Dabbling in Landing Page Optimization and SEO

For our eleventh week we learned about Website and Landing Page Optimization, as well as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Landing Page Optimization

This is all about your Landing Pages offering what your ad promises. For instance, if your ad says something about free shipping, you should have that featured above the fold on the landing page. If it’s not there they will look for it and possible bounce when they don’t find it. You can have a unique landing page for each of you ad groups. That way each landing page will feature the things your ad promotes. Using keywords from your ad through to your landing page is a great idea. Your customers eyes will look for something they found in your ad on the page and when they find it they may stay. Simple as that.

SEO

There is a lot more to SEO than can be taught in a single blog post, so I am going to focus on keywords and semantics. It is vital to use keywords on every level of your website. From the headline of your ad, to the landing page headline, to the sub headings and bodycopy. You can also add your list of keywords to your metadata (in the HTML file or through a plugin on WordPress), use your keywords in menus, submenus, footer site maps, sidebar category and tag widgets and anywhere else you can think to place it. It is also important to use proper HTML element tag and inline semantics. These are things like aside, footer, alt, img, cite, abbr, small, date, and time. Using these will improve quality ratings and site rankings.

Conclusion

There are a lot of limitations to using WordPress, but metadata via HTML or plugin and the semantics can be added by modifying he HTML code if you really want to do it. I don’t think it’s that big of an issue on WordPress. The tag and category widgets are already search optimized. I suppose if you wanted to make some keywords stand out you could add them to your metadata, but the semantics should be already setup correctly.

Campaigns, Conversions and Adwords, Oh My!

This week we learned about Adwords Conversions and we started our Ad Campaigns

Conversions

Setting up Adwords Conversions on anywhere but WordPress is somewhat straightforward. Since my web business is a blog on WordPress I took the harder road. The problem is finding a way to add the Javascript to the pages. I finally found a plugin that allowed me to place the Javascript in a side widget called HTML Javascript Adder. I included some Javascript that I modified that was provided by school to track any url that is clicked on my site. I won’t know if it works until someone clicks something.

My Campaign is Off and Running

I am under a bit of stress, so I blew it on launching my Adwords Campaign on time… I started it a week late. However, within minutes of launching it I had three clicks and 272 impressions. I now have six clicks and 2641 impression in 48 hours. All at a cost of $4.71. Sadly, no conversions yet. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Conclusion

I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t start my Adwords Campaign on time, but I am more than happy with the initial results. I have had at least 1 impression from ALL of my keywords, except one I paused for an assignment. I think this class is an amazing learning experience. I am changing my minor from biology to something else. Perhaps business isn’t a bad field to get into. I am really enjoying this… when I remember to do the assignments on time.

The Relevance and Quality Analytics of all Things Internet

For our ninth week of my Web Business course we learned about the Quality scores in Google Adwords and we setup our Google Analytics accounts. Every lesson we are getting closer to taking our web businesses’ live!

Quality and Relevance

It’s important to have the highest Quality and Relevance scores that you can get on Google Analytics. Relevance means you have to have content on your site and in your ad that relate to one another and to your keywords. A high Quality score leads to your ads being posted more often for a LOWER BID! Getting that score as high as possible is the main lesson to take away from this. Here are the three keys to getting a good Quality score for your Adword Keyword:

• First: The ad needs to include a strong keyword for the headline. You have one to one and a half lines to talk about your company — I would just list a bunch of the lesser keywords that tie into the strong keyword at the top — followed by a strong call to action. People are smart. They get the shorthand text of advertising. Keywords say more about what you do in the tiniest space possible. People will see their keyword (that is also linked to the ad in the ad group) in the text and are more likely to click through to your website. If your ad looks more professional, it will gain the trust of more people to at least get them to your page. Remember, the ad is the first contact you will have with each potential customer. Make sure it does its work well.

• Second: Perhaps you need a better keyword that is truer to the content you have on your landing page. Google Adwords looks at your landing page and will suggest a long list of keywords to you on each of your campaign/ad group keyword entry text box areas. Make sure to take a good look at it. Google terms to see what they bring up. See what other terms are related to it. Perhaps you will need to create extra ad groups to insure that the keywords you do have are fully connected to their ad.

• Finally: Your landing page is the second conversation you have with potential customers, so make it count. Make use of a site map in the footer of your website. Create subpages for major groupings so there is a link to them on in the site map. Use keywords in headings, subheadings and text. This is all just good SEO, but it will also improve your landing page score. Keep to standards. Don’t make it hard for the user to figure out or they will leave. You want them to get what they expect, a website that works, is easy to navigate and that fits in with the ad that brought them there.

Analytics

This week we set up our Google Analytics accounts. Setup is very easy. I used a WordPress plugin called WP Google Analytics Scripts to easily connect Analytics to my blog. I highly recommend taking the time to link up your Adwords and even your Adsense accounts to your Analytics account. This way you can create custom reports that cross-reference the data that is most important for you to know.

Conclusion

There will be more on Analytics in the course, so I will have a follow up post down the line. For now, I have some work to do on my own advertisement and I need to create some content to be available the day I go live. My goal is to have at least one blog post for each of my four Adgroups. Hopefully I will find the time to do more.

Ads and Ad Groups

This week we worked on our ad text and ad groups on our Adwords accounts.

Ad Groups

I decided to break my keywords into four ad groups. The campaign settings apply to all four groups and now I can create a new ad for each of the strongest keywords and those keywords that relate to them the closests.

Ad Text

I revised my ad text by adding a keyword as the headline for each of my four groups. The first description line is the same on each ad. It describes the type of blog I am writing. That way it drives away traffic of people who are not looking for an art blog. The second description line is different from the first ad, with the last three all being the same. I did not use a call to action. I felt that people who are interested in what I am blogging about will be sold on what I already wrote.

Conclusion

This was a nice lesson to learn. I see how ad campaigns with ad groups work to my advantage. I now have a top pay-per-click set by Adwords for me of $.01. Yep 1 cent. I know that means I am in a low competition area, but I hope to get some traffic anyway.