Google Adwords Basics

Many companies owe their entire existence to Google Adwords. This simple, easy to use application allows companies to advertise in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for a minimal fee. Your company will only pay when the link to your website has been clicked by a person who has entered your keyword into the Google search engine. This allows you to drive targeted traffic to your website at a relatively minimal price.

Begin using Google Adwords by selecting the keywords that you want to target. If your website sells dartboards, you would choose keywords such as “dartboards” and “buy dartboards”. Every time a user enters “dartboards” into Google, your ad will be shown to that user, but you only pay when the ad is clicked. Google calculates your cost-per-click (CPC) based on what other websites are bidding. If you are in a competitive industry, you may pay upwards of $20 per click, but most companies find themselves paying between $1 and $5 per click for industry-relevant terms.

The advantage of Google Adwords is that your company can instantly receive targeted traffic. There is no need to wait ages for the search engines to place your website at the top of organic results (this process usually takes 6 – 10 months for Google, and 12 – 16 months for Yahoo and MSN), you can buy traffic instantly.

Adwords can be a costly exercise. $5 per click can add up quickly and wind up costing your company thousands of dollars, so what can you do to ensure that you make the most of your pay-per-click advertising campaign? I have listed a few tips below:

1) Write honest advertisements. Don’t promise the moon to your Adwords clients if you cannot deliver. Inflated ads may result in higher click through rates (CTR), but that means nothing if the users leave as soon as they reach your website and realize that the ad was misleading. Be honest with your users, and you will only pay for legitimate clicks.

2) Optimize your landing pages. You need to show users that your website is legitimate within the first 3 seconds a user is on your website. Poorly designed websites with seasonal graphics are a great way to ensure that your advertising dollars are flushed down the toilet.

3) Focus your keywords. Make sure that you’re not paying to show up in the search results for keywords that are worthless to your company. This is by far the biggest mistake made by even the most serious eCommerce websites. You shouldn’t be paying to appear for search terms that will not result in sales.

Google Adwords can be a great tool for your company if properly utilized. Make sure that you take care to ensure that your advertising dollars are put to good use, as Google will not keep an eye on this for you. If necessary, hire an expert to maintain your pay-per-click advertising program and monitor your web traffic. The cost of such a service can pay huge dividends over time.

Homepage Basics

eCommerce begins with your homepage. For most webmasters, the homepage is the web page with the highest search engine value, which means that your homepage will receive more visits than any other page in your domain. The homepage is also the most popular entry page for most webmasters.

The most important function that the homepage performs is to take the first step in transforming visitors into finalized sales. The primary focus of your homepage should be communicating legitimacy and professionalism to your prospective buyers. You have less than 3 seconds to convince visitors that you are well established and have a good understanding of the products you sell.
Many companies use their homepage to display a myriad of products (you would think they are trying to cram an image of every product they sell into the homepage). Web designers who lack eCommerce experience seem to believe that visitors leave websites because they do not see the product they are looking for. If you think carefully about the way you shop online, you will realize that visitors are willing to deeply explore websites that they feel are legitimate, but won’t give a second thought to poorly designed or overcrowded websites.  The job of your homepage is not to show your visitors everything that they could possibly be looking for, but to quickly communicate a feeling of professionalism and legitimacy to your visitors.

To evaluate user experience, I recommend keeping a close watch on the bounce rate for your home page (install Google Analytics on your website, and this is easy to monitor). If your page is causing many users to bounce (bounce rate measures how many users leave your website as soon as they hit an entry page), then change the homepage design. When you see a problem, fix it! Don’t sit back and wait for more data. Good websites have bounce rates that are below 50%, decent websites have bounce rates below 70%, and awful websites bounce more than 70% of visitors.

The secondary purpose of your homepage is to ensure that your website is attracting the right type of visitors. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo are incredibly good at figuring out what your website is about from the content on your pages. If your website sells women’s clothing, make sure you take care to write content that communicates exactly what you do to your visitors. Not only will this improve user experience on your website, but you will find that the quality of leads you receive from search engines will dramatically improve.

The biggest mistake made by amateur webmasters is to design a homepage for search engines. After years of making this mistake myself, I shifted my focus and began to revamp my websites with the user in mind (hint: pretend that search engines do not exist). Success and high page rankings were quick to follow.