Want to target based on demographics? You probably think that’s what Facebook Ads are for, but there are so many more options in Google Ads’ targeting options.
Video transcriptfollows…
So you probably realise that Facebook knows a lot about you and uses that for ad targeting, but have you ever stopped to think about what Google knows about you?
Think about your search and browsing behaviour…. what you watch on YouTube….
With a massive network of owned and affiliated sites, Google is collecting all sorts of data that can be used for targeting…you could be a father with a 6 month old baby, Google would know it, and you could be targeted for ads based on that.
When you think about Google Ads, Google is so much bigger than keywords and search results – you’ve also got access to YouTube and a massive display network, and through Google Ads you can target by demographics, in-market intent and interests, no matter what stage of the marketing funnel your audience is in.
So if you’re a mortgage broker or real estate agent, you can target people thinking right now about buying or selling a home, or refinancing their existing home loan.
If you’re in business finance you could be targeting people in business that are in-market for a business loan, or finance for new equipment and vehicles.
Accountants can target people thinking about starting a new business.
Whatever business you are in, don’t get stuck on old thinking like
Google Ads are just for people searching for specific things, or
People aren’t searching for my product or service, or
Google Ads are too expensive.
Google Ads gives you the ability to target on more than just keywords across sites beyond Google Search, and with very specific targeting Google Ads could be a lot cheaper and more scaleable than Facebook Ads.
If you want to know more about how Google Ads could work for your business and how we track not just leads, but also sales even if they happen 3 months down the track, then check out our marketing addon services including Google Ads management and book a call.
If you’re a local business, what’s it going to take to rank in Google for people searching for your product or service in your local area?
In this video we give you some quick things you can check to see if Local SEO is for you, and to illustrate this we compare mortgage broking, as a more competitive industry, with a search for a local mechanic.
[expand title=”Read the video transcript”]Okay, so first we’re looking at the “mortgage broker Castle Hill” search results and immediately we see that all four ad spots are taken up. So straight away we know that people consider this a competitive term – that there’s money there that people want to rank for so even before we move further we know that there’s going to be a bit of competition for SEO.
Then we see the google maps results before we actually get into the organic results.
Now over here on the right hand side you’re seeing some things on the side of the search results that you yourself wouldn’t typically be seeing. That’s coming from a free Google Chrome extension called Keywords Everywhere, if you want to look it up, and what it does is it gives us some information, like the difficulty of that search term to rank for, the related keywords that people might search for, and what people also search for.
And then over here on the left hand side looking at the actual search results that are coming up we see what Keywords Everywhere is doing is inserting a few stat’s about each of those results.
First up we’ve got the domain authority which is a measure of how authoritatively google might look at that domain. Just because it’s got a high domain authority does not mean that every single page on that website has that same domain authority – it’s overall looking at the value of that domain. It may mean that some domains rank better than others, easier than others, but it’s not always the case.
The other thing to look at is the referring links – again this does not mean that that’s the number of links to that individual page. If it’s not, it should be just considered as an indicator of the amount of SEO that website has been doing, so if you’re seeing a lot of links to that website that means that quite typically they are engaging somebody to do SEO for their site, so immediately you know you’re going to be up against that so it’s not going to be a walk in the park necessarily.
And what we’re looking at here is a lot of bigger companies that are ranking just because of their domain authority. They’ve been around, they’ve been doing that SEO for a while. We’re seeing Yellow Pages as a directory coming up, Word of Mouth is coming up – what that says is that this is still a potential if you want to do SEO for a term like this because we know that Yellow Pages is not necessarily going to be doing SEO on every single page, so as soon as we start seeing that coming up we know that there is potential to come in and potentially rank for that, may take a bit of work but it’s not insurmountable.
You can see it’s not until we get further down the page that we start seeing probably this one is a local business that’s ranking.
That being said if we go back to the Google Maps results where we see the Google Business Profiles of these businesses, not all of these businesses that we’re seeing coming up in the top three are reflected in the organic results further down so this does indicate that there is potential for a bit of local SEO to get you up and ranking.
Now, if we then move on to “mechanic Castle Hill” this is what would be a lower competition search term. In general, the the smaller local businesses aren’t necessarily going to be doing the same amount of SEO that a service like a mortgage broker would be doing. In general, the cost per service isn’t worth as much so you don’t get the same degree of SEO as a general rule.
That being said we are seeing a couple of Google Ads, it’s not the entire four spots that are taken up so if you wanted to jump in on something like this, it’s very likely the cost per click if you are running some Google Ads would be not very expensive.
Then moving into the Google Maps results, before we start seeing what’s going on in the organic results, and you can start seeing okay you’ve got UltraTune as a franchise, Yellow Pages is a directory, AutoGuru again a directory, and then you’re seeing some local business results coming up but you can see the referring links – there’s only 103 there, there’s only six there, so you know that this is a term that doesn’t actually have a lot of competition so if you wanted to come in there and start ranking for a search term like this then there is a potential for you to take over.
So when you’re looking at things like this just from a service perspective you can install the Keywords Everywhere chrome extension just to get an idea of what is going on and just to work out just by yourself whether or not it’s worth considering SEO.[/expand]
Want to know how you’re ranking for local searches? 🤔
In this video we share:
A free tool that will show you how to check how you’re ranking in the Google Maps results for local search queries.
Some strategies to help you rank better and win more more local customers from Google.
If you want more local customers ready to do business with you, then watch this video to the end.
