Online Advertising - Google Adwords etc

Zascar

Has anyone here successfully used services such as google adwords to promote their website/business?

My dad wants me to help get more traffic to his website. We tried the adwords thing before with little success, however his website looked pretty pants back then and we didn't work too hard on it really. I want to give it another go and possibly use the other sites like MSN etc too.

Basically he is a Franchise Consultant and wants to be very visable when anyone searchs for anything to do with Franchising in the UK or Ireland. As it work on a biddinig basis I think you may have to pay up to 3-4 euro per click. This too me sounds pretty expensive, however if it resulted in even one actualy job, it would be very worthwhile.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has done this successfully or can give me any advise on how to approach it. Is it worth paying someone to do it for you or would that just be a waste of money?
Thanks.

Rollo Tamasi

Look into SEO.

do you know that you only have meta tags on your homepage? meta tags aren't as big a deal as what they once were but every little thing helps.

mneylon

The site has a Google PR of 1, which is very low.

You may need to do quite a bit of work building links in and generally optimising the site for search engines.

Meta tags won't cost you anything, so it can't hurt to use them

Rollo Tamasi

sitepoint is usally quite good for SEO related stuff.
thread

what are you using to determine the page rank michele?

m_stan

See this thread on the same subject, which I've just replied to. It answers some of your questions.

Using an agency can be a complete waste of money if you choose the wrong one as these things are notoriously easy to setup and leave running on their own. Its very hard to judge how much time and effort an agency is putting into running your campaign.

If you are promoting one site, one product, and in one language I vote strongly for doing it yourself. With some decent research (including reading the two books I recommend) you should be able to run a successful campaign with 30mins every day.

Hopefully this helps.

Let me know if you want any further advice. I have plenty of experience in this area.

*edit* all of the above is in reference to paid search, as in google adwords, and not SEO as some posts above refer to, although some of the same points apply to both. I wouldn't call myself an expert in SEO, while I'm quite experienced at the paid stuff.

mneylon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

what are you using to determine the page rank michele?

Google toolbar plugin for Firefox

The values may vary depending on which DC is serving you especially during an update

Zascar

Meta tas are in as follows:

<META content="Franchising, Emerson French, Emerson French Consulting, Franchising in Europe, Franchising in Ireland, Franchising in the UK, Franchising benefits, Thinking of franchising my business, What's involved in franchising?, How do I franchise my business?, How does franchising work?, Franchising, Franchising my business, What do I need to start franchising?, Help with franchising my business, How to franchise my business, Am I ready to franchise?, Getting ready to franchise, Franchise agreements, Franchise fees and royalties, Advice on franchising, Franchise training and support, How to generate franchise sales, Is franchising for me?, Selling a franchise, Franchising strategies" name=keywords>
<META content="Franchising is our business. If you're thinking of franchising your business but don't know what's involved, this is where you can find the answers." name=description>

I was told it is best to change the names of each page from e.g. franchising.html to about_franchising_your_business.html etc to basically get your keywords in the title etc. I am also going to purchase a domain name with some keywords in it, but as its a .ie I have to do the other bits first.

Our target market includes the UK so i want to get a .co.uk domain name as well, but does it matter if the site is not hosted in the UK? (I'm with blacknight). Is this correct?

What else can I do to improve SEO?

mneylon

Zascar wrote:

I am also going to purchase a domain name with some keywords in it, but as its a .ie I have to do the other bits first.

You'll end up getting done for duplicate content if you aren't careful

There's no need to go off getting other domain names if you work with the one you have sanely.

Zascar

Yes I heard that alrigt so I was planning on having two sites but slightly different, targeting towards each country slightly. Really just enough so the google computers don't cop that its the same site. Can't be too difficult really can it?

tomED

I find visitors from Google adwords tend to be just curious visitors rather than people that are actually willing to spend money. However, if you go by the general statistics of marketing, you should expect a 2-3% return. So if you say the average cost per click is €3, you need to spend at least €300 to get 2-3 sales in return. Of course, you would have to assume your website will also so enough to sell your services as well.

