Google Docs is something we use a lot of here at Zeald, and is a great tool that we feel many other businesses can benefit from. Google Docs is a free Web-based office suite and data storage service offered by Google. It is a free alternative to costly suites such as Microsoft Office, allowing you to create spread sheets, presentations and documents with ease. Google created Docs based on the idea that not all users have the need for the more technical functions. This means they have created a simpler suite with many advantages that set it apart.
 
Google Docs is an online application which means that it can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. By simply logging in, users are able to see their documents from wherever they are. This is handy for people who are always on the move or need to shift between computers a lot. Documents created on software such as Microsoft Office can be uploaded onto Google Docs which makes Google Docs a handy option for storage.  Each user is given 1GB of storage space for free and documents created within Google Docs do not count towards this quota. Users are also able to pay for additional storage.



Google Docs is highly focused on aiding collaboration. Users are able to choose who is able to view their documents and give other users permission to edit them.  Up to 50 users can edit a document at one time, and each user is able to see what the other users are doing in real time. Google Docs also has a chat feature within the document to allow users to have discussions during their collaboration. This means there is no need for email attachments and multiple copies of documents. Instead there is one copy of the document that is accessible to everyone who has permission to view and edit it. Google Docs also keep a record of past versions of the document, which means that if someone makes a change you’re not happy with, you will be able to restore it back to the old version.



 Another useful feature of Google Docs is the form creator. Users are able to create interactive forms with ease and email them straight to the people they wish to fill them in. When a form is created it is put on its own webpage so the link can be passed on to people. Google Docs will then record their responses in a spreadsheet for the user to easily analyse.  This is useful for things such as surveys. Just create the survey using the form creator, send it out to the people you wish to survey and read the results through the Google Docs spreadsheet!

 Joining Google Docs is as simple as signing in to your Google account and clicking on the 'Documents' tab or visiting www.docs.google.com and signing in to your google account. If you don’t already have a Google account, you can create one for free by visiting www.docs.google.com and clicking 'Sign up for a new Google Account'. There’s no software to download – it’s all on the net. So sign up, sign in and have a play. We’re sure you’ll find it as handy as we do!

We want to help... Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website.  Please talk to us

We are often asked this question not long after a new website has gone live. To answer this question we first of all need to explain how Google works…

Google employs some of the world’s greatest minds to continually develop the complex ranking process which ensures that the top results of a user's search are of the highest relevance and quality.

This is of course what makes Google the world’s most popular search engine.

Understanding how Google works

Google is constantly looking for new websites and updated content on the Internet using automated programs known as 'spiders' or 'robots'.

These robots use links between websites to travel around the internet and find new websites. If your website is not linked to the rest of the web, the robots will not be able to access it. And Google will not be able to find it.

When Google finds a new web page, it will analyse the content, known as 'crawling' the content. It will then transport the information back to the Google data centre, where Google stores it, known as 'caching'.

Once Google has a copy of your website in its index, it will send out the robots to check for new content on a continual basis. If the robots find new or updated content Google will add it to its index. The period between visits will vary from site to site, but the robots are intelligent and they will not waste their time visiting websites regularly if the content does not change regularly.

Relevancy

Once Google knows about your website, it then needs to calculate the 'relevancy' of each page to a user's search term. So when a user performs a search with Google, Google calculates the relevancy of search term to the web page. If the search term is not relevant, or the search term does not match the content of the web page, Google will not list the page in the results.

Google also uses geographic location to help match a website to a user's search query. Google will try to serve web pages that match the users geographic location.

Quality

Relevancy is just part of the equation. Remember there are likely to be hundreds, thousands or millions of other websites that are 'relevant' to a user's search query. And only a few spots on the front page of the search results. Therefore, the next thing Google does is calculate the 'quality'. This allows Google to position the web pages that are most relevant and of the highest quality at the top of the results page. This is of course what makes Google the world’s most popular search engine.

Calculating the relevancy and quality

Google uses a very complex 'formula' or 'algorithm' to calculate the relevancy and the quality of a web page to a user's search query.

This formula uses many factors to help calculate the relevancy and quality of a web page, including and not limited to:

• Keywords found in the content of the page
• The headings
• Links on the page
• Hidden Meta data found in the code of the page
• External links that link to the page

Google awards ranking for a page based on how often the keywords appear, how prominent they are on the page and the location of the keywords on the page.

