Search and Online Marketing

Online marketing is so broad and fast moving it can be hard to keep up with it all. OnlineMarketer.co.nz is our place to share some of our knowledge and reflect on some of the new things emerging in the search and online marketing space that we think are important. We hope you get something out of it and please leave us a comment if you would like to have your say.


How To Do Effective Keyword Research

July 10th, 2009

Hi folks,

Keyword research is the most crucial part of the entire search engine optimisation process in bulding a well optimised website. It is the same as laying a strong foundation for a beautiful mansion. What amazes me most is that many sites are built with swish designs and coolest scripts doing funkly things. When it comes to choice of keywords used to target the audience for the industry in which the business operates, it turns out to be an absolute disaster. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Blogging, Consultants, Ravi Venkatesan, Research, SEO-Search Engine Optimisation, keyword research | 4 Comments »

SEO Copywriting - Keep Humans And Googlebot Happy

July 9th, 2009

Hi everyone,
Today I am focusing on copywriting that keeps both humans and Googlebot happy. Content is still king on the web and good quality content accrues awesome benefits over time. It keeps readers engaged, its uniqueness makes the search engine bots sit up and take notice and it is a fantastic source of good inbound links.

The copy should be good enough (to spiders) to make the cut and be ranked on top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and the title and description of your listing should be inviting enough to be clicked by users.

A good thorough keyword research clearly indicates the demand and supply of the market of your choice in the form of searches made per day or per month and the number of competing sites on Google respectively. A keyword phrase particular to your industry that has an optimal supply and demand ratio should be an ideal term to target by way of a keyword focussed content page (KFCP) or money pages in short.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Blogging, Consultants, Natural Search, Ravi Venkatesan, SEO-Search Engine Optimisation | 3 Comments »

5 Ways Of Introducing Your Small Business Website To Google

July 7th, 2009

Hi all,
I am writing this post in the hope that small mum and dad companies trying to establish themselves in the New Zealand search space will read this and understand the importance of getting their sites introduced to Google.

It is a sad but true fact that a website does not even appear in the Google Index even after the site owner has spent money building the site and hosting it on cyberspace. If you are in this position, you must be frustrated to the limit. I am outlining five simple methods of introducing your site to Google by which I mean that you are letting Google know that your site is very much alive in the cyberspace and making Google take notice of you.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Blogging, Consultants, Natural Search, Ravi Venkatesan, SEO-Search Engine Optimisation | 6 Comments »

Google [not so] Local

July 3rd, 2009

Checkout this search query on Google.co.nz….

electrician in Birkenhead

Searching on google.co.nz, selecting pages from New Zealand, and using a query which makes it pretty clear what I am looking for, you’d think Google would know which set of local results to show. Notice anything wrong?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Charles Coxhead, Natural Search, local search | No Comments »

Pay Per Click Account History And Quality Score

July 2nd, 2009

Hi all,
My post today covers a less discussed but critical aspect of  how pay per click account history can affect the Google Adwords quality score. The ppc account history of your campaigns is the recording of the clicks, costs, CTRs and all other performance factors relating to your ads from the date of inception of your Adwords account to date.

Good targeted and relevant keywords are vital to the healthy performance of any pay per click campaign. Not all keywords are created equal. In a campaign, some keywords outperform the others. It is a publicly discussed fact that poorly performing keywords can bring down the quality score of an otherwise decently performing campaign. The crux of the issue is: Is it wise to delete the poor performers or move those keywords to new ad groups under new ads?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Campaigns, Consultants, Paid Search, Ravi Venkatesan | 12 Comments »

Google Adwords Quality Score - Important Factors

June 25th, 2009

Hi all,
Continuing on the Pay Per Click (PPC) post on Pay per click landing pages that convert, I will be looking at the important factors that influence Google Adwords Quality Score. This score measures the relevance of the keywords that form a tightly knit ad that in turn is relevant to a landing page. The higher the targeting and the relevancy along the chain, the greater is the quality score.

Quality score is important in determining the ad rank using the formula Ad rank = Quality Score * Maximum Cost Per Click (CPC). A higher quality score can still give your ad a higher rank if the cost per click is reasonable. For ads with poor quality score, the ad rank can be increased if the cost per click is hiked up. This leads to the advertiser paying through his nose which is certainly a recipe for disaster in the long run.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Consultants, Paid Search, Ravi Venkatesan | 1 Comment »

PPC Landing Page That Converts

June 24th, 2009

Hi all,
Landing page is one of the most important aspects of Pay per click (PPC) marketing on the Google Adwords network. After the initial keyword research and the creation of ad copy, you must have ads that are well targeted, great call to action and relevant to your industry and geotargeted to your target audience.

Each ad group in each of your campaigns must have a corresponding landing page that talks only about the product or service advertised in that specific ad. For exampe, if you are selling blue widgets, your landing page copy must address only blue widgets. This increases the relevancy of the whole process as the user gets to click on the ad of her choice and finds relevant content on the landing page that is in sync with the ad itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Blogging, Campaigns, Consultants, Paid Search, Ravi Venkatesan | 4 Comments »

Factors That Prevent Googlebot From Crawling Or Ranking A Website

June 19th, 2009

Hi everyone,
We will look at factors that may prevent the search engine spiders from crawling the pages of a site or affect a site’s rankings on the Google SERPs. The views of the top 37 SEO practitioners are collated by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Accessibility, Consultants, Natural Search, Ravi Venkatesan | No Comments »

Google Rankings - Link Factors

June 16th, 2009

Hi everyone,
I am discussing inbound link factorsand their impact on rankings in the Google SERPs. This deals with how Google weights links coming in to a page on a given site from other external sites. The clickable text in a link is called anchor text.

For Google, the anchor text of a link coming from an external site is a confirmation of the actual intent of the recipient page. Rand at SEOmoz discusses link attributes with 37 top SEO gurus.

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Posted to: Blogging, Consultants, Natural Search, Ravi Venkatesan | No Comments »

High Google Rankings-Site/Domain Factors

June 12th, 2009

Hi everyone,
Today, I am discussing the factors that affect Google rankings for a page based on the site/domain of which it forms a part. The authority of a domain forms an important part of achieving high rankings on the Google SERPs. Rand at SEOmoz gets the input from the top 37 gurus in the organic search engine optimisation field.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted to: Blogging, Consultants, Natural Search, Ravi Venkatesan | 2 Comments »