Website and Web Page Titles
Your website title is one of the first things that major search engines look for when ranking your page. When your title and description accurately reflect your content, (which should also be fabulous,) it drastically improves the chances that your web page rank will rise like fresh baked blueberry muffins. That’s not enough though. You’ll also need a website title that’s noticeable and makes people want to know more and click through to your site.

Think local. If your business is in London, make a specific appeal to London and the surrounding area. People all over the world will still want to view your website for its valuable information. However, it makes good business sense to make a local appeal too since people are more comfortable making purchases from companies that are close by.

List your business name and some important keywords in your title. Small and New businesses list keywords first. Larger and well known businesses can list their name before the keywords. i.e.: A small business may write: Best gourmet coffee in Maine at Schmoe’s Joe. While a larger company may say: Schmoe’s Joe: Best gourmet coffee in Maine.

For every page on your website, use a different tagline with keywords that you know people will look for. i.e.: Schmoe’s Joe: About Our Gourmet Coffee Company, Schmoe’s Joe: Buy Gourmet Coffee Online, Schmoe’s Joe: Gourmet Coffee Accessories.

Website titles should be as short as possible. Don’t try to squeeze ten keywords in to one headline. You are more likely to get better results with one or two quality keywords than you will with half a dozen of them. This is mostly due to the fact that web surfers are looking for instant information. They don’t typically read that much into a headline anyway. In order to get lots of quality keywords associated with your site, use the method above and put a different keyword in the title of every page.

Content, Blog and Article Headlines
According to John Caples, author of “Tested Advertising Methods,” There are three major types of titles that attract the most clicks:

1) News Headlines:
It is human nature to seek out information and find out what is happening in their world. News headlines offer objective facts which make readers feel more knowledgeable and in control of their environment. Examples are: “Celebrity Searches Lead to Malware” “New Remote Application Available for iPhone and iPod” and “Buy New Wii at Discount Stores”

2) Curious Monkey:
Everyone has a little curious monkey inside their head distracting them from the task at hand and telling them to click on the video of the skateboarding dog. Headlines like “Cat Declared Hero” “$80M Disaster” or “Bubble Boy Lives!” can get people’s attention pretty quickly.

3) Self Interests:
This is the most effective since readers are interested in things and ideas that they will personally benefit from. It appeals to a need, a want or an ego. For instance: “Learn Spanish in Two Weeks” “Retire Ten Years Early” or “Affordable Mansions”

When appealing to the “self-interest” spectrum, beware of overuse. Consumers and web surfers have become fairly desensitized to marketing and advertising on the internet, if not extremely wary and cynical. Over-sell it and they may think you’re a scam operation. There needs to exist a delicate balance between a quality product and an intelligent, subtle yet strong appeal to their ego and desire. It all comes down to finding what kind of tone your demographic responds to. Do they want something edgy and fresh, subtle and intelligent, or maybe they are more likely to click on a headline that is funny and bizzare

Remember, you don’t have to be #1 on the search engine’s list to get the most clicks.  It’s better to have a few high quality keywords and an appealing headline than a title that is too vague or contains too much information.

We have chosen our language, written a simple text ad and explained a few little reasons why we do what we do. Now it’s time to develop some keywords and finish off the account setup process.

Step 6) As you can see in the screencap below, Google gives a very simplified version of its keyword tool when you are going through your first campaign setup.

Any keywords you do get from this particular tool, aren’t really going to give you any insight into why you should be using them, other than a quick relevance check when you browse over them. So, instead of using this tool i’m going to ask you to load up the Google Keyword Tool Basically, this is using the same back end technology as the above tool, however its giving far more meaning to any keywords that you do choose.

The first thing you should do when you come to the keyword tool page is choose the specific country you want data for. If you are reading this guide, i will assume its campaign number one so stick to just one country for the time being. Select that country and then enter some descriptive terms about your website and business. For the sake of this example, lets keep going with the boston doctor theme.

Once you have entered the CAPTCHA code, you are going to be presented with a window which looks like this:

You may look at this and go “so what does this do for me?” but to understand the importance of this you need to understand the way it used to be. Basically, until a few months ago, you had to go and buy third party software which would quite often cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars, just to try and attach any meaningful figures onto your keyword research. Then Google released the current incarnation of this tool with accurate, country level keyword volumes and keyword research completely changed overnight.

Ok, enough of a rant there. Basically, what this is telling us is that as expected, the keyword Boston Doctors gets a good volume of searches and actually has relatively low competition. Which is fantastic as it means you are competing against fewer competitors and will ultimately pay less for clicks!

Next, i recommend scrolling down the list and picking out keywords which the tool is suggesting that are highly relevant to the specific business you are trying to advertise and you can do this one of two ways. Go through them one by one and click add on the right hand column, then download the list when you finish. Or you can go right ahead and download the entire list, then sort through the keywords in excel (I would recommend the second option)

One last thing i will point out with this tool, is to make sure that you scroll down the list a fair way and then go to the section that says “additional keywords to consider” this section is going to be filled with keywords that Google things are logically related to the terms you entered in the previous step.

