Letter of Recommendation

LocSea.com Page i

“Digital Marketing using Google Services”

Make your website visible on Google Search – by LocSea

Editor’s Note
Getting started with Digital Marketing for your website is quiet easy. Similar to an offline business, being active online is what Google expects from you in order to make your website come up on Google Search. A little bit of effort and time is required in this process.

This book will guide you through the process of Digital Marketing in a step by step approach. Who should read this book?
1. Business owners who need to promote their business on their own through Internet. 2. Entrepreneurs who wish to get started with their very own Digital Marketing business. 3. Digital Marketing Agencies who feel the necessity to train their employees on Digital Marketing approach
4. Students who want to learn and perform research on Digital Marketing.
5. Marketing, Sales, Business Development and Advertising Professionals who require a thorough knowledge about Digital Marketing to efficiently plan and manage a team 6. Clients who are planning to outsource their Digital Marketing Requirements should read this book and evaluate the agencies first. It will also help in tracking and asking questions on their progress.

There are so many tools available in Google! Which one will be suitable in the Digital Marketing sector for my business? It is important to know where to start, understand the flow, the tools to be used and how to approach. This book will help you get started with The World of Digital Marketing.

We are planning to have an Online Video Portal to train you on Digital Marketing from April 2015. Visit heredm.locsea.com

We are also planning to open Digital Marketing Institute in Chennai. If you are interested in funding us, please email me at balu@locsea.com.

Balu
Editor
Co-Founder and CEO, LocSea.com

LocSea.com Page ii

Book Launch Info

“ Digital Marketing using Google Services" Book byLocSeawas launched by Shri. Sivagnanam (Addl Industrial Advisor, Government of India), Shri. Kumar Jayant IAS (Secretary, MSME, Government of India), Shri. S M Jamkhandi (Director, MSME, Government of India) and Shri. Sathesh Kumar (Deputy Director, MSME, Government of India) at MSME Expo 2015, Chennai on January 24th 2015, Saturday.

About LocSea.com

LocSea is a registered Digital Marketing company in India which is also a Google Partner certified company with Qualified Google AdWords Certified Professionals, Google Analytics Certified Professionals, YouTube Ads Advanced Certified Professionals and Bing AdCenter Certified Professionals. LocSea further has a Global clientele list from US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, France, Brazil, Switzerland, Barbados, Singapore & UAE.

LocSea Specializes in Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Bing AdCenter, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Google Merchant Center (Product Listing Ads), Web Development and Android Mobile Application Development.

LocSea is a proud faculty partner for MSME DI, Chennai, Government of India and has conducted many seminars & trainings in Internet Marketing, E-Commerce, Web Development and Web Designing in India. LocSea’s focus is to educate Micro Small and Medium Enterprises on this digital space & fulfil their dream of going online to have a wider reach. This book will be a good starting point for all MSMEs to market their product online.

LocSea.com Page iii

Digital Marketing using Google Services

Make your website visible on Google Search
Copyright©2015 by LocSea Software Development Private Limited, Chennai, India. All rights reserved.

No part of this book, including content, cover design and interior design may be reproduced or transmitted in any form except with the permission of LocSea Software Development Private Limited, 923, 2nd floor, TVS Avenue, Anna Nagar West Extension, Chennai 600101, Tamil Nadu, India.

Trademarks
© 2013 LocSea Software Development Private Limited. All rights reserved. LocSea is a trademark of LocSea Software Development Private Limited.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google Logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc. © 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google Trends is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google Analytics is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google AdSense is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google Webmaster Tools is a trademark of Google Inc. © 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google AdWords is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google+ is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. YouTube is a trademark of Google Inc.
© 2012 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google MyBusiness is a trademark of Google Inc.

First Edition: 2015

Acknowledgements

This is our first book initiative from LocSea Software Development Private Limited. We take this opportunity to thank our employees Asif, Aswani, Kalee, Hirthanu, Akhila, Karthick, Nithila, Jesi, Thuvaarakkesh, Nirmal, Mithun, Anitha, Keerthana, Shiva , Ram and Avinash who contributed for this edition in various roles.

Great Team Effort. Thanks.
We also take this opportunity to thank our parents.

Regards,
Balu and Latha
Founders, LocSea Software Development Private Limited

Website: www.LocSea.com

Google Plus: www.Google.com/ +LocSea Facebook: www.Facebook.com/LocSea Twitter:
YouTube:
www.Twitter.com/LocSea www.YouTube.com/LocSea

LocSea.com Page v

Contents

Aim of this Book ……………………………………………………………1 Google Search Result Page…1
Paid Ads in Search Results …2
Organic Search Results…2
Maps Search Results…2
Local Business Search Results…2

Understanding the Digital Marketing Flow ………………………………3 Analysis…3
Organic Promotion…3
Paid Promotion…4
Tracking Your Website Visitors…4
Monetize your Website…4

Chapter 1 Google Trends ………………………………………………………………6 Get Started…8
Regional Interest…11
Related Searches…12

Chapter 2 Competitor Analysis……………………………………………………….13 How do I find my Competitor? …13

Chapter 3 Website Strategy…………………………………………………………...16 Tips…18

Chapter 4 Google MyBusiness. ………………………………………………………..19 Adding a Business…20
Adding Detailed Business Information…24
Get Custom Google MyBusiness Page URL…26
Adding Multiple Business Locations…27

Chapter 5 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ………………………………………28 Panda…28
Penguin…28
Hummingbird…28
Pigeon…29
SEO On-Page and Off-Page…30
5.1 On-Page…………………………………………………………………31

Analyze Flipkart On-Page Activities…31
HTML Tags…36
Tips…38
Robots.txt…38
Sitemap…39
W3C Validation…40
Page Speed Insights…40
Canonicalization…42
Tips…43
On Page Don’ts…43
5.2. Off-Page………………………………………………………………..44 Backlinks and analysis…44
Press Release Submissions…45
Blog Submission…45
Article Submissions…45
Directory submission…46
Forum Posting…46
Community…46
Classified Submissions…46
PPT Sharing…47
Social bookmarking…47
Off-Page Don’ts…47
Tips…48
What is Anchor Text? …48
Day to Day Approach…48

Chapter 6 YouTube……………………………………………………………………50 Creator Studio…51

Chapter 7 Social Media Optimization or Marketing (SMO/SMM)………………..64 Facebook for Business…64

How to create my business page?…64
Twitter for Business…76
Tips…77
Pinterest for Business…78

The Sign-up, Boards and Pins…78
Product Board…78
Content Board…78

Instagram for Business…79
The strategies followed by leading brands…79
A Backstage Pass…79
Source of Motivation…79
Customer sharing…79

Google Plus for Business…79

LinkedIn for Business…80

LinkedIn Company Page…80

LocSea.com Page vii Chapter 8 Google AdWords……………………………………………………………84
8.1 Paid Ads in Google Search……………………………………………..81
Google Search Partners…86
Campaign Structuring and Budgeting…86
Targeting Ideas…86
Unique Selling Points…86
Call To Action…87
Preference…87
Aim…87
Keyword Planner…92
Exact Match Type…96
Phrase Match Type…96
Broad Match Type…97
Broad Match Modifier…97
Ad extensions…100
Sitelinks extensions…101
Location Extensions…102
Call Extensions…103
Billing Setup…103
Key Fields to Monitor…104
Clicks…105
CTR…105
Converted Clicks…105
Conversions…105
Optimize…107
Quality Score…107
Negative Keywords…107
Search Terms…107
Ad Schedule…108
Devices…109
Bid Adjustments…109
Reports…109
Process…110
Ad Rank…110
Ad Auction…110
Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool…111
Tips…111
Google Merchant Center…111
Google AdWords Editor…112
8.2 Display Network……………………………………………………….113
Have you seen Google Display Network Ads?…113 Aiming the right Audience…114
Display Network Ad Format…114

LocSea.com Page viii Text Ads…114
Image Ads…114

Create Display network Campaign…116

Optimize…120

Placement Analysis…120
8.3 YouTube Ads…..……………………………………………………….122 Types of YouTube ads format…122
In-Stream Video Ads…122
In-Display Video Ads…122
Steps to create a new video campaign…123
Video Ads Performance Evaluation…126

Chapter 9 Google Tag Manager ………………………………………………………127 How is this going to help me?…127
Google Tag Manager Setup…128
Container Draft…130
Tags…130
Google Analytics Tag Setup…130

Rules…132

Google AdWords Conversion Code Tag Setup…133

Chapter 10 Google Analytics ……………………………………………………………136 Introduction to Google analytics…137
Setup…137

Adding the setup code manually…139

(Optional) Adding the setup code via Google Tag Manager…139

Reporting…140
Channel Reports…141
Search Engine Optimization Report…141
Queries Report…141
Landing Pages…142
Geo Reporting…142
Technology and mobile…142
Demographics and Interests…143
What am I going to do by knowing their age, gender and interests?...143 Behaviour Flow Report…144
Conversion Report…145
Define a Goal in Analytics…145

Linking Analytics with AdWords…146

Linking Analytics with Google Webmasters Tools…146

Chapter 11 Google Webmaster…………………………………………………………148 How is this going to help me? …148

LocSea.com Page ix Add a Site and Verify…149
Select the preferred domain…152 Choose Targeting Country…152 Share access with co-workers…153 Submit a Sitemap file…153
The Crawl Errors Report…154 Search Queries Report…155 Search Appearance…155
What are rich Snippets?…156 HTML Improvements…157
Links to your Site…158
Internal links…159
Manual actions…160

Chapter 12 Google AdSense ……………………………………………………………162 What is Google AdSense? …162
Registering With Google AdSense…163
Working with Google AdSense…167
Creating an Ad Unit for your website…168
Analysing the Ad…170
Allow and Block Ads Tab…173
When Do I Get Paid?...174

LocSea.com Page x

Aim of this Book

Aim: To make your Website listed in Google Search.

Google Search Result Page
Go to Google.co.in and type this query “yoga classes in chennai”. Google Search Result for this query is shown in Snapshot 1.

Snapshot 1: Google Search Results Page

The query “ yoga classes in chennai” is also referred asSearch Term or Keywords. When you search in Google, it provides results related to search term entered. When you click on any of the search results in Snapshot 1, it takes you to the respective website.

Let us understand the Google Search Results Page shown in Snapshot 1. I have highlighted 5 sections A, B, C, D and E in Snapshot 1.

Paid Ads in Search Results (A & E):
Sections A & E are called Paid Ads. When you click on any of these Ads, Google charges certain amount per click from the respective business owner or agency who owns this ad. To create Paid Ads targeting Google Search, you should useGoogle AdWords(Chapter 8).

Organic Search Results (B):
Section B is called Organic Search Results. Google won’t charge any fee when someone clicks on this organic search results. Google uses many algorithms to provide these results by evaluating your website, reputation, contribution, history and brand presence. You should do various activities suggested inSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) (Chapter 5), Social Media Optimization (SMO) (Chapter 7) & YouTube (Chapter 6)to reach this position.

Maps Search Results (D):
Section D is called Maps Search Results. You can see many pin marks inside this map. These are search results from Google Maps for “yoga classes in chennai”. As we are specifically looking for Chennai location, Google Maps shows nearby locations. These are not paid listings. To create such listing for your business, you should useGoogle MyBusiness (Chapter 4).

Local Business Search Results (C):
Section C is called Local Business Search Results. It shows businesses located near the place searched for. You should useGoogle MyBusiness (Chapter 4)to create this listing for your business. Google MyBusiness is a free tool.

As our aim is to make your websitelisted onGoogle Searchfor yourbusiness related keywords, understanding the process flow is a key to approach your Digital Marketing. Let’s take a look at the steps involved in acquiring and engaging visitors to your website.

Understanding the Digital Marketing Flow

We have classified our chapters into five categories “Analysis”, “Organic Promotion”, “Paid Promotion”,“Tracking Your Website Visitors”and “Monetize your Website”.

Analysis
Step 1: Start with analysing your business trends by readingChapter 1 Google Trends.

Step 2: Find your online competitors and their strategy by readingChapter 2 Competitor Analysis.

Step 3: Create or Alter your website with required components to improve website visitor engagement by readingChapter 3 Website Strategy.

Organic Promotion

Step 7: The best way to make your website listed in Google Search Results for local search queries related to your business is through Google MyBusiness. Do not skip any sections in this Chapter 4 Google MyBusiness. Complete it in one stretch.

Step 8:The next step is to make your website listed in Google Search Results for any search queries related to your business by followingChapter 5 Search Engine Optimization.

Step 9: Google provides priority to informative videos in Google Search. Create few videos about your products & services. Post it in YouTube. We also have few tips for your videos. Follow thisChapter 6 YouTube.

Step 10: Social Media is your key for Branding. I would suggest you to start with Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter by creating business pages today. As your business page becomes popular, your business page and website get higher ranking in Google Search. We have described these inChapter 7 Social Media Optimization.

Paid Promotion

Step 11: If you want to place Ads in Google, readChapter 8 Google AdWords. Start by creating Simple campaign targeting Google Search as described in this chapter. You may also want to read Google Display Network and YouTube Ads section to promote your Branding.

Tracking Your Website Visitors

Step 4: To track visitors and leads, you will be asked to update your website with many setup codes. Google Tag Manager makes this process simple by setting up one time setup code on your website. ReadChapter 9 Google Tag Managerto learn more about it. We strongly encourage you to use Google Tag Manager. Please note you may choose to skip this chapter if you want to manually paste all setup codes in to the website without the help of Google Tag Manager Tool.

Step 5: It is important to analyze your website’s visitor statistics to improve your Revenue. Google Analytics is a tool used to track your website visitors. ReadChapter 10 Google Analyticsto setup, analyze and improve your website user engagement.

Step 6:You should inform Google about your website details to crawl (read) all your webpages. To submit your website details, readChapter 11 Google Webmaster Tools.

Monetize your Website

Step 12: Chapter 12 Google AdSense guides you to get started with gaining some money from your active website. If your website is new or just building content, I would suggest you to skip this until you have a website with proper content in place.

“Digital Marketing using Google Services”

1

Google Trends

Knowing your product in depth and analysing how it fares on the internet is the foremost step to be carried out. Google Trends gives you the trending search data in Google for your business. For example, as a Supermarket owner, you will be able to compare and analyze trending search terms in Google. Refer Snapshots 1.1, 1.2 & 1.3 below.

Snapshot 1.1: Comparison data in Google Trends

Snapshot 1.2: Regional Interest in Google Trends

Snapshot 1.3: Related Search Trends

By analysing the current search trends for your business, will enable you to understand the specific search terms (technically called as keywords) users enquire globally and locally. By forming your Website Content and Keyword Strategy after analysing Google Trends, you will be able to address the users by delivering them what they searched for.

Get Started
Let’s do a simple analysis in Google Trends. I want to see search trends for two keywords “supermarket” and “grocery store” in India. I would like to know which search term is more popular in South India so that I can buy my website domain name based on that. I would also use this data to form my website content around such trending keywords. I suggest you to do this analysis along with me for your business related keywords. Let’s start.

Go to www.google.com/trends (Snapshot 1.4)

Snapshot 1.4: Google Trends Home Page: Trending Now, 2014 Charts

Start searching for “supermarket” in Google Trends Search Bar

Add Term (Snapshot 1.5) to compare how other searches have fared with the current keyword.

Snapshot 1.5: Analysing the search result Supermarket

Let’s add the term ‘Grocery Store’ and analyze the results.

Snapshot 1.6: Adding the search term ‘grocery store’ for comparison

Selecting Filters in order to get a refined list is also provided. For instance,
targeting a country or selecting a particular timeline during which the searches were made is made possible with the search results (Snapshot 1.7).

