For small businesses playing the Internet Marketing game is tough.  It involves a big investment of your time and money and you need to know that it’s working for you.

But stop for a minute! Before you get started, read my guide to Internet Marketing mistakes that small businesses make, so you can get it right first time.

1. Not Working to a Business Plan

There are so many different aspects of Internet Marketing to get involved in, and you want to try them all.  You’ve got a web site, you’re using email, trying out Twitter, beginning blogging, thinking about AdWords – and that’s before you mention all the basic SEO work that you’ve been doing.

Be honest though, do you have a business plan for all of your efforts?  It’s hard to find time for all the different things that you could be doing, and if you aren’t clear about what you’re trying to achieve, you might find that your enthusiasm for it all fizzles out pretty fast.

It’s far better for you to choose one aspect to work on and to do it really well than to spread yourself thin.  For most businesses this may just be basic SEO – yes, social media may be sexy, but it’s far more likely that you’ll get quality leads from Google.

2. Looking for a Quick Fix

I’m going to let you in on a secret:  there is no easy way to get great results from Internet Marketing.

Whether you are working on SEO, social media or PPC you need to put time and effort into any Internet Marketing strategy.  Yes, it is harder this way, but you avoid potential penalties associated with the “quick fix” strategies that Google sees as spam.

3. Not Giving Your SEO Enough Time

You’ve taken the advice to stick to White Hat marketing techniques and you’re doing everything by the book.  So, why is it taking so long for you to take pride of place at the top of Google?  Haven’t you done enough?  Don’t you deserve it?

Unfortunately, these things do take time, and anything that you can do to “hurry things along” is likely to be penalised for spam.  (See my comments about quick fixes above).  It can be frustrating when it takes months to meet your goals, but you have to be patient and keep working at it.

4. Worrying Too Much About Your Competition

It is healthy to keep a watchful eye on your competitors, but it doesn’t make good business sense to obsess over what they’re up to.  If they are ranking higher than you, do some competitor analysis to see if you can learn anything from them and move on.

Constantly wondering how you can get one over on them is a waste of your time that is much better spent on your own Internet Marketing efforts.

5. Obsessively Checking Your Rankings

Or AdWords position, number of fans on Facebook, number of hits to your website, Page Rank…  It isn’t a good idea to focus too much on these details, because the simple truth is that in the grand scheme of things they don’t matter.

Think back to your business plan: was your goal to get to number 1 in Google or to increase the number of visitors to your website?  Did you simply want 1,000 visitors a day to your website or to increase the number of visitors who sign up for your services or buy your products?  You should measure your success against your original objectives, not an arbitary number.

6. Not Analysing Your Data

You had 1,000 visitors to your site last week, you’ve got a CTR of 5% on your AdWords account, your home page has a Page Rank of 5…  So what?

Yes, it’s good to know the stats, but what do they mean?  Again, you have to think about your bottom line.  If your site visitors – paid or otherwise – aren’t leading to conversions or qualified leads for your business, then you need to ask whether your Internet Marketing is honestly working.

7. Starving the Budget

The Internet is amazing – anyone can build a website, send out marketing emails and so much more – and it’s all free!

Sorry to disappoint, but that just isn’t true.

You can build a free website, but a professionally designed site is likely to have greater impact and to help you to achieve your marketing goals.  Not using an appropriate email marketing package can potentially cause difficulties with managing subscribers and data protection concerns.  Even if you have paid out for an AdWords account you have to remember that you can only do so much with a limited budget.

There are many low cost ways to use the Internet, but none of them are entirely free, and as with anything in life you get what you pay for.

8. Not Thinking About Links

If you can only do 1 thing to improve your websites visibility, build links to your site.  Too many small business owners avoid link building because it’s time consuming or simply too hard.

Yes, there are other things you can do to increase your ranking, but these will only have limited success. The most important ranking factor for your site is still the number of high quality and relevant external sites that link to you.  Without working on this, you will struggle to see results.

So, now you know what everyone else is getting wrong, you can get your Internet Marketing strategy right from the start.  Start out with a clear and realistic goal in mind, remember that everything you do should bring you closer to achieving it and you will do well.

More advice for small businesses:

Top SEO Myths

How to Use Internet Marketing to Boost Your Business

How Customer Reviews Can Help Your SEO

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Katie Saxon

PPC advertising – an effective and highly targeted way to drive traffic to your website.  But here is one tip for all Adwords users to get more out of your daily budget.

Make sure your ads are not showing on the Google Display Network.

