The three main types of Google Adwords targeting tools are:

1. Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting will enable you to match your ads up with relevant websites on the Google Display Network, which is comprised of websites and apps that have chosen to collaborate with Google.

When you use contextual targeting to place your ads, Google will match your ads to automatic placements (websites considered relevant to your keywords and topics).

Here is an example of a contextual ad within the Google Display Network – an AA insurance ad, showing on a website about personal health:

Contextually targeted ads will provide your target audience with useful information. If, for example, you have produced an ad group to advertise wedding cakes and you have included keywords such as “iced wedding cake” and “three-tier chocolate wedding cake”, Google will use contextual targeting to place your ad on sites that are associated with these keywords.Your ad may therefore appear on discussion forums for brides-to-be who are talking about wedding cakes or web pages containing iced wedding cake recipe ideas.

You will be granted the freedom to fine-tune your campaign by adding exclusions. You can therefore prevent your ad from appearing on sites that are associated with low conversion rates or are not appropriate for your target audience.

2. Placement Targeting

Placement targeting will enable you to choose the locations of your ads on the Display Network. You can choose specific locations through the managed placements feature, or you can grant Google the freedom to choose appropriate automatic placements on your behalf, based on the keywords you have provided.

Here is an example Google Display Ad – an Air NZ Grabaseat ad and an Island Hop to Tahiti ad on Stuff.co.nz

3. Interest Category Targeting

Interest Category targeting will help you to reach out to your target audience by displaying relevant messages to your potential customer base while they are busying surfing the web. You can choose from over 1,600 predefined interest categories and Google will show ads to the people that have shown an interest in those specific categories.

For example, a mother may be interested in the baby toys your company has to offer or a dog owner may be interested in the dog kennel service you are trying to advertise. Category targeting can enhance the performance of your campaigns by increasing brand awareness, improving website traffic, extending the reach of your existing campaigns and creating ads that attract the attention of people with specific interests.

Here is an example of category targeting, where Amazon have an ad showing for pet gifts on a dog health / information website, so they have chosen the “Animal Products & Services” category for targeting:

In Summary

Targeting ads so they are displayed to the right website visitors at the right time is an essential part of an advertising campaign. Choose your campaign type wisely to successfully meet your goals!

So when special occasions such as Mother’s Day (12th May – don’t forget!) or Valentine’s Day roll around, many people turn to the internet to find special gifts for their Mum’s, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives and ? pets (yes, we know you are out there).

The convenience factor

Online shopping is popular because of its convenience and the variety of products available in just a few simple clicks of the mouse. CLICK.

Just as high street retailers have targeted advertising campaigns around the special days of the year to attract customers to their business, so should online retailers! You need to be visible at particularly at times of the year when customers are wanting to spend money. It is always worth securing extra sales that you wouldn’t have ever had without the advertising.

Adwords is perfect for occasion-based marketing

There are three principal ways of marketing an online business – search engine optimisation (SEO), adwords (PPC, pay per click), and social media. SEO takes weeks or months to have an effective result and so is not a practical solution for yearly special occasions that have peak demand periods.

So where timing is everything. PPC, is perfect for occasion-based marketing, as it allows you to create an effective campaign quickly, with the advert appearing in the results just when you need it to tempt customers.

Time your campaign around increased demand 

Below is a screen shot that shows the trend since 2004 for search terms such as “mothers day gifts”, “mothers day ideas”, “mothers day flowers”, “mothers day presents” (to name just a few). It’s pretty obvious the increased searches peak in the lead up to Mothers Day, then it completely flatlines until 12 months later. This happens every year, and can be applied to ALL of the typical occasions celebrated.

Like a tap, year after year

The great advantage of Adwords/PPC marketing is that you can analyse the results of each individual advert and alter or retain the wording to maximise effectiveness year on year, saving you time on having to create a new campaign each year. You can analyse your campaign, work out which keywords and ads delivered the best return, and then when the next year rolls around simply turn if back on, utilising all of the learnings from the previous year’s campaign!

It’s fast

Because an Adwords campaign is quick to create and implement, there is much more scope for instantly highlighting any specific promotions you have running for your customers around those special occasions of the year. The important thing is to research and use relevant keywords to your target market at the time.

You probably already know that Search Engine Optimisation, or “SEO“, the techniques that help your website being ranked higher by search engines such as Google, relies on ‘keywords’. That is all very well, but how do you actually find out which keywords are relevant to your business and are searched for? You will be relieved to hear that you don’t have to gaze into a crystal ball or have a total guess. There are online tools that can help you.