Snapshot 1.7: Selecting the geographical locations for a refined search list

The option of selecting Categories of your particular search (In the case of grocery stores, the category could either be business and industrial or shopping) and the search for it as images or videos in YouTube can also be examined (Snapshot 1.8). You can also filter data for specific period.

Snapshot 1.8: Selecting the Period, Categories and Search Type

As you apply your filters, Google Trends shows the Trending data for your keywords. It provides “Interest over time”, “Regional Interest” and “Related Searches”

Interest over time shows relative search trends graph for your keywords (As shown in Snapshot 1.9). An additional feature is the availability of the news headlines and forecast feature. The news headlines feature is marked with alphabets and gives you an insight for why the search results have been high or low during that particular period of time. The forecast feature provides you with how the search term would fare later this year.

In order to see the news headlines, hover your mouse over to the point with the alphabets and click over it. The forecast is displayed through dotted lines.

Snapshot 1.9: The news headlines and the forecast

Regional Interest
The selected geographical locations display a deeper view on how the search results have performed state wise. As shown in Snapshot 1.10, “supermarket” keyword is very popular in Tamil Nadu. If you look at Snapshot 1.11, “grocery store” keyword is used more in Haryana. Tamil Nadu has a relative score of 63 when compared to Haryana for this keyword. This trend shows how people search in different states. You can further drill down to cities and take a look at specific places.

Snapshot 1.10: Regional Interest for the keyword “supermarket” Vs

Snapshot 1.11: Regional Interest for the keyword “grocery store”

Related Searches
From the Snapshot 1.12, we could see the Trending Search Queries related to “supermarket” keyword. Snapshot 1.13 shows trending queries for “grocery store”. You can also choose specific Topics of your interest and view trending search queries. If you chooseRisingtab, it shows other rising queries for the keywords entered.

Snapshot 1.12: Related Searches for the keyword “supermarket”

Snapshot 1.13: Related Searches for the keyword “grocery store”

Google Trends helps you find trending keywords or search queries in specific region or worldwide. It helps you in identifying website content and keyword strategy. You may want to choose your domain name based on current keyword trends for your business in your locality. As you noted, people in different region use different keywords to look for same business.

2

Competitor Analysis

As the name suggests, ‘Competitor Analysis’ is nothing but analysing your competitor’s website and the internet marketing strategies followed.

How do I find my Competitor?

Analyze the current keyword trends for your business using Google Trends. After finding the top keywords being used in your locality for the business you run, type the keyword or key phrase in Google Search. All the websites displayed under the Organic Search Results are to be considered your online competitor.

Snapshot 2.1: Finding the Competitor

For example, refer Snapshot 2.1: As a supermarket owner, I
searched for “online
supermarket” in Google Search to find my competitors in this
segment. I should start analysing the websites
www.chennaibasket.com and www.chennaionlinegrocery.com listed in this Organic Search Results.

You need to look at various components in your competitor’s website.

For example, let’s open the website www.chennaibasket.com (ref Snapshot 2.2) and have a look at following components:

Snapshot 2.2: ChennaiBasket.com website

Take a look at these components:
1. Website content in all pages
2. Keywords used
3. Home page design
4. Offers
5. Banners
6. Menu Items
7. Delivery Options
8. Logo
9. Pictures
10. Uniqueness
11. Security Features
12. Convenience
13. Phone Numbers / Inquiry Form / Chat (Support Options available)
14. Terms & Conditions
15. Product Information (Look at the description for products. Photos in various angles)
16. Shopping cart experience (Add to cart, Buy Now, Payment Gateway, Cash On Delivery, Card on Delivery, easy 2 or 3 steps purchase experience)
17. Customer newsletter and sign up strategy
18. Gift vouchers
19. Offers for festivals
20. Product Search
21. Social Media and Videos (How engaging? What customers speak?)
22. Reviews & Ratings
23. FAQ
24. Title, Meta Description & Image Alt Tags for every page in their website (RefChapter 5 SEO)

Collect such points for all your competitor websites and put it in an Excel. With all such points, identify best approach and flaws. You should make sure you have resolved all flaws in your website and implement best approach. Also, create your unique website strategies to differentiate your website from competitors’. Provide better Unique Selling Points and Support options.

Also, analyze your competitors’ presence in other platforms:
1. Social Media like Google +, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, …
2. Online Business Directories
3. Online Communities
4. Online Forums
5. Their Press Releases
6. Their Blogs
7. YouTube

To learn more about above platforms, please refer Chapter 5 SEO, Chapter 6 YouTube and Chapter 7 SMO

By analysing your competitors’ strategy on such platforms, you will be able to create a better approach towards your branding exercise.

3

Website Strategy

Your Website being the key for your Digital Marketing Success, the strategy followed must be thorough and complete. In order to build a strengthened Website, the following core components are essential:

1. Know your current Trends in your target location and form your Keyword and Content strategies for your Website.
2. Know your Competitor’s Website Advantages and come up with better solutions in your website.
3. Your Website Domain Name is your key to success. So choose it after your Keyword Analysis. If your Domain Name contains core keyword, it is an added advantage for you to come up in Google Search results.
3. Provide enough Content & Images to better understand your products and services.
4. Your Unique Selling Points should be highlighted to make your visitor stay. It could be Offers
Promotion for the month
Technical Specification
Availability
Shipping
Guarantee / Warranty
Sizes
Colours
5. Every page should need to have answer to “What Next?”. It is also called as “Call To Action”. You should guide your visitor. Make sure to highlight your call to action in your website. Some call to actions:
Enquiry Form
Call us Now (Phone Number)
Buy Now
Add To Cart
Book Now
Learn More
6. Easy Checkout. Your visitor should be able to complete checkout in max 2 or 3 steps. For example go to www.flipkart.com and see how easy it is to purchase a product. Do not ask unnecessary details during checkout.
7. As there is no representative to explain the technical details online, your Technical Specifications should need to have to complete descriptions.
8. Improve user confidence
Social Media Plugins
Reviews and Ratings
Website Security Feature
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Company’s Background
Google Maps Integration
9. Improve Engagement
Attractive Banners
Live Chat
Blogs
Layout of your website
Font and Background
Menus
Informative or descriptive Videos
Home page design and logo design
10. Customer/Visitor Retention strategy
Easy Signup
Newsletter Signup
Signup and download free PDF options
Remembering the user choices and showing relevant products/services

Better your website, larger and longer the users visit it. Your website serves as the base to what you have to offer and making it fare better to the customers result in a stronger faith. This in result gives you a higher sales opportunity.

Having a great website design with all above components is a key factor for your Digital Marketing success. As people enter your website, you should try various experiments to make them stay and achieve what you expect them to do on your website. It could be an enquiry or a sale or a phone call.

Please understand there is no executive to help online visitors. It’s all about your website design, content, images, videos and other support resources.

Guide your visitors and provide enough support to help them find what they need. Provide enough information to explain about your products and services. If required provide live chat/telephone assistance.

Make your website as easy and engaging as possible.

Tips:
You need to buy domain name and hosting server for your website. You may do this on your own from websites like Godaddy.com, Zoho.in, Bigrock.in … Make sure to search for best packages before you choose your Domain and Hosting provider. Compare their review especially support before choosing them.

If you are not comfortable with managing domain and hosting for your website, I would suggest you to hire an agency. At the same time, request them to buy and maintain your domain and hosting under your login details. If there is an issue, it will be easy to retain your domain and hosting server.

Mobile Responsive Website:
Many visitors are using Mobiles to view your websites. If you do not have a website version for mobile or a mobile responsive website, you are going to lose your mobile visitors. A normal website is not good for engagement of Mobile Visitors as screen size differs. You need to have proper versions created for Mobile. There are two ways to approach. Either you can create a mobile version of your website or you can make your website Mobile Responsive using HTML5/CSS3.

If you are in India and not having a mobile responsive design, you are going to miss a lot of customers.

4

Google My Business

Here is the Google Search result for the search term “Yoga classes in Chennai”. Refer Snapshot 4.1 (C & D). C is called Local Business Results and D shows Map results.

Snapshot 4.1: Local Business Results (C) & Maps (D)
To get your business listed in the local business results of Google Search, registering your business in Google My Business is necessary.
When a user looks up for a local business by indicating a specific location in their search terms, Google prioritizes the local businesses registered in Google My Business.

If you are selling a product or maintaining a brand or performing a service, registering your business in Google MyBusiness is a vital part. Cataloguing your business with Google is by far the simplest way to get into Google search results.

To make your website listed in localized search results, you should add your business in Google MyBusiness.

Adding a Business: Step 1:Go to www.google.co.in/business/ and click on “Get on Google”. Login with your Gmail ID and Password.

Snapshot 4.2 Sign Up

Step 2: Once you sign into Google MyBusiness, a page similar to the one below appears. Click on theGet your PageButton to proceed (Snapshot 4.3).
Note: In some cases, you won’t be shown this page, you can directly go to Step 3.

Snapshot 4.3 Get your page

Step 3:Choose your Business Type (Snapshot 4.4): “Shop or Service or Brand”. For Shop and Service, address verification is needed. For Brand, you will receive only phone verification.

Snapshot 4.4 Choose Business Type

Step 4: Start typing your business name in the search bar and choose “Let me enter the full business details”. In this case, I wanted to add our Organisation IIMWA. I searched for IIMWA (Snapshot 4.5).

Snapshot 4.5 Search for your New Business

Step 5: Enter Name of your business & address (Snapshot 4.6). Address field is tricky. At times, you get errors for your Street Address (as shown in Snapshot 4.7). Try various combinations for your Address field to locate your correct address.

Snapshot 4.6 Business Details

Snapshot 4.7: Address Error

You may want keep trying by splitting up the Address Field by Adding lines using “add line” link.

Category Field : Start typing & choose closely matching category for your business.
After successfully entering your address, phone number & category, submit your information.

Step 6:Authorize that you manage this business and agree to terms (Snapshot 4.7). Click on “Mail me my code” to initiate the Postal Card Verification Process (Snapshot 4.8).

Note: Please do not delay by clicking on “Continue and Verify Later” link in Snapshot 4.8. Initiate the verification process right away using “Mail me my Code”.

Snapshots 4.7 and 4.8 Confirm and Verify your Business (Postal Card Verification)

Step 7: Enter your name and click on “Send postcard” (Snapshot 4.9). A postal card will be delivered to the mentioned address with a verification code. Postal Card should arrive in 1 to 2 weeks. Make sure to collect the postal card and enter the Verification Code within 30 Days.

Snapshots 4.9 & 4.10 Initiate the Postal Card Verification process

Step 8: Click on Continue in “Postcard Sent” screen (Snapshot 4.10). It takes you to your Google MyBusiness page for your business (Snapshot 4.11). Click on “Enter code” to enter verification code. Continue with Step 9.

Snapshot 4.11 Enter Code

Step 9: If you have received your Postal Card, enter the verification code and Submit. Your business will be listed as Verified Business.

Snapshot 4.12 Submit your Verification Code

Note: If you are yet to receive your Postal Card, wait for 1 to 2 weeks. You may come back to this step any time by Clicking on “Enter Code” (refer Step 8 above). Proceed with other steps.

Adding Detailed Business Information:
Login to www.google.co.in/business/ and click on “Sign In”. Use your Gmail ID and Password to login.
Click on Manage Your Page. It opens up your Google MyBusiness Page (Snapshot 4.12).

Snapshot 4.12 Google MyBusiness Page

Click on “Edit” (Snapshot 4.12) to add more information about your Business.

Snapshot 4.13 Contact Info, Category, Hours
Contact Info(Snapshot 4.13): Click on Edit and Add Phone Number, Website and Email Category: Add specific categories Hours: Add Hours of operation Maps & Search Photos: Add photos and certificates
Introduction: Add detailed introduction about your business. Make sure to mention your core business keywords.

Once done with your basic details, it's time to engage your visitors & customers through this Google MyBusiness Page.

Engage your visitors and customers
Login to your Google MyBusiness Page here www.google.co.in/business/ and click on Manage Page.

If you scroll down, you will see this “g+ Share” (Snapshot 4.14) section. You will be able to post Text Updates, Photos, Website Links, Business Videos and Events.

Snapshot 4.14 g+ Share

Start sharing new updates, videos and events through this page. Consider this as your mini website and be very active in posting new updates about your business. Make it a practice to post at least one business update every week.

If you further scroll down on your MyBusiness page, you will see Reviews (Snapshot 4.15)

Snapshot 4.15 Reviews

Reviews are the key for your business success. Encourage your customers to leave a review on your page. As you get more reviews, your business information will be displayed with star ratings which attract users' attention.

How do I ask my customers to leave a review?
Send an email to your customers asking for their experience and rating for your business by providing your Google MyBusiness Page URL. What is my Google MyBusiness Page URL? To get your URL, follow these steps:

Place your cursor in the Top Left Corner of your MyBusiness Page (as shown in Snapshot 4.16). It opens up the Main Menu.
Click on “Google+ Page”.
Copy the URL and send it to your Customers. Ex.

Ask them to open the URL and Click on “Reviews” Tab to leave a review about your business.

Snapshot 4.16 Main Menu

Get Custom Google MyBusiness Page URL

Usually the URL for Google MyBusiness Page will be lengthy. Ex.

To have a meaningful and short URL, Google provides Custom URL for your MyBusiness Page (if you are eligible). To acquire custom URL, go to your Google MyBusiness Page, open your Google+ Page from Main Menu and Click on “About” Tab. If you scroll down, you will see “Get your custom URL” section. Click onGet URLand follow the phone verification process to acquire your custom URL.

For example, you can access LocSea’s MyBusiness page using www.google.com/+LocSea. It is very easy to remember Custom URL. So acquire one for your business.

Google Search Result Page for your business:
If you type your business name in Google Search, it shows your Business Address from MyBusiness and also Maps Location (Snapshot 4.17). This is possible only if you add your business in Google MyBusiness.

Snapshot 4.17 Google MyBusiness (Search Page with Business Address & Maps)

Adding Multiple Business Locations Do you have multiple branches? If more than one business places to be added for your business, the following would do the trick.

Go to Google MyBusiness home page: www.google.co.in/business/ and Sign in.

Click on “Manage Multiple Locations? Use Google My Business Locations” link and start adding multiple locations.

5

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is a search engine? Google is a Search Engine. Bing is a Search Engine. Yahoo is a search engine. Search Engine is a website that provides search results related to your queries. Google Search Engine uses its own Search Algorithms or programs to come up with relevant search results. Google sends a program called googlebot to crawl (Read) every website. It reads your website content and stores (indexes) it in Google’s databases. When someone enters a search query in Google Search, Google executes the algorithms to evaluate indexed content from the database and decides on the relevant search results to be displayed to the user. Algorithms are nothing but functions or programs in other words.

There are various search algorithms developed by Google. I will explain about few key algorithms in brief.

Panda: Panda algorithm is used to evaluate the website content and make a decision on sites with poor quality content. It helps Google rank websites with high quality content higher in search results. Google updates this Panda Algorithm time to time.

Penguin: Having genuine referral links to your website from good quality websites is the key for success for your Search Engine Optimization strategy. These referral links to your website is also called as Back Links. People do acquire false back links by way of doing link exchange or by acquiring links for money to push their website in Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Penguin algorithm is used to evaluate such activities and find such websites with false back links. This helps Google provide quality search results.

Hummingbird: Hummingbird algorithm provides Conversational Search results. For example, ask these questions to Google.

Snapshot 5.1 Hummingbird

Snapshot 5.2 Hummingbird

Hummingbird algorithm can understand and provide the answers to you (In addition to the search results).

That’s the power of hummingbird.

