Google Adwords is a powerful online advertising tool that helps people find a business at the precise moment they are searching for the product/service that the business offers. Every business can use Google Adwords to grow their reach and achieve their business goals which may be to generate leads or enhance sales.
Below you can find a slideshare presentation on the basics of Google Adwords and what one needs to know before starting their first Pay Per Click campaign. This has been made from practical experience of multiple team members at Social Beat (a Google Partner).
Ad Types
Google Adwords offers a whole range of ad types to choose from depending on the objective of the campaign. Ad types include plain text ads for the search network on desktops & mobile phones, text or image ads for the Google Display Network (GDN), Product-listing ads and Search, display and In-stream video ads on YouTube. Prior to running a campaign, it is important to understand each type and how they function.
Keyword Research
Keyword research forms the basis of an Ad campaign on the search network. The keywords must be specific and include all possibilities and variations keeping in mind the interests of the target audience. A clear understanding of the keyword types – Broad match, modified broad match, phrase match and exact match and using the right mix of them in a campaign is essential to building a successful campaign. It is also important to carry out research for your negative keywords (not sure what negative keywords are? Watch out for our next blog post on the same)
Ad creation
Similar keywords would need to be grouped together to form different Ad groups and then multiple ads would have to be created for each group. For example, for a dental clinic they Ad Groups could be Dentist, Dental Clinic, Dental Care, Orthodontic Treatment etc. These might seem similar from a business perspective, but from a search and Adwords perspective they need to be broken down into separate Ad Groups.
The quality of these ads is of paramount importance as these will attract the user to click on them and get to your website. There are a number of rules to be followed and techniques to be learnt. One interesting technique, which helps make the ad headline appear longer the 25-character limit when the ad is shown, is to add a full-stop at the end of the first line of the description. The ad must always include the key selling points and adding a keyword in the display URL would help enhance quality score.
Quality Score & Ad Rank
Quality score of an ad takes into account the expected Click Through Rate (CTR), Ad relevance and the Landing Page experience. Keywords need to be optimized to enhance Quality Score which will eventually impact the Ad rank (which is the Quality Score multiplied by the CPC bid). A good understanding of ad rank and quality score is essential to running a good campaign.
Once the campaign is up and running, improving it and optimizing it is a continuous process and involves managing bids, refining keywords based on conversions and adapting ads based on their response.
Are you ready to run your first campaign? Have any questions? Feel free to drop them below and we’d be glad to answer them.
A large number of people still consider Google+ to be a ghost town, sparsely inhabited and sans activity – not worth investing time and effort to create and maintain a presence on. If you’re one of them, it’s time to give this thought some serious reconsideration.
In less than three years of its existence since its launch in the second half of 2011, Google+ has shown tremendous growth with the total number of registered users recently crossing the 1 billion mark and the number of active monthly users crossing 540 million. To gauge the growth in activity - 1.5 billion photos are uploaded every week and +1 is clicked more than 5 billion times a day. If these massive numbers are not reason enough for you to include G+ as part of your social media strategy, here are seven strong reasons why you must begin using Google+ as a business marketing tool.
1. It’s a Google product:
No other social network has the kind of web assets leverage that Google has. Think about it. Apart from being the world’s most used search network, Google owns one of the most popular browsers in Chrome, one of the most-used mobile Operating systems in Android, the largest video sharing website in YouTube, the world’s largest email service in Gmail, one of the most popular photo-editing platforms in Picasa, a versatile cloud-storage application in Google Drive and the most popular mapping service application in Google Maps. Google is the leader of the online world and is already using all its might to ensure Google+ gains popularity and acceptance. Apart from this, the use of Google+ also provides seamless integration with all other Google services.
2. Higher Search Rankings:
The boost to SEO is one of the biggest benefits of Google+. Almost all SEO experts will tell you that content on Google+ is indexed faster than other content across the web and any links on G+ positively impact SEO results. This is because unlike most other social platforms like Twitter, where all links are placed with a no follow tag, Google+ links are follow links and G+ pages are treated as web pages. This increases website visibility and accumulates Page Rank and thereby, by actively participating on Google+, you are increasing the visibility of your brand.
A recent scientific correlation Study by Moz to discover the qualities of web pages that have a strong association with ranking high in Google, shows that Google+ posts have multiple SEO benefits unlike other social platforms. The study also found a strong correlation between Google +1s and higher search rankings, clearly indicating that sharing content on Google + has the potential to influence search rankings in many ways.
3. Enhanced search results:
When a user searches for your Google+ optimized business online, the results show the most recent G+ post, the number of followers, profile name and image, any +1 recommendations from friends and Google map directions to the business. And, if the person searching is already following your business on G+, the brands content appears even more prominently in the search results.