Therefore, the more focused you are on a certain topic, the better you will rank, as Google will believe that you are an expert on the topic.

Let’s use an example

Let’s say you have a website focused on photography services in Wellington. Let's say a user performs a search using “photography wellington”. Google, at the time this article was written, lists 411,000 web pages that match this search term. That is 411,000 different websites that are relevant to this search term.

Google has a tough job to order this list to ensure the websites at the top are the most relevant and of the highest quality.

The top listings are websites of photographers based in Wellington. If we look further down the list we will see websites with less relevant content, for example photography equipment suppliers, etc..

Now we know how Google works...lets apply this knowledge to our website...

Does Google know about my website?

Now that we have a greater understanding for how the search engines work, we can turn our attention to finding our website on Google.

The quickest way to find out is to perform a 'site' search. You can do this by entering Site: [your website address] into Google as shown below:

If your website has been listed you will see a list of all the pages of your website that Google has stored in its cache.
Next you can find out which search terms your website is ranking for. The easiest way to do this is to check your Search keywords, traffic report. If you are a Zeald client, you will be able to find this report in the admin of your website under the "Reports" tab.

If other people have found their way to your website via these search terms, chances are your website is ranking well for them. Try a Google search using the search terms to see where your website is currently positioned.

What if my website is not listed?

If your website is not listed with Google, your search for the site will result in something like this:


This means that Google has not discovered your website yet, or has not completed the content crawling and storage process.

Tell Google about my new website

You need to ensure that Google knows about your website or connect your website to the rest of the internet so Google robots can find your website. You can do this by submitting your site to Google and/or generating inbound links to your website.

But I have already submitted a sitemap?

Once you have submitted your sitemap, there is usually a delay before which you can find your website on Google. This is because the robots still have to find their way to your website and complete the process, which can sometimes take up to 3 months. Unfortunately you can't rush Google but there are things you can do to speed up the process.

How do I speed up the process?

There are a few things that you can do to ensure that your website is found and the content crawled as soon as possible:

1. You need to ensure that you have submitted your website
2. Or that you have some inbound links to create a pathway for the robots to be able to access your website
3. To get your website instantly to the top of Google for targeted search terms, use Google’s advertising program, called Adwords.

How do I get my website to the top of the Google results for a keyword of my choice?

There are various techniques you can do to improve a web site's ranking in Google's organic search results for chosen or targeted keyword phrases. This process is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and is a large topic that requires another article.

>Stay tuned for our next article on how to optimise your website

Or... you can get your website to the top of Google for targeted search terms using Google’s advertising program, called Adwords. By setting up Google Adwords you can create a listing and choose search terms that will trigger your listing or advertisement. The good thing about Google Adwords is that you don’t pay unless someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your website.

You might pay as little as 5c per click, especially if it is your own business name, which will be less competitive.

>Learn more about Google Adwords

>Learn more about Search engine advertising

Last month, we went over the importance of identifying the right keyword phrases for your website and how you can do it yourself. Now that you have gone through and identified them, you can use these phrases to create a pay per click (PPC) campaign with Google Adwords. Why do you need to bother with Google Adwords? Have a read of our post on why Adwords is a great cost-effective way to promote your website.

So how does Google Adwords work?

When you did the keyword analysis, you would have ended up a whole bunch of keyword phrases which are part of keyword segment groups (i.e., the keywords within each segment group share a common theme. So for Giveaduck, one segment would be 'bath toys', with a number of phrases associated with it like 'baby bath toy', 'water toy' etc.) For each of these segments you will create an Adgroup. And for each Adgroup, you will create an advert that Google will display when a user searches for any of the keywords within that keyword segment. If a user clicks on your ad, you will pay Google an amount that you setup.

The structure of a Google Adwords account

The structure of Google Adwords is made up a campaign (which could be area specific like NZ or Aus). Under each campaign, you have an Adgroup (which is the keyword segment) and you will create an ad for each Adgroup which will use the keyword phrases under that particular segment.

How does Google position your ads?

Google calculates your position in the paid search results based on the number of other companies competing on your target search phrases. So if there are no competitors, you will pay the minimum cost of 5c per click and be at the top of the page. However, it is unlikely (and very lucky) that you will have zero competition. So when there are other companies competing for the same phrases, Google calculates your ad position based on an equation which is determined using maximum cost per click (CPC) and the relevancy of your ad and the landing page compared to the keywords.