Pigeon : Pigeon Algorithm is used to provide relevant and accurate Local Business Search Results. For example, here is the search result page for “paediatrician in anna nagar” (Snapshot 5.3):

Snapshot 5.3 Pigeon

SEO On-Page and Off-Page

Online presence is not a one stop act. Being very active in this Internet World is highly necessary in order to maintain consistency. Having just a website is not going to bring you traffic. Promoting it constantly alone brings your website further up in the search results. Hence optimizing your website in order to achieve a top slot in the search results is necessary for your business to fare better.

We classify SEO activities into two
On-Page (Tuning your website)
Off-Page (Activities you do outside your website)

On-Page
On page optimization is the process in which you tune your website to improve the user experience and site performance.
For example: It is important to have a better Title and Meta Description to have a meaningful website description in Google Search.
It is important to reduce the Flash and Script issues to improve the performance. It is important to follow W3C Standards in order to reduce the coding errors.

Off-Page
Creating an awareness of your brand is how people come to know about your website. It is important that people hear out your business and the positives you have to offer. For example: You may form online communities and forums to contribute.
You may want to register in local business directories. You may want to contribute by writing articles about your business on various other sites and educate the ones who are new to the field. As you contribute through various means, your business will reach a wider audience and when the contributions are well performed a viral sensation about your business is achieved. This is an added advantage for your website ranking in Google.

5.1 On-Page

Analyze Flipkart On-Page Activities stI searched for “buy samsung galaxy s5” in Google Search and Flipkart.com showed up in 1 position in Organic Search Results (Snapshot 5.1.1). Take a look at Flipkart’s description from the search result below:

“ Samsung Galaxy S5Price in India – Buy Samsung … - Flipkart”
“BuySamsung Galaxy S5for Rs.31999 Online, Also getSamsung Galaxy S5Specs &
Features. Only Genuine Products. 30 Day Replacement Guarantee”

Google usually fetches this information from Title and Meta Description tags from the webpage and displays it in search results. It is important to mention yourunique selling points,brand, call to actionandcore keywordsin Title and Meta Description. It should be unique and attractive for every web page to get the user attention. This is one of the key on-page activities you should follow. Let’s analyze Flipkart’s on-page further by opening this specific page. You may want to take a note and try to follow best practice.

Snapshot 5.1.1

Snapshot 5.1.2 Samsung Galaxy S5 webpage in Flipkart

We are in Samsung Galaxy S5 webpage in Flipkart ( Snapshot 5.1.2). Let’s take a closer look at their on-page strategy that helps them rank higher for the keywords searched by me (buy samsung galaxy s5) and also how they engage their visitors.

We are going to look and observe few things:
1. The Keyword Presence: “buy samsung galaxy s5”
2. Engaging components to make visitor stay on this page and take some action.
3. Tags Analysis from the page’s HTML Source

URL: URL contains this specific keyword “samsung-galaxy-s5”. Your URL should be user friendly and search engine friendly. Use meaningful URL. Name your folder and files based on your Product / Service. Structure your folders with proper category names.

Bread Crumps has this keyword “samsung-galaxy-s5”. If your website do not have Bread Crumps, ask your web developer to implement it.

Page Headerhas this keyword “samsung-galaxy-s5”. You need to make sure your core keyword for the page should be in header.

Images

Samsung Galaxy S5 Images in various angles for User Engagement. It helps user stay on this page.
Note:You will learn how these images help in SEO On-page when we go to HTML Tags section below.

Reviews and Ratings: Builds Trust and User Engagement.

Add to COMPARE: User engagement

Cross selling products: For engagement and to sell related products. This also helps in Internal Linking of other web pages. It is a good practice to link a webpage with one or more other webpages in your website. It helps in passing the value (link juice) of your webpage and improves your SEO on-page.

Call to Action:“Add To Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons to help user decidewhat next? It helps user take immediate action.

Unique Selling Points: “Cash on delivery”, “30 day replacement guarantee”, etc. Helps them make a decision.

Combos: Cross Selling other products like accessories. Note down the Keyword usage “Recommended combos forSamsung Galaxy S5”.

Other related products listing:It helps in internal linking and Cross selling

Content Strategy : Look at the keyword presence in “Key Features ofSamsung Galaxy S5” and they support this header with relevant content description as mentioned in this snapshot.

Similar strategy is followed for “Specifications of Samsung Galaxy S5”.

Try to provide enough content description for your Products and Services. It also helps you in increasing the mentioning of your core keywords.

Content is the main key for your on-page activity.

Reviews & Ratings: As people start
reviewing your products and services, it helps in content strategy as they share their
experience about the product or service. It also helps in engaging and trust building.

Tip: Ask your web developer to implement Rich Snippets for your Review Rating program. Google understands Rich Snippets and it improves the chances of showing your ratings in Google Search Results.

“Recommendations based on your browsing history” section helps Flipkart in user engagement by showing items based on the pages viewed. It also helps them in Re-Targeting or Re-Marketing their products or services.

Footer :

Footer page is the place where you can have internal links to key webpages in your website. Note some key links in Flipkart: Privacy, Terms, Cancellation, FAQ, Payments, etc. It builds trust in your system.

You may even mention about your certificates, associations and any other key information to build trust.

Trust is the main factor that you need to build to make user perform expected action in your website. Most of the online businesses fail because they fail in building trust. It takes time to build trust for a new online business. Think different here.

HTML Tags:
Let’s take a look at HTML tags for this Flipkart page and their SEO On-Page activities. To view HTML Tags, you need to open the Page Source. Right click on the page and click on “View Page Source” if you are using Chrome Browser or “View Source” in Internet Explorer.

It opens up theHTML Sourcefor this samsung galaxy s5 page in Flipkart. Let’s analyse key SEO On-Page Tags:

Title Tag:
<title> tag defines the page title. Usually this field is left unnoticedorit is filled up with some junk contentsorjust the website nameorsame title for all webpages in your website. You should not do that. This field is a key for your SEO activity and any Search Engines like Google reads this field when it crawls and indexes your webpage. Google usually shows your title in Search Results. Title Tag should be unique for every webpage in your website. Let’s check what’s there in samsung galaxy s5 page in flipkart.

They have their core keyword for this page “Samsung galaxy s5” mentioned in their title tag and also their brand name Flipkart.com. Make sure to mention your core keyword or topic discussed in that specific webpage in your title tag. Try to restrict the length of the Title field to around 65 to 70 characters. If you have a long text in Title Field, it will be truncated when Google shows it in Search Results Page.

Whom should I inform to change my Title tags for all webpages in my website? Good question. If you know web development, you may do it on your own. Or ask your web developer. If your website portal is built using famous applications like Magento or PrestaShop or OpenCart or Wordpress, you will get SEO Plugins for your portal. You can use those plugins to enter your Title Tags for every webpage.

Meta Description Tag:
One more key field always left unnoticed is Meta Description. This field should be filled with summary of your webpage content. This field should be unique for every webpage. Try to restrict the length of this field within 155 to 170 characters. Google usually shows this field in Search Results Page. Let’s take a look at Flipkart’s meta description

They have complete summary mentioned here. It has got the keyword, price, unique selling points and call to action.

Here is the Google Search Results with Flipkart’s Title and Meta description for Samsung galaxy s5 page.
You should use Title and Meta Description fields as a good marketing material to attract the user attention. Spend some time and effort in creating your title and meta description for all your webpages.

Image Alt and Source Tags:
Here is one of the samsung galaxy s5 image alt and src tags from the Flipkart page. Alt: It is called alternative text for the image. You need to describe the image. Here in this case “Samsung Galaxy S5(Electric Blue)”
Src: Image Source. It contains image location and the file name. The image file name should be a meaningful name. Here in this case the file name is “samsung-galaxy-s5-sm-...jpeg”

It helps Search Engines understand the description of your image.

Header Tags:
There are 6 header tags: H1 to H6. Headers are used to highlight the page or section title. As we are discussing about Samsung Galaxy S5, it is important to have this keyword highlighted with H1. It is also a important component for Search Engines like Google. Try to use headers in your webpage to highlight page and section titles.

Tips:
Create Product or Service specific webpages in your website. For every product or service, have a webpage and describe about it. Your keyword and content strategy are very important for every webpage you create. Instead of creating webpages targeting generic keywords, identify niche keywords or long tail keywords or acronym and form your content strategy for your webpage. For example, a person who does not have any idea about Inverter would search for generic keywords like UPS, Inverter, etc. Don’t target them. A person who is about to buy 850 VA Sine Wave inverter from APC would be searching for “best price for APC 850 VA Sine Wave Inverter” or “ APC 850 inverter price”. When you target these people and design your webpages, you will have less competition and also you get more sales.

Do not include all products and services in a single webpage. Your visitor may not like that. It also confuses your visitors.

Robots.txt
robots.txt is text file present in your website. You should create it and have your web developer place that in root folder of your website. robots.txt file provides instruction to search engines about the content that should not be crawled.

For ex. Let’s open www.locsea.com/robots.txt

“User-agent: *” - indicates that this instruction is for all search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Search Engines usually send a program called Crawlers to read your website. Google sends a crawler called googlebot. As you have mentioned “User-agent: *”, it means this instruction is for all Search Engine Crawlers. You can even write instruction for specific crawlers. For example, you can say “User-agent: googlebot”. All Search Engines read robots.txt and obey the instruction provided.

There are few more instructions provided by me in my robots.txt. I have instructed search engines to not to crawl my “/writers/” and “/proposal/” directories as I have confidential information. I do not want this information available to public through search engines. Use “Disallow: {/folder name/..}” command to block it.

Sitemap
As a best SEO on-page practice, a website should need to have a file called sitemap.xml. This file helps Search Engines like Google to crawl your website better. What does it have? Let’s take a look at www.locsea.com/sitemap.xml
This sitemap.xml file has all your webpage URLs mentioned along with change frequency. It helps Google identify and crawl your URLs.

You should generate this file for your website and place it in your website’s root folder. To generate this file, you should go to https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and enter your website domain name. Set the change frequency to hourly or daily or weekly or monthly as per your requirement. Click on start to generate sitemap.xml file for your website. Download this file and place it in your website root folder.

You should inform Google about your sitemap.xml location to make Google Crawl it. To do so, you have to use Google Webmasters Tools (Refer Chapter 11).

W3C Validation
It is important to follow W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards for your website. You should check for HTML, XHTML and CSS related errors in your website and resolve it. To do so, go to http://validator.w3.org and validate all your webpages including your domain home page.
Every webpage in your website should be validated in order to make your site W3C Validated. The steps to be followed to validate your pages are as follows:
Go to http://validator.w3.org/

Enter URL of your webpage and click on Check. It shows up errors in your webpage. Send those errors to your web developer to fix it. Please note you should do this for all webpages including your domain home page.

Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is a tool available from Google to improve the webpage speed performance.

Go to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ page.

Type in your webpage URL to be checked, and click the ANALYZE button

Toggle between the tabs MOBILE and DESKTOP Insights, and see through the suggestions given and optimize the pages according to the suggestions provided to improve the page speed performance of your website. You should do this for every webpage in your website.

Improving your page speed helps in loading the webpage faster and hence your visitors will be impressed. This will improve your visitor engagement and stay on your webpage for long time browsing your webpages. Improving the page loading time also helps in your SEO on-page as Google looks at it as one of the factors.

Canonicalization
It is important to set preferred unique URL to reach your home page. For example, LocSea’s home page can be accessed using various URLs as mentioned below:

http://www.locsea.com
http://www.locsea.com/index.php http://locsea.com
http://locsea.com/index.php

What does it mean? 4 different URLs to access LocSea’s home page. It splits up the value of your home page.

You should decide on a preferred home page URL (say http://www.locsea.com) and ask your web developer to create301 re-directentries in .htaccess file to point other 3 URLs to http://www.locsea.com. If you do this, you will have one URL to access your home page and it helps in your SEO on-page by improving the value of this page.

Try typing http://locsea.com/index.php and see what happens. It will take you to http://www.locsea.com.

Customized 404 Page Design
You should create Customized 404 Page Design to guide your visitors.
Assume you have a webpage URL “www.locsea.com/googleadwordstraining” but your visitor entered it with a spelling mistake like “www.locsea.com/googleadwordstraninig”. If you do not have a customized 404 Page, it shows “404 Page Not Found” error in your browser. The visitor may either go to Google to search for this page or go to some other website. Instead, to retain this user and improve engagement, you need to have your web developer redirect such visitors to customized 404 Page (Refer Snapshot8.1.3). You may provide content like this “This page has been moved or you are using old URL. You may be looking for one of these links below” and provide important links to go through or provide options to search your website. It helps your visitor stay on your website and look for other options. Never show “404 Page Not Found” error page to your visitors.

Snapshot 5.1.3 Customized 404 Page

Tips
Learn about Mobile Sitemap and Image Sitemap when you have time. Submitting Mobile Sitemap helps your website listed in Google Mobile Search.

Your webpages are the key for your SEO success. Identify niche keywords (long phrase, abbreviations)for your business and design your webpages with following points:  URL with niche keywords
 Header with niche keywords
 Your content describing niche keywords
 Images supporting niche keywords
If you design webpages targeting niche keywords, the chances are very high for such webpages to rank higher in Google Search. Usually people target generic keywords where competition is very high. They always miss the other part.

On Page Don’ts
Create your webpages primarily for users and not for search engines. Do not copy and paste others content in your webpage.
Do not use copyright content from others
Do not use images owned by others
Do not create webpages with hidden text or links
Do not create webpages with Spelling and Grammatical errors

5.2. Off-Page

While On-Page SEO mainly concentrated on the tuning requirements of a website, Off-Page focuses on creating an awareness of your product, brand or service. The significance of this fragment in building up a strong reputation of your business is vivacious. Contributing and showcasing your business brings in a larger traffic to your website. This in turn upgrades your website’s rank in the search results.
Factors that demonstrate a strong Off-Page presence is as follows:

Backlinks and analysis:
Backlinks:
Links from other websites that directs users to your domain are termed as backlinks. Also called as inbound links, the part played by this is immense when considered in terms of Search Engine Optimization. Since the quantity and quality of the backlinks a website has, plays a significant role in determining the ranking factor of that particular website, they are credited highly.

It will be good to have quality backlinks from quality websites which plays a role in the ranking of a website in Google Search.

It is important to be active in this Internet world by contributing, discussing, interacting, sharing and appreciating [especially in your domain]. This helps you create more branding and it indirectly creates online referrals in-terms of backlinks. Which in turn help your website rank higher in Google Search.

Backlinks are of two types: a) No-Follow Backlinks: b) Do-Follow Backlinks:

No-Follow Backlinks :
Not all backlinks are considered by Google. These links does bring in traffic to your website. Example:
<a href= http://www.example1.com rel="nofollow"> Locsea</a>
From the above code the hyperlink with a rel=”nofollow” attribute clearly mentions that the link falls under the ‘No-Follow’ category. *Links you place in Twitter are No-Follow Backlinks. Do-Follow Backlinks:
Do-Follow backlinks are the exact opposite of No-Follow backlinks. These links not just brings in traffic but also helps in ranking a website in Google Search. Though these are considered worthy in terms of SEO, the qualities of these links vary. The quality of the backlink is measured in terms of the Page Rank it comes from. Better the page rank, better the quality of backlink originating from it.
Example:
<a href= http://www.Locsea.com rel="external"> LocSea </a>
In the above example the attribute rel=”external” is the indication denoting that the hyperlink is a do follow backlink.

Note:Even if rel attribute is not found in the link, Google considers it as a Do-follow link.

Backlink Analysis :
Analysing the backlinks obtained for your website through certain software and tools is termed as backlink analysis. Backlinks of other websites, preferably your competitor’s too can be checked. This method is practiced in order to get the quality and count of backlinks obtained, and to strategize a healthy campaign to obtain fruitful results.
Google Webmaster Tools acts as an efficient tool in analysing the backlinks of a website. Webanalyticseo.com is another example of an online tool that performs a backlink analysis. MOZ.com has a pro tool for backlink analysis.