It’s NOT all About You, You know!

The fascinating thing about keywords is that what YOU think potential customers would type in the search bar to find a business like yours is actually rarely accurate. And, well, it is what THEY search for that actually matters.

But Where to Start? 

It’s best to have a brainstorming session about what your customers may type in when they are searching, at least to get you started. We call these “seed keywords” – they help us with ideas and to get the ball rolling.

So start by compiling a list of a few keywords that you think people would use, for each webpage, and then go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You don’t have to create an account to check the number of monthly searches, you can get started right away. This invaluable free online service will tell you how many searches were conducted in New Zealand (or whatever country you are researching- under ‘local’) and worldwide (‘global’) on your chosen keyword, but even more useful, it will suggest keywords closely related to your search, which will often yield unexpected results!

Here’s what the tool looks like, populated for “red shoes”, location = New Zealand, English language.

And here are some of the example keywords that the tool spits out, with levels of competition, average global and local search numbers:

But Which Keywords to Choose?

80% of people use 2 or 3 ‘significant’ words (not including prepositions etc) as a search phrase to start with, and may, if they are not seeing what they want, increase to 4 to 6 keywords. So you want to choose keywords 2-5 words long.

The other criterion to look at is the competition index, still in the keyword tool. Google ranks each search term from 0 to 1, with 0 being the least competitive to 1 the most. They show as Low, Medium and High, but if you download the results, you will get numbers.

The ideal keyword is one that has a reasonable number of searches, but a medium to low competition index (no more than 0.70). Although it is very tempting to target a keyword with hundreds of thousands of searches, if it is a highly competitive term, it is unlikely that you will ever rank well on it. Additionally, a lot of these terms may not convert as well into enquiries or sales, so it is often better to begin by targeting longer keywords (known as the “long tail”), as experience shows that the conversion rate from visitors to prospects and clients is higher for these more specific search terms. 

Last … But Not Least

Other strategies that can give good results as well are:

- Check for singular and plural variations of your search terms, compound names hyphenated or spelt as two words. There are sometimes huge differences in results
- Think about common misspellings. You may not like it, but introducing spelling mistakes in your website could be very successful
- Likewise, think about terms incorrectly used. For example, ‘hang gliding’ is often mistakenly called ‘hand gliding’

Happy hunting!

But there’s help. I stumbled across DashThis and have never looked back. It’s a flexible online tool for no-sweat (read: painless!) reporting. In just a few clicks, you can automatically generate dashboards, for Google Analytics, Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and a multitude of other data sources, including in-house systems.

No more data entry. No more hours spent manipulating the data in a last-minute dash to getting your reports out the door. No more frantic sprints to analyse the darn data—which is where your value resides—and missing key insights because the report has to leave to meet deadlines.

Here’s an example of what an online marketing monthly dashboard might look like, so you can get a feel for what I am talking about:

In a nutshell: with DashThis, you’ll look like a god to your boss and clients. I’ve been using it for a few months now, and the clients love it.

DashThis packs a wallop of features that are a delight to both newbie and experienced web analysts. Here are the top 10 points worth mentioning:

1. Intuitive, completely visual editor
2. Wide variety of graphical displays, such as pie, line and bar graphs, gauges, and more
3. Many easy-to-add KPIs
4. Easy data aggregation, consolidation, and management
5. Dashboard grouping
6. Email alerts that can be set up to dispatch your dashboards to who you want, when you want
7. Manage several Google accounts with several profiles—all in one account
8. Ability to automatically calculate a whole bunch of metrics. If you are a mathematical gymnast, this tool is for you!
9. Ability to brand the reports with your or your clients’ logo
10. Customised reports can be built for the more discerning, hard core analysts out there

So if you are looking for dashboards for Google Analytics, Adwords, Facebook insights, then DashThis is definitely worth a look.

Click here for more information.

Filtering Your IPs

To begin filtering IPs, it is necessary to collect the IP addresses of all the locations and/or people you do not wish to track. You can use an IP address look-up website to do this. To start with, if you type “what’s my IP” into Google, you will be presented with results something like the screen shot below. See how your IP address is displayed at the top. You can get all of your employees, at each location, to do this for you.

Once you have collected your IPs, you will need to sign in to your Google Analytics account and view your Profile Overview page. Once there, click on the “Edit” option, found underneath the “Actions” column, and select the option to “Add Filter” from underneath the section entitled “Filters Applied to Profile”. You will then see an option to “Add new Filter for Profile” – click on this and enter a memorable name for your filter, i.e. “Marketing Team IP filter”. Select the option to “Exclude all traffic from an IP address” and enter the IP addresses you wish to filter.