Previously known as the Content Network, the Display Network is a collection of websites on which Google adverts are displayed.  You will have seen them at some point – they often look a bit like this:

Although really creative ones feature multimedia, images and creative copy to encourage their users.

The Google Display Network can be a really excellent way to increase the visibility and recognition of your brand.  But, the audience that you reach by advertising this way is less targeted, usually not as far along in the buying cycle and potentially less likely to convert meaning you’ll spend more money to acquire each customer.

For example, say I decide that I really want to buy red shoes.  I go on to Google and run this search:

I’m shown a variety of ads that all relate directly to my search – Office in particular is really shouting about red shoes in their ad.

Now imagine I’m reading my friend’s shoe blog.  Yes, I have an interest in shoes, but I’m not actively looking to buy, I just want to keep up with my friend’s blog.  If any of these adverts were to appear on her site there is a chance I’ll click on them, but unless I’m prone to impulse buying I’m much less likely to become a customer.

You need to advertise to potential customers in subtley different ways on Search Engines and the Display Network.  So if you are displaying the same ads on both, chances are you are wasting your money.  Not only will you get less conversions for your cash, but a drop in the Click Through Rate (CTR) of your ads can drive the cost of your ads up so you get less for your daily PPC budget.

The real danger here is that many Adwords users aren’t aware that their ads are showing on the Display Network. To find out if yours is, go to your campaign settings and look for your network settings:

If it is set to All, click Edit, and choose where you want your ad to be displayed.

Simply untick the Display Network box, and your ads will only appear on Google, and other search engines powered by Google.  For anyone on a limited budget you may also want to untick the Search partners option, so that your ads only appear on Google itself.

As your understanding and use of Adwords grows and you have more to splash out on PPC, it’s worth exploring the Display Network.  There are many great things that you can do with it and you can even select specific sites to appear on, to target your ads more effectively.

But, if all you want right now is the most conversions, and the most clicks at the right price, stick to Google Search and you’ll get much more from your budget.

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Katie Saxon

This week the team at Google Adwords announced that they are rolling out a new AdWords Modified Broad Match keyword targeting feature for Adwords users.

Now, as well as using broad, phrase and exact match targeting on your keywords, they are offering a modified broad match feature.  This new keyword match feature gives you more control than a basic broad match, without limiting you to phrase or exact matching.

As a quick reminder for anyone who is new to Adwords, before this update you could bid for keywords based on three matching types – broad, match and exact.  Whether or not your advert was displayed for a certain search query, depended on the matching type you had selected.

Broad match would display your ad in the SERPs when synonyms of your keywords were used and if additional words were used.  Phrase match would display your ad if the keyword appeared as a phrase, but additional words could be used either before or after.  Exact match would only show your results if the user had typed in your keywords exactly as you did, with no additional words or variations.

The new Broad Match Modifier keyword targeting feature sits between the broad and phrase match types.

By adding a plus sign (+) directly in front of any or all of your keywords you specify that you only want to match your advert against variations of that term.  This means that your ad might show when the search terms includes misspellings, pluralisations and abbreviations of your modified keyword but it won’t be displayed if synonyms or related search terms are used.

To make this concept easier to understand, Google has provided an excellent graphic of how the different targeting features work:

Results from beta testing have been positive, showing this as a cost-effective way of improving your conversions.  However, so far the happy clients include Adwords customers who have only used Phrase and Exact matching types.

If you currently make use of broad matching, making sweeping changes to use the Modified Feature instead will most likely result in a drop in clicks, as less people will see your ad.  That would also lead to a decrease in conversions, so use this with caution.  It is far better to add Modified Broad Match keywords to your account and test to see if this feature works for you.

This new feature has the potential to generate really positive results with Pay Per Click and we’re looking forward to seeing how it impacts on future Adwords campaigns.  Let us know how you get on – does it help to improve your conversions?

Read the announcement on the Google Adwords blog.

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Katie Saxon

Would you like a business grant that you can use towards a private training/coaching session with me to develop your Internet marketing skills?

Small business owners/managers are eligible for a grant of up to £1000 towards the cost of business training and development designed to develop their strategic skills to drive their company forward.

Take advantage of this grant funding from Business Link whilst it’s available, and as always the case, when the money is gone, the money is gone!

