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Online Promotion
Google Gives Local Businesses an Advertising Boost
Oct 26th
Google has just launched Boost, a location-based ad product for local businesses which underlines the search engine giants stance on localised searches.
Built on Google Places, Boost beta is available in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago right now and will roll out to more cities soon.
Boost ads show up when users search for local businesses; they appear in the “sponsored links” section of Google’s (Google) web search and Google Maps (Google Maps), as well. Ads will appear when the right combination of vertical keyword (e.g., “restaurants”) and location keyword (e.g., “San Francisco”) is met.
The ads can contain basic location information, such as the address, business name and phone number, as well as more consumer-focused tidbits, including a star ratings, number of reviews received and a special Maps marker.
Business owners can create Boost ads from within their Google Places account. Initial setup is simple, and campaign management is automatic; all the business owner needs to do is set a budget, and Google’s advertising algorithm takes care of the details of placement and frequency.
We see this product as a preemptive strike against Facebook Places advertising. To date, Facebook has only announced cursory guidelines for Places use by businesses; no ads are yet being More >
Google Extend Autocomplete Globally.
Oct 26th
It’s been more than a year since Google launched localized versions of Google Autocomplete (formerly Google Suggest) that offer relevant search predictions tailored for different regions. More recently, they took these tailored predictions to a new level in the U.S. by targeting to specific metro areas like San Francisco and Chicago. This week, they have extended these hyper-local predictions around the globe to every country that has Autocomplete. This means that the list of predictions beneath the search box will seem more locally relevant than ever updating the searches with the areas you are searching within.
For example, when you’re in Barcelona, Spain and you start typing [rest] there’s a good chance you’re actually looking for restaurants in Barcelona:
However, if you’re in Madrid, you’ll probably want to check the restaurants there:
The Present Future of Link Building
Oct 26th
The number of people who tried to get their posts to go viral (by writing list posts and publishing images) increased dramatically and, at the same time, Twitter and Facebook REALLY took off. People that wanted to ‘share good stuff’ found these services easier to use for sharing than having a WordPress or Blogspot blog. The result? If you create linkbait and it goes popular, then you should expect a lot of re-tweets/stumble thumbs-ups/Facebook ‘likes’ but a very small number of links from different unique root domains. Do these links from Facebook/Twitter carry any special importance?
Matt Cutts once said in a YouTube video that they rate links from Facebook and Twitter just like any other link! Yay!
One recent lesson I’ve learned about ‘niche’ link building is that you can get viral in your niche community. Take SEO and this blog, for example. I’ve witnessed how different SEOs follow each other and, in case someone has something interesting to share, then other people in the industry re-tweet him and the chain goes on. This is not the case for every niche market unfortunately.
What’s the Future of Natural Link Building? Is it DEAD?!??!Okay, 3 points here:
- Many people who link ‘naturally’ have switched to More >
Google Places enhanced listing are essential to all Localised Businesses
Oct 21st
Google suggests that nearly 20% of all searches in the USA & UK have local intent. This makes it much more important for all companies to have both localised content on their pages as well as having a Google Places listing.
Add Localised content & localised pages to your website If your company provides services to customers in North London and you add this information to your website they may be able to find you of the search for North London but they will not find you if they search for your service in Highgate even though this is within your catchment area. You need to talk about all the places that you do work in so that every combination of your service and place has the potential to come up in the search engines. If you target specific areas or you find that a specific area holds your target audience then make extra pages on your website specifically about providing your service in that specific place. Google Places Google places listing are what appears as pointers on the map near the top of some localised searches. These listing are highly relevant to what is being searched for and well performing listing can More >
Google Local Has Changed
Oct 19th
With a few tweaks and an interface change, Google has placed location and location-based search front-and-center in its search engine.
The big change, announced earlier today on Google Blog’s, is that Google (Google) has moved the user location setting to the left-hand panel of the search engine results page. This feature automatically detects your current location and tailors search results based on that. For example, searches for “pizza” or “gyms” will provide local business results near your location, which tend to be a lot more relevant than a Wikipedia (Wikipedia) article on everybody’s favorite cheesy snack.
The change rolls out starting today and will be available to users in 40+ languages sometime soon.
Now that the location setting will be on the left side of the search engine results page, users can easily change it if Google gets it wrong or if a user wants to find restaurants near a different location. Say you’re about to travel to Enfield and you want to find the best website design shop near your hotel; all you have to do is type in the new city or post code and Google will adjust search results based on that location.
While nothing has changed in the back-end of More >
Google In-Page Analytics Provides Visual Context for Traffic Data
Oct 16th
Google (Google) has announced in-page Analytics for its popular web measurement suite Google Analytics. The feature contextualizes Google Analytics (Google Analytics) data by superimposing it directly over a website.
The goal is to help users better understand the correlations between site elements and traffic metrics, allowing them to make more educated design and navigation choices.
Although Google In-Page Analytics is still very much in beta, it already shows strong potential. For a full walkthrough, see the video below.
Online Advertising Booms
Oct 13th
Online advertising is thriving in the U.S., according to figures released in the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report.
Businesses and individuals spent approximately $12.1 billion on online advertising in the first six months of 2010, up 11.3% from the from the first half of 2009 and 13.9% from the second quarter of 2009. In fact, this was both the highest first-half and second-quarter revenue ever recorded.
Search advertising continued to monopolize the greater share of online ad dollars, having attracted more than $5.7 billion in spending between January and June this year — a year-over-year increase of 11.6%. Display advertising, which includes banner ads, digital video, rich media and sponsorships, garnered more than $4.4 billion in the first half of 2010, a 16% increase over the same period in 2009.
Digital video recorded the greatest growth of all. More was spent in video advertising from January to June than in any other half-year period before, an increase of 31% from the first half of 2009.
IAB’s SVP of Industry Services Sherill Mane cited growing online advertising budgets among consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical companies for the growth.
“While the recession clearly affected short term growth in 2009, with double digit growth in both search More >
1.5 Million Visits Generated By Areatrade
Oct 4th
The most important aspect of PPC advertising is the analytic side of things. We take over campaigns for new clients all the time and there are hardly ever any GOAL SETTING implemented. This is key to understanding the cost of each conversion on your website, without this information you have no idea what is working and what is not. Most accounts are made up of just 1 campaign with all keywords crammed into it which also is a big no no and has a very negative effect on the quality scores. Google tries to calculate which advert works the best – if you have no specific adverts Google has no chance of helping you.
If your not currently tracking your PPC campaign let us know as we can help.