Tag: Search

10 Step Website Self-Check

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog

What makes a website great? What makes a website terrible? The quality and effectiveness of a website really comes down to ten main elements. All of these ten elements are pretty simple, but due to the wide variety of options in each category, sometime people make websites overly complicated or confusing, or maybe on the other side of things, they make it boring and dull.

Fear no more. We have broken down these ten elements for you a created a 10 Step Self-Check Test for you to use to rate your website. What do you think your score will be.

  • If you have 2 or less elements, your website is an F.
  • If you have 2-5 elements, your website is average and is a C.
  • If you have 5-8 elements, your website is pretty good and receives a B.
  • If you have 9 or 10 elements, your website is fantastic and is an A.

Good luck! Here is our 10 Step Self-Check Test:

  1. Home Page: Your homepage is your front door, your welcome mat, your first impression, and your first impression is one of the most important. It sets the tone. While this may sound silly, think about the way you feel when you open your home page. Does your homepage leave your audience with the right feeling?
  2. Design: The way you set up and design your website will make a big impact on the experience your user has. The most important design element about a website is if it is functional. Can your user find everything they need to find easily? Does the layout make sense for the purpose?
  3. Timeliness: This is simple. Is the website being updated? Look at the last social media post and see if it was in the last week or two. Are you regularly posting new content? At the very least, is all the information correct and up to date.
  4. Searchability: Most people come to websites with a purpose, not just to look around. The search bar needs to be somewhere easy to find so that people can use it. Your menu also must make sense and clearly direct your audience to information through helpful categories or whatever is best for your purpose.
  5. Branding: Does your website stay true to your brand? Is your logo thoroughly incorporated through the website? The easiest thing to forget is to maintain your brand on every section of your website. Your logo should be the same across sections and social media platforms. The colors and theme of your website should go not only with what you are trying to convey, but also you brand.
  6. Credibility: A section of your website need to be devoted to showing that you are a legitimate and serious website. For a company, this would mean including you mission statement, certifications, a portfolio of your work or services, and other additional resources to build credibility. Often people like to showcase their employees and give background on the company’s purpose and founding. All of these benefit the credibility of your site which is an ever increasing problem online.
  7. Headlines: Your headlines are important. They bring your audience into what you are trying to tell them. Whether it is a blog post, a news blurb, or a helpful tip, creative and engaging headlines make the difference between people clicking to read and just passing over it. Do you have thoughtful engaging headlines?
  8. Social Media: In the world we live in, most websites will also have corresponding social media accounts, even if it is just a Facebook page or a LinkedIn account. Optimally, a website will add as many social media accounts as makes sense for them. Whether or not they are incorporated into the website well is usually the problem. What is the point of having them is they don’t work together with you website. Plus, the most important thing is that you add as many as you can keep updated.
  9. Audience: Remember who your target audience is. If you are trying to sell children’s toys, make the website more user friendly for a younger audience. Make it a fun, colorful, exciting experience. If you are a dentist, you may not need as much color and fun, but you will need to appear professional with a clean website that is easy to use.
  10. Overall: At the end of all of this, it is the combination of these nine other areas that leave an overall impression. When your user leaves the website, they will leave with either a good overall feeling of being satisfied or a bad overall feeling. The big question is which does your website give? Does it leave your audience satisfied and do you believe they can find and enjoy finding what they need to on your website?

The Secret To Get To The TOP Of Google’s Results

by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing

In this blog, we will teach you how to get to the top of Google’s results using paid search advertising, which can help your business gain more exposure, more leads, and more conversions.

SEM stands for search engine marketing, which is where you purchase ads from search engines such as Google to gain more website traffic. The most popular paid search advertising method is Google AdWords, which allows you to bid on certain keywords so your ads will show up at the top of certain searches. Google AdWords is effective because it allows you to target your ads, control your costs, measure your success, and manage your campaigns.

Your ads can show on two of Google’s networks, the Search Network or the Display Network. The search network means your ads will show up on the search page, while the display network allows your ads to show on Google’s partner websites. You can put your ads on the Search Network only, the Display Network only, or a combination of both.

With Search Network marketing, your ads will be given a quality score and ad rank. The quality score estimates how effective your ads will be based on the expected clickthrough rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. Ad rank determines the order in which your ad shows up on the page.

Because Google AdWords is paid search advertising, you will obviously have to pay for your ads. You have three options for payment on Google AdWords, cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Cost-per-click (CPC) focuses on clicks on your ads and drive traffic to your website. Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) focuses on impressions — the number of times your ad shows — and increases awareness of your brand. This is used on Display Network campaigns only. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) focuses on conversions — which is when people take a specific action on your website after clicking one of your ads.

Choosing the appropriate keywords is a big part of creating your Google AdWords campaign. When choosing your keywords, it is important to think like a customer, align your keywords with your goals, and reviewing which search terms work best. Exhaustive keyword research and bid optimization designed for high click-through rates at a lower cost-per-inquiry is necessary for a successful Google AdWords campaign.

Once you have created your AdWords campaign, you can measure your success with several tools. Segments allow you to split your data into rows based on the information that matters to you most, such as periods of time, click type, or device. The list below shows you a few of your options if you want to measure your ad’s success based on segments.

    • Click type: See which clicks resulted in visits to your website
    • Device: Compare performance across devices
    • Top vs. Other: Find out where your ad appeared on Google’s search results pages and search partners’ pages
    • Time: Isolate changes in your performance using the time segment options

You can also measure the success of your campaign by utilizing the top movers report, which lets you see which campaigns have the biggest changes (increases or decreases) in clicks, costs, and conversions, and shows you some possible causes for those changes. The paid and organic report lets you can see how often pages from your website are showing in Google search results, and which queries triggered those results to show on the search results page. Another report, auction insights, compares your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are.

Overall, paid search advertising can help your business get more exposure and generate more leads. If you need additional help, please let us become part of your team and we’ll use our proven approach to provide you with success.