For many website owners wanting to get more sales from Google, many different approaches can be taken. Quite often the assumption is that SEO is the only way to go. After all, everyone clicks on the left hand side of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)?
While all of the research which has been conducted seems to point to 'Yes', there are still many ways that Google can deliver qualified traffic to your website without having to wait weeks or months. Having given talks to thousands of people over the last year, many of these new features and tools are often underused, if known about at all (as mentioned on SEOptimise recently)
In a recent talk I gave, I outlined some of the ways that Google can be used for short term and long term gain for improving online sales. For everyone who reads this blog, I've outlined them below :)
Using Google for short term results
With the run up to Christmas, many website owners are looking to cash in while the UK starts to spend their pounds online. Last year online sales went up 15% compared to 2007, and this year will only be bigger. Here are some quick wins, that can be used to get sales quickly.
Setting up a Google Adwords campaign can be achieved in under an hour. Creating an account and entering your advert and target phrases you want your website to appear for is pretty straightforward. Google has made it easy for even novices to start their own advertising and now have the biggest advertising platform on the Internet. Create your campaign and within an hour, visitor will be on your website. You can't get more instant than that!
A word of warning though. While it is certainly quick to get started on Adwords, it isn't necessarily easy. Choosing the right key phrases to target can be a bit of a minefield, let alone creating your adverts and selecting your landing pages. We recommend that anyone trying this for the first time should either speak to a Google Adwords Professional or at least watch some of the Adwords learning centre videos before you start spending your pounds.
Google BaseIf you are an ecommerce website owner, then this one is for you. Google Base or Google Shopping (or Google Product search) is a very powerful yet underused way to get quick sales.
Google Base is a repositiory of product information which has been loaded onto their databases by website owners / advertisers. To start create an account with Google Base and then upload an XML file of all of your product information such as sizes, features and of course price to your account. Once this information has been uploaded and verfied, your products can be listed in the Google Product search within a day and you will then start to appear in the listings which attract millions of searches each day. It's then up to you to improve your product listings as much as possible to get them noticed in front of your competitors.
Using Google for long term results
Once you've covered off the short term wins and have maximised their results to get more sales or enquiries online, there are several things that you should look to cover off as part of your longer term strategy. Quite often the investment which needs to be made in your long term strategy is time. If you don't have the time yourself, or can't afford to pay for someone elses time, then your chances of success are minimal.
Assuming you do have the time, here are some of the best things to concentrate on.
SEO
When it comes to Google, achieving high rankings on the 'free' (or organic) listings is the holy grail. Most of search engine users click on the left hand side of results (6 out of 7 users click on these listings before clicking on the PPC ads according to Jupiter research) and around 71% of users trust these results more when compared to the paid (Adwords) listings.
To get high rankings on the phrases that you want your website to appear for will always take a significant amount of time. To get high rankings can take anything from a month or two to over a year of experienced SEO effort, depending on the industry you are in, the phrases you want to target and the quality of your current website.
In very basic terms, the websites which rank highest on the free listings have the following things associated with them;
- High 'trust' with Google (this can come from the domain name /age as well as many other things)
- Good number of regular updates made to the website content
- High quality content on website
- A high number and quality of links pointing to your website
As part of Googles mission to
The local business centre can be easily set up once you have completed the registration forms and verified your listing using one their very cool automated facilities (we recommend going for the phone verification option).
Although quick to set up and activate, the time lag getting your company listed in the results is notorious. Due to the (still) mystery over how the maps and local business centre work, there isn't a massive amount that can be done to improve this time lag so it is a matter of sit and wait before your rankings appear and you start to see results. The wait can sometimes be very well worth it though. We have seen businesses drive thousands of pounds of orders using these listings.
The Google owned blogging platform (which we use incidentally) Blogger allows anyone to create their own blog for free. Like most Google services, you can create your own account by filling in a few forms and once completed, your blog is born.
Blogs are great for sharing knowledge and expertise (like this one :) and also helping with the SEO effort by allowing content to be published with minimal effort and cost.
Of all Google marketing techniques mentioned here though, this is probably the longest term method you can use to get results. Putting effort into your blog to create new content each week is a manual task which can sometimes take hours. In addition to this you need to tell people about your blog. This is best achieved by getting involved with your industry community online. Guest blogging, posting comments on other blogs, participating in forums and using social media tools like Twitter are all efforts you will need to consider before you start to get users following and linking to your blog. If you're going to be one of seven million blog owners who make it a succes and not one of the 95% who fail, you'll need to put a lot of effort in over a long period of time.
Summary
For most business owners, Google is still a massively under exploited sales tool and if worked in the right way can generate significant results. Whatever the goals for your business, the most important thing to consider before investing in any online marketing is choosing the right tool(s) to fit your strategy. Hopefully we've outlined just some of the ways you can improve your results in the short term and the long term.
Anything we've missed? Please let us know in the comments.
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