Make your ads and landing pages relevant to your keywords

If there is one thing that you should always keep in mind when setting up a Google Adwords campaign is RELEVANCY. It is very important that you make your ad and landing page highly relevant to your keywords. This is why we go through so much trouble to segment our keywords. For example for Give a duck we determined a segment “Bath toy” which contains many phrases centered around the theme “bath toys”, such as "baby bath", "bath for baby", "bath toy", "water toys", "bath for kids", etc. So with this in mind we would create an ad using these keywords and we would also make sure that these search phrases were incorporated into our landing page so it all ties in togethere and makes sense for the user.

Create new campaign

Before you create a campaign you'll need to sign up to Google Adwords account - simply follow the directions supplied by Google.

You should create campaigns to target customers who browse the Internet:

• from a specific geographic area
• using a specific language
• with a certain type of device, i.e., only mobile phones
• using different networks, i.e., Google search or display network information sites using Google Adsense programme

Setup different campaigns if you are targeting different geographic locations. For example, we might decide to sell rubber ducks to New Zealand and also Australia. We would create a separate campaign for each country and label them 'Rubber duck nz' and 'Rubber duck Aus'. We can also create a campaigns specific to regions within a country i.e., Auckland and Wellington. For example a photographer in Wellington, will target Wellington only.

A few steps to help you set up your campaign on Google Adwords:

1. Name your campaign
2. Select the relevant location. This can be either entire country, a city or a radius from a certain point or an arbitrary shape that you can draw on the map.
3. Select the language
4. Choose the device type (we recommend starting with all devices)
5. Choose a network (we recommend just the search network to begin with. You can always setup a new campaign to target the display network.)
6. Select your bidding option (we recommend starting out with automatic bidding to maximise clicks)
7. Set your budget, which is the amount of dollars you want to spend per day. This means that if you have a budget of $200 per month you would divide by 30 to give you about $7 per day. We recommend that you start with at least $200 per month, but a maximum of $500 to a $1000 per month. Of course your budget will depend on your marketing budget and how much you would like to dedicate to your website. The number of clicks that you will receive for your daily budget will depend on how competitive your industry is. So how many other people are competing for your same keywords and how much budget they are allocating towards it, which is known a 'bidding' for the keywords. The number of clicks will also depend on how relevant and compelling your ads are to your target keywords and your landing page. We think that $200 is a great start and it will give you a good idea as to your return on investment. This budget per day means that if you receive $7 worth of clicks for the day, Google will hide your ads and not show them again until the next day. If you do not receive $7 worth of clicks then you will save the money.
8. Don't worry about advanced settings
9. Click next

Setup Adgroup

Before we go over how to set up an Adgroup on Google Adwords, we have a few tips below on how to write a good ad:

1. Use your most popular search phrases in your ads, especially the title of the ad. Meaning for every keyword segment you have identified in the keyword analysis, you'll have a list of keywords and you need to pick the ones with the highest search volume and high relevancy. Choosing these phrases means that your ad will be relevant and cost you less to get to the top. Google will also bold the keywords in the ad to highlight them to a user. This will make them more attractive to the user.
2. Check out what local competitors are doing and also look at what what might be working globally i.e., try a google.co.uk search for the same keyword phrases and see what the ads look like.
3. Convey your unique selling proposition (USP) in your ads. For example, “money to charity”, “Largest range”, "Good price", etc. are all good USPs.
4. Add a call to action and it's always great to create a bit of urgency i.e., "Buy Now", "Don't miss out", etc.
5. Add a compelling offer. For example, "Free delivery", "Mothers day sale", "Half price", etc.
6. Think about qualifying your customer. For example if we only sell rubber ducks, we don't want to incur the cost of people clicking on our ad if they are not interested in rubber ducks. So whatever segment you are creating an ad for, you need to make up an ad that compels clicks that result in buying your products or services.
7. Include prices if possible - again this is a great way to make sure that people that click on your ad are actually willing to pay the price. It's also a great way to convey discounts.
8. Split test multiple ads. This means for each Adgroup, create at least two ads with one or two elements that are different so you can find out what's working better. So you can choose to change the headline to see if that makes a difference or you can choose to change the offer in the ad to see what's perceived as more important. It will also allow you to test which ad clicks actually result in sales.
9. Avoid using competitor brand names