A screen shot of how this will look is shown here:

To save yourself time and effort, you may wish to enter a whole range of IP addresses.

For example: if the range you wish to filter is 174.165.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14, you will need to enter this as: ^174\.165\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$.

Seems a bit complicated for you? Do not worry, there are tools to help! You can use Google’s IP Address Range Tool to ensure that you have entered the correct expression.

Once you have finished adding your IP addresses, you will need to click on “Save” to put your filters in place. The next time you view your Google Analytics account, the data should exclude traffic generated by (in this example) your marketing team’s visits.

Comparing and Contrasting Your Google Analytics Data

Once you have created a filter, you will not be able to view your unfiltered data. Setting up two profiles – one for your filtered data and another for your unfiltered data – will allow you to compare and contrast your data, enabling you to feel more confident in decision-making.

To create an unfiltered profile, choose the “Add new profile” option to the left-hand side of the domain name you wish to add it to and name it in such a way that it reflects the unfiltered nature of the profile.

A smart website marketing strategy should begin with well-defined goals and milestones. How many site visitors, customer inquiries, newsletter subscribers, or followers do you hope to gain? Where do you want to be visible online? Is your website marketing goal to sell more products, announce a new product, or increase awareness for your brand / cause?

Once you’ve established the KPIs, you need to create a website marketing plan to achieve them and, if you have the budget, employ a website marketing company to implement!

Is your online marketing strategic?

Each element of your online marketing plan should define the specific activities you or your website marketing company will engage in to accomplish your goals. Each activity should be specific and measurable. For example, you might:

Develop 10 additional pages of website content to add value to your website in terms of user experience (and to help SEO!)

Distribute monthly email newsletters to improve your customer communications and to leverage your existing database.

Invest in Search Engine Marketing or Google Adwords to generate new leads / increase your website ROI by 25% by end of financial year.

Ramp up your Search Engine Optimisation to increase your brand positioning and website presence in your industry for relevant keywords

Develop and distribute PR to increase apparent activity and awareness of your brand

Purchase banner / display advertising to generate brand awareness and website traffic

Set up a blog, Facebook and Twitter account to engage on a face-to-face level with your customers.

Are your priorities in the right place?

Do you have the resource to populate a blog? A six month old blog posts will end up doing more damage to your brand than good. Why have a Twitter account when you don’t have a blog? Do you know the difference?? Social media and blog posts need to be relevant and ideally integrated with your search engine optimisation campaign as well – so they need to be strategic.

Email newsletters should be distributed on a regular basis so that your customers expect them, get used to them and so that you are fresh in their minds. Most people don’t appreciate random emails!

A website marketing strategy is a moving target which you need to be ahead of. All its elements should be aligned to achieve the common goal of driving highly qualified traffic to your site to drive ‘conversions’ / sales / sign ups.

Finally, website traffic and conversion reporting and analysis will help you understand what’s working currently, and where the gaps are. Are your website marketing activities accomplishing the predefined goals?

Website marketing is an ongoing process that requires smart tactics and a decent budget; it’s not a one-off effort that your IT guy can handle in between fixing laptops! Make it a priority in your business.

Why?

Because a number of website owners and so called SEO “specialists” that had been enjoying good rankings in the search engines before the update are now scrambling to try and negate the adverse affects of it. Their websites are being punished with a fall of rankings, traffic, and therefore business sales and enquiries.

Should we care? Absolutely not, as it serves them right!

For too long people implementing negative SEO practices were holding the top positions of Google and taking the majority of the traffic. As a company that has only ever implemented “white-hat” SEO tactics, it was pretty frustrating explaining to clients how the people at the top were doing it, and why we refused to do the same.

At the time some of the clients were frustrated, but now they have swallowed their pride and thanked us for sticking to “clean” SEO practices. This has meant we have held their rankings throughout the updates, and in some cases rankings and traffic has improved as the dodgy sites above us have disappeared into the ether!

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What’s happened since April?

The signs and signals that the update is picking up in the search engines are yet to be clearly outlined by Google. This means that the exact reasons for traffic losses that companies may have experienced in April are yet to be fully understood.

