Google’s New Local Listing Ads

Google is currently limited Beta testing local listing ads in San Diego and San Francisco. For these cities, Local Listing Ads are available for businesses with verified free listings in Google Local Business Center under a limited set of categories.

The New Local Listing Ads are designed for small local businesses. They are to be an economical, low maintenance, ad solution with a flat monthly fee. By creating or claiming your business listing on Google Maps, a service we offer, through your Local Business Center your business can be promoted through Local Listing Ads.

Your business information and the descriptive category that you choose are used to create targeted ads that are displayed on Google.com and Google Maps to consumers in your local area when they search for businesses like yours. These ads require no management of ad creative, keywords, bidding or budget management and according to Google, are the easiest way to advertise your business to local customers. When you select a standard category that best describes your business, Google will determine the cost that ensures your ad is seen by the highest number of people looking for businesses similar to yours in your location.

This fee will vary by the business location and category. Google gives you the opportunity to confirm the flat monthly fee and has thus far stated that this fee will not be changed frequently and that you can be notified of changes 30 days in advance via your email and your LBC account messages.

In addition to providing you with full performance reporting on your Local Listing Ads clicks, and driving instructions requests, Google is also planning to offer fee call tracking for your Local Listing ads so you know when and how often your ads make your phone ring.

These calls will have a short announcement stating “this caller brought to you by Google” before the forwarded call is put through.

For more information on Google Maps Local SEO in Houston, Texas as well as how Magnetiks Search Marketing can help you increase the online presence of your business, contact us or call (281) 362-9855 today!

5 quick tips for optimizing PPC ads

In today’s economy businesses with tight budgets have to find ways to stretch their advertising dollars. One method of doing this is to refine paid advertising ads to keep them fresh and unique.

One step that a lot of advertisers forget is surveying their competition's ads that are currently running for the keywords they wish to target. You want to know what they’re doing not so you can copy their ads but so you can do something different and one up them by fashioning your ads to stand out.
 
Here are some proven tricks to help your ads stand out from the competition:

1. Add a touch of seasoning to your ads
Many marketers run the same ads year round despite the holidays and changing seasons. You can bring in big returns by taking the time to update your ads to be effective during the holidays or a particular season. Ads that reflect the current holiday theme catch the attention of and better connect with consumers because it speaks to them directly.

2. Include mention of a special deal
Special deals, special rates or special prices are popular with shoppers, especially on items they were going to buy anyway. Mentioning a limited time offer or a special online price will increase the likelihood that a shopper will select your ad above your competitors. Offer free shipping? Then include it in your ads.

3. Break the mold in your ad copy
Questions can help pull shoppers into your ad and grab their attention. Ask a question that addresses a need. You may also want to try another copywriting technique that grabs readers' attention like creating ad copy that is a bit offbeat or bizarre enough to compel the readers to click on the ad to learn more; just be careful, this technique can be easily overdone.

4. Customize the ad with geo-terms whenever possible
Include specific geographical locations in your ads, like names of cities, towns, and neighborhoods. This lets consumers know that you serve their local region.

5. Run multiple ads
It is always surprising to learn how many advertisers create one ad and run it. They don’t realize that the better way is to create multiple ads and let the consumer tell you which is the most effective ad based on performance. Let the data be your guide. You might be surprised which ads converts better.

Try a few of these approaches to give your ads a fresh look they may just increase your profits. For more information on Adwords campaign optimization or to have your Adwords pay per click campaign professional managed. Call Magnetiks Search Marketing, a search engine marketing firm in Houston, Texas for quality Adwords campaign management services at (281) 362-9855 today

Benefits of Sitemaps

Many SEO tips are out there that can help you optimize your website but one of the most underestimated of these tips is sitemap generation. A Sitemap, as the name implies, is just a map of your site showing its structure broken down into sections and the links between them. Sitemaps are a way of making the navigation of your site easier for both the search engines and the users. While robots.txt are used to tell the search engines which part or parts of your website to be excluded from indexing, your sitemap is used to tell the search engines where you'd like them to go.

Sitemaps have always been a part of best Web design practices but now that the search engines have adopted them, sitemaps are now even more important. It is important to note that Yahoo! and Bing still support the standard html format sitemaps, however, Google now uses special Extendible Markup Language, or XML sitemaps that is different from the html sitemap for human users. With that being said, for SEO purposes you can’t just only use the conventional sitemap if you want your site to be successful.

