Ads Next™ Local Internet Advertising, Annapolis, Maryland, Internet Advertising Solutions, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design and Integration, Social Media Marketing

People often think that if you pay more per click that guarantees you a higher position in the search results.  This may have been the case years ago however now Google factors in two things when determining your Ad Rank.  One being the amount your bid and the other is your “Quality Score.” Maintaining a good quality score allows your ads to be in top postitions at a lower cost per click.

What is Quality Score?
Quality Score for Google and the Search Network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.

Here are 8 steps to improve your Adwords Quality Score

1. Generate a Relevant Keyword List
Generate a list of your business’s products and services.  Then use a keyword tool to research exactly how people search online for these products and services.  There may be many different variations for each product or service.  Start by picking the keywords that users search on the most.  And then test these keywords accordingly overtime to determine which ones perform best in your Adwords Campaign.

2. Separate Keywords into Groups
It is important to keep a very targeted list of keywords in each Adgroup. Focus on one product and service and group all related keywords to that product or service in one Adgroup. Driving traffic is important but it’s more important to drive the most qualified traffic to your website.  So keep your keyword lists very specific and focus on the goals you are trying to achieve from this traffic.

3. Create Relevant and Compelling Ads for Each Group
Create Ad Copy that is relevant to the list of keywords in each Ad Group.  Again the more specific and relevant the Ad copy is to your group of keywords the higher your quality score will be.  Also create ads that stand out above your competition.  Intrigue the user and make them want to find out more about what you are offering so they will then click on to your website and potentially become a new customer.

4. Split Test Your Ads
It’s important to run two or more ads at the same time to determine which ad will perform better.  You will want to monitor the performance.  If you notice that one ad is performing the best allow that one to display more frequently to improve overall quality score.

5. Make Your Landing Page Relevant
When you create your landing page, you want to make sure that your content is consistent with both your keywords and ad copy. Make sure that keywords are carried through to title tags, headers and body content.

6. Don’t Mislead a User
Make sure to deliver on the content people expect to find. Even if all of your keywords, ad copy and landing page content is relevant, if people don’t see what they thought they were getting, they will leave. A high bounce rate is another factor that will erode a high quality score.

7. Make it Clear and Easy
When you drive people to a landing page make sure the call to action is obvious.  Don’t display too much text.  Users don’t typically read all the text on a page they just scan through it.  Also having too many graphics will slow down the load time of the page and people will leave your site.

8. Constantly Monitor
It is very important to implement analytics and keep an eye on your campaign performance. Getting in the habit of monitoring key metrics will help identify problem areas quickly. Continuous improvement will improve your quality score, lower your campaign costs and increase conversions.

In the second part of 2009 Google will be launching a new product called Google Wave. One of Google Wave’s developers Lars Rasmussen describes the new product as, “what email would look like if it were invented today.” Google Wave is a real – time communication platform that combines email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management.

Software Engineering Manager, Lars Rasmussen comments: “Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

To Learn more about the Google Wave view the video below.

Internet marketing has become a hot new trend when advertising your business. We at Ads Next  pride ourselves on offering our clients with the best internet marketing solutions. Michael Burns of Ads Next states – “While currently providing our clients with complete internet marketing solutions, and while consistently following the current and upcoming trends in our industry, we are finding ourselves to becoming more and more fascinated and even focused on the importance of Video Marketing and how it can increase our clients page ranks…such as on Google, Yahoo or MSN…etc.  Just as inbound link building and site preperation are to internet marketing, Video Marketing is now becoming a staple for successful website promotion.

From most readings, especailly an interesting online article written by Terri Miller, it is becoming more logical to move into Video Marketing Productions, and by his thoughts will become a staple.

For instance, please read these quotes from Terri Millers blog:

• “This [online video ads] could very well become the dominant form of online advertising…probably within the next 18 to 24 months” – Bob Hanna, senor vice president of sales with Burst Media-a group that offers publisher sites to advertisers.

• “Online video ad spend is to surge by 89% in 2007 and is poised to grow and in 2010 will be worth around $2.9 billion”. – marketing vox.

It should now becoming more clearer that Video marketing will most likely become the “next big thing” in the world of Internet marketing.

Well what is Video marketing? Well most would say that Video marketing is the use of video for conveying your message to an audience while topics can range from business perspectives to personal grievances. Most experts believe that videos are more effective when it comes to establishing an engaging and interactive platform to communicate with the target audience. 

Video advertising is one of the basic forms of video marketing. In most cases of video advertising, the advertiser would make use of the video that is already being run across various television channels. Usually, a video is edited to shorten the duration. This also makes the video more appealing to the online audience. 