Have a look at this study by Eyetools http://www.eyetools.com/inpage/research_google_eyetracking_heatmap.htm

This shows a graph of where people will look when they view the results on Google. From this report, they found that only 50% of people searching google will look at the Adwords, compared to 100% that look at the first 3 generic search results.

So ideally, you need to aim for the generic search results as opposed to the Google Adwords. But this takes time and a lot of effort, so Google Adwords is a good way of getting instant visibility.

From your website point of view, ok most of us here will recognise that it's a purchased template, however I'm sure your target market won't notice any difference. But there are a few things I would change, most notably the navigation. With the last update of IE6, it included a protection for flash movies and java applets where you have to click on the item to make it active. I have seen with many of my clients, that they get frustrated with this and think a site doesnt work, because when they click on it, it does not go anywhere.... I would suggest getting rid of this!

On another note, someone mentioned dowin their name_pages_like_this.html - you should really do it like-this-instead.html as some search engines don't class the underscore as a space, but they will with a dash.

m_stan

tomED wrote:

On another note, someone mentioned dowin their name_pages_like_this.html - you should really do it like-this-instead.html as some search engines don't class the underscore as a space, but they will with a dash.

just about to say the same thing. very valid piece of advice there.

tomED

Zascar wrote:

Meta tas are in as follows:


I was told it is best to change the names of each page from e.g. franchising.html to about_franchising_your_business.html etc to basically get your keywords in the title etc. I am also going to purchase a domain name with some keywords in it, but as its a .ie I have to do the other bits first.

Our target market includes the UK so i want to get a .co.uk domain name as well, but does it matter if the site is not hosted in the UK? (I'm with blacknight). Is this correct?

What else can I do to improve SEO?

Just seen this, your meta tags are way too spammy, you will get done for spamming. Try keep your keywords and description tag to less than 250 characters. Sure most engines will ignore more than that anyway. Ideally with keywords, try have no more than 5 phrases. e.g. "Franchising Ireland" is one.

Also - I wouldn't bother with the domain name, there is no reason why you can't develop good traffic and sales from your site with the domain name you have. You just need to focus more on developing good links back to your website and doing a few minor adjustments to your code.

Before doing any of this - check your keyphrases to make sure people actually search for them!

Zascar

tomED wrote:

I wouldn't bother with the domain name, there is no reason why you can't develop good traffic and sales from your site with the domain name you have. You just need to focus more on developing good links back to your website and doing a few minor adjustments to your code.

But what if we had www.franchising-Ireland.com or www.FranchiseYourBusiness.ie - woudn't that help? I though that if there is a keyword in the domain it helps too. I also think its good for Branding.

How should I reduce the spammyness (?) of my keywords? Lots of people type 'questions' into Google instead of keywords, thats why I put them in there... How can I improve them?

tomED

It will help yes - but what I'm trying to say is that you don't need it.

Look at the competition in Google for "Franchising Ireland", it's nearly non existant. There's no need to get a domain name to get above them. That's all I'm trying to say.

Do a search for say "web design ireland" - how many of the top 10 have a domain name with all those keywords in it?

On the bit about keywords - lots maybe, but not the majority. You need to keep your phrases to 2-3 words. Use somewhere like www.nichebot.com to see what people are searching for.

Zascar

Good point. The google search for 'Franchising Ireland' is full of companies that are franchsies looking to expand like supermacs and O'Briens. This guy gets top spot and I can see why. Does it make a big difference when lots of other sites have links back to you? Is this difficult to do and how is best to do it? Like many people here have their website on their sig, or mentioned in their blog, does all this help or might it have otehr affects?

Would it be worth getting a Links page and swapping likes with other sites?

Rollo Tamasi

Zascar wrote:

Like many people here have their website on their sig, or mentioned in their blog, does all this help or might it have otehr affects?

It does seem to work....

Zascar wrote:

Would it be worth getting a Links page and swapping likes with other sites?

...Google Bombing is a bit of a no-no

Zascar

Also, another few questions. A lot of the key phrases are embedded in images. Should I have them somewhere else in the test of the page, or hiden in the same background color or something?

I'm going to change all the page names to why_franchise_your_business.html and put them in a directory called .../franchsing_ireland/ - will that help?

I think I'll just have to do lots of reading up on SEO. If anyone can recommend good sites please let me know

mneylon

STOP!