Apart from the right hand space on the Search results page, where Google+ information currently shows up, Google is also experimenting with including recent posts, most relevant to the search query keyed in, in the Search results space itself. The example below shows a relevant Google+ post of a play school, displaying in the results for the Search query “play school in Velachery”.
4. Google+ Authorship:
Google Authorship includes the author’s photo and byline with the search snippet on search results pages. It is activated by linking the author’s Google+ profile to the website he is a contributor to, through an email address on that domain. Including the author’s credentials lends reliability and trustworthiness to the content and enhances ranking on Search Engine Results Pages(SERPs) while also improving click-through-rates, thereby increasing the reach of your content and traffic to your site.
5. Unfiltered Updates:
Unlike Facebook, which constantly tweaks its Edgerank algorithm to decide which of your updates will be seen by your fans, updates on Google+ are currently unfiltered and chances of your updates reaching your fan-base are higher on Google+ than Facebook. Also, unlike Facebook, whose primary source of revenue is Ads, Google’s primary source of revenue comes from search advertising and it presently does not need to force users to pay to gain visibility on Google+.
6. Google+ Ads:
The above does not mean that Google will never attempt to monetize Google+ through ads. Google is already testing paid +Post ads for Google+ content and apart from Google’s experience with Adwords expected to make the Ads a great product, the possible game changer would be access to the whole of the Google Display Network through Google+ Ads.
7. Google+ Hangouts:
Hangouts are probably the best and most important feature of Google+. Think of it as a free webinar tool where you can include upto 9 participants and automatically broadcast live to your Google+ page as well as your YouTube Channel. Hangouts are an excellent means of communicating with clients and potential clients to educate them about a product/service and share ideas and case studies.
The world’s second largest social network is here to stay. So, get on it, establish your presence and learn how you can use it effectively to grow your brand. The proverbial early bird always gets the worm and being early to Google’s party is sure to have its benefits in the long-term.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikimedia Foundation once said “If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist.” We stand in an era where no one would deny what Jimmy said. More than 90% of the market share in search engine belongs to Google. With gazillions of data available on the web, how do you get the exact information you’re looking for from the Google search? For example, when you want to look for Jaguar (the animal), the keyword you are likely to enter is “Jaguar.” Wait. Please find below the Google search results for the keyword “Jaguar.”
This conflict between your mind and Google’s search engine can be easily avoided if you master these 10 tips and use it effectively. This will also save your valuable time and optimize your search results.
1. Definitions
You get to read a lot of contents online in the form of news articles, blog posts, tutorials, e-books etc. Have you ever found yourself taking a pause in the middle of reading a cover story only because the word or the phrase was so alien to you? In this case, you would either reach out to a pre-installed dictionary software or Google it by randomly choosing a website from the search results page one.
Instead, remember this simple syntax and let Google tell you the definition, origin of the word and synonyms. You can also listen to the pronunciation of the word. Use define: in front of any word to learn the definition of it.
E.g. define: legerdemain
2. Quotes
Quotes are very useful if you are looking for something specific on your search results. Imagine this scenario. You remember the title of an article very well, but you vaguely remember the website’s name. Using quotation marks in your search could be really helpful in those cases. Check out the below example where the search for Digital Marketing Trends for India in 2014 without using quotation marks results in a lot of websites suggestions which have these words arranged in any manner.
If you include quotation marks for the same sentence, you get totally different results, the results you desired for. So, if you are looking for a specific phrase and you want only those websites which have the same phrase in the exact order, use quotes to refine your search results.
E.g. “Digital Marketing Trends for India in 2014”
3. File type
Of late, we have been witnessing a lot of religious protests against films leading to censorship by several state governments across India based on the Cinematograph Act. So, you decide to read about it thoroughly to avoid feeling lost in the conversations happening on social media platforms. If you plainly search for “Cinematograph Act” in Google, you’ll get editorials and op-ed columns of popular publications as results.
Instead, use the following syntax to zero in the particular file type you are looking for to read about the topic in-depth. You can search for specific file types by adding the 3-letter abbreviation of the file type. E.g. PDF, PPT, XLS, DOC.
E.g. cinematograph act filetype:pdf
4. Case-sensitive and Punctuation
Please note that Google search is not case-sensitive. If you search for either New Delhi or new delhi, your results will be the same. So, you can stop being conscious to case-sensitive words in Google search.
Search overlooks punctuation too. You can ignore it as well and save time.
5. Related
This technique is useful for all digital marketers who are researching for competitors in a particular space. It helps to find websites which have similar content. For instance, if you are shopping on Flipkart and want to find out similar e-commerce websites, this tip could help you.