Press Release Submissions
Any event within the company that is worth a grand announcement can be published as an Online Press Release. Events such as a product’s launch or an achievement in its field qualify to serve this purpose. Facts that could be verified alone stand to be a participant. This gives your business a boost and increases traffic to your website when published. It not just supplies you with an efficient backlink but also serves as a content which could reach a larger audience.

Website Suggestions: prlog.com, prweb.com, siliconindia.com

Blog Submission:
Maintaining a blog either within the website or through various other blogging websites such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.org is an additional advantage. Since blogger.com is a Google owned subsidiary, preferring this would be a better option when compared to other blogging sites. Educating your customers about any updates would keep the audience intact. This method also assists as a platform to interact with customers and hear their feedback. Hence, improvements based on any complaints received could be rectified. Customers are the reason why your business runs. So, responding to their views would build trust within them.

Blog Suggestions: blogger.com, wordpress.org

Article Submissions:
Unlike blog submissions, article submissions are published in a third party website. Writing relevant articles and submitting them to websites that carry a lot of traffic could improvise the addressees significantly. Keeping in mind that the article written should not be submitted in multiple sites, an additional point to be noted is that the article should be creative and interactive, since it has the potential of bringing in a lot of visitors.

Website Suggestions: ehow.com, hubpages.com

Directory submission:
Submitting your website on online directories that are renowned in your local online directory list is one of the chief methods to create an online presence. Since directories are often searched for business related queries by the users, registering with online directories expands the presence of your business. In addition to it, the backlink obtained from such sites are often considered precious since the Page Rank of notorious directories are often high. Hence the backlink obtained is of greater quality.

Website Suggestions: dmoz.org, abc-directory.com

Forum Posting:
Considering that you are well versed with your business, helping the ones in need could actually improve the customer – company relationship. Internet is filled with forums where people discuss, criticize and argue about various things. Being an expert in your field, advising and answering to questions related to your field using your business’s name could attract many new customers and since the threads are saved for future purposes, your comments remain as a guide to newcomers.
Since the audience being targeted here are of the same field, conversions through your website can be expected when this method is performed efficiently.

Website Suggestions: myspace.com, forums.cnet.com

Online forums are usually based on a single field. Sign into the forums that represent your business type.

Community:
Creating communities on various social media platforms can enhance the engagement of your customers and could also proficiently increase the count of new customers. Google+ being one of the subsidiaries of Google, the weightage it carries when a community based on your product is created in it is of ample importance. Creating a community alone isn’t sufficient; a constant engagement in this alone would help build your business. Communities with better interaction tend to rise at a great pace. Hence, hearing out to every community member and appealing to their doubts and necessities should be done regularly. A greater advantage is that the articles and blogs published by you could get a large audience when showcased in your community.

Community Suggestions: Google+ Communities, LinkedIn Communities, Facebook Communities

Classified Submissions:
There may be handful of ways to submit your site online, but the classical and a still good and going way to submit your site is to try classifieds submission. Submitting classifieds may be a traditional way to build your business but, it is still a great idea to do so, because classifieds are not only done on print but also off print i.e., over the internet through many of the online classified submission sites that are available for free as well as on payment basis. Classified submissions still stand as a dominant method when advertising a product online.

Website Suggestions: olx.in, quickr.com

PPT Sharing:
Power point presentations are a graphical way of approaching the audience. Expressing your business through a pictured format and through text is an effective way to make the target audience understand the business. In fact this method is effective as well as a favoured setup by many across the internet. Sharing these files over the internet through various presentation sites such as slideshare.com and authorstream.com is a method that could effectively make your audience understands the business. These presentations could either be about the making of the product, what your services is about or the rise of your brand.

Website Suggestions: slideshare.com, authorstream.com

Social bookmarking:
Social Bookmarking is an online service which plays very powerful role that can contribute positively to bookmark and share the contents through social circle which eventually capitalizes the traffic. The practice of Social Bookmarking is phenomenal in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when combined with other link building strategies which will eventually contribute to high visibility and translate to higher traffic volumes and perhaps, higher conversion rate for the website. Nowadays, sites are specifically designed and marketed to targeted users in specifics to industry. Keyword positioning, tagging or targeting niche bookmarking sites and category would help gain qualified visitors.

Some of the social bookmarking sites are as follows: Delicious www.delicious.com
Digg www.digg.com
Diigo www.diigo.com
Google Bookmarks www.google.com/bookmarks Pearltrees – www.pearltrees.com
Pinterest – www.pinterest.com
Reddit – www.reddit.com
Stumbleupon – www.stumbleupon.com.

Off-Page Don’ts
Do not buy false back links from others to improve your search ranking. Do not do link exchange.
Do not do any unethical activities targeting to improve search ranking

Tips
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor Text is a keyword or phrase that links to specific webpage. For example, in below sentence, the Anchor Text is “Google AdWords Blog Page”.

“For more details on Google AdWords Optimization, visit Google AdWords Blog Page in LocSea.”

If you click on this Anchor Text, it takes you to the link
http://www.locsea.com/googleadwordsblog/. This specific phrase is hyperlinked with this link. It is important to have a meaningful Anchor Text. Do not create “Click Here” as an Anchor Text. Anchor Text is the key for your SEO link building exercise. Search engines give more attention to Anchor Text to decide on your website ranking.

If you have an imagewith a hyperlink to another webpage, how do you provide anchor text? Alt Tag acts as an anchor text for images with links. Make use of it. To learn about Alt Tag refer SEO On-Page.

Day to Day Approach (Sample recommendation)
I want to start with SEO On-Page and Off-Page. Also I need to work on Social Media to improve my Branding. If I can afford, I also want to spend for AdWords. How do I schedule my tasks?

Work out on a Weekly Plan On Day1: Implement On-Page Tasks

On Day2: A great creative post in Facebook or other SMO. Work on AdWords Campaign.

On Day3: Analyze Website Statistics using Google Analytics. Setup new features in Google Analytics

On Day4: Think about YouTube. Implement back link strategy.

On Day5: Write an article about your business and post it in your website blog or blogger or any other popular medium. Work on AdWords Campaign.

Work out on a Monthly Plan

On Week1 Day1: Competitor Analysis, Trend analysis, their back link analysis.

On Week2 Day1: Form on-page and off-page Strategy for your Online Business. Review your back links. Review your generic and niche keywords. Review your keyword rankings in Google Search.
On Week3 Day1: Review monthly Google Analytics data. Review your Device Strategy especially for Mobiles. Work on AdWords Strategy.

On Week4 Day1: Review what you have planned and what you have achieved. Have an excel report prepared for every week. List your pending tasks. Push it for next month. Prioritize your tasks and complete one at a time.

Work out on a Quarterly Plan
Set a Quarterly Target for your Keyword Rankings by defining On-Page and Off-Page tasks targeting Generic and Niche keywords.
Look at the trends and set a target
Work on Seasonal or Festival Plan. Work on offers.
Allocate Budget for SEO and AdWords evaluating the ROI from Organic and Paid Traffic. Evaluate the results and follow up.

Use this approach:

Work out on a Quarterly Plan -> Work out on a Monthly Plan -> Work out on a Weekly Plan.

6

YouTube

YouTube is one prominent method to increase the attention your website gets. YouTube being a renowned subsidiary of Google, the importance it carries is substantial. As a business owner, contributing videos that educates people of your business and its functionality brings about potential customers of greater multitude.

For example: training videos, unpacking videos, video reviews, technical videos etc.

Videos of creative and interactive content have the potential to reach a larger audience. As the word about your video starts to spread by, the interest over the creator arises. Which naturally leads to your website and hence the website receives traffic.

Video that we create need not be of high quality and extreme cinematography. Audience would expect only quality content in the video, which answers their questions.

Let’s analyse the results of a LocSea’s video and the aspects that made the video to reach more audience.

Sign up or Login to YouTube.com with your Gmail id (Snapshot 6.1).

Snapshot 6.1

Once you Login, you can upload a new video using Upload button or you can edit your uploaded videos from Creator Studio menu. To upload, click on Upload button on top right corner.

Snapshot 6.2

You can upload your video using the Arrow Mark button ( Snapshot 6.2). Once you upload your video to YouTube, it takes you toVideo EditorPage inCreator Studio(Snapshot 6.3). From here you can edit your Video and Settings for this video.

Snapshot 6.3

You can also reach this video editor screen by clicking on the profile image on the top right corner(Snapshot 6.3) and choosing Creator Studio button. That would take you to the video editor.

Creator Studio
Let’s go through the tabs that are present under the Creator Studio, so that we can make use of those options and settings for our videos.

The video Manager (Snapshot 6.4) shows reports like data of all the videos, live events, playlists, Search History, and likes with options to edit and details such as published date and time.

Let’s open a video and analyze various fields.

Snapshot 6.4

Let’s take the below video as an example ( Snapshot 6.5). We have 193 views for this video and it has the maximum views when compared to other videos. We can get into the details and analyse the video settings in order to understand the reasons for better performance of this video.

Snapshot 6.5

When we Google for locsea, we get this video link in the third position of the first page (Snapshot 6.6). What can be the reason?

In the video listing, choose the edit option under the video (Snapshot 6.7).

Snapshot 6.6

Snapshot 6.7

You would get the below page (Snapshot 6.8) with tabs like info and settings, enhancements, audio, annotations, subtitles and CC.

We can analyse all the tabs one by one. Click on ‘Info and Settings’ and scroll down.

Snapshot 6.8

You would get the below options (Snapshot 6.9).

Snapshot 6.9

We have provided a Title and Description (Snapshot 6.9) that is related to the video and also contains the important keywords.

Once we have entered the title and description, we will be adding tags that would be used by the audience while searching for the video and also the important keywords.
YouTube would also suggest few tags for your video based on the keywords present in the title and description.

Snapshot 6.10

video language, recording date, statistics etc.
Click on Monetization (Snapshot 6.10) once we have completed including the Basic information. We can allow other’s ads to be inserted in our videos. We can choose the ad formats in which the ads should be shown in our video. When we have completed the monetization settings, click
advanced settings and enable comments and user ratings.
Enabling these settings can create more interaction in our videos.

Check the other options as required like the category, video location,

Snapshot 6.11

Click on Enhancements Tab after completing the Info and Settings Tab.

Snapshot 6.12

Annotation ( Snapshot 6.13) is an important part in Video settings. Annotations can be defined as the content which would be displayed over the video along with a hyperlink (if required), so that audience watching the video can also be taken to our website. We can also add notification information to the video like offers, coupons, new products, video related information, etc.

Make improvements to the video clarity like improving the Lighting, contrast, trim, etc. and save the video (Snapshot 6.12)

Now Choose Audio Tab. Under Audio, you can choose audio files and embed them to the video.

Snapshot 6.14

We can add annotation ( Snapshot 6.14) in any required position over the video. We can also add information like the start and the end time, between which the annotations should be displayed over the video.
The links that are included in the annotations can be any one of the following:

 Video
 Playlist
 Channel
 Google+ Profile Page
 Subscribe
 Fundraising Project
 Associated Website
 Merch

Once we have edited the video, we come back to the creator studio where we have analysed Video Manager

Now we would check Community ( Snapshot 6.15), under which we have comments option. When we consider our case study video, we have more interaction in the comments section. This video reached on top 3 positions in SERP, since we have more interaction in the video page. Answer your visitors’ queries. It helps in engagement. Ask your visitors to like, subscribe your video channels and build more subscribers.

Under Channels ( Snapshot 6.16), we can make changes to the channel settings like changing the status, monetization, upload defaults, in-video programming, fan finder and other advanced settings.

The snap (Snapshot 6.16) shows the status of our channel when we consider every important aspect considered by YouTube.

Snapshot 6.15

Monetization ( Snapshot 6.17) is a process of allowing the advertisements to be displayed in our videos. YouTube charges the advertisers for displaying ads and provides monetization benefits for the videos in which the ads are displayed.

Snapshot 6.17

Choose your Country and enter Channel Keywords ( Snapshot 6.18)

You should link your channel with your website ( Snapshot 6.19) and verify your website in YouTube, since it is important for branding. Once this is done, YouTube would consider your channel as the official representative for your Business.

Snapshot 6.19

We can also enable settings like allow my channel to appear in other channel’s recommendations. Doing this would increase the number of views.

We would already be having a Google Analytics account by now, which can be linked with the YouTube channel by entering the Google Analytics tracking ID in the option given.

Under Analytics ( Snapshot 6.20), we can see the performance data of the videos. Analytics shows all the details about the performance, amount spent on ads, money earned through monetization, estimated minutes of video watched by Audience and the average time period a user spent with the video.

We would also get the demographics report, the data about the traffic sources through which audience reached our video.

The Engagement report provides you the video interaction details such as duration watched (Snapshot 6.21), subscribers, likes and dislikes.

The list of Top performing Videos in our YouTube Channel (Snapshot 6.21).

Snapshot 6.21

We have skimmed the Creator Studio and now we can move over to some Generic Factors that can be made perfect for improving User Friendliness.

Click on the Dashboard -> View Channel. It opens the Channel Home Page (Snapshot 6.22) Go to About Tab and provide more Specific information about your business (Snapshot 6.23).

Snapshot 6.23

Add an Image that would attract the visitors and make your profile more trustable and pleasant for the audience (Snapshot 6.24).

Tips :
“How to”Videos have high number of views than any other videos in YouTube. So, createhow tovideos related to your business. When you provide answers for your visitor’s queries and needs, they would trust you better and would subscribe to your channel to get more useful information.

For Example: If you own an inverter business, create a video for unboxing inverters. You are providing answer for their “how to unbox apc inverter?” question. Google prioritizes YouTube videos related to the question and shows it in Google Search first page (Snapshot 6.25)

7

Social Media Optimization or Marketing (SMO/SMM)

Let us name few Social Media we know.

Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn

Be active in your Social Media and engage your visitors. As people start interacting, sharing and liking your content, your website will have big fan & follower base. This is a great branding medium you should use to promote your website. As many people start sharing and following your brand content in Social Media, it will be an added advantage for your website ranking through Social media.

You also need to know certain Technical Aspects in Social Media like linking your website to your Social Media Platforms.

First you should need to have your business pages created in all Social Media like Facebook. Let’s get started.

Facebook for Business

I assume that you already have a personal account in Facebook. If you do not have one, please go to www.facebook.com and sign up for a personal profile before you proceed further.

How to create my business page?
Here, I’m going to create a Facebook business page for my business “School for E-Commerce and Digital Marketing”.
Login to your personal profile in Facebook. On the top right corner of your profile, click on the inverted triangle. Click on “Create Page” to create your business page (Snapshot 7.1)

Snapshot 7.1

Choose your business type (Snapshot 7.2).

Snapshot 7.2

Here I chose “Local Business or Place”

Enter your Business Details and Click on Get Started (Snapshot 7.3).

Snapshot 7.3

Add categories, description and website details for your Business ( Snapshot 7.4).

Add your Business Image ( Snapshot 7.5): (In this case, My Photo is my Business Image). Click on Next.

Snapshot 7.5

Click on Add to Favorites to add this Business page to your personal Facebook profile under Favorites section (Snapshot 7.6).

Snapshot 7.6

It provides an option to create an Ad to promote your page in Facebook ( Snapshot 7.7). If you are interested in marketing your page through Facebook Ads, you should start filling up the fields “Location” of your target customers, Interests, age and gender. Set daily budget and click on Promote your page. Click on Skip if you do not want to create an Ad Now.

It takes you to your new Business Page -> Page Tab -> Timeline Tab ( Snapshot 7.8). You can post your business updates, offers, photos, videos, event details, visitor/customer interaction and do more here from this Timeline Tab. As you post, people start interacting, liking, sharing your post and page. As they like your page, your post will be there in their Timeline and it can viewed by their friends. Sometimes your post goes viral. You should treat this as your official Facebook Page.