Hidden phrases and all those techniques will get you banned from Google.

Do as Tom says and readup on legitimate SEO (there's also a couple of tools in your hosting control panel that can help)

There's also some discussion here:
http://forum.search.ie/f14-search-engine-optimisation.html

Seohelp

Hi Zascar,

Blacknight is giving you some great advice when he says

Hidden phrases and all those techniques will get you banned from Google.

Your site is in desperate need of inbound links. Yahoo are showing only a couple and Google are not listing any. Google sometimes choose to show you less than the other Search Engines but the fact that the number of inbound links is so low on Yahoo I'd question whether or not Google even knows that your site exists. Whatever the case may be, my advice would be to start submitting to industry related directories to get the links out there.

I was told it is best to change the names of each page from e.g. franchising.html to about_franchising_your_business.html etc to basically get your keywords in the title etc.

I'm not sure where you got this piece of advice but I'd really have to question it. To get keywords in your "title" you simply have to put them into the code of your website. For example your webpage about services has the following code in the title <title>Services</title>.

By simply adding more relevant keywords into the title tag your webpages will have a much better chance of being found on search engine results pages. For example... <title>Irish Franchise Consulting Services</title> will definitely give you a better chance of being found for relevant search terms within Search Engine results pages over the original <title>Services</title>

If you look at each page and change the title to include relevant keywords that your target market should be searching on you will be on the right road. Every page should be optimised. Not just your home page.

But what if we had www.franchising-Ireland.com or www.FranchiseYourBusiness.ie - woudn't that help? I though that if there is a keyword in the domain it helps too. I also think its good for Branding.

Good for branding. But when it comes to it, not a huge help to SEO. If your are submitting your website to directories and any other webpages that will link to your site try to use keywords such as Franchise, Consultant, etc. in the Title of your site as this will help Google and prospective visitors know what your website is about. Do a Google search on anchor text and you'll get to learn more about this.

M_Stan recommends Andrew Goodmans Winning Results with Google Adwords and I really think you should pick this up before you dive into any campaign. It's a great read and easy-to-follow.

I really think that if you focus on SEO you won't need to spend money on Adwords as your niche is not very competitive.

Rollo Tamasi

Here is an indication of the sites that are linking to yours
http://wholinkstome.com/?url=http://www.efconsulting.ie/

Can anybody else recommend a decent inbound links dectector site?

Here's a good read to explain more about inbound linkage
http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/articles/link-popularity-improvement/google-inbound-links.php

tomED

Seohelp wrote:

Hi Zascar,
I'm not sure where you got this piece of advice but I'd really have to question it. To get keywords in your "title" you simply have to put them into the code of your website. For example your webpage about services has the following code in the title <title>Services</title>.

If he was to change the "_" for "-" it will help hugely, not only on Google but on other search engines too.

But I do agree with a lot you are saying.

tomED

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Can anybody else recommend a decent inbound links dectector site?

http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/link-popularity/

It's the quality of the links that matter though, not the number. So there's no point in having a link from a site with a pagerank of less than 4 really.

mneylon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Can anybody else recommend a decent inbound links dectector site?

I usually check the search engines themselves ....

Seohelp

If he was to change the "_" for "-" it will help hugely, not only on Google but on other search engines too

Hi Tom. Wasn't questioning the effectiveness of swapping the underscores to dashes. It should help. Making sure that Zascar knows that the URL has nothing to do with the "Title" (<title> insert keywords here </title>) of the page with respect to keyword placement was where I'm coming from. so many terms for such similar things.

Can anybody else recommend a decent inbound links dectector site?

www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/index.html
http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer

Rollo Tamasi

blacknight wrote:

I usually check the search engines themselves ....

what's the statement again to check it in google? is it ...
sitelink: www.website.com
?