Using the syntax related: followed by the website address will give you websites similar to that in search results.
E.g. related:flipkart.com
6. Include or Exclude Words in Search
This trick helps you to include or exclude a specific word in search results. For example, if you want baking recipes with egg as an ingredient, you need to highlight the word Egg by using quotation marks in the search.
To include egg in your baking recipes, the syntax should be baking recipes “egg”
If you are looking for baking recipes without egg, the syntax should be baking recipes -egg
7. Search within a site
Have you ever struggled to find something specific within a website? This syntax could be your solution. For example, if you want to read editorials on The Hindu website and you find that the search box in the website doesn't work. Fret not. Use the syntax site:website to search within a particular website.
E.g. editorials site:thehindu.com
Got an interesting Google search tip? Please share with us in the comments.
In a surprising gesture, Google has rolled out an update for Toolbar PageRank yesterday after a time gap of 10 months. The last update for Toolbar PageRank came in February 2013. The update comes as a surprise for many because Matt Cutts, the head of webspam in Google thought otherwise (two months back) as you can see below. Now, don’t try your luck in searching for that tweet. It’s disappeared for obvious reasons.
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PageRank has improved for a lot of sites including Social Beat’s. Have you checked the PR for your site?
PageRank – In a nutshell
PR is one of the many algorithms that Google uses to rank a website in search results. It tells you how reputable a website is to provide you the most relevant results at the top of the page. PageRank is not the sole algorithm used by Google to refine search results. For example, if you use a PageRank Search Tool to identify PR of websites in search results, you are more likely to see websites with even low PR listed above the ones that have a high PR. This substantiates the fact that Google doesn’t use PR as the only factor to rank websites in search results.
Why your website’s PageRank has not improved?
There are few indications that could explain this. One of the important factors for your PR to improve is that there should be an increase in the number of incoming links pointing to your website from other well established sites. The significance of your incoming links does play a vital role but it could not be the only reason.
The balance between the number of incoming links and outgoing links for your website should be maintained. There is no harm in giving outgoing links from your website, but ensure that they have a good PR. This provides a visibility for your website too and is a good optimization strategy. Hence, if the outgoing links are greater than the number of incoming links to your site, then your PR is likely to see a dip.
Do not chase the PR trends. If you create unique and fresh content for your website and leverage your social media presence, your content will certainly gain visibility. If not sooner, at least in the long run it will.
Click here to know more about Google Toolbar
Google added a new dimension to data visualization few months back by introducing an animated and colorful interface for real-time hot searches. Google’s passion for effective utilization of data has been evident in its other services as well. When it launched customizable Google Maps for users, it took data visualization to the next level. The real-time search can be customized by choosing the number of rows and columns in the ‘Grid Box’ on the top left side of the page as you can see in the image below. We can select either a particular country or ‘All Regions’ in the bottom left of the page to narrow our search options.
With this captivating interface to search for real-time ‘hot trends’, Google has proved yet again that it is ambitious to offer more sophisticated ways of using data in future. As of now, it offers search results for 13 countries including India. Check out the sample real-time search for 25*25 for All Regions below.
Google launched a course on Digital Analytics earlier this month for analysts and digital marketers to understand the fundamentals of digital analytics. The course includes expert video tutorials on digital measurement landscape and descriptions of key concepts, terminologies and analysis techniques. It has 6 units in total and each unit has 4 chapters on an average. In addition to the tutorials, each chapter has exclusive resources from digital analytics evangelists for more detailed knowledge and reference. Also, each chapter is available in the text version as PDF files to download and read later.
There are short quizzes and practice exercises at the end of each chapter and a final assessment once you complete all six units. On clearing the final assessment, you will be awarded with a certificate from the Analytics Academy of Google. Find out the certificate of Vikas Chawla, the Co-Founder of Social Beat to know how exactly it looks like.
The course is open till Oct 30th, 2013. You can take up the final assessment any time before that in order to receive the certificate of completion. After 30th October, the content will still be available on the website of analytics academy for future learning.
If you have doubts on the course or need assistance in understanding the lessons, you can visit their Community page to join in group discussions with fellow learners and analytics experts from Google.
The meeting of Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1995 at Stanford has to be the most historical rendezvous ever in the online world. Technically, the duo has been in business together since 1996 and that makes it 17 years. But then, Google filed its incorporation only in 1998 and they celebrate 15 years today. From being an academic research project (Back Rub) to literally running a monopoly in the internet domain, it has phenomenally come a long way.