I’m able to develop a training programme designed for your specific needs, meaning we can skip over the bits you know already, and focus on what you really need to know to make your business more competitive on the Internet:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaigns
• Social Media Marketing campaigns:  Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogging
• Web design reviews
• Google AdWords pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Google Analytics and web metrics
• Improving Conversions
• E Commerce
• Email marketing
• International Web Marketing

One grant is available per organisation of up to a maximum of £1,000.  The first £500 is 100% grant funded, with an additional £500 available for you to match at 50%, for a total grant value of £1000.

Both business, public sector and charitable organisations with between 5 to 249 employees are eligible to apply. Organisations who accessed previous Leadership and Management funding initiatives from the LSC are not eligible. Funding is made available for the development of a senior manager or key decision maker.

Our training and consultancy services are a approved by Business Link in both the East Midlands and West Midland, and our training courses rated amongst the top three in the country.

Contact us to discuss your training requirements and learn more about how you can apply for a grant.

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If  you missed The Internet Conference 2010 then you missed one amazing day.  Our expert speakers shared a huge amount of knowledge, and feedback from the delegates says it was a great opportunity to network and connect with other businesses using the Internet.  We will be organising another event next year, even bigger and even better, so watch this space!

In the meantime, our speakers have kindly agreed to share their slides with you:

What’s New With Google

Susan Hallam:  Hallam Communications Ltd

Getting it Wrong:  Change and Measurement on the Internet

Charles Arthur: The Guardian

Essentials of Search Engine Optimisation

Ian Lockwood:  Ian Lockwood Digital Consultancy

Improving the Ecommerce User Experience

The Google Keyword Tool is a useful tool for your keyword research, which is the first stage of any successful SEO strategy or PPC campaign.  Recently Google has been spring cleaning their products and the Keyword Tool has been given a fresh look.  But are the changes purely superficial or will they have any impact?

I’ll start by saying that the new look is undoubtedly fresh, clean and clear.  Features are more clearly laid out and signposted, which is a major bonus for users.  While many of the features you’ll see aren’t actually new, they are now more prominent or simply easier to navigate to, making for a more user-friendly experience.

There may be no change to the data, but columns such as Local Search Trends were previously only shown after customising your layout.  Many other tweaks like this don’t give users anything new, but allow anyone without previous experience with the tool easier access to advanced features.

There are however a few new features that deserve a mention.

Search Type – Broad, [Exact], “Phrase”

Previously you could choose whether you wanted to do keyword research on a broad, exact or phrase match.  Now you can do all three at once and download the results in one spreadsheet.  This is mostly a benefit for anyone setting up a PPC campaign, but it can be useful for keyword research too.

Clickable Keywords

Want to know how much competition there is on that juicy long tail keyword phrase?  Now you can just click on the phrase to be taken to the Google results page.

*Warning!*

While this tool might make your life easier, just seeing how many results Google serves for your keyword does not give a true reflection of how much competition there is for a phrase.  If you want to know how many websites are optimised for your keywords you need to use the intitle: command in your search results.

So clicking on your keyword might show you this:

But the intitle command will show you how many of your competitors understand SEO and are optimising their content for your keywords:

Categories

The new categories feature does exactly what it says on the tin – groups your keywords into relevant categories.  This is particularly useful for managing PPC campaigns, which is after all what the AdWords tool was made for.

If you are creating a Pay Per Click campaign all you need to do is put negative matches on keywords from categories that are unrelated to your own, which should help keep your cost per click down and your click through rate high.

Downloading Data

Previously the Google Keyword Tool only let you download entire spreadsheets of data or individual keywords without any of the search numbers.  While the first option was helpful for analysis, you did have to trawl through a whole lot of information to get to the facts you were interested in.  The second option was helpful for creating a PPC campaign, but less useful for analysing keyword research.

Now you can have the best of both worlds and just select the keywords that you are interested in to download but you still get the lovely raw data to analyse.

Simply highlight your choices, choose to just download the selected keywords and you’ll get your keywords along with global and local monthly search volumes.  They do give you search data for the previous 12 months, so you may still need to delete – or ignore – extra information, but generally there seems to be less to wade through.

If you are using the Keyword Tool to set up your AdWords campaign the new downloading features do have one big downside – no option to highlight a keyword phrases for a negative match.  While there are ways round it – downloading a spreadsheet just for negative matches, for example – it is the one clear problem with the new tool.

The New Google Keyword Tool is taking a massive step in the right direction.  The changes may not be extensive, but the tool already worked well.  Instead these changes make for a tool that will be more useful to both SEO bods doing research and anyone using PPC, good work Google.