Seohelp

Yahoo link syntax
linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com

Google
link:www.yourdomain.com

MSN
linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com

Zascar

Seohelp, sorry when I said 'title' I meant to say url. I think i will get it as someone intersted in franchising is more likely to click on a link that says www.franchiseyourbusiness.ie rather than www.efconsulting.ie

Basically, my dad bought www.efconsulting.ie ages ago, I think its a crap domain name, so I've just bought him www.emersonfrench.com instead and plan to switch. However I'd like to get www.franchiseyourbusiness.ie as well. Can I have 2 sites the same? I know redirects are frowned upon, and also identical sites, so can I change them around a bit, would that work? What is the best option? Suretly lots of people have multiple domain names...

tomED wrote:

If he was to change the "_" for "-" it will help hugely, not only on Google but on other search engines too.

Ok so '-' is definitely better than '_' ?

I'll work on getting myself in some directories etc, anyone know a good place to start?

m_stan

Zascar wrote:

Ok so '-' is definitely better than '_' ?

very much so

Rollo Tamasi

Setup a sitemap for your website too using Googles Sitemap technology. I'm using this as my sitemap generator.

Seohelp

Basically, my dad bought www.efconsulting.ie ages ago, I think its a crap domain name, so I've just bought him www.emersonfrench.com instead and plan to switch. However I'd like to get www.franchiseyourbusiness.ie as well. Can I have 2 sites the same? I know redirects are frowned upon, and also identical sites, so can I change them around a bit, would that work? What is the best option? Suretly lots of people have multiple domain names...

Zascar, I would advise you on reading up on the "Google Sandbox" effect that puts most new websites into a kind of online purgatory where they wait 6 - 12 months until they come out. You may feel like your present website is a crap domain, but after you swap and spend months waiting for an appearance within the search engine results you might feel the same about the new one:D

I personally don't have multiple domain names, but I would advise you to be very careful when it comes to attempting to "fool" the search engines. The main reason that I think it's not a good idea is not the risk of being found out, it's the need to create two professional sites and optimize both of them. Really not worth the hassle. Just pick one domain name and learn all you can about how to optimize it professionaly and in time you could build another one for the .co.uk market using your knowledge and proven success.

I'll work on getting myself in some directories etc, anyone know a good place to start?

Type "Irish Business Directory" and "Business directory Ireland" into the major search engines and you're on your way.

Setup a sitemap for your website too using Googles Sitemap technology. I'm using this as my sitemap generator

Rollo Tamasi is giving some really good advice here. Your website is lacking a good accessible structure for search engine spiders to follow. A site map would help you out a lot once you start getting inbound links.

Good luck

mneylon

http://www.search.ie
http://www.browse.ie
http://www.browseireland.com
http://www.niceone.com

Rollo Tamasi

To see for yourself how well spiders can read your site download the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox and disable flash, css and javascript. What you should be left it is unformatted text, links and images. If you can read all your content and navigate from page to page then every spider that visits your site should be able to index your pages.

DJB

tomED wrote:

From your website point of view, ok most of us here will recognise that it's a purchased template, however I'm sure your target market won't notice any difference. But there are a few things I would change, most notably the navigation. With the last update of IE6, it included a protection for flash movies and java applets where you have to click on the item to make it active. I have seen with many of my clients, that they get frustrated with this and think a site doesnt work, because when they click on it, it does not go anywhere.... I would suggest getting rid of this!

Tom... there's another way of embedding flash into the page without <embed> or <object> that doesn't require you to click on it before being able to do something inside the flash. See swfobject:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

Rgds,

Dave

tomED

DJB wrote:

Tom... there's another way of embedding flash into the page without <embed> or <object> that doesn't require you to click on it before being able to do something inside the flash. See swfobject:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

Rgds,

Dave

Hi Dave,

Yes, I know thanks, but my point was to prevent it from happening to enhance usability.

I never said anything about removing the flash itself. I was merely pointing out that he should get rid of this obstacle.

Tom

Zascar

Cheers for all the help lads I'm going to have a hack at this over the next few weeks. No doubt I'll be back with more questions. Any more advice you can think of I'd love to hear it!

DJB

tomED wrote:

Hi Dave,

Yes, I know thanks, but my point was to prevent it from happening to enhance usability.

I never said anything about removing the flash itself. I was merely pointing out that he should get rid of this obstacle.

