Google Keywords Tool – how to sell online
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Google AdWords Demos and Guides – sell online australia
https://adwords.google.com/select/library/index.html
Google AdWords Learning Centre (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/
Google AdWords Optimisation Tips
https://adwords.google.com/select/tips.html
Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines
https://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html
In just a few short years, search engine marketing has grown from nothing into a multi-billion dollar industry.
And leading this revolution is Pay-Per-Click advertising.
Pay-Per-Click is not only shaking up the online marketing world, it’s changing the way people think about advertising with web design.
Online stores (especially small and medium sized) are asking themselves ‘remind me again why I should spend thousands of dollars on this fancy marketing campaign – without any guarantee I’ll actually get any customers?’
Pay-Per-Click means you only advertise to customers who are already interested in your products or services.
You get to control your spending by setting your own budgets and it’s easy to measure your performance.
But most importantly you only pay when a user actually visits your site. – web design company melbourne
Could you imagine producing a TV commercial and only paying if the ad was successful?
Or advertising in a major newspaper and only paying for if shoppers landed on your door step?
Not likely. And that’s what makes Pay-Per-Click unique – you only pay for advertising that works.
Unlike direct mail, you don’t have to pay for mailing lists, printing or postage, and you won’t pay only for ‘impressions’ like you do with banner ads.
Pay-Per-Click also gives you the unique opportunity to ‘test the waters’ on any new ideas you may have.
For example, if you’re an online retailer you might want to bring in a new range of products – but you’re not sure what the market reaction will be.
Instead of committing big dollars in stock and marketing, you can run a quick one week Pay-Per-Click campaign to see what the market thinks of your new product.
If the reaction is good, you can start stocking and selling the product.
But if the results are less than satisfactory, you can move onto the next idea whilst saving yourself a fortune in time, money and hassles.
Remember that reciprocal linking is a commitment from both parties involved.
As long as a partner is providing a link to your shopping cart web design you have a moral obligation to maintain a link to them and vice versa.
A good strategy to increase your acceptance rate from potential link partners is to provide a link on your website before requesting a link from them.
Put yourself in their shoes… if someone sends you an email requesting a link and has already gone to the trouble of linking to your site – wouldn’t you at least consider their proposal?
Of course you would.
Also, when linking to other websites it’s important to make sure that all links you create open in a new window.
This means that when a user clicks on a link, their web browser opens up a separate screen to view the new site.
Opening a new screen prevents users from accidentally leaving your shopping cart website when checking out your link partners.
Every industry has at least a couple of magazines and trade journals that get a lot of attention within the industry.
In most cases, these magazines also have an online presence.
For example, let’s say you sell computer drafting software for architects.
Naturally, you want to expose your site in the places where architects spend their time online.
How do you find these sites? – ecommerce hosting
Just go to Google and do a search for ‘architect news’.
You’ll automatically get a list of websites targeted specifically to your industry – in this case Architects.
Websites like:
www.architechmag.com
www.residentialarchitect.com
If you’re a manufacturer of audio equipment you’ll want to target the following online stores:
www.audioworld.com
www.ecoustics.com
If you’re in the travel industry you’d look at:
http://www.btnmag.com
You get the point.
For any industry you can think of, there are dozens of online portals where you can put your product or service directly in front of your target market.
And because finding high quality content can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, often you won’t have to do much to persuade other sites to publish your articles.
Having said that, your success rate will be directly linked to the quality of your content, so here’s a few tips to get you on the right track.
What if I’m not a writer? – web design sydney
You don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to create good quality informative articles.
Stephen King is a writer. Shakespeare was a writer.
Unlike these authors, people reading your articles are not going to be critiquing your writing style – they’re only interested in the information you’re delivering.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the web is a much less formal environment than other mediums.
The best type of writing style for the web is ‘conversational’ – writing like you would speak.
A good way to get your thoughts on paper is to pretend you’re having a cup of coffee with a regular customer of your hosted shopping cart.
Simply work through the conversation in your head and write down what you would say naturally.
If you find this difficult, try recording your thoughts on a tape recorder and then transcribing your notes.
Many people find this technique easier than starting with a blank page.
Where will I find the time? – web design company
Writing is like any other skill – the more you practice it, the better you’ll get.
Try to set aside a small amount of time (evenings, early mornings and weekends) whatever works best for you.
After a bit of practice, you’ll get into your own rhythm and develop a familiar system of putting together your content.
Isn’t there already an oversupply of information on the net?
Whilst it’s true that there are currently billions of web pages that make up the Internet – good quality, relevant content is always in short supply.
Once you eliminate all the useless spam pages, link pages and sites with vague, outdated or ambiguous information – you’re left with a very small percentage of high quality informative sites.