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Katie Saxon

With the election campaign in full swing it is probably as good a time as any to see how Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are fairing on the Internet. How the three main parties appear in the search results is of great importance in our Internet savvy times so let’s have a look at what the potential voters see in the Google search results:

What we are looking at here are the organic results for the Labour Party, Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats . There are three main points to consider here:

• David Cameron’s name appear in the Labour Party search listing.  Ouch. The two lines of black text in each listing is typically the Meta Description tag.  Google is not taking the Meta Description provided by Labour and is instead extracting text from their site. Unfortunately this has put Labour in the slightly embarrassing situation of having David Cameron’s name the first word that appears in the Google search results.

• The Conservative Party have the added benefit of being granted a search box within the search results, essentially allowing any potential voters to search for particular policies without having to click onto the Conservatives site.

• How do the 3 parties Site Links compare? If you look at the Sitelinks for the Conservatives you can see that there Sitelinks are using active voice and  have a definite Call to Action – ‘Join The Party’ and ‘Get Involved’ as opposed to Labour’s rather vague ‘Join’ and ‘Recruit’.  LibDems have more descriptive and conversational sitelinks.

We can also see some interesting paid advertising results popping up in the sponsored links for all the parties.  Advertisers on the Labour bandwagon include Ann Summers, as well as counter offensives from the Conservatives:

• Ann Summers appears at the top of the sponsored links for the Labour Party. Here we can see a cheeky Ann Summers advertisement piggy backing on what is a popular search term at the moment. Granted, the ‘Mass Debate’ joke is not one that I have used since I was about twelve but it is clever piece of advertising that will stick in the memory.

• Why are Google advertising on the sponsored links for the Labour Party? Google is also using the piggyback tactic to effectively get you to click through on to their Google Trends data for the election. It is an interesting tactic for Google and I don’t suppose they are charging themselves too much either!

• The Conservatives and the Greens are advertising on the sponsored links for Labour. The third result down on the sponsored links shows the Conservatives using the tactic as well to promote their YouTube channel. On this occasion it displayed the title ‘Labour have failed’, sometimes it displays ‘It’s Time for Change’.  There is also a specific Conservative candidate who chose to bid for the Labour Party phrase.

The Conservatives also benefit from an Ann Summers onslaught, with counter-advertising from the Greens:

• Once again we can see both Google and Ann Summers choosing to advertise for the political party phrase, but in this instance Ann Summers has a variation on her cheeky ad.

• Labour do not appear to be bidding for Conservative phrases, whereas the Green Party is.

• The BBC advertises on the Conservative results but not the Labour ones. The BBC have chosen to advertise when someone searches for the Conservatives but not when they search for Labour.

Only the Liberal Democrats get the honour of a betting agency, with counter advertising from the Roar Party….?

Are we being a bit picky, do these little things even matter? The Internet and your appearance in the search results is of great importance nowadays, and the little things can make a huge difference in how you are presented to the people that are searching. The Internet is the first port of call for a large number of people when they are looking for information so it is crucial to have a stronghold on your identity or brand or you may lose out to your competitors.

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Wayne Barker

Hasn’t summer just flown by; those sunny days went by in a flash and now summer seems to be over before I had time to say “fire up the barbecue, honey.”

Keep in mind that you might be able to get a grant to attend these training courses.

Here are my autumn course dates:

SEO Training – Nottingham

SEO Training – London

Advanced Search Engine Optimisation: SEO for Web Designers

Google Analytics Training – Nottingham

Google Analytics Training – London

Google AdWords Training – London

Google AdWords Training – Nottingham

SpyFu is a keyword research tool that let’s you discover your competitors’ keyword strategies for their pay per click advertising and organic search engine optimisation.

Larger organisations are using services like Experian’s Hitwise competitive intelligence tool, but at just £14.95 for a 3 day subscription, SypFu is  well suited for small businesses looking to sharpen up their search marketing activities.

The free version provides you with a websites top organic and paid key phrases.  In this example I’m researching the organic and paid key phrases being targeted by a local Nottingham web designer.

This data gives not only a better understanding of key phrases, but also provides competive information on your competitors’ product offerings, target markets, and how they are positioning themselves in the market place:

You can research by your competitor’s domain name, by selected key phrases, or by industry sectors.

With the paid-for version, I can then see a comprehensive list of phrases that I can download to a spreadsheet including  Ad copy, landing page URLs and bid estimates.