Steps for setting up an Adgroup

1. Choose a keyword segment for your first Adgroup. We have decided to start with the segment “bath toys”.
2. Review the top most popular search phrases to work out the keywords that you should use in your ad. Our top phrases include: "bath for baby", "bath toy", "water toys", "bath for kids", "bath toys", "toys bath". We would use phrase “bath toy for baby” in our ad which includes most of the words from all our top phrases, especially the headline.
3. Write your headline
4. Write each description line
5. Set your display URL. Again use your target keywords or phrases that help to qualify the user. For example we used www.giveaduck.org/RubberDuck. Note this does not need to be the actual URL. It is there to give the user an idea of where they are going to be taken. It must incorporate your domain i.e., giveaduck.org
6. Set your description URL. Find the most suitable landing page that the visitor is taken to when they click on your ad. Make it specific to your ad, make it relevant and ensure that it uses the target search phrases. Avoid sending people to your generic homepage.
7. Copy and paste all the keywords associated with the chosen segment from your research, into the keywords field.
8. Save your ad. Once you have set this up, the ad will be sent to a real person at Google to authorise the ad who will make sure that it fits their ad guideline.

Split test your ad

It is very important that you split test your ad. This means just changing one or two aspects of a Ad group to test out what's working better. It will allow you to test which offer is perceived as being more attractive and which ad click actually converts into a sale. But remember not to set up more two ads at a time for each Adgroup, unless you have many 1,000s of people visiting your site.

Steps to create a split test

1. Create a new ad under the campaign. You can do this once you have saved your ad, you can click to add a new ad under the campaign.
2. Avoid making too many changes to the ad - just change either the headline, or your offer or your USP.
3. In our case, we want test out our offer vs. the USP. So we are trialing out to see if users are more motivated to click an ad because of charity or because of free delivery.

Note that Google will start monitor your split tests and if one them if really under performing, it will cease to run that ad so as to make sure that your click rate is high.

Billing

We recommend that you use the Postpay billing option to ensure that your ads are running smoothly. Often a prepaid balance will run out and your ads will dry-up, meaning once your prepaid balance is out, you will have no click throughs. This means that you will start to lose traffic and more importantly you will lose important test data. It makes it difficult to test and tune your ads and your landing pages if you have big holes in your reports.

Postpay billing option doesn't have to be a scary option because you will have set your budget before hand anyway so there is not way Google will let your spend go over your budget and if you decide that you don't want to spend anymore money on Adwords, you can go in and cancel anytime you like.

Going Live

Your ads will not go live straight away because Google will need to review the ads to make sure that they pass their criteria. This will usually take around a day or so before your ad can go live.

Set up the next Adgroup

Follow the same steps to setup ads for the rest of your keyword segments from your keyword research.

We've tried to make this process as simple as possible but if you're finding that this is too complex or it is taking too much of your time, you can fast track it and get us to help you with it instead. Contact us to find out more.

As you might have read our article on the importance of doing a keyword analysis, identifying the right search phrases has a number of advantages. And it is the most important step before setting up a Pay per click (PPC - Google Adwords) campaign and also optimising your organic search engine ranking.

Before we get started....

In this article, we are taking you through a "simplified version" of the exact process our Google Adwords specialist follows to arrive at the right phrases (we simplified it a little to make it a bit easier). We encourage you to follow this process but please note that it is complex and there is no other way to simplify it without losing value. If you feel that the full process is too difficult to follow, you can get started on the first couple of steps which will still give you a good idea of what your customers are searching for on Google. Otherwise, you might be interested in our Pay per click (Google Adwords) service, which includes a keyword analysis - contact us to find out more.

Tools for the job

We recommend that you use Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a similar package to follow this process - and you will need to have sound Excel skills to complete this process. You will also need access to the Google Adwords Keyword tool.

Step 1: Brainstorm seed keywords

Brainstorm all the phrases your customer could be typing into Google to find your business. Now put yourself in the shoes of your customer and imagine yourself in front of Google. What would you type into the search field to find a solution to your problem? This means starting with 'seeds' which is an idea and then thinking of a few search phrases under each seed. So for Zeald's Give a duck website which sells rubber ducks for charity - one seed might be 'rubber duck', another might be 'toy', etc.