Can I really call myself an ‘expert’?
The definition of an ‘expert’ will vary from one person to the next.
If you know more about one subject than 90% of the general population – in their eyes you’re an expert.
Keep in mind that one man’s trash in another man’s treasure.
For example, the correct technique for ‘sculpting a terracotta pot’ might be second nature to an expert, but it’s still a new and fascinating process for a beginner.
Google AdWords should be your first choice to start promoting your new hosted ecommerce solution.
If you’re a small business and cash-flow is tight, AdWords offers a fast way to generate quality traffic and sales.
AdWords allows you to get up and running in 30 minutes, whereas it can take a few months for your online stores to appear within Google’s natural results.
Signing up with AdWords is a simple process and there is no contract to lock you in – so you can open an account today and close it tomorrow.
In our opinion, Pay-Per-Click advertising is one of the best ways to attract targeted traffic to your website and we believe Google offers the best program on the market.
How do I start? – web design company brisbane
You can signup with Google AdWords by visiting the following link:
AdWords Signup – Australia
https://adwords.google.com/select/
If you’re like most small business owners, you don’t have an unlimited budget to splurge on advertising.
The good news is there are tons of ways you can generate quality traffic to your website – without spending a cent!
In fact, some of the biggest online successes (like Google, Yahoo! and eBay) have all benefited tremendously from free word-of-mouth advertising.
Take eBay as an example.
Pierre Omidyar started the company in 1995 with the intention of creating the perfect marketplace for buyers and sellers.
Long story short, a few people discovered it was a convenient way to sell their stuff and told their friends about it.
This started the ripple effect.
eBay initially sold small ticket items, but has since moved onto bigger and better things.
Today, there are over 125 million eBay users worldwide and the online store software now sells a motorcycle every 18 minutes and a car every 30 minutes.
As many as 150,000 people have given up their day jobs to start a home based business selling online on eBay and at last count, eBay was turning over $60,000 a minute!
The same ripple effect occurred with Napster, the popular music sharing program that started the mp3 music craze.
Napster’s creator Shawn Fanning wrote the software program whilst still at college. Upon completion of the program, he gave the software to a few friends to try out under one condition – they didn’t tell anyone about it.Shawn knew that his friends couldn’t keep a secret.
The software spread like wildfire… and the rest is history.
Whilst Napster has since faded out of the limelight, it’s still pretty amazing that a 19 year old ‘college drop-out’ sparked a revolution in the way we listen to music.
What makes both these success stories even more special, is that they started purely by word-of-mouth and without spending a cent on paid marketing.
This module focuses on numerous ways to generate traffic to your ecommerce templates for free, namely:
Once someone has accepted your offer to exchange links – you now have a link partner.
All you have to do now is create a basic ‘links page’ on your website.
A links page is simply a regular web page that provides a brief description of each of your link partners and a link to their site.
You can view an example of a links page at our website:
http://www.webdummy.com.au/linkpartners.php
Tip: To maximise the effectiveness of your incoming links, you can request that your link partners use specific keywords when linking to your online shopping cart.
IMPORTANT NOTE: AVOID LINK FARMS
Legitimate link pages are fine as long as they are a small part of a website that contains lots of relevant content.
The term ‘Link Farms’ refers to websites that have plenty of links but contain little or no unique content of their own.
It’s a common misconception that incoming links to your website from Link Farms will boost your search engine ranking.
Because these sites contain little or no valuable information, Link Farms are mostly ignored by search engines.
In extreme cases, linking to Link Farms will get your shopping cart web design temporarily or permanently banned from search engines.
Why should I pay for traffic when I can get it for free?
Once you’ve built your website through a e-commerce host, your goal is to generate sales and sell online as quickly as possible.
From a sales perspective, you only have two jobs:
1. Generate targeted traffic to your online stores; and
2. Convert that traffic into sales
But for most websites the major hurdle is not converting visitors into buyers – it’s getting the visitors to your site in the first place.
And whilst there are countless ways to drive traffic to your website, every strategy has a different timeframe on returning results.
For example, natural search engine optimisation can be a very effective in driving quality visitors to your website.
The problem is – it takes time:
1. Firstly, it takes time to get your site listed in the search engines;
2. When you are listed, chances are you’ll be fairly low down the list and it takes time to creep up the rankings;
3. Search engines also tend to favour websites with lots of quality content and links from other websites – both of which take time to generate.
The bottom line is, whilst natural search engine optimisation is a strategy that almost all website owners should focus on – it won’t generate results overnight.
And if cash flow is tight, you can’t afford to wait around for a top page listing in a search engine.