You can also see changes in key phrases usage, changes in budgets.  You can get a glimpse of what is working well for your competitors, and what they have decided is not working well:

I decided to test the accuracy of SpyFu to “spy” on some of my own client’s Pay Per Click Advertising.  On the one hand, some of the data is highly revealing, but there was alot of inaccuracies in the results SpyFu reported.  In some examples the budgets were widely inaccurate, and the price per click not representative.

This is because of the way SpyFu gathers competitor data, and the way it then calculates some of the results.

Nevertheless, the information it provides is very useful, and I would suggest using Spyfu to:

• get an overview of the phrases your  competitors are bidding for
• identify new competitors who are bidding in your market space
• discover the organic keywords driving traffic to your competitors’ websites.
• Download this data to a spreadsheet and use it in your own PPC strategy, or to guide your own SEO
• analyse the overlap in PPC advertising key phrases between your own and your competitor’s campaigns
• see all the copy of the adverts a competitior is running, including their landing page addresses

Don’t get ripped off by the BT Web Clicks service.  Why pay £460 every month for a year for a service that would only cost you £150?

More importantly, why is BT claiming to generate “contacts” for your business, when indeed all it is doing is charging you for a “click” to your website .  Since when is a click the same thing as a valuable contact?

BT are aggressively marketing their own Pay Per Click management service branded BT Web Clicks. Delegates at a number of workshops I recently taught have mentioned there is a carpet bombing telemarketing campaign promoting their money back guarantee.  As soon as I see money back promises, I reckon it is worth looking more closely at the detail of what is being promised.

BT Web Clicks guarantees a “level of contacts” – and they price the offer at a sensible £40 per month (+VAT)  giving a business 40 contacts, or £60 gets you 60 contacts, and so forth.

BT will  promote your site, thus generating contacts, via

• BT’s own BT directory sites like BTExchanges.com
• Proprietary directory like Ufindus
• Pay Per Click services on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

So, why are BT being so generous with this offer, and why am I recommending my clients to avoid committing to the BT Web Clicks?

Who Uses BT Exchanges.com?

Have you even heard of BT Exchanges? It’s a big secret to me, and it looks like not many other people are using it.  Take a look at the visitor data for BT Exchanges.  No data means insufficient visitors to register on Google’s radar.

What about the other directories BT are promoting in?

Taking a look at visitor traffic to Ufindus, SmileLocal, and MoreUK.  There is a distinct downward trends as fewer Internet users make use of these directories, dipping towards half the amount of traffic they formerly received:

So, how will BT get all these “contacts” for you?

The answer is likely to be Pay Per Click advertising.

Indeed, in it’s own terms and conditions BT describes the service thus:

“BT Web Clicks is a package of online advertising, enabling business to advertise on Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo.”

And herein lies the rub.

Let’s do the maths together, and you’ll see why I recommend you avoid BT Web Clicks

A BT Web Click contact is defined as  “calls, clicks, texts, emails.”  Note how BT have cannily included “clicks” as a successful contact. I would hardly equate a Click on my website as a Contact, but that is the marketing spin being put on this package.

I suspect people think a “contact” equates with an enquiry, but  given the low volume of traffic to the directories they are promoting your business in, I think it is fair to assume BT will be getting a delivering the bulk of business contacts as paid “clicks” to your website.

So, at a budget of £40 for 40 contacts, that means you will paying a  £1 per click on the pay per click network for a click that might actually be costing BT 2 pence.  My maths aren’t great, but I think that means for every click there is 98% profit for BT.

But the price of a pound per client is only for the easiest clicks to acquire.  If you are in a more competitive field like Teleconferencing, then BT will charge you £400 per 40 visitors, or whopping £10 per click.

If we take a look at the estimated price per click for teleconferencing using Google AdWords, the price is estimated at £3.75.  That means a business might pay BT £400 per month for a service that costs BT only £150. You do the maths on the profit BT is making.  By the way, the £400 is plus VAT, and the £150 includes VAT

Why is is BT Web Clicks a Bad Idea?

• You are paying a huge mark up on Pay Per Click advertising that you could do yourself, or get a professional agency to do for your more cheaply
• In addition to this cost, you will also be paying a significant set up fee running to hundreds of pounds.
• You are restricted in terms of the flexibility of testing new keywords, and changing your keyword strategies
• You are locked into a 12 month contract.  Even if you’re not happy with the service you have signed on the dotted line and you must continue to pay up
• It is not compatible with a business doing their own PPC advertising.  Either you use BT’s service, or nothing at all.

I hate to even link to the service, but here is where you can learn more about the BT Web Clicks service

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