An initial statistic I have read is that 3.1 per cent of queries were impacted by Penguin, compared to 12 per cent by the first Panda update. The SEO community surmises that the impact could be the result of;

(a) keyword stuffing in outbound and inbound links

(b) poor quality blog spam and article marketing

(c) overusing exact-match domains

(d) aggressive keyword based anchor texts

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So what does this mean for you? 

If you are concerned about how the Penguin update has influenced your website, then it’s best to take a second look at your current SEO tactics and strategies to identify if you are at a risk of penalty. It would be worth considering auditing your website to spot vulnerable areas and use the Penguin Update as an opportunity to enhance it.

Some of the tried and true SEO practices you can incorporate still include increasing the number of quality links pointing to your site, doing away with spammy back links (from sites that have no relevance to your business) and making your content more user-friendly and useful for your customers.

====Return on Investment (ROI) ====

One of the most important reasons for having SEO as part of your business strategy is to improve your ROI by bringing targeted traffic to your website. Businesses that tend to overlook the importance of SEO will find it a lot harder to achieve higher website rankings, and therefore will not get a good ROI on their website investment.

Imagine a situation where you are launching a new business and you cannot afford to spend huge money on advertising. In such a case, Google Adwords can be a cost effective approach for marketing your products and gaining access to a targeted audience. Today, Adwords marketing ranks high in terms of popularity as an advertising tool as it can help companies manage their budgets effectively and quickly reach their potential customers.

===Why is SEO and Google Adwords a must for every business?===

Achieve higher search engine rankings:

If you are planning to start a marketing campaign, then it is recommended that SEO is included as part of your long term business plan. Search engine marketing can help your website rank higher among the search engine results to provide greater visibility to your business, generating significant website traffic to support your promotional efforts.

Brings targeted traffic to your website:

Online advertising has become crucial for businesses and their survival amidst the global competition. With millions of websites created every day, online marketing tools such as Adwords have become an integral part of every company’s advertising campaign. It can help your businesses generate targeted leads and regular e-commerce sales.
 

Gives your business a competitive edge:

If you want to boost the popularity of your website, then SEO has to be an integral part of your promotional efforts. Search engine optimised sites have a higher chance of attracting a targeted audience, as the aim is to have your website show up when someone has already made the conscious decision to look for whatever your products and services are. Companies that use SEO and Adwords have a competitive advantage over the others, as they can achieve greater online presence and visibility. Moreover, they can ensure that every single dollar they spend on advertising can be measured.

Provides true estimate of your business:

Google Adwords is an intelligent marketing tool that allows you to measure the performance of your campaign in terms of its overall reach and effectiveness. It provides accurate data and information regarding every search phrase used in your marketing campaign. For example, you can get to know about the most popular search phrase or the profitable phrases by using this great tool. And the best part is that you can use this information to boost your search engine optimisation efforts! Win win!

==In Summary==

You can definitely get incredible results by making a smart investment in SEO and Adwords for improving your business by:

1. Getting your website viewed by thousands of visitors and gaining access to targeted customers.

2. Enhancing marketability of your products with maximum brand exposure to gain long term profits in your business.

3. Manage your advertising campaigns in a smarter and transparent way, with considerable reduction in costs.

4. Benchmarking your performance against the best in the industry.

Why is that you may ask?

For the uninitiated, SEO stands for search engine optimisation. SEO is the art of attracting visitors to a website with the careful use of keywords and phrases relevant to your business. A successful SEO strategy requires time, patience and a long-term outlook.

Unfortunately, now it is much too late to start an SEO plan in order to capitalise on the RWC; however, Adwords (paid advertising) could achieve a quick result – so you still have time! Adwords help in the short term, providing you with instant visibility in the search engines, but they are not as effective as natural listings achieved through SEO.

Research shows that people click on natural listings about 85 per cent of the time, and Adwords around 15 percent. So if you come up in the natural listings, people are much more likely to click on the result which links through to your website. Natural listings are seen as more credible. 

Spike in Internet Traffic

Businesses related to tourism have experienced a spike in internet traffic recently, as worshippers of the ‘oval ball’ search for accommodation and activities to do while here in NZ. I expect this spike to continue during the tournament, so it’s now time for those that have developed an SEO or Adwords strategy, to enjoy a piece of the action!

Good on you for having the foresight to take advantage of this great opportunity. The improved google rankings for keywords relevant to your business should now be delivering the goods

On a personal level, my friend Felipe from Madrid in Spain is visiting especially for the tournament. He has spent a great deal on time planning his itinerary from his home in Spain — all with the help of our friend ‘Google’. This, I feel, illustrates just how businesses with SEO and Adword strategies will benefit from RWC.

