Local Search Advantage with Google AdWords

Google AdWords has continued to roll-out enhancement features for advertisers. The latest feature is called Ad Sitelinks. This new one-line format will allow advertisers to add additional links into the ad copy of AdWords campaigns. Google will automatically determine if your ad qualifies to show Ad Sitelinks and whether to show two lines or the one-line format based on the quality of the ads.

Keep in mind that there are several other Ad Extensions that local businesses may find useful to improve search results. These extensions are locations, products, and phone extensions.

Analyzing Social Media Marketing Impact

Social Media Marketing is a global phenomenon. It’s much more than Twitter, FaceBook or Linkedin. There are millions of users communicating about products and services. Social Media is branding your business, products or services. The impact of social media can be measured by using web analytics tools. It is critical to develop KPIs for social media analytics to gauge the ROI of the time investment necessary for successful social media marketing.

Social Media marketing will continue to be a top priority for marketers. The ability to integrate social media marketing into every aspect of marketing campaigns is important for long-term success and increasing brand awareness. Contrary to popular belief, email marketing will continue to be a marketing medium that drives fans, friends, customers, and visitor to new information.

Remember our top 6 key steps for a successful campaign:

1. Research your opportunities to leverage social media marketing that consistently will reach your target audience.

2. Develop a strategy that outlines your business goals, purpose, metrics, and acceptable ROI.

3. Identify your organization’s Social Media Marketing Champion to carry the charge.

4. Identify your organization’s channels for a successful campaign.

5. Measure the campaign.

6. Remember that Social Media Marketing does not function independent of other marketing efforts. It impacts search engine optimization, pay-per-click, email marketing, banner advertising, and website performance.

Social Media Marketing: The “Hot Button” for Marketers

We have worked with numerous clients providing web analytics reporting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and more. More recently, social media marketing has been the “hot button” among many prospective clients. We have three specific points regarding social media marketing:

1. Clearly outline your business enterprise guidelines, policies, and rules of engagement. This will help you to develop a standard form of communication and the ability to hold contributors accountable for comments or their actions.

2. Social Media Marketing does not exist in a solo. It is more than Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, or YouTube. Social Media Marketing is everywhere.

Figure 1 Email Signature

Figure 2 Email Marketing Campaign

3. It’s up to the business to analyze which social media tactics are helping to achieve the business goals and objectives. The only way to measure social media is through analytics.

Quality Search Engine Marketing Agency?

As a Search Engine Marketing & Web Analytics agency, we receive numerous questions regarding the difference between us and the local advertising agencies. Our focus is concentrated specifically on marketing tactics and strategies that will impact a business or brand in the search engine ranking via paid or organic methods. We specialize in Search Engine Marketing & Web Analytics and do not attempt to be all things to all businesses!

6 Ways to Identify a Quality Search Engine Marketing Agency:

1. Has more than 1 person on staff with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and/or Web Analytics certifications. This shows that the agency has the capacity to handle more than one large search engine marketing campaign.
2. Attends industry conferences or seminars such as SES, SMX, eMetric Summit, etc. This demonstrates an effort to continue to improve the agency's overall knowledge base.
3. Can utilize more than one Web Analytics and more than one Search Engine Marketing tool. If they are "experts" in the field, they should be able to handle different tools.
4. Reads industry blogs such as Google, WAA, etc. to stay updated on trends and changes to popular industry tools such as Google AdWords, Google Analytics, MS Advertising, etc.
5. Is a member of Industry Associations. This reinforces the agency's commitment to their field, and most associations have best practices to which members must adhere.
6. Has a client base willing to provide references.

If you have a medical condition such as heart disease, you go to see a cardiologist, not a general practitioner. So, if you have a search engine marketing problem, go see a search engine marketing agency.

Why Is Link Building Important to Businesses?

When a prospective customer enters a query into a search engine, the search engine needs to determine how to return the best results. Effective link building assists in the development of the link profile of the site and the web pages being evaluated. The links to the web page are like a vote of "relevance" for the web page. Basically, if your competitor has an equally relevant page for a given search term or keyword, your web page with a better inbound link profile will rank higher than your competitor page.

This will allow your business to reallocate marketing dollars and efforts to other search terms. It may also reduce the cost of your current search engine marketing campaign by improving your organic (non paid) search results for keywords critical to sales and lead generation. No Search Engine Optimization project is complete without Link Building.

Pay Per Click Testing

We received a question about testing ads in Google AdWords from one of our clients. As we have mentioned in the past, there are many different ways to test ads with pay-per-click advertising. The most common are A/B testing and multivariate testing. A/B testing is a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. Multivariate testing or multi-variable testing is a technique for testing hypotheses on complex multi-variable systems, especially used in testing market perceptions.

Unfortunately, Google AdWords rarely provides an “apples to apples” comparison of the ads because it does not “serve” the ads at an equal distribution. There are several ways to streamline the results for the best data.

1. Add Conversion Tracking to the Campaign.
2. Link to Google Analytics for overall impact.
3. Calculate the Sample Size of the Market and do not make any changes until all ads reach the sample size or greater.
4. Isolate the ads with consistent testing methods (day of the week, time, etc.). Not always the best method.

Tracking Social Media with Google Analytics

Earlier this month, we had a presentation on tracking and social media marketing for the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce Rev Up Your Marketing 2010. At the event, we discussed a method for tracking Bit.ly links within communications. One of the attendees asked if it would work for TinyURL; theoretically, we did not see any reason why it would not work. So, we tested this theory and wanted to provide our readers with the information to track with TinyURL.

Step 1: Identify the page you want to send traffic to (www.dabrianmarketing.com).
Step 2: Go to Google URL Builder



Step 3: Add the Source, Medium, and Campaign Name.
Step 4: Document URL for Future Reference.
Step 5: Place the Generated URL into Make TinyURL Tool.


Step 6: Test the URL prior to distribution.
Step 7: Verify in Google Analytics




Step 8: Start Implementing into Tweets, Linkedin, and Facebook initiatives.