This month’s article brings you the latest and greatest developments with Google and online marketing. As we all know, this is now a dominant marketing channel and I thought it would be helpful to explain some of the emerging technology and point out some useful (often free) opportunities for business promotion.
I am interviewing Monte Huebsch, the Google Guru and founder of AussieWeb Local Search. (If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend that you claim your free business listing with www.aussieweb.com.au - it will help with your search engine results).
Megan: What are some of the new, cool technologies that Google is working on that will help business owners?
Monte: Google is ALWAYS trying to get us to spend more time on the internet. If we do – they win and sell more advertising. Their forward looking future is for mobile devices. We all carry our phones around with us. If they are “smart phones” like the iPhone and Nexus 1 we will always have access to the internet. Google Goggles (not currently available in Australia) allow you to point you phone at virtually anything and it tells you about it. At a restaurant and it gives you the menus. At a book it links through to Amazon’s to buy it. Way cool!!!
Megan: How can people find out what key search terms to use on their websites?
Monte: There are two, free tools worth checking out - https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal will give you an idea of what search words people are using to find you and others like you.
The second tool is from Google Insights. It allows you to compare the traffic between multiple keywords in various locations around the world. You can find it here - http://www.google.com/insights/search/#.
Choose the top words and use these throughout your website content. On the same page that you use the words (two or three times is good), use the same words in the page title. This will increase your chances of being found and ranked successfully by the Google ‘bots’.
Megan: How do we know which pages of a website are being visited?
Monte: If you haven’t already done so, sign up for a free Google account and go to ‘Google Analytics’ (Access Analytics / enter your username and password / click on your URL / view report / content (left hand side menu) / site overlay). This will show you the number of people who visit each page of your site, where they click and how they move around the site. Sign up here http://www.google.com/analytics/.
Megan: What other free services does Google provide to business owners?
Monte: Everyone should use Google alerts. It’s an online clipping service and you should set it up to “clip” web content about yourself, your competitors and industry leaders. It’s the easiest way to keep up with how well you and your competitors are being seen in the web sphere and also what you need to keep abreast of. It’s free and it’s here http://www.google.com/alerts.
Megan: How important is it to keep website content up to date? How often should web content be updated?
Monte: Even Google has felt the Global Economic Crisis. If the “googlebot” visits your site and doesn’t see any new content it will wait longer before coming back. When it does come back – if there are still no changes it will wait even longer! You are “teaching” Google not to come back because you never add or change things. A blog will fix this problem. 250 to 400 words once a fortnight is enough.
Megan: Do people really need a blog? What about FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter? Do these really create commercial outcomes (sales) for serious businesses?
Monte: It is now possible to integrate FaceBook, Twitter and posts on your website so you can publish once and it goes to all three platforms! I know that FaceBook is the only company that scares Google. With over 400 million members and an average time on site of close to five minutes they are worried. You should set up a FaceBook fan page for your business, separate from your personal FaceBook page. Even if you just park it for now. Twitter is useful for about 10 percent of the businesses that we see. Not much business return for the other 90 percent. LinkedIn is basically a business FaceBook. Mainly used for recruiting and connecting to other business people. Each business person should create a LinkedIn profile.
Megan: How do businesses get to be on the first page of Google and how do they stay there?
Monte: Watch my video http://www.aussiewebconversion.com/1st-page-on-google.aspx. And here is a bonus video http://www.aussiewebconversion.com/google-vs-yellow.aspx.
Megan: How can people use Google Adwords?
Monte: Google does great things but all those PHDs they have keep adding features which makes things more and more complex. I do not believe that AdWords is a “Do it yourself” DIY system any more. It is way too complex. We manage 100s of accounts for small businesses for a flat fee of $149 a month including GST. No set up fee, no contract and no “loading” the click costs. It’s great value.
Megan: Is there anything else that you would like to add? Any other frequently asked questions that you guys receive regularly?
Monte: Wrap your head around video. YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world! People search on YouTube for “how to videos” and product reviews. You need to establish some videos on www.YouTube.com and imbed them in your site like mine. Google owns YouTube and as always – it’s free!
For more information on increasing your profile (enquiries and sales) and integrated Google in your overall marketing strategies, please contact me on 07 3899 8335.
Kind regards
Megan Walker