Tips and tricks to make the most of your website 13 Jun 2008 05:35:00 en-us http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog.html Getting the most out of your PPC campaign can be a real drag. Some days figures look great, others can see a sometimes baffling drop in sales. the trick is, of course, to aggregate the figures over time and look for trends. Over recent years, lots of software has come onto the market that can automate huge aspects of this on your behalf. If you've got a campaign with thousands of keywords and dozens of Ad Groups, the appeal is immediate and obvious. But - you're expecting some caveats, so let's look at them! Setting the right targets Our client has been using http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-94-bid-management-software-an-exercise-in-failure.html Google Adwords lets you target your advertising by region – be it the UK, London, or even a 20-mile area around your home. If you don't ship abroad or if you run a local business this saves you paying for clicks from people who simply can't buy from you. It's surprising however how many businesses don't take advantage of this simple option. Take today for example. I was browsing Google and noticed two adverts that said in the body text, "London Only". Now we're based in Harrogate, so why on earth would I want to know about a company who only sells in the London area? http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-93-location-targeting-you-have-the-power-so-use-it.html When the first client rang up asking if their Adwords account had been stopped, we forwarded the email onto Google asking if they knew anything. When another client rang a week later, we knew for sure there was some 'phishing' going on. It Just Looks Wrong The subject line of the email: Your Adwords Google Account is stoped looks a bit weird in the first place. This may be a little optimistic, but we don't expect emails from Google to contain typos! The rest of the email looks genuine enough, it even contains a link to adwords.google.com. Unfo http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-92-phishing-emails-going-round.html Google have taken on the noble cause of making every book in the world available in a digital format (whilst respecting copyright laws), but is advertising their book results in the main search pages overstepping the mark? Aren't the search pages for, you know, websites? A Good Cause Google aren't the first to digitise and archive books. Project Gutenberg have been doing it for years and have a catalogue of over 17000 free e-books. These are transcribed by volunteers the world over and uploaded in many languages, with th http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-91-google-books-good-or-bad.html We bow to no-one in our admiration of Google's AdWords program (except, perhaps, the company accountants). Sometimes its easy to forget that this product is in a constant state of flux, with new features and quirks coming online all the time. Sometimes, we can't figure out what they are! Any Suggestions? Here's a queer little feature we've seen on AdWords recently. Beneath some of the standard, 3 line ads we've come to know and love... a fourth line has appeared containing the name of a town or a http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-90-new-google-adwords-feature-but-what-is-it.html Writing content for a website isn't easy. It's an art form all to itself. Fortunately, there are millions of pages out there you can use for inspiration - and unless you genuinely are the first person in the world to have an idea, you are bound to cast around for other people with similar ideas to help inspire your writing. But - you CANNOT copy someone else's content wholesale! Not only is it illegal but it can damage the credibility of your business if you get caught. Busted! A marketing company in our local http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-89-oi-stealing-website-content-is-a-no-no.html Here at Clearsite we like to take a look around our marketplace every now and again to see what everyone else is up to. In the course of our travels we see good ideas and neat innovations, dubious activity and just plain wrongness. I'm going to take a look at one business practice that we've seen increase dramatically over the past few years, and which is now creeping into our sector; shifting operations abroad. The Call Centre For large businesses like banks and phone companies, opening offices abroad and hiring a local workforce has proved the most cost-ef http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-88-made-in-the-uk-does-it-really-matter.html We learnt last time that online advertising is set to increase, and my thoughts on that weren't entirely positive. This week takes a look from the other side of the fence; how web 2.0 allows the kind of targeted marketing that advertisers' wet dreams are made of. With personal information becoming public property, you can now target consumers based on their hobbies, interests and even social background. The holy grail of demographics is available to all through one of the most popula http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-87-the-rise-of-social-advertising.html Just before Xmas I spent some time browsing Yahoo! Answers; Yahoo!'s peer-powered knowledge exchange service. Relying on the input of its users it's certainly no Wikipedia, but it does have a loyal following of thousands who log on daily to ask and answer a torrent of questions. On this particular day there was unrest on the forum; every fourth or fifth question was a variation on a theme: "How do you stop that annoying Gap ad?!" The 'Gap ad' was a video advert at the top le http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-84-a-lesson-in-marketing-for-yahoo.html If your website dropped from the Google listings tomorrow, what would happen to your traffic? If the answer is; "um...there wouldn't be any" then you may need to rethink your marketing strategy. A number one listing for key terms is all well and good, but brand awareness can be just as important in ensuring sales and repeat visits. Taking advantage of Google's tools can help build this awareness and possibly, (just possibly) make the search engine itself obsolete Take a look at a brand like Nike; do you think they lose much sleep ove http://www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk/blog-82-if-no-one-can-find-your-website-does-it-exist.html