• Think about the primary search phrases that describe your website or industry in general i.e., for the rubber duck website we would use "childrens toys".
• Make a big list of phrases - think of every possible scenario including local searches like 'rubber duck nz'.
• Consider famous brands that you might also stock as part of your business - be careful to not use a competitor brand though.
• Also consider related topical themes like "baby shower gift" that might have low competition than say "childrens toy" but still has high traffic.
• Solve the problems of your target market
• For large catalogues consider different product categories. For example rubber duck is a small catalogue, but it might be just one category of a larger childrens toys website.

Step 2: Segment the keywords

Group the phrases you have come up with into various themes, usually the 'seed' you start with can be the segment heading. The segments might be for different product groups that your company offers. Or they could be different target customer groups searching for your company's products and services in different ways. Consider different uses of the same product or different target customers or the same customer at different buying stages.

For a traditional website that does not have a large catalogue, you should have up to 5 different segments initially.  You will use these to optimise your homepage and the site in general.

A large catalogue website may have many more than 5 segments. For example an automotive parts website might have many different themes, such as brake parts, windscreens, wheels, oil, cleaning products, etc. To begin with, you should focus on the general theme of the website which would be something like "auto products", or "car parts", etc. You can repeat this exercise later to research the different categories.

Step 3: Determine search volume

We can determine the volume of each of the search phrases you have brainstormed using Google's Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool also allows you to determine search volume of a phrase specific to New Zealand or other geographic locations.

1. Once you have setup a Google Adwords account and logged in, click on 'Reporting and Tools' in the menu bar and select 'Keyword Tool'.
   

2. First thing change your geographical location to match your business, i.e., for Give a duck this would be New Zealand. Click on 'Advanced Options' (next to United States and English) and choose the your desired location.

3. Now copy and paste your seed keywords, one segment at a time into the 'Word or phrase' box and click 'search'. Google will come back with a big list of search phrases related to your seed word segment along with search volumes for each.

4. On the left hand menu, Set the 'Match type' to be 'Phrase' - Google will return the search results with quotes around the phrases which are the exact search phrases in the order that you typed into the box. It might have additions around it like adding 'buy'. This step will be very helpful later on when you start a PPC campaign.

5. Export the results to Excel using the Download button. Copy and paste the results into an Excel spread sheet - call the tab something like 'Primary keywords'.

6. Keep the words in keyword groups by adding a new column at the start of the sheet and filling it with the segment title, i.e., rubber duck. So every keyword should have the relevant segment heading next to it.

7. Repeat this for each segment and make sure that you run a separate keyword search for every different geographical location. Keep adding the search results back into the Primary Keywords tab and write the name of the segment heading next to the words for each word.

Step 4 - Shortlist your words

We now need to shortlist the phrases to a more manageable number:

1. Tidy the spreadsheet

You can do this by removing unused columns, leaving just the following columns:

• Global Monthly Searches
• Local Monthly Searches
• Estimated average CPC
• Advertiser competition
• Plus keyword phrases and segment headings of course

2. Shortlist by search volume

• Order by 'local search volume' or 'global search volume' depending on the location of your primary target market so that the most popular terms appear at the top. Use the Excel sort function for this operation.

• Delete all the rows which have 0 or low search volume, maybe 10% or 20% of your total search phrases depending on how many you have and how thorough you want to be with this process. The less phrases you have the quicker it will be but the greater the chance you could miss out on a golden opportunity.

3. Shortlist by relevancy

• Remove all duplicates. Because we have researched the popularity of each keyword segment separately with Google Adwords, there is bound to be some cross over. We need to remove this crossover. You can use the 'Remove duplicates' option under the 'Data' tab within Excel. Make sure that you choose the 'Keyword' column only.
• Work your way down each keyword/phrase and remove any rows that are obviously not relevant to your business. For example the phrase "Toy story3" is the name of a movie with a large number of page views and not really relevant to our business. Likewise with "wooden toys".
• Consider removing competitor brand names. It is not considered good practice to use competitor brand names. For example with the Give a duck website we would remove the phrase "Toys are us" because this is a competitor.
• Consider commercial intent. There is a tool available online which can give you a bit of guidance on commercial intent if you are not sure of a certain phrase yourself. Click on the 'query' button, type in the search phrase and click go. The result is a percentage so 'commercial intent of .29' indicates a commercial intent of 29% and 'non-commercial intent .29' indicates a commercial intent of 81%. Phrases with really low commercial intent can be removed as well.