Snapshot 7.8

After creating your business page, it’s time to be active. First invite your friends ( Snapshot 7.9) by clicking on “Build Audience” drop down -> “Invite Friends” as shown below. You may also send your Business Page URL to your Customers to Like your page to build your Audience. You should claim your official Facebook Business Page URL. I have explained that below.

Snapshot 7.9
Click on About Tab.

Click on Page Info -> Click on “Facebook Web Address” -> Click on “Create a web address for this page?” link (Snapshot 7.10)

Snapshot 7.10

It will take you to Mobile Verification process. Click on Continue -> Provide your mobile number to receive verification code -> Enter verification code -> Save it. Now your account is mobile verified and it will allow you to claim your Facebook Business Page URL.

Click on the drop down as shown and choose your business page.

Click on “Continue as ……” to claim your page URL ( Snapshot 7.11).

Start typing your business name or any name that suits your business. You are going to get your Official Facebook Business Page URL. Choose it with care (Snapshot 7.12). I wanted it to be like “www.facebook.com/digitalmarketing” but I could not get that as someone else have already taken it. Check your business URL availability. Keep trying.

Snapshot 7.12

Finally I found one “digitalmarketingexecutiveeducation” for my business (Snapshot 7.13). Click on confirm.

Snapshot 7.13

Yes, We are in last step of acquiring Facebook Business Page URL.

Click on OK.

My Facebook Business Page URL from now will be:

I can just type this in my browser to reach my Business Page. You can mention this in your website too. Start sending this URL to your Friends, Relatives, and Customers to like your Business Page. Acquiring Business Page URL helps in creating Branding in Social Platform.

Next step should be to add more business details to your Facebook Business Page. Click on About Tab -> Page Info (Snapshot 7.14)

Enter your Hours of Operation Short and Long Description Mission, Awards and Products details

Provide as much info as possible to help your customers.

Key Tabs
We have few key tabs on the top of the page such as Page, Messages, Notifications, Insights and Settings.

Page Tab
Page Tab has Timeline, About, Photos, Likes and more other Tabs. The key tab to focus on is Timeline. You should create engaging posts to keep your visitors engaged. Your post should need to have greater reach. Start creating creative posts (with images) and target trending topics with #tagging technique to have better reach. Here is an example (Snapshot 7.15):

Snapshot 7.15

We posted this and targeted the trending #AppleOnARoll. Also we mentioned this term “Apple” in the post. Look at the reach. Trending topics will be available from your Facebook Personal profile home page. Open a New Browser window and open your Facebook.com. Look at the Trending Topics (Snapshot 7.16).

Snapshot 7.16

You also have to open the image and tag your friends to get better reach. To do so, from your personal profile, search for your business page and open it (Snapshot 7.17).

Snapshot 7.17

Click on the image you want to tag your friends.
Click on Tag Photo and select the image (Snapshot 7.18). Type your friends or customers name and tag it. It will send a Notification to them.

Snapshot 7.18

You can also target your text posts addressing/mentioning specific people by typing @[name]. Replace name with the actual person name.

Posts
We can schedule our posts for a future date and time. The data about the scheduled posts and draft posts are also present in the activity tab.

Insights Tab
Insights provide you the exact data about page’s performance.
Insights can be categorized and analysed based on likes, reach, visits, posts and people.

Likes:Likes are given by our fans for the post or for our page.

Reach: Reach shows how many people have viewed our posts regardless of whether they have liked our post or not. Reach increases if our fans like and share our posts. When people like our posts, their friends would be receiving this information in their news feed and hence they might click and view our post. Thus our posts reach increases.

Visits:Visits are the number of page visits.

Posts:Post contains post details such as posts that are already posted, its engagement and reach details.

People:People include the demographics data such as age and gender.

Settings Tab(Snapshot 7.19)

Settings Tab has General Page related settings. A key setting to note down is Page Roles.

Snapshot 7.19

You can add other users say your employee to manage your Business Page from here. Google does show Facebook Business Page URLs in its Search Results for business related keywords. It is time for you to be very active with your Facebook Business Page Posts Engagement activities and that should bring in your Facebook Business Page URL in Google search results for your relevant business queries.

Twitter for Business
Sign up for Twitter here www.twitter.com. When you sign up provide your business name as user name so that it creates www.twitter.com/businessname as your twitter URL. Provide your business description, website details and if required link it with other social media.

Let me open our LocSea’s twitter page www.twitter.com/locsea. Note down various components in this page like Tweets, Following, Followers, “Edit Profile” button, “Trends” section, “Who to follow” section, “Profile” section, etc.

Create Followers for your business page by asking your customers and visitors to follow it.

Your posts (also called astweets) should not exceed 140 Characters. Try to post as many tweets related to your business as possible to engage your followers.

Retweet(Reply) interesting tweets to get attention.

Follow great people. As you follow, they get a notification about you.

Create tweet targeting trending #tags.

Create good header and profile photos. Make sure to link your website, provide detailed description about your company in your Twitter profile. It adds value to your SEO effort. To update your company details, click on Edit Profile and it opens up this page:

Update your photos and profile details from this screen. Keep posting targeting trending topics and engage. It slowly builds quality followers and visitors to your page.

Tips
We have few time saving social media automation tools to list. Try these. Just type these names in Google and go through their websites.

 Hootsuite
 Pagemodo
 Social bro
 Sprout social
 Spred fast
 Social oomph
 Dlvr.it
 IFTTT
 Zapier
 Aweber
 Postplanner
 Buffer

Pinterest for Business

Pinterest.com has built quite a larger reputation for itself throughout the major countries like U.S. and the U.K. and is gaining popularity in other countries as well and most notably in India. Pinterest is the 3rdmost popular Social Media followed by Facebook and Twitter. The basic concept of Pinterest is information delivered through pictures (i.e.) people are often attracted by pictures rather than words that is the idea of Pinterest.
The feature that makes Pinterest stands apart from other social Media is its ability to target the specific audience of the particular business that is, it is easy to target the audience you require to view your business related stuff in Pinterest. And moreover, Pinterest is one of THE best social media platforms for an Ecommerce website.
So let us move into how Pinterest will drive in traffic to your site.

The Sign-up, Boards and Pins:
First thing you got to do is just sign up your business with Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) and start creating post related to your business.
After signing up, the next step is to create a pin board. Pin Boards are similar to the normal office boards where we pin important stuffs.
The next step is a little tricky, creating the most creative, eye-catching pins for your target audience.
The Pin boards are actually classified into
1) Product Board
2) Content Board

Product Board:
The name itself tells you the info, this board is used to display the array of products you have, if you are an ecommerce website.
Furthermore these product boards can be further divided into

 Boards that will display pins about your products
 Latest trend in the market and whether your product matches that trend  Products that are selling like a hot cake and products with discounts.

Content Board:
Content boards are content specific boards where your pins contain sound content about your products. All you got to do is just drop a link on your pin that will redirect your audience to your blog site where the relevant content for the particular product is present.
The best part about Pinterest is that it allows users to search about specific products or content they view, for example if your user want to search for food recipes, Pinterest easily categorizes the search into boards or pins exactly related to food.
This is a primitive way of Pinterest to drive traffic to your site. Let’s move on to the promoted ads aspect of Pinterest.

Instagram for Business

Let’s bring on the Next Hot and top trending social media The Instagram ( instagram.com). Sounds cool isn’t it, yea the name says it all, your instant photos is called as Instagram. Instagram recently surpassed twitter, having over a 300 million accounts and having whooping no of people engaging every second. Instagram could be a source of serious traffic for your site.

The strategies followed by leading brands:
Some of the Leading brands in Instagram follow various strategies to cover their audience base; we will discuss some of the strategies now

A Backstage Pass:
The Blackberry brand uses Instagram as a source of providing a backstage insight into their company and devices, their strategy is to show people the insights that they can’t view in person in the company.
The Levi’s brand uses Instagram to show their legacy in the wardrobe line to their audience, right from their origin to their development and their experiment with the jeans can be seen in their Instagram ads.

Source of Motivation:
Leading Brand like Adidas use Instagram as source of motivating their audience for a brisk beginning of their fitness life by providing eye gasping high resolution pictures of various sports persons and extreme fitness people. Their strategy has working out well for them because many of their audience have been “ADIDAINSPIRED”
The Macy’s brand is using Instagram to showcase their artwork of various fashion outfits to attract its fashion savvy audience. They use ads showcasing various high fashion outfits in the market. This way they increase their traffic through Instagram.
The next strategy seems even more sassy and simple

Customer sharing:
The famous Ben & Jerry’s follow this simple and highly effective strategy of allowing their customers to share their yummy and tasty moment they had with a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and flavours. This simple technique has been an phenomenal success for the franchise as more and more of its customers have been sharing their awesome and yummy ice cream on the social media.

Google Plus for Business:
Google Plus is another social media site, where we can create business pages for our business like every other social media site. We have already covered about Google Plus in a different name. Remember Google MyBusiness Chapter? YesYour Google MyBusiness page is also referred as Google+ Business page. Please refer Chapter 4.

LinkedIn for Business

LinkedIn ( https://www.linkedin.com/ ) is a professional network. I assume you already have personal profile in LinkedIn. If not, please signup for a personal profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/ . Please make sure to add your complete professional details in LinkedIn as this is a professional network. You should be very active in adding projects, client details, getting recommendations, adding your certificates, etc.,

Google provides priority to Linked Profiles and also Company Pages. To create your Company Page for your Business, please follow these steps.

LinkedIn Company Page

Login to your personal profile in LinkedIn and click on Interests -> Companies (Snapshot 7.20). It is free to create your Company Page in LinkedIn.

Snapshot 7.20

Click on Create and it opens up the Company Page creation window (Snapshot 7.21) Provide your Company Name, Description, Website and Industry details (Snapshot 7.22).

Snapshot 7.22

You can also designate people to manage your Company Page (Snapshot 7.23).

Snapshot 7.23

Choose your company image ( Snapshot 7.24)

Provide Specialities and add your featured groups if you have already joined or own ( Snapshot 7.25).

Snapshot 7.25

That’s all about creating a company page. You should post professional updates happening in your company on your Company Page. Also try join or create new Groups (communities) and contribute to your industry. You can create or join new Groups from Interest -> Groups menu (Snapshot 7.26).

Click on what you want to do and start contributing (Snapshot 7.27).

Snapshot 7.27

You can also useInterests->Pulseto post your professional articles in LinkedIn.

Summary :
Make use of Social Media Platforms to build your branding by posting interesting updates, offers, contests and customer support. As people start sharing, following and liking your page and posts, you will have greater brand reach. This brand reach helps your website rank higher. If you have a popular social media company page, the chances are very high for your page to appear in Google Search for related keywords for your business. It helps you gain relevant traffic to your website.

Be very active and creative!

8

Google AdWords

As of this time, we have been analysing on Organic promotion. Let’s take a look at Google’s Paid Promotion Platform called Google AdWords. This platform is also called as Google Pay Per Click (PPC). Using this platform, you can place Text Ads in Google Search Results page, Display Ads in Google Display Network and Video Ads in YouTube. If people click on your ads, you will be paying certain amount to Google based on Ad Auction results. Hence it is called Pay Per Click.

8.1 Paid Ads in Google Search
Have you seen Ads in Google Search?Can you spot Ads in Google Search Result Page listed below (Snapshot 8.1)?

Snapshot 8.1 Google Paid Ads in Search
What you see above (A & E) are called Text Ads created using Google AdWords Platform. Please note the Keyword searched by this user:yoga classes in chennai.This Keyword is also called as Search Term.
What happens here?
Many Competitors are running online marketing campaigns using Google AdWords for the search term “yoga classes in chennai” and mapping it with specific Ads. Hence you see such ads in Google Search when you type this Keyword.

If someone clicks on a Text Ad above, the respective client who owns this Ad will be paying certain amount to Google. Hence this platform is also called as Google Pay Per Click (PPC).

There are various types of Ads:
1. Text Ads
2. Banner Ads
3. Video Ads

Let’s take a look at Text Ads. Banner Ads and Video Ads will be covered later in this Chapter. Let’s analyze various attributes for a Text Ad (Snapshot 8.2):

Snapshot 8.2 Text Ad

1. Headline (25 Characters): Yoga Besant Nagar Chennai [Usually, Headline should need to have Keywords searched by the user. This helps you to get the user attention.]
2. Display URL (35 Characters):www.practo.com/Chennai-Clinics[Please note this is not the actual website page URL. Only the domain www.practo.com in this URL is correct and it should match with the actual domain. “/Chennai-Clinics” need not be the actual URL. This portion is used to display or convey the URL details or unique points to attract the user. Hence it is called Display URL.]
3. Description Line 1 (35 Characters):Clinics < 2 KMs From Your Location [We need to have Unique Selling Points listed in this Line 1. You should differentiate your ad from other competitor ads.]
4. Description Line 2 (35 Characters):Book an Appointment Instantly[We need to have Call To Action (like Enquire Now, Buy Now, Book Now, …) listed in this Line 2. This will make the user take immediate action by clicking on your Ad.
5. Destination URL/Final URL (1024 Characters):This attribute is not visible in ad.It is a link to the actual website page URL. If someone clicks on this ad, it will land them to the actual website page URL (also called as Landing Page URL). You provide this URL when you create an Ad in AdWords and rest will be taken care.

Text Ads can be displayed in following Google network
1. Google Search (Only in Google Search)
2. Google Search Partners (refer description below)
3. Google Display Network (refer Chapter 8.2)
4. YouTube (refer Chapter 8.3)

Google Search Partners are non-Google Search Network that partnered with Google to show Ads. For example AOL.com is a Google Search Partner. There are hundreds of such Search Partners. Google Search Partners also includes Google Maps, YouTube and other Google sites.

In this chapter, we are going to create Text Ad Marketing Campaign targeting Google Search Network using Google AdWords.

Before we create any Marketing Campaign, we need to have better strategy in place. We should review our website and come up with following points:
1. Campaign Structuring and Budgeting
2. Targeting Ideas
3. Unique Selling Points
4. Call To Action
5. Preference
Once we have these 5 points, we will be able to create effective marketing campaign in Google AdWords.

Campaign Structuring and Budgeting:
1. If you have many divisions in your organisation, we usually allocate marketing budget for each division and measure Return on Investment (ROI). This helps us identify the best performing divisions. In your case, the division may be a product or service or brand. So, you should create multiple marketing campaigns in AdWords if you have multiple product lines and want to allocate specific budget and measure ROI for a specific product line.

2. You need to allocate special budget reserved for seasonal campaigns

Targeting Ideas
1. Who are your target customers? Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C)? The keyword searched by a consumer looking for a product in Google Search will be different from the keyword searched by a distributor looking for a manufacturer. As a business owner, it is important to identify the correct keyword and target your Text Ads.

2. Where are your customers located? In specific city or country or worldwide.

Unique Selling Points
1. What is unique about your company? We are in business since 1975. List all.
2. What is unique about your website? Free Shipping, Secured Payments. List all.
3. What is unique about your specific product or service? Offers, Technical Specification. List all.
Call To Action(answer to What Next? in any page)
1. Inquire Now
2. Buy Now
3. Add To Cart
4. Learn More
5. Call Now

Preference

1. Do you want your Ads to run from Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM? or All

Days?
2. Do you want your Ads to run on all Devices like Laptop, Tablet and Mobile? Do you
want to exclude Mobile devices?

You need to have answers to all above 5 sections to start your campaign in AdWords. You also need to understand few basic terms.