You need to generate cash flow as quickly as possible and that’s why we recommend starting with Pay-Per-Click advertising – it generates immediate results.
Then, once you have a solid stream of traffic to your website, you can branch out and concentrate on some of the longer term strategies.
Starting a Pay-Per-Click campaign also gives you the opportunity to test your sales process and make any necessary changes to boost your website’s conversion percentage.
Will Pay-Per-Click advertising work for my business?
The only way to be certain of anything in marketing is to test it.
Pay-Per-Click allows you to affordably test your advertising with the fastest feedback loop of any medium in the world.
Unlike other forms of media, Pay-Per-Click allows you to set a predefined budget so you can stick your toe in the water and discover what’s working and what’s not.
Having said that, we’ve worked with hundreds of business owners in every industry imaginable – and we have yet to see a business that couldn’t benefit from Pay-Per-Click advertising.
Why would an end user click on a Pay-Per-Click listing instead of a natural search engine result? – web design melbourne
Good question. Whilst it is true that most users focus primarily on natural search results, it comes down to who you’re targeting.
A recent survey conducted by WebAdvantage.net found that around half of all Internet users cannot distinguish between paid search engine listings and unpaid listings.
There’s a good chance that before reading this course you didn’t completely understand the difference either.
Of the users who can tell the difference, the general consensus is that people who click on sponsored links are usually ‘buyers’, whereas people who click on the natural results tend to be ‘researchers’.
Overall, this makes sense.
Someone looking to buy a computer knows that the sponsored listings are obviously merchants.
This differs from the natural search results, which can contain a mixture of news articles, research reports, product reviews and so on.
The bottom line is, if someone is looking at researching a topic (i.e. ‘what are the symptoms of heart disease) they are more likely to click on a natural search result, whereas someone looking to buy a productor service (i.e. cheap computers) is more likely to click on a sponsored result.
How do I get the number one position? – ecommerce hosting
To get the number one position in Overture, you must simply bid higher than everyone else.
To get the number one position in Google AdWords, you’ll need to have a combination of a high bid price and a high click-through-rate (CTR).
Who determines the price for a keyword?
In short – you do.
Unlike traditional media (TV, Newspapers, Radio, etc), where advertising rates are dictated by the provider – Pay-Per-Click prices are determined by the users.
For any given keyword, the price is determined by the advertisers bidding on that term.
How can I find out how much people are bidding for my keywords?
Google does not publish their bid prices, but you can use the Overture Bid Tool to see what advertisers in Yahoo and MSN are paying for any keyword.
Overture View Bids Tool – Bids within Australia
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/?mkt=au&lang=en_GB
Overture View Bids Tool – Bids within the United States
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/
How do I control my budget? How can I prevent overspending?
Controlling your Pay-Per-Click budget is simple.
Both Google and Overture have mechanisms in place that allow you to control the maximum amount of clicks you receive so you’re never at risk of overspending.
Say for example that you sell swimming pools and you’re willing to bid 50 cents for each click. In AdWords, you set your ‘daily limit’ to $20 per day, which equates to 40 clicks per day.
As soon as AdWords registers 40 clicks on your account – it stops showing your ad. It’s that simple.
Within every industry there are at least a handful of online portals.
These information portals get thousands of visitors to their online shopping cart every month and earn the bulk of their income by selling advertising space.
Their whole business evolves around one thing – quality content.
In order to charge for the advertising space in the first place, potential advertisers need to see that their hosted shopping cart is generating a substantial amount of traffic.
To attract visitors, they need original content, namely:
And to keep readers coming back to the site – portals must be constantly updating the content on their site.
As you can imagine, when the content gets stale – readers quickly begin to drop off.
The bottom line is – everything evolves around supplying fresh content to keep their users and advertisers happy.
The Opportunity – shopping cart web designer
When it comes to generating content, a publisher has two choices:
a) Employ writers to produce content all day long; or
b) Request content from third party contributors.
Often, only the biggest publishers can afford to hire professional writers on a full time basis.
Most online publishers rely on articles written by third party contributors to keep their sites fresh.
If you can supply good quality information, most publishers will jump at the opportunity to publish your material.
It’s a win-win situation: You generate free exposure for your business and the other site gets fresh content to keep their visitors happy.
A good example of this arrangement is the website www.sitepoint.com
Sitepoint publishes articles targeted towards the web design and programming industry.
Whilst they do have their own writers, the bulk of articles published on Sitepoint are provided by third party contributors.
Sitepoint – Write for Us:
http://www.sitepoint.com/about/writeforus
Another thing to keep in mind is that many online publishers like Sitepoint also publish regular weekly or monthly newsletters.
Getting your article included in these newsletters can expose you to thousands of potential customers.