The last thing you then need to do is take all of the keywords you chose and enter them into the text box on the Adwords page (Step 3 of 7)

Only select keywords which are highly relevant to the ad which you wrote earlier, remember that the ad must match the keywords you use to trigger it and also match the page you are delivering users to. So stay away from adding in keywords like doctors for the moment as they will eat up your budget.

Step 7) – The final few choices i will roll into one step as they are pretty self explanatory. You need to choose your currency, so for this example USD will do fine. Next Adwords is asking you to set a monthly budget, so go and calculate what you are willing to spend on search marketing and then enter about HALF of that figure into this field. The reason i say this is because you are still learning, no optimisation has been done and for all intensive purposes you may waste that whole amount with very few results. I also recommend that once you have setup your campaign you go in and set a daily budget which further restricts your spending (We will show that in another post)

Leave the last two check boxed ticked and then press continue.

Ok, you will finally come to a screen which is going to ask whether you already have a Google account. I will assume that you don’t, so click the button which says “I do not use these other services” and you will then have the chance, to enter your email address and choose a password.

Click on “create account” and viola, you are done. You now have an adwords account, have written an ad and have chosen relevant keywords based on volumes and relevance.

Our next educational step by step guide will focus on what to do after you have created your account and how to understand whether or not you are getting any real value out of your campaign. So stay tuned early next week for that one.

This guide is obviously aimed at those who are just getting search marketing running on their website. More advanced optimisation and development articles will follow.

Step 1) You need to load up http://adwords.google.com this is the homepage of the worlds biggest and most talked about online advertising program Google Adwords. You will see up the very top of the screen a link which says “Click to begin”, go ahead and click on that which will take you to step 2.

Step 2) Once you have decided to start the signup process, Google is going to ask you to choose Starter Edition or Standard Edition. Now, if i were starting a new campaign i would choose the Standard Edition however, lets go through the process of using the starter edition as there are a few different steps involved.

Click on the starter edition radio box and also on “i have a webpage” then click continue. (If you don’t have a webpage, we will be developing a simple how to guide shortly to suit your needs)

Step 3) The next thing Google is going to do is pop-up a little sub window which will ask for additional details. Let’s ignore that and get on with the signup process, so click continue without entering the additional information.

This next page is where you enter all of your target information such as location, language, keywords and other factors which will help to refine your advertising and ensure that you aren’t just throwing money away.

Step 4) So let’s choose our location and language, if your business is a local and geographically specific business such as a bakery or a doctor, this is probably the most important step. Make sure that you choose a specific region or at the very least your state. If your business is a countrywide or global, online business, then i would suggest choosing some of the major countries such as the USA, Canada, UK.

To start off with, lets simply choose the USA.

Step 5)Next, Google is going to ask us to write your very first ad! First, let’s enter your URL. The important thing to remember here is that this won’t always be your homepage. You should be delivering users directly to the most information rich, sales driven page on your website. So think to yourself “What is the page which would best sell and explain my product or service?” then enter that page in.

Next, we need to write your ad. The most important thing is to remember that there is very limited space with only 35 characters in the headline and 70 characters worth of description text. So each ad has to be to the point and if possible, feature part or all of the keyword you are targeting. There is no one, trusted way to write a text ad but i will give a few quick tips.

Step 5A) – Headline The headline is the most important part of your ad, this is the part of your ad that gets noticed more than anything else. Your headline should be to the point and feature at least one of your major keywords. Ideally you would write a variation of your ad for each major group of keywords so that they are all closely matched. To begin with, we are only writing one ad so lets create an example.

Let’s say you are a doctor in Boston and you offer services only within the Boston region. For this kind of account i would write a headline like: Experienced Boston Doctor or Local Boston Doctor You basically want to try and sum up the service you are offering within that small 35 character space.

Step 5B) Ok, now for the description this is where you can start to be more creative and try to differentiate yourself from other competing advertisers. I recommend going to Google and searching for a keyword like Boston Doctors for the sake of this example, look at what your competitors are using and then try to improve on it!

Try your best to include any points of difference between yourself and your competitors. An example descriptions for this kind of ad are: “Serving the Boston Community for 15 Years. Trusted and Professional”, Basically i think since its a medical industry ad, trusted, safe, reliable are all words which should be focused on.

Step 5C) Display URL, this is the domain name of your site which if you are lucky, will be highly relevant to your market. However one important thing to remember is that you can add a folder name onto the end of your display URL without it existing on your website. This extra bit of advertising space can be a great way of fitting in an extra keyword and making your ad more relevant.

