Google ads should be used and available as part of your overall marketing strategy. They can be set up and switched on and off as and when required and useful for all sorts of scenarios:
- Launching a new product or service
- Introducing your business to a new sector or geographic location
- Boosting an area of the business where interest has waned
- A completely new business
A healthy mix of SEO efforts and a sensible Google Advertising Campaign is we think a recommended position to be in.
Please also see What does an SEO Agency Do as that will also answer this.
A good SEO agency will largely eliminate the random and bring focussed order to your online content.
To do this a good SEO agency has to get you involved. it can’t be done without you.
A good SEO agency will also..
- .. focus your online messaging and brand regardless of the size of your business.
- .. not bamboozle you with 50+ pages of stats, graphs and terminology. It shouldn’t be about them.
- .. give you realistic goals. There is little point in implementing an SEO strategy when there are no resources available to physically do the work.
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the process of improving and maintaining your website’s ranking on Google, Bing and other search engines, so more people looking for your products and services are more likely to see you. This is done by making sure you adhere to not only the Best Practice website guidelines but appreciating that search engines want to rank those websites that are genuinely useful, trustworthy and authoritative.
SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private (Source SSL.com)
Most hosting companies offer it as a service and once installed your website URL will have a padlock and the https not http reference.
A WordPress theme has two main functions; It provides style in the form of layout, complementary fonts, colour and other styling and additional functionality such as tools to make the design and management of the website easier and improve visitor engagement.
A Content Management System is a software application that allows invited users to build and more specifically manage a website quickly and easily. This is possible because all the code that would otherwise take months of development to make the system work, is already done for you.
The popular CMSes are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Squarespace.
A CMS’s backbone is the ability to organise content using categories, tags and a built in archive system based on month/year.
An SEO agency helps you identify opportunities, weaknesses, threats and strengths with your online visibility and recommends and helps implement strategies to promote your ranking with search engines.
If you want your website to perform better regardless of how you visitors arrived there, implementing an SEO strategy is essential because to do well with search engines means you have demonstrated you are useful, trustworthy and authoritative.
We Don’t Bamboozle
What do we mean when we say “useful, trustworthy and authoritative”?
We strive to talk plain english. If you would like to know what we mean by the above, please follow the links below for more detailed explanations:
What do you need from us when building a website?
Our process starts with our evaluation document. This requires you to give some good answers to some classic marketing questions.
You are the expert of your business so our job is to tease this out of you and create content your potential client wants to see.
Where possible, we like to use your images not stock images.
Yes.
Search engines are constantly trying to work out how useful, trustworthy and authoritative you are. They are saying “Will our (search) customers have a great experience if I point them to your website?”
If you want all your potential customers to have a good experience, regardless of how they got there, you should be implementing many of the SEO guidelines and Best Practices.
Yes. And No. It is true that if you removed every word on your website, you will eventually find your website will disappear from all search engines. Search engines will have nothing to go on and people won’t want to link to you. However, word count of keywords alone doesn’t really do much anymore especially if they seem unnatural. A search engine tries (very well) to mimic a potential user’s experience and if it is easy, useful, informative and trustworthy, then it makes for good SEO.
Consider this:
The Mona Lisa’s eyebrows are an interesting eyebrows fact and are mentioned everytime eyebrows are mentioned. The eyebrows on the Mona Lisa are not painted as eyebrows and are not therefore present as eyebrows or anything else.
Versus
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.
There are 200+ measures for determining the usefulness of every web page and keyword stuffing as it is known actually has the reverse effect mainly because it makes your sentences silly.
Is WordPress.com and a WordPress website the same thing?
Yes but like any platform, it needs to be correctly managed.
Content Management Systems are vulnerable by nature as they are built on open source frameworks. WordPress is a target because it is by far the most popular and by its open-source nature. However it would be wrong to dismiss WordPress because of this and here is why:
- WordPress is extremely good at responding to security vulnerabilities. Its auto-update mechanism allows WordPress websites to automatically update when there is a new security patch.
- There are built-in mechanisms that display updates to the site administrator for WordPress themes and plugins and some email the administrator notifications or auto update.
- There are sophisticated security plug-ins that block, detect and remove potential threats.
- There are sophisticated plug-ins that detect, clean and restore with the minimum of downtime should the worst happen
Is WordPress good for business websites?
Like all websites it needs to be managed well and have in place measures should the worst happen. Again WordPress has abundant tools for this to be achieved.
WordPress Website Examples
sonymusic.com
whitehouse.gov
nationalarchives.gov.uk
group.renault.com
thewaltdisneycompany.com (the one time you can truly say it is a Mickey Mouse platform)
toyota.com.br
thesun.co.uk (Yes, surprised me too)
Creating SEO goals and constantly measuring performance and achievements will enable every business to analyse their ROI.
It is very true that it is tricky to measure the value of using an SEO agency. We all can give you positions of keywords where you were ranked “73” and now you are ranked “3”. The real value is of course increased sales as a result of new customers finding you on a search engine and that increased sales figure far outstrips the cost of you getting that ranking.
What I would say however is a professional SEO service helps you identify opportunities and focusses you on what is important to promote. It teases out from within your organisation what makes you an expert; what makes your product different; why potential clients and customers should have that conversation with you.
Having that focus is definitely worth the expense as ultimately a better ranking is as a result of you demonstrating usefulness, trustworthiness and authoritativeness to any potential client whether they have arrived by search or not.
You should write a blog when you have something interesting to say and will benefit the person reading it.
There are often natural time intervals within a company and these are ideal for blogging. Some companies do a monthly round up while others feel a weekly blog is more useful.
Google ads cost whatever your fellow competitors are willing to pay for the same keyword as you are bidding for.
We have clients who spend no more than £5 a day and others who spend no less than £50 a day. Part of a professional service is to maximise what you are prepared to pay by tweaking the multitude of ever changing settings and not accepting blindly the defaults and recommendations you are constantly given. Also have in mind what the ads are being used for and where you want them to show.
How long does it take to build a website?
The week of development time is not all done at once but can be spread over a month or sometimes even longer.
The majority of our WordPress sites take between 3 and 4 days and 4-5 days for e-commerce sites.
You should bear in mind that most websites are different. An empty shop takes less time than one with 1000 products or a website with 30 case studies.
Yes. The email that comes with web hosting tends to be basic. If email is your main communication tool and you have several of your team using it, we encourage you to switch to a dedicated email provider such as Microsoft or Google Mail.
Yes but not always the results you want. In the good old days we have had ‘next day’ successes from a new Campaign for a new client. Today’s Google Ads is all about machine learning and combinations and this can take 5 days or so to be optimised. And results are not just about lead conversion. Some ads are there specifically for brand awareness and we broadcast your products and services to as many of the right people as possible. This does happen instantly.
Also don’t forget that even poor performing ads tell their own story. That’s why it is imperative to keep on top of any Campaign so we are constantly tweaking and perfecting.
Yes when done correctly.
Google Ads are worth it because you have total control on who to reach, when to reach and how much you are willing to pay.
Let’s examine when they don’t work:
- Setting up a campaign and accepting all the defaults and ticking all the recommendations because it is easy.
- Trying to keep pace with Google’s constant desire to change the functionality and the interface while trying to run your business.
- Letting it run in the background and not watching what is going on.
- Increasing the budget because your latest 12 week Google representative tells you to
- When Artificial Intelligence (AI) recommends updates that are so general it has the opposite effect for your nuanced business.
Like everything, it needs to be set up properly and managed or it becomes disheartening and expensive.