This is a long and can be tedious task that requires a lot of concentration.....have lots of caffeine on hand.

Once you are done re-order the spreadsheet based on the 'Group' first and then the 'local/global monthly searches' using the 'Sort & filter' function.

Pheeeew ! Well done!

If you have followed this whole process, well done! Now you have a comprehensive list of keywords grouped into relevant themes, and ordered by their popularity.

You should also have a sound understanding for the type of language that your target customers are using online.

You should have had many different insights and hopefully discovered some nice little opportunities.

What next?

Now you can setup a PPC (Google Adwords) campaign using these search phrases and the themes you have created will form your Adgroups. You can then craft your ad-creative using the search phrase from each group with the highest popularity as your headline.

Stay tuned for our next article on setting up your own PPC campaign. It's best to work on a PPC campaign before starting with optimising your website for organic search engine rankings because PPC will give you a clear idea of which of these keyword segments and phrases are working well for your business in terms of results. Based on that you can start working on your search engine optimisation.

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into search engines like Google to find products and services that might relate to your business.

Why is it important to do a keyword analysis for your business?

1. Doing a thorough keyword analysis means that you will be putting all your efforts and investment into getting your site to the top of Google rankings for search phrases that are relevant to your business. And for phrases that people are actually looking for in the biggest numbers. This will help send targeted quality traffic to your website.

2. Going through the process of identifying your keywords will also help you learn the language of your target customers. Too many businesses use jargon that they are familiar with, but their customers don't understand what that might mean. Speaking the same language as your customers can improve your conversion.

3. You can spend a lot of time, money and resources to obtain and hold a good ranking for a search phrase. If later down the track you realise that you didn't get the right search phrases, it can be difficult to change your target phrases. This is because part of ranking well in search engines involves getting links to your site from other credible sites. An important part of those links is the 'anchor text'. 'Anchor text' is the visual text on the page that links to a site. For example in this article, one of the anchor texts is 'Pay-Per-Click campaigns' (below). The anchor text should incorporate your target search phrases for a good Google ranking. It's difficult to change the anchor text on other websites, therefore finding the right keyword phrases will prevent this from happening.

4. Knowing the right keywords is the starting point to setting up effective Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

An example...

A pig hunter ran an online business selling pig hunting DVDs internationally. Doing a keyword analysis revealed that very few of his target customers actually referred to it as 'pig hunting'. His American customers referred to it as 'hog hunting'. His European customers referred to it as 'boar hunting' and only Australian and New Zealand customers called it 'pig hunting'.

A quick check on Google Insights can show this information:

So how do you go about finding the right keywords/search phrases for your business? Read our article on how to do a keyword analysis.

Working with the Zeald marketing department I have noticed this issue on a number of occasions

Companies bid on the name of a competing company to show their Google Ads at the top of the search results. In fact it happened to Zeald on numerous occasions. I won't name names, but a number of companies were bidding on the search phrase "Zeald" and "Zeald.com" to trigger their ads for their web services.

As you might imagine, we have issue with this. It was blatently obvious these companies were trying to scrape away our valuable leads and ride on the back of our hard earned marketing dollars.

The problem with this...

We do not recommend that our clients or anyone for that matter utilise such underhanded technique with their Google Adwords Advertising. Sure there are occasions where the company name is very generic and is not really a company name anymore. FOr example "The web design company" is the name of a New Zealand company. But it is also a very generic and common search phrase. Whereas the word or name "Zeald" is a made up word and can only be associated with our company.

As a company we invest significant amounts of time effort and money into building our brand. So when people think of websites, they think of Zeald. It is a very important element of building an effective business. We spend money and effort advertising our website address and encouraging leads to visit our website. is might be newspaper ads, word of mouth, radio etc. Of course these days, most people use Google to help them find a website and will simply enter "Zeald" into Google to find us. Now when they do this and a competitors ad shows at the top, and entices a percentage of those hard won leads away from our website, our marketing department are not so happy.
The other issue is that these underhanded businesses show at the top of the results and our potential leads associate them with us which does not reflect well on our brand

Googles Adwords trademark policy

So we looked into ways that we could stop this. We discovered a great article from Google which outlines
Google's AdWords and AdSense trademark policy

In this article Google explains that they take this issue seriously and prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers as outlined in their AdWords Terms and Conditions . Advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.

