Damn your love, Damn your lies.
Oh chain redirects, they’re nearly inevitable when running large scale websites (small too). At some point you redirected a link, then you redesigned your site and redirected that link again. Maybe you didn’t even realize the link got redirected. Next thing you know, you click A, it redirects to B, and well B redirects you to C, and if you’re lucky you eventually make it to your destination D. Well, if you have a large, long running website you probably have some chain redirects that could use some cleanup.
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Google My Business recently launched a new feature called “Posts.” With the new feature you can engage viewers with a business update, announce a new product or service offering, share a promotion, lead them to a Call-to-Action (CTA), or share your next event. Posts appear on your Google business listing (“Google My Business”) and on valuable search engine results pages. Prime real estate!
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Google has taken control of your business description in search results. Specifically, the description that is on the right of search results in your Google My Business (GMB) description, above address and below your business name, and on Google Maps. Google makes the distinction this is an “editorial summary.” So what are your options to change the editorial summary if it is inaccurate or undesirable?
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About the New Character Limits for Expanded Text Ads
Google announced the launch, and eventual changeover, to an Expanded Text Ad format in mid-2016. The Expanded Text Ads gave a boost to the clickable real-estate of the ad, and a longer description for more detail. If you haven’t updated your older ads, you’re missing an opportunity to increase your position and Click Through Rate. Here’s a little more information:
(See below for the character limits list)
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Google Alerts is almost an afterthought to most seasoned webmasters and digital marketers, but let’s retract a minute and zoom back out to ten-thousand feet. What if you, Jane Business, could track/monitor every time a keyword was mentioned in a Google search result? How would you harvest that power?
Here’s how I would take advantage of that – I’d monitor my name, for one, but I’d also monitor topics of interest for me, my industry, or areas where I’m trying to build links back to my website or a client’s website.
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Google offers a $10,000 grant for in-kind advertising for non-profits who meet the eligibility requirements. This a great way to boost your non-profit’s visibility in the community and promote your events, fundraising activities, and volunteer-ship. Here’s what you need to know about the Google Ad Grants.
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Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a simple metric that shows that rate at which an ad impression receives a click. It’s a core measurement in Search Engine Marketing and yet, slightly misunderstood on the surface. Let’s look at this major ad performance metric.
What is Click-Through Rate?
Whenever and however you generate traffic to your app or website — be it through any channel (social, organic, referral, paid, display, email) — your links, banners, or ads will have impressions (views) and clicks. Impressions are the number of times a link or ad was seen, or rather available on the screen to be seen. Clicks are, well, people who clicked the link or ad. Click-Through Rate is the percentage of people who saw the impression and clicked it.
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Add Your Business to the Google Maps “Service Area” in Two Easy Steps!
Small businesses are often turned off to adding their business to the Google map, because they don’t actually have a physical address. Logically, this makes sense. You probably don’t want to show your home address or PO Box number to the public, and Google has accounted for this by allowing you to include a “service area.”
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As of now, Google Adwords contains six different campaign types to select. Choosing a campaign type is your first step in getting ads running, so study up. Each campaign type has secondary features that expand and contract the functionality in the campaign (e.g. Standard, All Features, Mobile app installs, Dynamic Search Ads, Call-only, Marketing Objectives, etc.). Fortunately, those features change on-page, as you select, for easy viewing.
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On Tuesday, I hosted a “Grow Your Business Online” workshop to 50 working professionals, on behalf of Big Cat Advertising. I presented on the topic of leveraging your local search presence using Google My Business, website SEO 101, and an overview of Google Adwords and best practices. The response to the event was great as we sold out a week ahead. Judging from the feedback and the reactions during the event, the topic generated a lot of engagement from small business owners; as it should, because it’s a powerful tool. I’ve released my presentation notes with links and expanded topics over on the Big Cat Advertising website. I’m enclosing the full presentation slides here to this post.
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