1. Campaignin AdWords Account: A Campaign is like a root folder (say C:\ or D:\). You can create multiple campaigns from your AdWords Account.
2. Adgroup: Adgroup is like a theme based sub-folder under a Campaign.
3. KeywordandAd: A theme based Adgroup will have specific theme based Keywords and Ads designed for such Keywords.
4. A Campaign may have multiple Adgroups to cover multiple keyword themes.
5. Impressions: An impression will be counted if your ad appears in Google Search
6. Clicks: If someone clicks on your ad impression, it will be counted as a click.
7. CTR(Click Through Rate): Number of Clicks divided by Number of Impressions.

Let’s create a simple Text Ad Campaign in AdWords with following inputs:
Website Domain:www.msmedi-chennai.gov.in

Aim :We provide Digital Marketing Training in our Chennai office. If someone search for keywords like “digital marketing training” in Google, I need my ad to appear. Let’s create Text Ads Campaign.

Website Landing Page or Destination Page URL where you talk about this specific training: www.msmedi-chennai.gov.in/training/dm
(If someone clicks on my Text Ad, it should take them to above specific training page.)

Network:I want my Text Ads to appear only in Google Search.

Target Location: 20 Miles around Anna Nagar West Extension, Chennai. Also, I receive enquiries from a place called Karur which is located outside Chennai. People come from there to attend this training.
Let’s begin working in AdWords interface. Go toadwords.google.com,

Snapshot 8.3 AdWords Sign In

Step 1:Click on Start Now or Sign In to create a new AdWords account.

Once you click onStart Now, it takes you to the Welcome screen (Snapshot 8.4). As always, please use the same Gmail ID to sign up for all Google Services.

Snapshot 8.4 Welcome Screen

Step 2: Enter yourGmail ID
Enter yourCountry, Time ZoneandCurrency. Once saved, these settings cannot be changed later.

These settings do not affect the targeting audience location. These settings will be used for your Reporting and Billing purpose.

Click onSave and continue.

Step 3: It takes you to the login screen. Provide your Gmail ID and Password to sign up for AdWords.

Step 4: After successful sign up process, it takes you to the Google AdWords Campaigns Tab (Snapshot 8.5). Choose “Create your first campaign” to create your first campaign.

Snapshot 8.5 Create your first campaign

Step 5:You are in Campaign Creation page. Always choose the Campaign Type first and then enter your Campaign name (Snapshot 8.6).

Snapshot 8.6 Choose Campaign Type and Name

What should be the campaign type?

We have 4 options to choose from (Snapshot 8.7). They are

Snapshot 8.7 Campaign Type

1. Search Network with Display Select
2. Search Network Only
3. Display Network Only
4. Shopping

As our focus is to create Text Ad Campaign targeting Google Search Network, Choose “Search Network only” as Campaign Type

Usually “Search Network only” Type is more suitable for Businesses that require immediate leads/sales.

Step 6: Choose “All Features”in the sub type given on the right side (Snapshot 8.7).All Featuressub type enables features like Ad Scheduling, Ad delivery methods and all the ad extensions which are not available inStandardsub type.

Step 7:Now enter the Campaign Name ‘MSME Digital Marketing”

Step 8: If you want to show your Text Ads only in Google Search, uncheck “include search partners”. If you also want to show your Text Ads in Google Search Partners, leave it checked. Step 9:Devices option by default will be enabled to show ads on all devices. i.e., your ads will be shown on Desktop, Laptop, Tablet and Mobile.

Step 10:Our Target locations are Karur and 20 Miles around Anna Nagar West Extension, Chennai. So, choose Advanced Search to select these locations.

Step 11: There are four tabs Search, Radius targeting, Location groups and Bulk locations. We are going to use the first two (Snapshot 8.8). Type “karur” in search box and choose Add. This location will be added.

Snapshot 8.8 Choose Karur

Step 11:Choose Radius targeting tab and type “Anna Nagar West Extn, Chennai”. Type 20 and Select mi or km from the dropdown. Click on Add to select this location.

Step 12:Verify the locations added and click on “Done” to save your selections (Snapshot 8.9)

Snapshot 8.9 Save your locations

Step 13: Once you save your locations, it takes you to the Campaign Creation screen. Next step is to select the Languages. Click on Edit and choose the language of the websites that you would like your ads to appear on. By default, the language targeting is set to English.

Snapshot 8.10 Languages

You can choose any language based on your business interest.
It is important to understand that Google will not be translating your ads or keywords based on the targeting language you select. It is your duty to add translated keywords and ads if you want to target other languages.

Step 14: Choose your Bid Strategy for your keywords (Snapshot 8.11). There are two options
1. I’ll manually set my bids for clicks
2. AdWords will set my bids

For every keyword, the cost per click varies based on competitors bidding for the keyword during Ad Auction. I would suggest you to choose “I’ll manually set my bids for clicks”. Also, I would suggest you to analyse your Keyword bid values before you proceed to next step. Click onToolsmenu and right click onKeyword Plannersub-menu. Open it in New Window for reference.

Let’s go toKeyword Plannerwindow (Snapshot 8.12) to analyse the bid values suggestions for keywords.

Snapshot 8.11 Bid Strategy and Tools Menu

Snapshot 8.12 Keyword Planner Window

Step 16:

Snapshot 8.13 Search for new Keyword Ideas

Step 15: Keyword Planner Tool helps you identify various keyword combinations related to your
keyword, monthly search volume in Google and suggested Bid values.

Expand “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” row (Snapshot 8.13).

Enter a keyword related to your business to get more suggestions related to that keyword. Choose the targeting Location, Language, etc. to make a research on the keywords under the selected conditions.

I entered “digital marketing training” to search for keyword combinations and bid values.

I chose Chennai and English as Targeting Location and Language.

Now click on Get Ideas. It opens up the Various Adgroup and Keyword Ideas related to “digital marketing training” (Snapshot 8.14).

Step 17: It shows Average Monthly Searches, Competition and Suggested Bid for the keywords. You have to analyse the various keyword combinations suggestions provided in this tool to decide on specific keywords to bid for.

Snapshot 8.14 Adgroup and Keyword Ideas

Do not choose generic keywords for your campaign. Always choose specific keywords and bid for it. For example, I would suggest you to choose “digital marketing training Chennai” as your keyword. This should fetch more focused visitors from your marketing campaign as they are specifically looking for training in Chennai.

Step 18: Let’s click on “Digital Training” Adgroup from Snapshot 8.14 above and analyse. As you see in Snapshot 8.15, I found that “digital marketing training in Chennai” is the best keyword for me to target with Average Monthly Search of 70, Medium Competition and suggested bid of Rs. 127.78. You should do this analysis for all Adgroup Ideas and find more keyword themes for your campaign.

Snapshot 8.15 Keyword Ideas

Step 19: Based on keyword planner analysis, I decided to set Rs.128 as bid value and will be adding “digital marketing training in chennai” as my keyword for my first ad group. Budget amount should be decided based on how much you are willing to spend on the ads. Consider if I’m planning to spend Rs. 80,000 on my AdWords campaign for a month, divide it by 30.4 to know the amount to be spent for a day and enter it in the Budget per day box. Here, in this example we have decided to spend Rs. 60,800 and hence we have entered the budget as Rs.2000/day.

Snapshot 8.16 Bid and Budget

Step 20:

Ad extensions will be covered later in this chapter. For Now, we can Save and Continue.

Snapshot 8.17 Save your Campaign

Step 21: Provide name for your first Ad group. It is important to understand that the name of the Ad group is for our reference only. This has got nothing to do with the performance of the campaign.
Add Keyword “digital marketing in chennai” under this ad group (Snapshot 8.18).

Snapshot 8.18 Ad group name and Keywords

While adding keyword, we need to decide on the various keyword match types to add. There are 4 keyword match types.
1. Broad match: digital marketing training in chennai
2. Phrase match: “digital marketing training in Chennai”
3. Exact Match: [digital marketing training in chennai ]
4. Broad Match Modifier: +digital +marketing +training in +chennai

Match types are used for informing Google about how the keyword should be matched with the search term by the users for showing ads.

Exact Match Type :
Exact match type is used to specify the Google search engine that our ads should be shown only if a person search for that exact term included in the AdWords campaign. Exact type keywords are added inside Square Brackets [].
Example:when we give [digital marketing training], our ads will be shown only if people search for digital marketing training. If they search in different order with the same terms or if they include “in Chennai” to the search term, our ads will not be displayed.
Phrase Match Type:
In Phrase Match Type, our ads will be shown if people search for the exact term, or with some other terms in the beginning or at the end of the keyword phrase provided by us. Our keyword order should not be modified. Phrase match keywords are represented using double quotes “ ”. Example:When we add “digital marketing training” in phrase match, our ads will be shown if people search for the following terms.

 digital marketing training in Chennai.
 chennai digital marketing training.
 digital marketing training

Our ads will not be shown for the following keywords.  training for digital marketing in chennai.  training for digital marketing

Broad Match Type :
Broad Match type is the most generic way to add a keyword, such that the ads will be shown if the search term contains the keyword in any order and this also shows ads for the plural terms and other same meaning keywords. It is not necessary that all the terms in the keyword should be present in the search term for showing our ads.

Example: When digital marketing training is given in broad type, Our ads will be shown for the following:
 digital marketing
 marketing training
 training for marketing
 training for digital marketing, etc.

Broad Match Modifier:
This type of keywords is used to prevent the ads from being displayed to irrelevant customers. This type of keyword would have a Plus symbol before the important terms of the keyword. The terms with plus symbol should be compulsorily present in the search term but can be in any order.
Example:If our keyword is +digital +marketing +training in +chennai, we can see that we have included + symbols for the keywords required to be present in the Search Term.

Our ads will be shown for the following search terms:  digital marketing training chennai
 chennai digital marketing training
 training for digital marketing training chennai

Our ads will not be shown for the following:  marketing training chennai
 digital marketing training
 training in marketing

We have added all four match types just to explain. Google suggests following Broad to Exact approach. You may start with adding just broad type and analyze. You may then move on to include only specific match types as required.

Step 22:Once you are done with adding the keywords, click onContinue to ads. Step 23:Create your Text Ad for first Ad group (Snapshot 8.19)

Snapshot 8.19 Create ad
Headline:
Headline of the ad which will be shown in Google Search Results Page. It should not exceed 25 characters and should contain keywords. Make sure to use “Initial Caps” for your words for better readability.
Snapshot 8.19: our Headline is “Digital Marketing Course”

Ad Text (Description Line 1) & Ad Text (Destination Line 2):
Should contain unique selling points about your business and Call to action terms such as buy now, enquire, contact us etc. Each line should not exceed 35 characters limit.

Snapshot 8.19 : our Ad Texts are:
Course Starts on October 2014
Fee INR 4000, Register Today!

On the right side (As shown in Snapshot 8.19), we can see the preview of how our ads will be displayed in Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Note: Ads should followGoogle AdWords Guidelines. Search for “Google AdWords Guidelines” to know more about Ad Guidelines and Policies.

Display URL:

It should not exceed 35 characters. It should contain the domain name

Snapshot 8.19: our Display URL isMsmeDi-Chennai.gov.in/Digital
Destination URL / Final URL:Final URL has advanced feature when compared to Destination URL option. So, choose “Final URL” option and enter your Landing Page URL.

Do not use your home page URL here. It should be the actual Landing Page URL where we talk about digital marketing training program. Land your visitors to the page they are actually looking for. Do not land them on a generic page like your home page where you talk about everything. Do not confuse your visitor by providing more options.

Snapshot 8.19: our Destination URL iswww.msmedi-chennai.gov.in/training/dm
Advanced Ad Options: Please leaveURLs for MobileandCustom Parameteroptions empty. Save the ad by clicking onSavebutton (Snapshot 8.19).

Step 24:Click onReview Campaignbutton to review your Campaign Settings, Ad group, keywords, Ads and Bids. If you are fine, Click on “Save and Finish” to create this campaign.

Step 25:Once you click on Save and Finish, you would see a pop up to continue to billing. We will setup billing at a later point.

ChooseSave and Finishto analyse our Campaign first.

Step 26: Here is the AdWords interface with our Campaign (Snapshot 8.20). Campaigns and Ad Groups are listed on the left pane. On the right pane, you have various tabs “Ad Groups, Settings, Ads, Keywords, Ad extensions and Dimensions”.

You will be able to add/modify/pause/enable/delete Ad groups, Ads, Keywords from respective Tabs above.

You can create new campaigns by choosing “All online campaigns” from left pane.

You will be able to change the campaign settings for your campaign from Settings Tab.

Snapshot 8.20 AdWords Interface

Snapshot 8.21 Pause / Enable

Ad extensions :
Ad Extensions are the additional information displayed in addition to your Ad Text. Here in this Snapshot 8.22, “20 Million Units Sold” is called Sitelink Ad Extension. The next ad has Location Ad Extension: “6, Kariyan Ponnan Street, Madipakkam”

Snapshot 8.22 Ad Extensions

To Enable or Pause any Keyword, go to Keywords Tab and click on the Green button as shown in Snapshot 8.21. The process is same for Ad groups and Ads but you will be doing it from the respective Tabs.
Step 27:These extensions are used to provide more information about the business, website or products. We are going to add three key Ad Extensions for our MSME - Digital Marketing Campaign:

 Sitelinks
 Location
 Call

You can add Ad extensions at campaign level or at Ad group level. If you add a campaign level extension, it applies to ads in all Ad groups. If you add an Ad group level extension, it applies only to ads in that specific Ad group. It is advisable to add Ad group level extensions to have focused extensions per ad group.

To add an Ad extension, click on your Ad group under Ad Groups Tab

Now Click on Ad extensions Tab (Snapshot 8.23). Click on View Drop down.

Snapshot 8.23 Ad extensions

Step 28:Choose your Ad group

Step 29: Click on+New Sitelink.

Sitelinks extensions :
Click on Sitelinks Extensions to create sitelinks for specific Adgroup. It opens up the Sitelink Extension window.

Step 30:Provide required details to create a sitelink (Snapshot 8.24).

Location Extensions:

Similar to an ad, create this sitelink with heading (Link text), destination URL (link URL) and description. Scheduling is used show this sitelink for a specific time period. You can add offer as a sitelink and set a time limit for this offer sitelink to expire by certain date.

Click on Save to create this sitelink.

Snapshot 8.24 Create Sitelink

Location Extensions are used for displaying the business location along with the ad text. Through Location Extension, we should linkGoogle AdWordswithGoogle MyBusiness. We have already discussed about creating a Google MyBusiness Account in Chapter 4. Let’s go through the steps to link Google AdWords with Google MyBusiness.

Step 31:Choose Location extensions from Ad Extensions Tab -> View drop down (Snapshot 8.23). Click on + EXTENSION.

You’ll be prompted to link your Google MyBusiness and AdWords accounts. As we use same Gmail ID for all our Google Services, you just have to click on Done (Snapshot 8.25). Your location information from MyBusiness will be linked to AdWords.

Snapshot 8.25 Link MyBusiness and Adwords

Call Extensions

Call extension is used to display the phone number along with your Ad Text in Google Search.

Step 32: Choose Call extensions from Ad Extensions Tab -> View drop down (Snapshot 8.23). Click on + EXTENSION. Click on +New Phone Number to add your call extension as mentioned in Snapshot 8.26.

Snapshot 8.26 New Phone Number

Enter your phone number and set the schedule if needed.

Click on save once done.

We have successfully created our Campaign and Ad Extensions. It’s now time to make it live. To do this, we need to setup Billing Profile and make a Payment.

Billing Setup

Click on the Gear icon on the top right corner of the AdWords interface. Choose Billing.

Choose your billing country from Account Setup Screen. I chose India here. Choose Individual or Business. For Business, Tax Account Number is mandatory. Provide

Snapshot 8.27 Billing Setup

Name and Address. Choose the Payment type. There are two types:
1. Automatic
2. Manual

If you choose Automatic Payments, you should provide your Credit or Debit card details. Your Ads start running. You will be automatically charged after 30 days or when you reach max billing limit for your account. This is called Post Pay mode.

