Google shopping or Google base is a free service offered for eCommerce website owners to upload their product information for free.

Website browsers can find quick information about products on the SHOPPING tab or directly from page one of Google. This is a great tool which can provide excellent additional coverage for your products online.

Below are 5 reasons to upload products to Google:

Reason 1   – it’s free and easy to setup if your eCommerce software supports it

Reason 2   – increases your coverage on the search engine of exising keyword phrases

Reason 3   – can be used to cover alternative keyword phrases which you don’t cover from your website

Reason 4  – can put your product on page one of Google when your website product page is struggling to be there

When people click on the Google shopping option they often see a grid list of 20 products, with bigger images and no text about the product. In the past the only option was a list of 10 products per web page with a short description. So make sure you checkout how your products appear so you can adjust your upload accordingly to make the most of what Google has to offer.

Any good eCommerce online website solution should provide integrated Google product uploads directly from your content management system. Have a look or ask your website provider and start uploading products for free onto Google.

Last Wednesday evening I was invited to deliver a presentation on website search engine optimisation  (SEO) by Jane Stretton who runs this Derbyshire/Staffordshire Wire group. My talk was about the “5 Step SEO Lifecycle” providing the attendees with a more structured process to attack and conquer SEO on their websites. One of the key points I stressed during the talk was that SEO is not a one off exercise. If you wish to implement SEO and be on page one of Google, then it is a continuous, never ending process to maintain that page one position. So for most small businesses it is not cost effective to pay an SEO consultant to continue with this activity forever! Understanding the what, how, why and where of SEO is an important skill for small business owners to implement.

With over 2o people attending the presentation, most with their own websites, there were lots of interesting questions asked during the session. At the end of the session several of the attendees signed up for my “Strictly SEO” workshop programme to be launched in April 2010 – more on this very soon…..

Many thanks for all the great comments emailed by attendees about how relevant and useful the content of the presentation was. And also thanks to our host Jane Stretton who puts a great deal of time and effort into making the Ashbourne Wire group so inspiring and successful.

Many small businesses try out Google’s adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) online marketing. Often they have received a free voucher through the post encouraging you to signup and try it out. It is in fact extremely easy to setup and run a Google adwords campaign – in around 30 minutes you can bring more customers to your website.

However, without some basic guidelines on how to setup, manage and optimise your adwords account, many small businesses find themselves with a large bill from Google at the end of the month and very few additional sales or leads.

Unfortunately this puts many small businesses off using Google adwords in future which is a shame as a correctly managed and optimised campaign can produce great results. Below are a five simple tips to help small businesses  avoid some of the biggest mistakes when setting up a PPC campaign:

1.  Content Network VS Google Search

Google Search = ads displayed on the standard Google search engine in the sponsored ad section.

Content Network = Google showing your advert on any website across the internet

Initially run your campaign only on the Google Search network excluding “Search Partners”. Once you have a viable campaign running here, then look to create a separate one for the content network. Never mix the two in one campaign to control your costs.

2. Split Campaigns Into Multiple Ad Groups

Within each campaign setup multiple ad groups, each one containing very similar groups of keywords. You can then match the adverts more closely to the keywords.

3. Don’t Send All Adverts to Your Home Page

Always send visitors to the MOST RELEVANT webpage for the advert. This is another reason for implementing (2) above as it allows you to send visitors to the best matched website page for the keyword phrase they input to Google.

4. Always Check Your Keyword Quality Score.

Google adwords keyword quality score needs to be at least 7 or above to ensure you are not being over-charged for clicks on your adverts. Anything below 6 and your keywords and not matching up with the webpage you are sending visitors to and the campaign is unlikely to be profitable.

5. Make Effective Use of Negative Keywords

Always research and setup negative keywords on campaigns and ad groups. This ensures that you are not paying for irrevelant clicks for your campaigns.  A great example of this is the company bidding on the keyword “night stands” which was not working out at all profitable. When they investigated the actual keyword phrases people were finding their advert and clicking on it for, they discovered around 50% of the traffic came from the keyword phrase “one night stand”……..!  They setup “one” as a negative keyword and the campaign immediately became profitable.

Bonus TIP

Finally, I think the most important thing to understand about PPC advertising is that you must be prepared to continuously montior, tune and optimise the whole E2E sales funnel. So long as you have the time and inclination to work on these areas then PPC can be an extremely profitable advertising medium for your business.

Had some great feedback last week from several of the small business website owners who’ve downloaded and implemented my free “10 Step SEO Healthcheck” guide. One business has trebled it’s traffic in a few months, another has moved up to page one of Google for a target keyword phrase and also increased traffic and sales!

It’s great that this document has helped these business owners. If you want to find out how well your website is performing on the search engines, pop across to my website, download your copy and start improving your website’s ranking, traffic and sales!   “10 Step SEO Healthcheck“

I recently finished a successful Google Adwords PPC trial for a customer in a very small niche market place. Below is an overview of how I turned an initially unprofitable PPC campaign into a proftable, productive one in a few months.

The diagram below shows the number of times adverts were shown on Google (impressions in BLUE) and the number of times visitors clicked on the adverts to visit the website (in GREEN).

Initially you can see a huge volume of impressions compared to the number of clicks received. By optimising and tuning the keyword list and the advert content, I reduced the list of keywords down to the most profitable ones.

Once the most profitable keywords and adverts had been identified, then the PPC website landing pages were analysed, tuned and optimised. Scientific tests were completed to identify the web page format and layouts which produced the most sales.

Below is an extract from the Google Adwords PPC account for just one set of keywords from this campaign.

You’ll note from the above image how the clicks and click through rate (CTR) have increased month on month AND the cost per click (CPC) has nearly halved in the same time.

Clicks on Advert      -  Increased 1000%   (2 -> 20)
Click Through Rate – Increased 400%       (1.53% -> 8%)
Cost per Click            – Reduced 40%             (38p – 22p)

Throughout the position of the advert has been maintained at second place on the first page of Google.

Initially the monthly cost of the Adwords Campaign was 25% of the sales value which was not profitable. By the end of month two the Adwords cost had been reduced to 10% of the sales value and is now producing profitable sales for my customer!

Contact me and find out how I can make your adwords campaigns profitable.