For the example of a Boston doctor, your display URL might look something like this BostonDoctors.com/Advice or BostonDoctors.com/HouseCall – Take advantage of this as your competitors will most likely be. Anytime a user searches for a keyword, if that keyword is within your ad it will highlight in bold!

So that i don’t overload you with all of these things, i am going to leave part one of getting started with Adwords for today and continue on tomorrow. We will get more in depth into keyword research both using the Google tool and other resources.

Come back tomorrow for part 2 in this new series.

Here is how Google explained the way in which the new formula will work in their latest inside adwords post

Here’s an example to illustrate how per-query Quality Score works:

Nancy’s Dairy advertises on the keyword ‘milk.’ Nancy’s ads perform better on the keyword ‘milk’ in the U.S. than in Canada. Her ads also perform better on the query ‘milk delivery’ than on ‘milk,’ and better on certain search network sites than on others. Instead of one static Quality Score and minimum bid that determines whether the keyword ‘milk’ is eligible to trigger an ad for all search queries, we will now determine eligibility dynamically, based on factors such as location, the specific query, and other relevance factors. For that reason, Nancy’s keyword ‘milk’ will be able to trigger an ad for search queries where it’s likely to perform better, i.e., in the U.S., on ‘milk delivery’ and on certain search network sites.

Now, the biggest problem i see with this is that Google STILL DOESN’T give advertisers the ability to run bulk, campaign wide quality score reports. That however is a whole different issue that i will address shortly.

Google also states that quality scores will now update in real time which is a massive improvement because until now, quality score sweeps could happen several days or even weeks after making a change to an ad. Which is of course a bad thing when it comes to paying too much for clicks.

One of the other big changes is that keywords will no longer be deactivated. I’m sure we have all come across dozens of keywords in large accounts which will quite often become deactivated due to low quality scores. In fact, i’ve always found it quite useful to look at accounts in adwords editor and sort by keyword status, the inactive keywords are always the first ones to be optimized!

Google the ever evolving beast is doing a fantastic job across almost all areas of adwords and is still lightyears ahead of Yahoo, Keep up the good work guys!

Universal search brings together components of web, book, blog, video, news and many more different types of search onto the one results page, all blended seamlessly so that the average Joe doesn’t know the difference between one or the other, they simply get results tailored to their search query from various different sources.

The interesting question facing marketers, is how to take advantage of these new elements, which feature prominently within SERPS? Do you focus your time on optimizing video content, tagging images, writing a blog, publishing ebooks?!?

Need an example of universal search? Try searching Google.com for “los angeles bars” and this is what you will see:

Universal Search Example:

Ok, so we now know what universal search optimization can cover, basically any kind of web content so here is my guide to help priotize your online content efforts, in order of easiest to hardest.

1. Tagging your images: This is a no brainer and one of the easiest ways to start to get some additional traffic from the search engines. Tagging all images contained on your website with the correct alt text and description fields, gives you the opportunity to basically show a banner ad at the very top of a search result, if Google deems your image to be highly relevant.
2. Optimizing video content: Make your video useful or informational (Don’t waste users time), tag your video with popular terms which relate to the content, keep the video short and to the point, put your logo on the video and always ensure that you name your video so that it is relevant to the content and the keywords associated with it. Another great tip is to always include your videos in a “video sitemap” so that the search engines can find it all and finally use html to describe the contents of your video because search engines still love HTML best!
3. News content: If Google or Yahoo or any other news aggregators, truly think your site is newsworthy, they will generally add you to their index on their own, however for the majority of us it’s a matter of writing content, building up a reasonable level of quality and then submitting for approval. Once approved, news based search results can deliver lots of relevant traffic and the same old rules apply, write good quality, keyword rich, feature articles and make them worthwhile for users to read.
4. Local search: Getting listed within local search results can be as simple as adding your website to the local business ads section index within your adwords account, the reason that i put this as #4 was because you generally have to pay for the listing on a per click basis. However Google will also give you that one, free, map based link if you claim ownership of your business address, via a verification process. Click here for more information on Local business ads
5. Book search: Now this is a tougher one, simply because you have to take the time to write a book! It’s not as easy as it sounds but if you have the time, write a book on something you are truly passionate about, something you have a strong opinion on and then publish it as a PDF. Do your research and find popular phrases, using tools like wordtracker or keyword elite and featuring these phrases heavily within your original content. Once you have written your book, published it, it looks all pretty. Register it for a Google book ID and you are done, if people are searching for phrases which are highly relevant to your publication, there is a good change your book will be shown.

If you currently use a third party search agency to optimize your website, make sure you ask them what they are doing for your universal optimization, be proactive and findout their guidelines and strategies and ask questions about where they think the future is heading and get in before your competition does.

Those tips above are useful, but the most important thing to remember when optimizing your search marketing, is to try and deliver unique, meaningful content to users. Google and Yahoo both love to deliver the freshest, most useful webpage’s to their users, so if you write it (and optimize it properly) they will come.