[expand title=”Read the video transcript”]If you’re a business that has a local customer base, there’s a good chance you rely on Google to deliver those customers to you. If not, then you’re probably wishing Google was just that nice to you!
In this video, I’m going to show you a free tool to work out just where you do stand with Google, and some of the things you can do to improve that standing.
First, let’s look at an example of a very typical local business search and what searches are seeing.
Here you can see I’ve done a search for “mechanic Blacktown”. This is very typical of how someone would be searching with local intent – the “need” + “location”.
You can see first, we have the ads. Here it is showing only one ad, but before I refreshed, it was showing three.That’s a lot of real estate at the top of search results.
So for a lot of businesses, I do suggest having a budget for ads. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad. On average, it is $3 per click, but for a lot of businesses, you may be looking between $1 and $5 per click.
A lot of people do get scared by this, but think about the lifetime value of a customer.
How much would you be willing to spend to get one? Think for a mechanic, for example, with services every six months, the average customer is going to be worth thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that customer. So if it costs $50 to secure a new customer, that’s money well spent.
After the ads, we have the maps results and then way down the page are what we call the organic results, which probably most searchers don’t even scroll to see.
Going back to my search query, 46% of the searches on Google include local intent like this, with 28% of those leading to a purchase, and up to 78% if the search is conducted on a mobile.
So how are you ranking in Google?
Knowing how much real estate and the percentage of clicks it gets, let’s look at the Google Maps results we see in search results. And for this I’m going to use a free tool from Surfer Local.
First, I’ll search for and select a Google Business Profile – these used to be called Google My Business Listings, if that’s the name you’re familiar with – and then I put in the search query I was interested in.
What Surfer Local does is then show how your Google business profile ranks in the Maps results. In this example, you can see the business is generally ranked somewhere below the 20th in the results.
Now, this is why tools like this are so important if you’re the business owner to get the real picture of how you are ranking. There are two reasons why this tool is so important:
Google will give some weighting to businesses that are close to the searcher, and if you’re doing a search yourself to see where you sit, you’re probably doing it from your own place of business.
Google does skew the results it shows to you to you based on your own preferences, search history, and even your browser actions.
Zooming into the results, you’ll see that nearby searches show better rankings, but outside of that, the picture is not so rosy. There’s really a lot of work that needs to be done if this business owner wants to get results out of Google.
So if you’re not performing so well, what can you do?
I’m not going to go into great detail around this, but these are some of the more obvious and easy things you can do.
1. Optimise your Google Business Profile.
There are a few things you can do, but the top priorities are going to be…
Making sure that the primary and secondary business categories you have listed are correct.
Then make sure that your business name, address and phone number are still correct. Pretty obvious, but sometimes businesses haven’t updated. They’ve moved, whatever’s happened, that’s not up to date.
And lastly, make sure that Google is telling you your profile is 100% complete.
Now, I do say lastly, but there are extra things that you can continue doing on an ongoing basis that will keep your Google My Business or Google Business Profile up to date and something that Google will like to rank better for you.
2. Make sure that your website is optimised.
It’s making sure that you’ve optimised for the keywords you selected as categories in your Google Business profile.
It’s making sure that your business name, address and phone number are still correct, and match up with what you have in your Google Business profile.
And if you look up just about any article about on page SEO, implement those recommendations. There’s a tonne of articles about on page SEO, a tonne of how-to’s. All of those, it’s pretty standard recommendations, so you can follow just about any one of those, and that will give you a good basis for moving forward.
3.Listyour business in business and industry specific directories
Think of True Local, for instance.
These should in large part reflect the content of your Google Business profile. What these are, therefore, is to pretty much lend some credibility to your Google Business profile. It’s telling Google that, yes, this is a legitimate business, and there are all of these other business directories that are referencing your business so Google can rest assured that somebody exists at this business location.
4. Look at getting more Google reviews.
Over the years, many SEO professionals have gone back and forth on whether Google reviews do have a direct impact on your ranking.
Even if they don’t, here’s what they do. They give you massive social proof, and they encourage people to click.
When people click, it’s telling Google they have got it right. If people don’t click, then Google assumes that maybe they’ve got it wrong and they’re going to reshuffle the results.
So the more Google reviews you have, the more appealing your listing actually looks in those search results.
So you are going to get more clicks and that is likely going to have a feedback on how you rank in the Google Maps results.
Okay, so that’s pretty much a wrap on this video.
The takeaways from this…
Make sure you know where you stand in the Google Maps results.
If you look at the results, do a search yourself, you’re going to see those ads at the top. A lot of real estate there, so worth taking a look at.
And then you’re going to see the Maps results.
So it’s really important, you know where you stand. And once you know where you stand, obviously it’s taking those actions to improve it.
The more you improve your results, obviously, the better it’s going to be for your business and the number of customers and sales that are coming in.[/expand]
Whether you need a way to manage your brand assets for yourself or you’re part of a team, knowing where everything you need is, when you need it, can get a bit overwhelming.
With Brandy, you’ll have one place to manage all versions of your logo, colour palettes, font combinations, business descriptions, and a whole lot more.
For ourselves this deal was a no-brainer.
With unlimited users and brand spaces you can:
💥 Have one space for all your brand assets. 💥 Keep bio pics for your people in one place. 💥 Have a media kit you can share with everything a media outlet would need. 💥 Brand each brand space with its own logo. 💥 Set a subdomain for each brand space so if you ever need to share a URL, it’s your own branded URL people see. 💥 Use it for clients if you are managing brand assets for other businesses.