However, as Terri Millers blog describes, their can be many pitfalls when creating a proper Video marketing campaign. According to Amit I. Budhrani of Alza Management Institute, “Most advertisers feel that the content for a video advert can be borrowed from their own TV commercials. However, this is not the case. One needs to clearly differentiate between a video advert and an advertisement made for the TV. Video made for a TV can nevër replace video that is required for the Internet. And it will not make a good impression about the company in the eyes of the people since they can quickly make out that the ad has been copied directly from the TV. If this happens then one is likely to löse out on viewers since people will not care to view the ad of the company ever again. Hence the company will loose viewers instead of gaining them. And this will be a very big loss of opportunity.”

The growing popularity of such sites as YouTube has opened up one more avenue for advertisers, business houses and the corporate sector. One can place videos in social network sites. According to a report that appeared in Reuters, “YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its “snack-sized” video fare.”

Experts state that this particular form of advertising has not only great scope, provided the videos feature original content and are high on creativity, but will become a standard for an internet marketing campaign.

Many people search online for local dentists, doctors, restaurants, spas, landscapers and many other local businesses.  Is your business being placed in front of these users? 

It’s not just about how many people make it to your Web site, but whether or not they take action once they’re there. Are they filling out lead forms?  Are they making a phone call?

Phone call tracking is one way to measure the success of your Local Internet Advertising efforts.  Call tracking allows you to place unique local or toll-free telephone numbers on your website, online and offline ads or landing pages. 

Call tracking proves accountability in both online and offline ad campaigns.  It allows you to monitor the effectiveness of each ad campaign and prove ROI to advertisers.  Calls can be recorded for quality assurance purposes and to measure the quality of the leads that are being generated.  You are able to listen to the phone calls through a real-time reporting portal.  Within these reports you are also able to view name, date, time they called and phone number.

Starting an online or offline campaign with tracked phone numbers can drive qualified leads to your business.  If you are running an ad campaign without tracking the results you could potentially be losing money.  It is crucial that you start tracking your local internet advertising efforts.  Find out what ad campaigns are working best for your business and invest more into those campaigns.

I found this article today from eMarketer very interesting.

Here comes the “Precision Shopper.”

Any retailer who isn’t using the online channel to promote offline sales—as well as online sales—is missing a sizable opportunity.”Today, online consumers think nothing of shopping across a retailer’s stores, Web site and catalog,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Multi-Channel Retailing, “As a consequence, online product research is driving more in-store sales than online sales.”

Last year, eMarketer estimated that store sales influenced by online research totaled $471 billion. Comparatively, retail e-commerce sales were only $136 billion.

Looked at another way, for every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales.

”Online consumers are becoming precision shoppers,” says Mr. Grau. “They are availing themselves of the wealth of information resources online to discover and evaluate products, compare them and find where they can be purchased.”

Mounting research shows that a significant percentage of store purchases are influenced by online product research.

In addition, the “eHoliday Mood Study,” conducted during last year’s holiday shopping season by Shop.org, showed that 63% of US online buyers made their holiday purchases in two or even three retail channels.

The percent of respondents who used more than one channel would have been even higher if consumers who researched products in one channel then bought them in another were included.

According to eMarketer estimates, combined Web-influenced store sales and retail e-commerce sales accounted for 15% of retail sales in 2007. By 2012, the percentage will nearly double to 28%.

Forrester Research, in contrast, reported that Web-influenced store sales plus e-commerce sales accounted for 27% of retail sales in 2007—almost twice eMarketer’s estimate.

”As much as online shopping is a convenience and the online shopping experience continuously improves, people are not about to abandon stores anytime soon,” says Mr. Grau.

So if your cross-channel marketing capabilities are still in the early stages of development, don’t despair. As Mr. Grau says, “The majority of multi-channel retailers still have work to do to resolve organizational and IT issues that stand in their path.”

So you have a website, now what?

Just like a brick and mortar store your website needs to be promoted. On the web there are two main ways to accomplish this goal.

Paid Advertising: This includes pay-per-click text ads on the Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You can also buy display banner ads on local newspaper and magazines sites. This form of advertising is very affordable and the results are tracked. Small Businesses are finding this form of advertising to be a great place to start when advertising a new business. More established small businesses use the Internet to highly target customers in a specific area

Organic Promotion: This form of website promotion is less common, but incredibly effective. This form involves Search Engine Optimization, the process of creating title tags, keyword density and site maps so your site ranks higher in the search engines. It is also very important to create a Blog for posting orginal content. The Blog is then linked to your website. The content can be posted on other community sites (ex. Digg.com) for additonal quality links to your website. In addition is very helpful to have the blog feed the posts into a defined space on your website. This is excellent spider food and really helps with organic rankings.

Website Features shoud Include:

• Creation of quality Inbound and outbound links
• Blogs with RSS Feeds
• Real-time Chat tools
• Search Engine Optimization