Tom

NP, Tom... I guess you're comment of "I would suggest getting rid of this" led me believe you meant get rid of the flash altogether and not the "click to activate" flash, which you meant. At least Zascar has the resource to do it now!

tomED

DJB wrote:

NP, Tom... I guess you're comment of "I would suggest getting rid of this" led me believe you meant get rid of the flash altogether and not the "click to activate" flash, which you meant. At least Zascar has the resource to do it now!

Yep - terrible writing on my behalf! Apologies!

vito

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Here is an indication of the sites that are linking to yours
http://wholinkstome.com/?url=http://www.efconsulting.ie/

Can anybody else recommend a decent inbound links dectector site?

Here's a good read to explain more about inbound linkage
http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/articles/link-popularity-improvement/google-inbound-links.php

domain-pop.com/backlink-link-checker-US-1.php?URL=

not bad

also take a look at the free backlinks tool at www.seobook.com - I have tried it but not tested enough to validate the results.

On the topic of doamin names, I think that having a keyword rich domain name can help get you listed in Google SERPs more quickly.

You should definitely look at a IBL building campaign of some description. I wouldnt bother with most of the Irish directories - many have masked redirects rather than direct URLs - these dont help with SEO whatsoever.

Google site: command has been broken for yonks - dont bother with it unless you know what you're at.

'-' is better than '_' - SE's see '-' as space but google also now is clever enought to see 'wordswithoutspaces' as 'words without spaces' very often.

Try sitemaps but be prepared to take it down and check the google index: command. I have heard of countless times when the submission of a sitemap has hurt the density of your Google index. This has been backed up by people removing the sitemap and their index jumping significantly. I think that sitemaps might not yet be 100%.

tomED

vito wrote:

On the topic of doamin names, I think that having a keyword rich domain name can help get you listed in Google SERPs more quickly.

I don't agree with this at all. Any new site is treated exactly the same. The best technique to try avoid the google sandbox is to get a few good strong links back to your website. A page with a PR of 5 or higher is a good start.

vito wrote:

I wouldnt bother with most of the Irish directories - many have masked redirects rather than direct URLs - these dont help with SEO whatsoever.

Not true, yes a lot of them do, but look at www.searchme.ie - that includes a direct link. www.search.ie and www.browse.ie give direct links, the problem with these links are that you have to dig very deep to get them which means the pagerank of the final page is very low, however, search engines other than google will pick these links up, so it's all not in vain.

vito wrote:

Google site: command has been broken for yonks - dont bother with it unless you know what you're at.

Google site command has never been broken.... what are you trying to do?
Site just gives a list of pages that google have listed in their index relating to your domain. e.g. http://www.google.ie/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-18,GGLG:en&q=site%3Awww%2Etomdoyletalk%2Ecom
This is a great way to see if Google has indexed all the pages on your website.

vito wrote:

'-' is better than '_' - SE's see '-' as space but google also now is clever enought to see 'wordswithoutspaces' as 'words without spaces' very often.

Google seems clever enough to pick up words without spaces, but it doesn't give as much weight to them.

vito

My bad WRT the site: command - I had meant the link: command but that wasn't under discussion here.

I would say that a large proportion of the Irish directories use masked redirects. Yep a few newer directories are SEO friendly (e.g. Michele's site) but there are not so many Irish directories anyhow. I was suggesting that time might be better spent targeting resources other than Irish directories.

Google seems clever enough to pick up words without spaces, but it doesn't give as much weight to them.

Out of curiosity what are you basing this on?

I think that one of the best things I have ever learnt about SEO is that it is 90% opinion and 10% fact.

mneylon

vito wrote:

I would say that a large proportion of the Irish directories use masked redirects. Yep a few newer directories are SEO friendly (e.g. Michele's site) but there are not so many Irish directories anyhow.

A lot of them are dmoz parsers or flash in the pan type sites. Only a very small number of sites have been around for any length of time and you'll see a lot of the new ones vanishing as their owners realise that they can't get the traffic to sustain them

tomED

vito wrote:

Out of curiosity what are you basing this on?

The many sites I have worked on.

vito

tomED wrote:

The many sites I have worked on.

I dont doubt that you know what you are on about. You have done a great job with some of the client sites you reference on your site (I have to wonder how much that soliditor fella has made).

I'll slot this into my 90% opinion folder and keep an eye on it