hundreds of dollars per month for tools or for outsourced manpower.

Clancy’s report is based on research done by Duct Tape Marketing, who’s creator, John Jantsch, attributes the findings to business owners’ realization that social media is “an essential element of the marketing mix.”

Despite spending nearly $1000 per month on social media, almost all responding business owners said their online presence has “somewhat helped” or “helped a great deal”.

It appears social media has joined the ranks of print, radio or TV ads. It’s a pay to play system, so you’d better be sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

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Use Social Media for Awareness, Not Sales

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Forrester Research Inc. recently researched the purchase paths of 77-thousand online shoppers to come to the conclusion that social media does not lead to direct sales. As Zach Stambor reports for Internet Retailer, “less than 1-percent of transactions for new and repeat customers can be traced back to social links.” 

Despite these findings, another Forrester survey found that, when asked, consumers claim that they do make purchases based on social media posts. Nearly half agreed that they find out about new products or brands through social media and 40-percent said social media posts are “a great way to discover sales.”

Essentially, this means that, despite the lack of direct sales associated with social media, it is still a valuable tool to raise awareness of your brand. Think about your own purchase path for products you’ve bought online. Does one email or social media post lead you to whip out your credit card? More than likely, you do some research and view mulitple marketing channels.

Forrester’s purchase path analysis found just that. One-third of shoppers take this multi-faceted approach for first time customers and it’s almost half of repeat buyers.

Perhaps the most telling statistic to come from the analysis is the role of email for repeat customers. Almost a third of that return business came from email. 13-percent went directly from email to sale and 17-percent read the email and clicked through to other marketing channels.

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Quick Tips for Making Great Content

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The vast changes Google has been making to SEO are well documented and discussed, as they have rendered all of the old ways of ruling searches with manipulative techniques obsolete. Instead, the optimization industry is being dominated by content investment. That, of course, means you’ll need to know how to make the best content possible.

We have some quick tips for helping with the shift to content creation. For a longer list, check out Simon Penson’s list at Search Engine Watch.

Idea creation

  • Come up with a list of ideas you can serialize. Regularly appearing content like “Quick Tips”, Top 10’s, and Q&A’s are a good place to start.
  • Identify types of content that would work well for you online.
  • Use Highcharts.com to see a visualization of every part of your content strategy to make sure everything is consistent.
  • There are lots of different and innovative types of content to create now, but the blog post is still the old standard for a reason.
  • Competitions are a great way to grow audiences via social media that you can later engage.
  • Change up your locations for brainstorming. Different environments stimulate creativity.

Creating Structure

  • While serialized content is good, don’t just repeat the same type of content over and over. Try to come up with a pattern of types of different content you can create and publish.
  • Make a 6-month content plan in the form of an editorial calender, keeping in mind industry events and trends.
  • Include your site pages in your initial structural plan. It is essential to include every part of your site in your plan so that every word matches your brand persona and message.

Content Strategy

  • Think about your timing. Time of day has a large effect on online activities and you should try to maximize your potential reach by considering when you publish content.
  • Learn your audience. Use survey for quantitative data and customer meets for qualitative information. This will tell you more about how to approach creating content for your market.
  • Separate your brand into different personas to match three or four demographics with different needs, then create content for these different personas.
  • Create a content flow as part of your strategy creation process.

Content Execution

  • When creating copy keep the details in mind. Font style and size, kerning, and leading all matter. Your presentation is as important as your content.
  • Take time to make a solid headline.
  • When creating a post, plan the structure beforehand.
  • Create persona writers for your brand and build authority over time to grow AuthorRank.

Measure Effectiveness

  • Don’t measure outreach by just the links earned. Take into consideration factors like referral traffic and brand visibility.
  • Keep social metrics in mind during content marketing measurement campaigns.
  • Set up Google Alerts with a snippet from any major piece of content you make so that you will be alerted when someone copies it.
  • Think of content performance like baseball averages. One hit for every three pieces of content is solid performance.

Hopefully these short tips will help you make the transition from the old SEO practices to content creation. The more you invest in content, the more reward you will see later.

 

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