Being said, I want to clarify that having two sitemaps is not regarded as duplicate content. In Google Webmaster tools help it explicitly states that you will never be penalized by Google for using sitemaps.

Why Use a Sitemap

Not only do sitemaps provide easier navigation and better search engine visibility, but they also immediately inform search engines about any changes on your website. Now we all know the search engines won’t immediately swoop right in to index the changes but we do know that the changes will be indexed much faster than if you did not have a sitemap.

If your site is new, or if you have a significant number of new (or recently updated pages), then using a sitemap can be vital to your success. Although you can still go without a sitemap, it is likely that soon sitemaps will become the standard way of submitting a site to search engines. Though it is certain that spiders will continue to index the Web and sitemaps will not make the standard crawling procedures obsolete, it is logical to say that the importance of sitemaps will continue to increase.

Keep in mind that using sitemaps may not produce huge advantages right away but as the search engines improve their sitemap indexing algorithms, it is expected that more and more sites will be indexed fast through the use of sitemaps.

Magnetiks Search Marketing, The SEO experts in Houston, Texas, specializes in Website optimization from small and medium sized businesses. We utilize SEO best practices including sitemap generation and submission. For more information on turning your business website into your best online sales person call 281-362-9855 today!

How to Decide on Directory for Submission

Thousands of directories are available for submitting your website to but which ones are the best for you? Directory submission can be a cost effective way to build one way links from thematic categories on high quality websites and obtain links from relevant content but you have to keep a few things in mind when looking for directories to submit to.
There are hundreds of directories, and you will have to spend a lot of time when submitting but you will always get the best value for your time and money if you think quality as opposed to quantity. Now you might be wondering what makes a directory a quality directory and how do you decide?

The following are few points which can assist you in determining whether or not a directory can be considered a quality directory.

1. Page rank. While the value of page rank as a factor in website rankings has significantly diminished; a directory with good Page rank of its homepage and some inner pages can be used as an initial indicator.

2. Directory Structure. Directories with structured categories containing a moderate selection of business verticals and geographical regions will create more thematic and relevant links.

3. Domain age. Search engine do give more relevancy to older directories and consider those directories that have trusted. Links from these directories will most likely help your website rankings.

4. Number of pages indexed. If the directory itself cannot be indexed by the search engines for whatever reason, then how is a link from them valuable to you?

5. Traffic. Although they can provide you with a little traffic, Directory submission is primarily used to enhance search engine rankings by providing quality one-way or reciprocal links to your website.

6. Link Longevity. How long will your listing be active? Are they offering a permanent link, an annual or a link for few months?

7. SEO friendly? Any directory you submit to should be SEO friendly, providing a static link; not a dynamic one.  It should also provide a direct link to the landing page you choose using anchor text.

8. Paid Directory. If it is a paid directory then cost must be considered whether it is annual or lifetime.
9. Niche Directories. Niche directories are very good because they provide relevant thematic links. For Example, if your website is related to the home remodeling industry then you would submit to home remodeling niche directories.

Let Magnetiks Search Marketing handle your directory submission as part of an overall SEO Marketing plan that will help grow your business. Call (281) 362-9855 today!

Leveraging the power of your Blog

To search engines, Blogs are like daily snippets of information that are updated on a frequent basis and therefore get a lot of preference in the search results. So from this, how do you leverage the power of your blog?

Blogs aren't too much different than websites in that they increase the Search Engine Optimization, or Organic SEO efforts of a website. A Blog’s power comes from the frequency of the postings. If the search engine spiders see a pattern of frequent or regular postings, they will be more active on indexing that site. Since blogs are typically a few pages long, you only need to establish a few rules that will be applied site wide:

• Utilize a title that grabs the users attention – This is also known as link baiting - your title should entice the user into reading more
• Try to use keywords for your blog in the title - while it may be hard to do this all the time, by keeping the title and topic related your blog will always be relevant
• Make use of H1 tags - All blog editors allow the use of custom templates, so make sure you stylize your blog title in H1 tags
• Link to other blogs - Find other relevant blogs that your readers may find interesting and ask for a reciprocal link in return

• Remember your archives - You may end up posting a topic that’s not hot at the moment, but if it comes up later you need to make sure your readers can find that posting

As I’ve already stated, frequent postings are vital to the success of a blog. A couple paragraphs and a few resource links is enough, you don’t have to write up an article every time. To learn more about blogs or to utilize Magnetiks Search Marketing for all of your blogging needs, contact us or call (281) 362-9855