Go the Naki!

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the 6 weeks of rugby and look forward to seeing the AB’s take care of business. But if they don’t, I’ll take solace in the fact that after 15 long years Taranaki finally brought home the Ranfurly Shield 2 weeks ago. Go the Naki!

See below for an example. Now, as you actually type, suggestions start to show up below. So as you type “website marketing”, other popular search terms that Google thinks are you likely to be looking for start to show up below.

Earlier this year we had Google Caffeine, and now Google Instant. Caffeine + Instant = you get the fastest, freshest search results you’ve ever seen before you’ve even figured out what you were looking for! Some say this is invasive and annoying. Others say it’s handy and nifty. Google says it’s time-saving and efficient. They estimate that using Google Instant saves 2 to 5 seconds with every search, and up to 11 hours every second worldwide.

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We’ve got all the ‘shakes’ about how this will affect our website marketing

The shakes are a good thing…. we’ll tell you why in a moment, but first things first: where your website shows up in Google – your ‘rank’ / position won’t change. That’s because the algorithm that determines search results has not changed. So you’ll stay there for the keywords you’re targeting (if your SEO company is doing a good job that is!).

However, it will change how people search. What you didn’t know: this is a great opportunity for businesses who are advertising! – particularly for those who have already got an SEO project underway. Let us explain…

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How does Google Instant work?

Let’s say you need better office lighting, as it’s gloomy in your office and you’re getting sore eyes having to squint at the computer screen all day. So you jump online and search for ‘cheap table lamps online’. If you try typing that in, you’ll see that as you type, the results change. First, you’ll get irrelevant results for the word ‘cheap’, and then more irrelevant results start to show as you get to ‘cheap table’, and then finally, relevant results when you type in ‘cheap table lamps’.

But you’ll probably stop there. Even though you intended to specify that you wanted ‘cheap table lamps ONLINE’… you most likely won’t end up clarifying the last bit, because you’ve already seen relevant search results, and away you’ll go…

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So what’s the business opportunity then?

The most important factor for advertisers is that people will probably type less when they search – at least initially while Google Instant is still very new, and people are getting used to using it. This means that the ‘long tail’ terms (more than 1 or 2 keywords) you’re targeting will get less traffic. However, the ‘short tail’ keywords (like ‘lamps’ or ‘table lamps’) will likely get much more traffic!

Opportunity 1: to be more targeted with the keywords you want to show up for, and to ensure you have a long term business strategy for ‘short tail’, competitive keywords. These are also very important terms for strategic business positioning in your industry. If you can rank well for these ‘short tail’ keywords, and you might already, then get ready for a huge spike in traffic!

Opportunity 2: Once everyone gets used to Google Instant, they will start to search smarter as they warm further to the long-tail search. So this means there is an opportunity for businesses to develop a specific strategy for the ‘long tail’, less competitive but very relevant keywords. You may have already optimised around long-tail, and that’s great, but if you haven’t, then it’s certainly worth taking a closer look at what opportunities exist.

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What’s your search marketing strategy like?

In the past, SEO companies may have told you that their SEO strategy for you is 100% focused on long tail keywords, since they have significant accumulative search volume, and because they’re far less competitive you’ll get there quicker. All this is true. However, now there is a much stronger case for being bold and AGGRESSIVE, and targeting the short tail keywords that your ego loves!

If you sell lights, you want to be there for lights! In some countries, this is a real challenge. In New Zealand, we believe it’s achievable (for most categories, there are certainly a few exceptions), as long as there is a solid long-term strategy in place.

Now it’s more justifiable than ever to invest in your website’s visibility at a high level. It’s essential to have a long term positioning strategy in place for the increasingly high volume keywords that people may stop typing at. Why type in ‘lights online new zealand’, when they’ve found what they’re after at ‘lights’?

You can prepare for this is by sitting down with your SEO provider and developing a long-term search marketing strategy, and assigning an ongoing marketing budget to attain and retain strong ranking for these terms. Your SEO investment can now be more focused and strategic. As long as you’ve got a search marketing company who you’re confident in, you don’t need to pull any hairs out … apart from the grey ones.

In terms of keyword research, Google Instant means the need to look even more closely at some of the suggestions that Google provides in the search box. But that’s not new. Google’s beating war drums and your long-tail keywords could well be cannon fodder –at least in the short term anyway. So be sure to have solid reinforcement and a game plan in place – and seize the opportunity!