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Getting ready for 2010

23-12-2009

Here at Redweb Search, we are really looking forward to 2010. We are being told that the economic markets are getting stronger and consumers are starting to spend their money more readily. Google has been watching this shift very closely over the last 12 months and has released several new tools to develop the way we work in search. We recommend you become familiar with these innovations to stay ahead of the marketing game.

Google Webmaster toolkit

We are big fans of this. This toolkit is a great way to gain valuable information from Google about the performance of your website. Google will use data provided to trawl your website and will identify who is linking to the site, and problem areas such as pages that take a long time to download.

PPC site links

This technique uses additional links to drive users deeper into your website. For example if you're an insurance company and a user is looking to insure their car, they can link straight to a more relevant page on your website from the search engine results page (SERPs). However, problems can occur if you are using a bid management tool that relies on URL redirections.

Google local business adverts

Google has decided to rebuild the setup of its' local business adverts which have historically never worked to their full potential. The new system is currently being tested with a select few business accounts in the USA.

Local business adverts can now be linked to PPC campaigns. Be careful with this if you have multiple locations as customers could be put off by your advert if it is not local to them. If you have several locations, campaigns and adverts, the only way presently to ensure that they always combine with a search term correctly is to set up a local business account for each advert and connect individually to the right PPC campaign. One of our clients has 52 locations which, as you can imagine, can cause a headache!

Mobile adverts

There has been a large increase in the use of Smartphone devices in 2009 to search for products and services. It is important to understand the difference in user habits of Smartphone devices and also their limitations. Mobile campaigns should not simply be a duplication of a current campaign. They may require different keywords and even mobile friendly landing pages.

We wish you prosperity for 2010 off the back of your search engine marketing results.

Written by: Martin McAndrew