If you choose Manual Payments type, you should make a payment first using Net Banking or Credit or Debit card. Your ads start running. Google deducts Cost per click from your Pre Paid Balance. Your ads stop running when your balance is exhausted. You need make a payment again to start. This is called Pre Pay mode.

As you are a beginner, I would suggest you to go ahead with Manual Payment to have control on your spend.

Choose the Language, review the terms and click on Complete sign up.

As soon as you enter your billing and make a payment, you ads start running. The next step is to measure performance of your campaign and optimize it to make it a successful campaign. You need to closely monitor your campaign and tune to generate more sales / leads.

Key Fields to Monitor

After going live with your campaign, you should monitor these values. Budget: Decide if you have to increase or decrease your budget for the campaign.

Budget is one of the key factors for your Ads to show up more times in Google Search Results Page.

Clicks: Number of times user clicked on your Ads in Google Search Network.

Impressions: Number of times your Ads shown up in Google Search Network.

CTR : Click Through Rate. Clicks divided by Impressions. CTR is a key field to monitor. Try to improve CTR%. If CTR goes high, it means your Ads are relevant to your Keywords and hence you get higher CTR. It helps in increasing your keyword Quality Score. Please refer “Quality Score” section below.

Avg CPC: Average amount charged by Google for a click on your Ad. Avg CPC will never exceed your maximum bid value.

Cost: Total amount spent for your Ad Clicks.

Avg. Pos.: Average Ads Position in Google Search.

Converted Clicks : A conversion is nothing but a lead generated through website or product sales or any action that you want to measure. This field shows how many conversions have been generated in your website using Google AdWords. To setup conversions, you need to generate and paste setup code. Please refer “Conversions” section below.

Cost/converted click: Cost divided by number of Converted Clicks.

Click conversion rate : Number of Converted Clicks divided by number of Clicks. Try to increase the conversion rate as it directly results in more revenue. Check the “Optimization” section below to improve.

Max CPC : Maximum Cost Per Click (Maximum Bid) that you are ready to pay for a click on your Ad. The right combination of Max CPC and Budget acquires maximum number of impressions for your Ads.

There are more columns you may add from Columns drop down under any Tab in Adwords. What we have listed above are the core fields you should track on a regular basis.

Conversions
Assume we have a lead form in our website. Whenever we click on this lead form, it takes us to a thank you page. It is called a conversion or lead or goal. To track number of leads generated through AdWords Ads, we should create AdWords Conversion Setup Code and paste it into this specific thank you page.

Go to Tools -> Conversions -> + Conversion Select "Website" -> Provide a Name Value: Choose "Don't assign a value" Category: Choose "Lead"
Click on Save and Continue

It shows Conversion Setup Code. Here is a sample Conversion Setup code generated using Google AdWords:

<!-- Google Code for Contact Form Submitted Conversion Page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = 1023521550;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "2";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "hrotCLPmi1oQjuaG6AM";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"> </script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt=""
src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1023521550/?label=hrotCLPmi1oQjuaG 6AM&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>

You should paste this setup code on your Thank you page. Please paste this in between <body> </body> section of this webpage. Please do not paste this code into every page.

(Optional Step) Adding it via Google Tag Manager:

If you are using Google Tag Manager, please do not paste this setup code in your thank you page. Instead, note down the values of google_conversion_id and google_conversion_label and refer Adwords Conversion Code Setup section in Google Tag Manager Chapter to set it up.

Optimize
You should optimize your campaign to get better Return on Investment. Follow these steps to tune your Campaigns.

Quality Score: For every keyword, there is a Quality Score assigned in AdWords.

Having highest Quality Score improves your Ad Ranking and it helps you reduce your cost per click.

How do I improve my Quality Score? 1. Perform SEO on-page and off-page activities for your website. It improves the Quality of your webpages and also the Quality Score of your campaign keywords.

2. Ads, Keywords and Landing page relevancy should be improved. Relevancy plays a major role in increasing your Quality score.

3. Maintain highest Click Through Rate (CTR) for your keywords. Again relevancy matters. To increase the CTR, you should try adding various Ads for your Keywords. Pause Ads with low CTR. Keep experimenting by introducing new ads relevant to your keywords.

4. Historical Performance of your Campaign affects your Quality Score.

Negative Keywords : Negative keywords help your campaign target only relevant visitors by not showing your Ads for irrelevant keywords search in Google. You need to add few generic negative keywords always to start with if it is applicable for your Campaign. For example: you may want to add these keywords as your negative keywords in your campaign: jobs, career, free, pro bono, hiring, review, what, how, etc. You can add negative keywords from Keywords Tab. Go to Keywords Tab -> scroll down to the end -> Expand +Negative Keywords -> Add your negatives at Campaign or Ad group level. If you add negatives at Ad group level, it will be applicable only for the Ad group. If you add negatives at Campaign level, it will be applicable for all Ad groups. Once the negative terms have been added, your ad won’t be displayed for the people who search for those terms. The negatives can also be added with individual keyword types such as broad, phrase and exact type.

Search Terms :
To increase relevant visitors to your website, you should review Actual Search Terms that triggered your Ad in Google Search. To review your search queries, go to the Keywords Tab for specific campaign and click on the Details drop down. Choose “All” from the drop down if you want to review the actual search terms for all your keywordsoryou can check for a specific keyword by selecting the check box from keyword list and then choose “Selected” from the Details drop down.

It opens up the Google Search Terms report for your keywords. It shows the actual search queries entered by the user in their systems that triggered your Ads. This helps you identify the good keywords used by the user to reach you. Also, it helps you identify the irrelevant keywords entered by the visitors. You should add irrelevant keywords to Negative Keywords so that your ad won’t appear next time when some other user search for that term. You should add relevant keywords to your keyword list if it is not present already.

Ad Schedule
If you want to run your campaign only for certain time period, you can do so by setting your Ad Schedule. Click on Settings Tab -> Ad schedule -> + AD SCHEDULE. Create your specific ad schedule and save.

Devices

Bid Adjustments

By Default, your ads will be shown on all devices. You can check the device specific performance of your campaigns from Settings -> Devices Tab.

You will be able to adjust your Mobile Bids from this tab by clicking on Bid adj. column for “Mobile devices for full browsers” row. You will be able to increase or decrease the bid by certain percentage. If you want to completely avoid Mobile devices from showing your ads, you can decrease “Bid adj.” column by 100%.

As you monitor your keywords performance, if you want to decrease or increase the Max CPC, you can do so from Ad group Tab and Keywords Tab

Edit your Default Max CPC column to adjust your bids based on the performance of your specific Ad group or Keywords. When you change your Max CPC for an Ad group, it applies to all Keywords inside the Ad group except below:

If you change Max CPC for a specific Keyword, it won’t follow Ad group’s Max CPC. It will use only the Keyword’s Max CPC.

Reports
You can choose the custom period for which you need the report from top right corner. Click on the down arrow mark button next to “Columns” drop down.

Choose the format you require and click on Download. You can download reports from any tabs except settings.

Process
Ad Rank
An Ad Rank is a value that is used to determine the ads position (Where the ads to be shown). This Ad Rank is calculated from the bid, quality score of each ad (expected click through rate, ad relevancy & landing page experience), Ad extensions and other ad formats. The Ad rank is recalculated each time the ad is eligible to show and thus the ads positions may vary each time when the ad competes in an ad auction. This also shows you whether your ad is eligible to show on all time or not.

Ad Auction
The Ad auction decides which ad to be shown at which position comparing all the competitors’ ads in the auction. Each time when an ad is eligible to appear in the Google search results, it goes through the Ad Auction.
How does ad auction takes place?

1. When a person enters the search term in Google Search bar, the AdWords system analyses all the ads that matches with the search term.
2. The ads which are not eligible to appear are ignored by the AdWords system.
3. The ads sufficiently with a high Ad Rank may show. Ad Rank is a combination of your bid, ad’s quality score, ad extensions and the other ad formats.

Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool
It helps you preview your ads. It provides diagnosis information if there is an issue with your Ads in showing up in Google Search. For example, if you added a Negative Keyword and it is blocking your Ads from showing up in Google Search.

Tips
Google Merchant Center:Application used to add your product data to Google and make it available via Google Shopping and Google Search. For example, when you search for “buy sarees”, it shows items with images and prices on the right side of Google SERP. This is created using Google Merchant Center.

Sign up here www.google.co.in/merchants/ with your Gmail ID and upload your product data in the format required by Google. Create a campaign with Type as Online Shopping with a budget. Your ads will be there in Google Search after approval from Google.

Google AdWords Editor: A desktop tool from Google to download/upload/sync your online AdWords account with your local desktop. You can create/edit campaigns, adgroups, keywords, ads, etc., from this desktop tool. You can make bulk changes in less time. You should try this too. Go to Google and search for it.

8.2 Display Network

Google Display network consists of a collection of websites in which the ads are displayed. You can display text and image ads in Google Display Network. You can also have Video Ads but we will be covering that in YouTube Ads section below. This network doesn’t just restrict to websites but also extends its advertising to mobile sites and apps. Display network helps us reach more potential customers and is an effective way of reaching the target audience.

The true potential of Display Network is acquired when the right measures are taken. Using the right keywords, placements, topics, interest and demographics can help your business reach potential customers.

For Example: When a medical ad is to be shown in Display Network, we can target websites with similar content to display our ads.

Google Display Network reaches a wide audience worldwide. With not just registered websites, the potential reach to customers extends to YouTube and many such Google subsidiaries.  Reach new customers and sell more products.
 Brand Awareness.

Have you seen Google Display Network Ads in any of the websites you know?
I have highlighted Display Banner Ad in red (refer Snapshot 8.2.1). You can target specific websites to create your Branding by placing your Banner Ads using Google Display Network.

Snapshot 8.2.1

Aiming the right Audience: To target right audience,

Select right keywords:To display ads in the relevant websites, adding right keywords to your Display Network campaign play a major role.

Adding right Placements (Websites): Using Display Planner Tools (AdWords Tools Menu -> Display Planner), you can find the suitable webpages (placements) that are relevant to your business. Adding right placements in your campaign helps you reach potential customers.

Example:
If you run gold rings business in India and want to create a display network campaign, you may choose to perform these:

1. Targeting Keywords (Contextual Targeting): Add keywords like gold rings, gold rings business in your Ad group. Ads will be shown in websites that talks about these keywords.

2. Targeting Website: Identify a website which has related content about gold rings and if you wish to show your ad there, add it as a placement in display network campaign.

Re-Targeting: You can re-target or show your ads to visitors who already visited your website. By creating Display Network campaign with re-marketing as sub type, you can re-target people who have already visited your website but did not complete a goal. It can be done from “interest category” tab.

Display Network Ad Format:

You can display Text Ads and Image/Banner Ads in Display Network.

Text Ads:We talked about Text Ads in Search Network Campaign.

Image Ads:

Image ad ( Snapshot 8.2.2) gets the attention of website visitors and makes them click on it to reach your website. You should mention your unique selling point (USP), call to action and better design to attract the customers.

Snapshot 8.2.2

Please follow these technical requirements provided by Google for your Image Ads:

Image size:
 Vertical rectangle: 240 x 400
 Mobile leaderboard: 320 x 50
 Banner: 468 x 60
 Leaderboard: 728 x 90
 Square: 250 x 250
 Small square: 200 x 200
 Large rectangle: 336 x 280
 Inline rectangle: 300 x 250
 Skyscraper: 120 x 600
 Wide skyscraper: 160 x 600
 Half-page: 300 x 600
 Large leaderboard: 970x90
 Large mobile banner: 320 x 100
 Billboard: 970 x 250
 Portrait: 300 x 1050

Your Image File Size should not exceed 150 KB.

Acceptable Image File Type: .jpeg or .jpg or .png or .gif

Do not use “Click Here” as a call to action in Image Ads. Do not use copyright materials in your image ads. Your ads will be disapproved by Google. If you receive disapproval email, it will also have policy details. Go through the policy and edit your image ads accordingly. When you resubmit your image ads after correcting the issues, it will be approved by Google after review.

Create Display network Campaign:
Step 1:Create a Campaign with Type as “Display Network Only” and sub type as “All Features”.

Step 2:Fill up required campaign settings such as location, language and bid strategy

Step 3: Set your Budget

Step 4: Provide your Ad group name and a bid for this Ad group. Use Tools -> Display Planner to analyze on the approximate bid for the Display Network for your business related placements.

Step 3: You can choose your target placements (websites) in three ways.
By choosing “Display Keywords”: Add your business keywords. Google shows ads in websites related to your keywords added.

By choosing “Interests & remarketing”: Your ads will be shown to people based on their interests.

By choosing third option, you can target using “Topics”, “Demographics” and “Placements”. Topics targets webpages based on the topic chosen. Demographics to target specific demographics like age, gender.
If you choose Placements, you can choose specific websites to target by searching for it as mentioned below.

You can also find placements (websites, mobile apps, video channels) related to your business keywords using Display Planner from Tools menu

Choose the type of ad you want to create. If you want to create image ad, upload your banner image. Provide Display and Destination URL.

If you want to create Text Ads, fill up the respective fields. Click on Done. Your Display Network campaign is ready.

Optimize
Placement Analysis

Let’s analyze the placement performance from Display Network -> Placements Tab

There are two types of placements: Automatic and Manual. Automatic placements are websites chosen by Google based on your target settings. Manual placements are websites that you added.

Check the performance of your placements by analysing the CTR and Converted clicks column. Usually CTR for display network campaigns will be less than 1%. If you see higher CTR for any of your placements, check if it is a valid placement by analysing the webpage. You can analyze the specific webpage by selecting your placement and choose “Selected”. It shows the actual Page URL. Open the Page URL and see if it is a valid page to display your ad. If you think the specific webpage URL or website is not going to fetch relevant visitors, go ahead and exclude it by adding the website domain or specific webpage URL as Negative Placements. If you scroll down to the bottom of “Placements” Tab, you will have option to add Negative Placements. Or you may select the placement, click on “Edit” drop down and choose “exclude (Campaign)” or “exclude (ad group). When you add a website domain as negative placement, your ads will not be shown in all webpages in that website. If you add only specific webpage URL of a website as negative, your ad will not be shown in that specific webpage URL but your ad may be shown in other webpage URLs in the same website.

You can also evaluate the performance your keywords from Display keywords tab.

If you want to add any keywords as a negative, just scroll down to the bottom of page and you will find this screen

Add your negative keyword by using + EXCLUSIONS

You can also add irrelevant Categoriesfor your business (for example. Games) as your negative category. If you add, the website classified under Games will not be targeted. You can do so by using + OPTIONS button under Site Category options (located next to Campaign keyword exclusions). This will save money and also you will get relevant visitors.

Similar way, you can add negatives from other tabs: Topics, Interest & remarketing and Demographics.

8.3 YouTube Ads

If you have a video in YouTube that you want to promote, you can do it using YouTube Video Ads. You can create your Video Ads from Google AdWords.

Types of YouTube ads format:

In-Stream Video Ads: When you try to open a video in YouTube, a video ad opens up before opening your actual video. It is called In-Stream Video Ads. There are two types in In-Stream video ads:

1. Video Ad that you can skip after 5 seconds.

2. Video Ad that you can’t skip. You have to watch the complete video ad.

In-Display Video Ads:As you watch some video, you can see Video Ad Suggestions on the right side. The one highlighted in Yellow. It shows related videos or suggestions as Ad.

Steps to create a new video campaign:
 Sign in to your AdWords Account
 To create a new video campaign, click on+CAMPAIGN -> Online Video

Enter the name of your campaign, budget, networks, location and language. For Networks, I would suggest you to start with YouTube Search and YouTube Videos. Uncheck “Include the Google Display Network” to begin with.