Google Adwords trademark complaint form

However that does not of course stop some businesses from leaching from another businesses marketing spend. To enforce this Google ask that you make a formal complaint and tell them about the infringement. They provide a Google Adwords trademark complaint form that is reasonably painless to fill out.

Some important points regarding this form:

1. Your company name will of course need to be officially registered with the companies office and you will need to provide a registration number as proof
2. Google do not investigate use of trademarks as keywords in certain regions but New Zealand and Australia are on the list of countries that Google do investigate
3. You will need to specify exclusions if you would like to allow agencies to use your trademark to advertise on your behalf

Google do not guarantee that they will action your complaint

Once you submit your complaint, you should not hold your breath. Although the Zeald case was actioned in a few weeks, some cases are not so cut and dried. The name "Zeald" is a "made up name" and although using a made up name does not help with our SEO because it does not include important relevant search phrases like "website" or "design" it does mean that we own it and Google are sure that it belongs to us.

However if you had a company name for example "Website design company" then yes you will do well in the organic search results, however it is hard for Google to differentiate between the company name and a generic and common search phrase. Google will not allow dis-allow other Adwords advertisers from using this "Trademark" as a search phrase as it is also a very generic and common search phrase.

Before you optimise your website for the search engines you need to decide what keywords and key phrases you will target in the search engines.  You will want to target keywords and phrases that your target customers will be searching on.

Try to think about keywords and phrases that are not too common. Also think about combinations of keywords such as “barbeque steak, order online, New Zealand”.

Think about your target customer– put yourself in their shoes.  If you were your customer, what would you type into a search engine if you were searching for your product or service?  Unless you have a well-established brand, they will definitely not type-in your brand name.  They are going to search for the type of product or service they are looking for, or the features of the product or service they are looking for.

Start brainstorming a list of keywords and phrases that your target customer is likely to be searching on.  Think about what your product or service does.  What are the features?

Check out your competition to see what keywords they are targeting.  You can use the Meta Tag Analyser on the Zeald website to check out the keywords your competitors use. (www.zeald.com/Resources/Free+Tools/Meta+Tag+Analyzer.html)

Think about misspellings, variations and strange ways of typing your key phrases. It’s amazing how much traffic you can receive based on words that are spelt incorrectly.

Geo-Targeting Keywords
Geo-targeting your keywords is where you target your keywords at a particular geographical region or population segment.  Remember – most search engines are global.  But if you can only deliver products or services within a specific geographical location, then consider targeting your keywords at that geographical area.  For example, if you deliver Indian meals in Albany, Auckland, then use keywords like “New Zealand, Albany, Indian Food”.

Finally, once you have a long list of keywords and key phrases it is time to do some analysis on them to see which are the best ones to target.  The best way to do this is to use a 'keyword research tool'.  An outline of the different keyword research tools is below.

1. Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com)
   The most popular of all the keyword research tools.  There is a simple free version and then a paid version that has more functionality.
2. Google Adwords Keyword Research (adwords.google.com)
   Google Adwords contains a keyword research tool within it available for anyone who has a Google Adwords account.

Based on the information provided by your keyword research tool, you should be able to narrow your list down to a small set of keywords and phrases to target.

Now you should be able to produce a list of the following:

• No.1 Keyword or Phrase - Your No.1 keyword or phrase is the priority keyword or phrase that you would like to target in the search engines.
• Secondary Keywords or Phrases - Your secondary keywords or phrases should be a short list of secondary keywords and phrases that you would also like to target.

Once you have discovered your target search phrases the next step is to saturate the content of your web pages with these keywords. Ensure that important keywords have pages of content specifically dedicated to them.

This section looks at how you can optimise your web pages to increase your chances of achieving good page rankings, for target keywords and phrases within the search engines.

Search engines rank your web page, for a keyword or phrase, based on the location of the keyword or phrase and the frequency the keyword or phrase appears in your page. Location is where on the web page a keyword or phrase is located and frequency is how often it appears on the web page, with some locations more important than others. Each of the key locations is outlined below, ranked in order of highest importance:

Theme your web pages

One of the best ways to optimise your web pages is to structure them into well defined themes.  One of the best aspects of themes is that they help keep your website well organized and on-topic - something that can become quite difficult as your online presence evolves and grows.  A correct theming structure will help you maintain a clear delineation between the different areas of your site, and allow you to target specific keywords and keyword variations to particular sections.