In perspective, we explored few fascinating facts about Google in terms of revenue. Google’s revenue in 2012 was roughly US $ 50 billion and it’s ahead of the GDP of 89 individual countries in the world in terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). And also, Google earns 2.7 % of India’s GDP (nominal).
1998: The Google website originally hosted on Stanford University servers.
Evolution of Google’s search page from 1998 to 2013: In the RHS of the image, you could see the empty space without any information in 1998 for the keyword “google.”
This is how a search page in 2013 looks when you type the same keyword “google” – A revolutionary change has happened from auto complete, universal search, instant search, knowledge graph to finally including intelligence features in 2013.
Google’s first doodle for its birthday came in 2002. There’s an interesting fact about when Google has been celebrating its birthdays since 2002.
2002 – Sep 27
2003 – Sep 8
2004 – Sep 7
2005 – Sep 26
2006 - 13 – Sep 27
Do you guys observe a pattern here? We’re not sure if Google uses a specific algorithm to celebrate its birthday every year :) Since Google has finally zeroed in on September 27th as its birthday for the past 8 years, we hope it continues in the future too. Happy Birthday Google :)
South India has been the biggest region for gold consumption in the country for many years now. Purchasing gold continues to be a tradition and is considered as the safest investment for people. Chennai, Coimbatore, Kochi and Thrissur together account for nearly 20 % of the annual gold demand. Jewellers are utilizing this opportunity and expanding their foothold in South by opening more showrooms and leveraging their social media presence to engage with the consumers.
At the moment only Facebook is significantly used to promote new products, to carry out festival contests and to interact with the consumers. Kalyan Jewellers – 209,000 likes, Joyalukkas – 66,000 likes and Jos Alukkas – 51,000 likes are among the largest contributors on Facebook. Even the big players are yet to explore other networking tools like Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, Google Plus and LinkedIN. Gehna with 30+ fans and Malabar Gold with 350+ followers are one of the few jewellers using Google Plus and LinkedIN to build a strong network of customers. Joyalukkas, GRT and Jos Alukkas upload videos (though, not frequently) in their YouTube channels to cater to their 700+ subscribers.
E-Commerce is another area that is picking up with jewelry houses and increasingly we see many showcasing and selling online. Online presence is supporting offline purchasing in a big way , with social media and digital marketing being the greater influencers on customers.
It is getting increasingly expensive to advertise online in India, across sectors, including ecommerce, healthcare, education and entertainment. Prices have gone up for PPC and PPM across Google, Facebook and channels such as retargeting. It has become imperative now to optimise the ads to increase effectiveness and make the most of our marketing budget. How do we do that? Simple. Images decide over 80% of the ads effectiveness. Below are 6 of the best ways to improve the effectiveness of your online ads through images:
1. Keep the image simple and clean: Focus on one aspect in the image, which is obvious even when the image size is very small. Acknowledge that the customer is not on a particular page to view your advertisement. Your image needs to be clear to stand out and attract a click.
2. Communicate the USP of your brand: Pick your image based on the USP of your business. Are you showcasing the most desired brands or are you showcasing your unique products or services? Ensure that the image you pick showcases this USP. If you retail a brand people love, ensure that it's prominently called out in the Image. If it's unique products that you represent, ensure that the image clearly establishes that in the users mind.
3. Show images with a model: Your product may be great, but for the customer, she is looking at how it fits into her life. Bring it alive for her by showcasing your product on or with a model wherever possible. Images with models have a significantly higher click through rate.
4. Call out a sale or deal: We Indians love to bargain and in the online world, that's substituted with a deal. Highlight the best deal you are running, with a % off sign.
5. Stand apart from the interface: Any communication needs to breakthrough through the clutter. Ensure that your image and copy stand out from the rest of the ads and the environment where it's being showed. For example, if you are advertising on Facebook, ensure that the image does not have a white background as it will blend into the Facebook interface.
6. Test, Test, Test: Finally, there is no easy answer to optimising your advertisement. Test different type of images and copies on different target segments and track which ones give you the highest conversion rates for clicks and transactions.
Google recently reported that India is its fastest growing market in the small and medium business category for Google Adwords.
Small and medium size enterprises (SME) in India are increasingly using the digital medium to target local customers and generate more leads or sales. Google's advertising platform, AdWords can be crucial in targeting advertisements at prospective customers searching for a product/service. When targetting a specific customer in a specific locality or to a customer searching for a specific product there is no better means to taget than Adwords. Facebook advertising may be a way to build the brand from a long term perspective but Google Adwords is excellent for short term sale and conversions.
Knowing the number of SMEs in India (which Google puts at 47 million) its no wonder that India has surged ahead to become the fastest growing SME market for Google. So have you tried it for your business yet?
