Internet Marketing – Where to Begin?

It one of the most common questions I get from new clients. What’s the first step in growing my online presence? Should I pay Google for keywords? Or hire someone to do keep my social media updated? Maybe update the design of my website? While all of these ideas have merit, they are all secondary when it comes to internet marketing. The first thing I recommend is a site review.

Before you put money and effort into bringing visitors to your site you should make sure they will find it informative and user-friendly when they arrive. A typical website review provides insights on security, user experience and functionality along with actionable recommendations on how to optimize it.

Some of the main categories to look at are:

Page Load Time
Security Issues
Coding Errors
Display Issues
Search Engine Optimization

Let’s take a deeper look at each area.

Page Load Time

This filmstrip shows the process of loading a slow web page.

Speed is your best salesperson. It’s a solid fact that every second you can save when loading the site translates into higher conversion rate.There are a lot of reasons your site could be slow loading. Using tools like Google Page Speed tester and GTmetrix helps developers pinpoint and correct them. Tip: Most of the issues I see are due to server settings. They can be fixed by your hosting company if you know what to ask for.

Security Issues

Firefox web browsers shows a green lock icon in the address bar of a secure website

Every website should be protected by an SSL. They come free with any decent hosting plan, and Google will actually penalize your site for not having one. Try visiting your site by typing in http://youwebsite.com in the address bar. Does it automatically send you to https://yoursite.com (or https://www.yoursite.com)? If not you may have a problem with the way the site is set up.

Other security issues I’ve come across include outdated plugins and themes, which can open your site (and any other sites on a shared hosting account) to attacks.

Coding Errors

Coding errors can make your website vulnerable to hacking. It slows down site speed and can break the layout and functionality of your site. The w3c validator is my go to tool for resolving code errors.

Display Issues

Google penalizes websites that aren’t responsive – meaning they don’t display nicely on browsers, tablets, and phones. You should also be aware that there are some differences between how different browsers display code. Something that looks great in Google Chrome may not look good at all in Internet Explorer, for example.

To be continued

How To Increase ROI Using AdWords

The data above is from an actual campaign. The eCommerce website is tied to Google Merchant Center and AdWords. Product feeds are submitted to Merchant Center (a free perk from Google). The AdWords account includes a shopping campaign with ads for each product in the feed. When someone searches for a product Google’s system kicks into gear, performing an auction with various merchants bidding on the opportunity to display their products.

The tricky part in all of this is knowing how much to bid. Bid too high and all your profits get eaten up, too low and you won’t get seen.

Obviously this is a simplified picture of setting up a profitable ad campaign. It’s taken years of experience, research and Google certification to get to this goal. The real answer to increasing your return on investment involves much more than creating a Google AdWords account. Success comes when you have a seasoned professional maintaining the account.

Client Spotlight: CSH Electric Motor Supply Inc

I’ve known Dan for more years than either of us would like to think about. I enjoy supporting his Owosso-based business because he is passionate about customer service. You can tell by the rave reviews on his site. Aside from selling every electric motor you can think of, Dan also manufactures Failed Circuit Alarms and High/Low Water Alarms . I’m thrilled to say that since I began managing Dan’s AdWords account last year his revenue has increased by more than 175%

Google AdWords Case Study

Chris is a very savvy businessman. He runs two online stores that sell wholesale goods to dealers and the general public, and makes enough money to support his wife and their 6 children.

Chris contacted me last year and asked if I could review his online advertising accounts -he thought he might not be getting the highest return on his investment. I did some digging and found:

January – July 2016 he’d spent over $20K for his Google AdWords campaigns, and only 14K revenue from those campaigns
His website had been updated, resulting in changes to the URL structure – This meant that every time someone clicked an ad, they received a Page Not Found message. In Chris’s words, he was paying to send customers to pages that didn’t exist.
It also meant that all organic links to his previously indexed pages were broken.
AdWords campaigns were created by an SEO company in June 2015, but no changes were ever made to that account. The company billed Chris $300 each month – a total of $3,600 before he cancelled the account

Before

After

Spend: $20,000
Revenue: $14,000

Spend: $11,000
Revenue: $99,000

One Year Later – The Astounding Results

Revenue increased more than 600%

January – July 2017 spend has been 11K and revenue earned from AdWords? Over 99K

If you aren’t sure you are getting the biggest bang for your AdWords buck, give me a call. The initial consultation is free and you just might end up finding buried treasure!

Holiday Sales

A family owned and operated business, Stylish Home and Gifts has been in business for over 20 years. The owner requested assistance with advertising products in her Bigcommerce website. She had hired another company originally, but sales hadn’t increased, communication was poor and the fees exorbitant. With the holidays just coming soon, she wanted to make sure her products were getting seen. Below is a screenshot of the Google AdWords Shopping Campaign I managed for 7 weeks. As you can see, an investment of $2k resulted in almost $4,600 in sales.

Oct 23, 2015 – Jan 10, 2016

The Devil’s in the Details

CSH Electric Motor Supply, Inc. offers a huge selection of electric motors, mechanical float switches and alarms, fan blades, hubs, blower wheels, phase converters & motor accessories. Sales were good, but they were having trouble with their AdWords account and asked me to take a look.

A few commonly made mistakes had created a marketing disaster. For example, ads for pool motors were displayed for any search term that included the word pool ie. ‘swimming pool’.

Below are screenshots of their account before they contacted me, and the same period one year later.