A themed website should follow a structure similar to this:

• First level:  Buy Meat Online in New Zealand
• Second level:  Buy Beef Online
• Third Level:  Buy Beef T-Bone Steaks Online

The key is to forget about the search engines as much as possible and just write and create your site with the single purpose of reaching your target audience.  Stay focused on this goal alone.  When you are done, then you can review it in the light of the guidelines below and tweak it to fit.

Content optimisation guidelines

• Incorporate the important key words and key phrases in the 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2' and 'Heading 3' formats.
• Optimise your meta data so that it includes your key words and key phrases.
• Include key words and key phrases in your internal links between pages whenever possible.

Title

The most important place to locate your keywords or phrases is in your web page titles. The title is the text that appears in the title bar of the web browser.

Headings

The second most important place to locate your keywords and phrases is in the headings of your website content. Within any web page you can have different levels of headings (heading 1, 2, 3 and so on). ‘Heading 1’ is the most important, with sub-headings having less ‘importance’.

Main text

The main text is one of the key content areas of your web page. It is the key area where you can influence the frequency of a keyword or phrase on your web page.

Graphics

Text that is inserted as a graphic on your web page cannot be ‘indexed’ by the search engines. However, graphics can include something called ‘alt’ text, which describes what the image is ‘about’, and this can be indexed. Make sure you use the ‘alt’ field to describe what each of your images is about.

Meta data

Meta data is the information that is included on a web page that is invisible to the online user, but is visible to a search engine. Meta information is designed to explain to a search engine what a web page is about. There are a number of different types of Meta information that can be included in a web page. The two most important types are:

Meta description

The Meta description in a web page describes in ‘plain English’ what the web page is about. The Meta description is very important, as some search engines will use this to describe your web page in the search results.

Meta keywords

The Meta keywords in a web page outline the key words that best describe the content of your web page. The use of Meta keywords has been subject to abuse by many authors in a quest to obtain higher search engine rankings. Because of this, many search engines now disregard Meta keywords completely, so do not spend too much time on your Meta keywords selection.

It is difficult to balance the needs of writing good sales copy versus the needs of writing copy that is optimised for the search engines. It is something that you will have to work out to achieve the best balance that you possibly can. That or hire one of our specialists to do this for you.

Look to write your copy so that your shortlist of keywords and phrases appear in the elements listed above as often as possible. Try different variations and measure the results.

A careful balance

It is difficult to balance the needs of writing good sales copy versus the needs of writing copy that is optimised for the search engines.  It is something that you will have to work out to achieve the best balance that you possibly can. That or hire one of our specialists to do this for you.

Look to write your copy so that your shortlist of keywords and phrases appear in the elements listed above as often as possible.  Try different variations and measure the results.

The key search engines that you need to be aware of are (ranked in order of priority):

 

• Google (www.google.com)
   
  Google is the biggest and most popular search engine on the Internet. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, as of June 2004, Google is being used by 41.6% of users on the Net!

 

• Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
   
  Yahoo is the second-largest search engine and offers a wide range of other value-add services too. Nielsen/NetRatings reports, as of June 2004, that Yahoo is being used by 31.5% of users on the Net.

 

• MSN Search (www.msnsearch.com)
   
  MSN Search is the third-largest search engine. MSN Search is very popular because it is provided as the default search engine when using Microsoft Windows. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, MSN Search is used by 27.4% of all users (remember some users use more than one search engine).

 

• SearchNZ (www.searchnz.co.nz)
   
  SearchNZ is a specialty search engine for finding New Zealand websites.

 
 
The key directories that you need to be aware of are (ranked in order of priority):

 

• Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)
   
  The Open Directory Project is a free directory maintained by 65,000 volunteer editors (as at September 2004). The ODP is used by Google and some smaller search engines to provide directory results for their customers.

 

• Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
   
  Yahoo originally started as a commercial directory before becoming a predominately crawler-based search engine in late 2002. The Yahoo Directory is maintained by a number of paid editorial staff and the results are used within Yahoo Search and many other search engines affiliated with Yahoo.

 
 
The following are currently the key NZ-based directories; they maintain their listings using paid editorial staff that ensure that the coded key words and phrases are indeed relevant search-wise to your product or service before adding to the directory:

 

• NZSearch (www.nzsearch.co.nz)

• NZS (www.nzs.co.nz)

• NZPages (www.nzpages.co.nz)