Choose your video from YouTube to be promoted as an Ad.

Save and continue to set the Targeting options for this Video Ad.

As shown in Snapshot 8.3.1: Name yourTargeting Groupand setBidding. When you set yourbidding, please note it is for Cost Per View (CPV). You will see “Typical” suggestion for CPV.

Choose the DemographicOptions underTargetingSection.

Choose Interest Categories to target (Snapshot 8.3.2). Further narrow down your Targeting options based on Topics, Remarketing, Keywords and Placements.

I would suggest you to use Keywords and Placements as your Targeting Filters to start with.

Video Ads Performance Evaluation: To view your video campaign, go to adwords.google.com and click on All Video Campaigns.

There are various tabs available on your video campaign page.

The performance of the video ads can be evaluated based on views, audience, branding and conversions using different metrics given under theColumnsdrop down list as given below. These metrics are available from all tabs except settings tab.

As you select one from the drop down, it shows various other statistical information about your video like Impressions, views, etc.,

9

Google Tag Manager

Now that you have your website ready with the required components, it is important to track and analyse the behaviour of your website visitors to improve your website. In order to achieve this, you need to paste multiple setup codes (Also called as Tags) in your website. Google Tag Manager makes it easy to handle such setup codes by adding one time simple setup.

How is this going to help me?
Maintaining and updating multiple setup codes in your website could be a tedious task. For example, in this book, you will be asked to setup Google Analytics tracking code and Google AdWords Conversion code. You will have to open your website’s coding and update the code setup twice. Instead, using the Google Tag Manager will minimize the task of rambling through a bunch of codes and perform the rest on its own.

Snapshot 9.1: Sample Tags in Tag Manager

Note: Before we get started, please note it is advisable to use one Gmail ID for signing up all Google Services like Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google MyBusiness, YouTube and Google +. If you use different Gmail IDs to sign up for each service, it will be difficult to link these services to share data with each other. So, please strict with one Gmail ID. Also, please do not use your personal Gmail ID. I would suggest you to create new Gmail ID especially for your business usage.

We have this Chapter here because we want you to understand that Google Tag Manager is an easy way to update all your setup codes using one time setup code. If you feel difficult to follow this chapter, please move on to other chapters and when it comes to setting up tracking code, please come back to this chapter. Let’s get started.

Google Tag Manager Setup

Step 1: Go to www.google.com/tagmanager/ and Click on “Sign up now” to register. Use your Gmail ID and Password to sign up. As we mentioned, please use one Gmail ID for all your Google Accounts sign up.

Snapshot 9.2: Sign up now

Snapshot 9.3 Setup an account

Step2: You can name the account as you would prefer, like “LocSea” or even you can have your site name as an Account Name as shown in Snapshot 9.3.

If you are fine with the option of“Share data
anonymously with Google and others”,keep it selected.

Step 3: Set up a container name of your choice, for instance: example.com. Choose “Web Pages” option in ‘Where to Use Container section’. Enter your domain URL, set a time zone according to the desired country (Snapshot 9.4).

Step 4: Once you click on “Create Account and Container”, you get a container code (Snapshot 9.5), which is the snippet code you need to paste it in your website. Please paste it in to every webpage of your website. Paste it immediately after the opening <body> tag.

Snapshot 9.4 Setup a Container

Snapshot 9.5 Container Code (This is theGoogle Tag Manager Setup Codeto be pasted in every webpage)

Step 5: Click “Add Tags Later”. It opens up the Container Draft Home Screen (Snapshot 9.6). That’s all you have to do for now in this chapter. You need to create Tags at a later point as you go through other chapters. Now move on to theChapter 10and come back to this section later.

Container Draft

Snapshot 9.6 Container Draft -> Tags

In this overview menu (Snapshot 9.6), you can see Tags, Rules, and Macros.

Click on New->Tag to create new tag.

Tags
Google Analytics Tag Setup
We need to create a new Tag in Google Tag Manager to enable Google Analytics tracking feature for your website. (Please first referChapter 10to setup Google Analytics Account to create Analytics Tracking ID for your website)

Step 1: To create Google Analytics Tag, click on New -> Tag (Snapshot 9.6). Provide a name for this Tag “Google Analytics Page View LocSea.com” and choose Tag Type as Google Analytics -> Universal Analytics (Snapshot 9.7)

Snapshot 9.7 Create New Tag and Select Tag Type

Step 2: Get your Google Analytics Tracking ID by logging into Google Analytics Account -> Admin->Property->Tracking Info->Tracking Code. Copy the Analytics Tracking ID “UAXXXXXXX-X” and insert it as shown in Snapshot 9.8.

Snapshot 9.8 Tracking ID

Step 3:If you want to enable Demographics Tracking through Google Analytics, you may enable the check box “Enable Display Advertising Features” shown in Snapshot 9.9

Snapshot 9.9 Display Advertising Features

Step 4:Leave default track type as “Page View” in order to track the website page views.

Step 5:Click on Save to create this Google Analytics Page View Tag (Snapshot 9.10).

Snapshot 9.10 Google Analytics Tag Created

We need to fire/deploy this Google Analytics Tag in to all webpages of your website to track. To do this, we should create a firingruletargeting all webpages of your website and apply it to this Tag.

Rules
By default, “All Pages” rule will be available under Rules menu (Snapshot 9.9). All Pages rule matches all webpages in your website. Refer Snapshot 9.11. We can make use of this existing rule and apply it for Google Analytics Page View Tag as we need to fire Google Analytics Tag to all webpages.

Snapshot 9.11 Rules

Step 6:Go to Tags Menu (Snapshot 9.10) and click on the “Google Analytics Page View LocSea.com” Tag. It opens up the “Edit Tag” window (Snapshot 9.12).

Snapshot 9.12 Edit Tag

Step 7: Click on “+Add” and Choose the existing “All Page” rules. Click on Save to apply this rule to your Tag (Snapshot 9.13).

Snapshot 9.13 Add Rules

Step 8:It is time to publish your Container and make your Tags live on your website. Click on Publish (Snapshot 9.14).

Snapshot 9.14 Publish your Container

It opens up the “Create Version and Publish” dialog box. Click on it to create a version and publish (Snapshot 9.15). Whenever you publish your Container, it creates a new Version (Snapshot 9.15). Versions help you to maintain and track your container changes.

Snapshot 9.15 Container Published and created a Version 1. It is live now.

We have successfully published this Container with Google Analytics Tag to all our Pages.

Google AdWords Conversion Code Tag Setup
AdWords Conversion Code Tag is used to track Sales/Leads/Inquiries/Goals. It should be fired only when someone reaches Thank You page or Order Successful Page. This Tag should not be fired in All Pages. Let’s create this Tag.

Note: Please referChapter 8AdWords before you create this Tag as you need to have your Conversion ID and Label ready.

Step 1: Create a New Tag and Name it as “AdWords Conversion LocSea Thank You Page” (Snapshot 9.16). Choose the Tag Type as AdWords Conversion Tracking. Enter the Conversion ID and Label. Click on +Add under Firing Rules Section. It opens up the “Add Rule” Dialog Box (Snapshot 9.17).

Snapshot 9.16 AdWords Conversion Tag

Step 2: Choose “Create new rule” as we need to fire this tag only in “thankyou” page. Let’s name this rule as ‘LocSea Thank You Page”. Enter the Condition as shown in Snapshot 9.17. Click on Save to apply this rule to AdWords Conversion LocSea Thank You Page Tag. This Tag will now be fired only in “thankyou” page.

Snapshot 9.17 New Rule (URL equals http://www.locsea.com/thankyou)

Step 3: Click on Save to save your Tag.
Step 4: Click on Publish to publish your new Container. This creates another Version for your container and goes live.

10

Google Analytics

Every business is in need of the right statistics to evaluate the on-going business and to target the right audience. Google Analytics helps you in that process by tracking the visitors of your website. The classifications of every visitor who visits your website would amaze you.

For example:

Demographics:

Snapshot 10.1: Age & Gender Analysis in Google Analytics

Geo:

Snapshot 10.2: Location and Language in Google Analytics

E-Commerce:

Snapshot 10.3: E-Commerce Conversions & Revenue

By studying the visitor’s behaviour and success rate, setting up a suitable format on where the target should be, becomes visible. Steering towards the right population is made possible and hence the probability of a higher success rate is evident.

Introduction to Google analytics:
Google Analytics, an amazing tool by Google provides you sufficient amount of data on what is happening in your website. Web analytics is very essential for planning out any online marketing campaign, being a free tool that can produce plenty of data, Google analytics is highly recommended for an online business or blog.

Setup:
We should first setup the Google Analytics Code and paste it into your website to track visitors. Step 1: sign up with Google analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/ ) using your Gmail Id.

Snapshot 10.4: Choose “Access Google Analytics” or “Sign in”

Snapshot 10.5: Choose “Sign up”

Step 2:Fill in the details about your website

Snapshot 10.6 Choose Website Tab

Choose the website tab, enter the Website Domain Name, Industry category, choose your business type, reporting time zone (Snapshot 10.6 and 10.7).

Snapshot 10.7 Website URL, Category, Time Zone

Step 3: Choose recommended data sharing settings (Snapshot 10.8). You have to enable this option “With other Google Products only” to transfer data across other Google Products. Enter “Get tracking Id” and accept the agreement.

Snapshot 10.8 Data Sharing Settings

Step 4: Now you will be redirected to a page (Snapshot 10.9) that contains the tracking code. Please note you are onAdminTab ->PropertyColumn ->Tracking InfoSection ->Tracking Code.

Snapshot 10.9 Google Analytics Tracking Code

Step 5: Adding the tracking code to your website: There are two ways.
1. Adding the setup code manually OR
2. (Optional) Adding it via Google tag manager.

Adding the setup code manually:
You or your web developer may do this step. Copy the Tracking Code and Paste it immediately before the closing </head> of your webpages. The main reason to paste the code in header section is that the header part is common in all the pages of the website and the fact that it’s the coding part that loads first when a web page is loaded. Please note this code has to be pasted into every webpage in your website.

(Optional) Adding the setup code via Google Tag Manager:

Please refer Chapter 9. Google Tag Manager -> Google Analytics Tag Setup.

Step 6: Check the tracking status in the property section:
Navigate through theProperty→Tracking Info→Tracking Codeof your Google analytics account and check the status displayed.

If it shows “Tracking Not Installed”, go to your website and open the Page Source (Right Click and choose “View Page Source”) (Snapshot 10.10).

It opens the HTML Source Code. Check if your web developer has installed the Analytics Tracking Code by searching for your respective Tracking Code.

Reporting:

Snapshot 10.10 View HTML Page Source

Once you are done with the tracking code setup, you can start analysing the reports for your website traffic and performance under theReportingtab (Snapshot 10.11)

Snapshot 10.11 Reporting Tab

Under Reporting, we have few major reports to highlight.
1. Channel ReportsunderAcquisition– For analysing the Traffic and Sources
2. SEO ReportsunderAcquisition– For analysing the SEO Performance
3. Geo ReportunderAudience– For analysing the Locations
4. DevicesunderAudience– For analysing the performance of the visitors from Mobile, desktop and tablet devices
5. Demographics ReportunderAudience– For analysing the Age/Gender
6. Behaviour FlowunderBehaviour– For analysing the user flow (Pages visited) in our Website
7. Goals ReportunderConversions– To find the number of successful Goals achieved

Acquisition -> Channels Reports:
Channels report exhibits various statistics like Sessions, New Users, Behavior, etc. for the website.

Traffics are evaluated and tracked under certain default channel grouping sources:

Direct (User entered the website into the browser or came to your site via a bookmark) Organic Search(Organic Search traffics)
Social(Traffic from social networks like Facebook, twitter, etc.)
Referral(Traffic from websites that are not categorized under social networks) Paid Search(Traffic from AdWords)
Display(Display Channel Traffic).
Email(Email traffics are categorized under this Channel)

Search Engine Optimization Report:
Queries Report

Queries Report provides the following statistics for your website:
 Queries entered by the users in Google Search
 Number of impressions of your website's URLs in Google Search results  Number of clicks on your website's URLs from Google Search
 The ratio of clicks to impressions for your website's URLs i.e. Click Through Rate  The average position of your website in Google Search

Landing Pages Report

After clicking on a link in Google search result, it takes your visitor to a specific webpage in

Geo Reporting:

your website. It is called the Landing Page. Landing Page Report provides visitor statistics for your Landing Page URLs.

Tip: Additionally, you can also view secondary dimension for your data by choosing Secondary Dimension drop down and selecting respective parameter like Country or Google Property.

Geo menu has 2 types of reporting: Language and Location.

The Location reporting shows the location of your visitors.

Why do we need this report?
 Evaluate if we are reaching the right audience.  Evaluate the Language specific data and visitor statistics. The language reporting tab provides session split-up for specific languages.

 To analyse the best performing Locations and Languages other than our target language and locations to plan further.

Let’s take an example:
I am focusing on visitors from US and English Language Speakers to buy my products. Through this report, I found that France and French speakers have brought in more conversions next to US and English speakers for my website. So, it provides me an opportunity to add France to my targeting locations and focus there more along with US. I will be translating my pages to French and show French Website if someone opens my website from France. It adds a local touch and I may get more conversions.

Technology and mobile:
Technology and Mobile Reports contain data about the Browser, OS, Network and the devices used by the visitors to visit our website.

It helps us optimize our website for specific browser and device. Assume we receive more traffic from Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers. It is a good idea to test your website on these browsers and make it compatible. Assume 40% of visitors for your website are coming from mobile, it is a good idea to make a mobile responsive website or create a mobile version of your website to provide better experience for your mobile visitors.

Demographics and Interests:

Demographics Report provides data about the age and gender.

Interests Report contains data categorized based on the affinity groups and in-market analysis.

What am I going to do by knowing their age, gender and interests?
Having this data, you will be able to identify the segment of visitors to your website, make redesign plan for your website and add required content targeting specific group. You can also plan your advertisements and promotions targeting specific age and affinity groups.

By default, Demographics data is disabled. You need to enable it. To enable, we need to perform below steps:
Step 1:Go to Admin tab -> Property column -> Property Settings.
Step 2:Under “Display Advertiser Features”, set “Enable Display Features” to ON Step 3:Add the following additional line to your existing Analytics Tracking Code on your website:

ga('require', 'displayfeatures');

For example, add it like this if you have manually pasted your Analytics Setup Code: <script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxx-xx', 'example.com');
ga('require', 'displayfeatures');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

OR (Optional) if you use Google Tag Manager:
You should Enable Display Advertiser Features to get Demographic details. Refer Chapter 9 Google Tag Manager -> Google Analytics Setup section.

Behaviour Flow Report:
Click on Behavior Menu -> Behavior Flow report to view this report (Refer Snapshot 10.12). It provides the complete flow of all visitors’ sessions. It shows the pages entered by the visitors, pages travelled and finally where they drop off. It provides a big picture of worst performing pages with more drop-offs. We can optimize these pages to reduce the drop-offs by adding required components like offers, content, images and trust building factors.

10.12 Behaviour Flow Report

Conversion Report
What is a conversion? Conversions or Goals can be: 1. Leads received
2. Product sold
3. Calls received
4. Sign Up
5. Membership
6. Duration stayed on a specific page
7. Download of an e-book
8. Videos Watched

Conversion report provides details about Goals recorded in your website.

To record a Goal, you need to first define a Goal in Analytics.

Define a Goal in Analytics

If someone submits a lead form in my website, it takes them to a thank you page URL www.locsea.com/contact-tks where it shows “Form Sent Successfully” message. Here this URL is called Destination URL for this Goal. So we need to define this URL page as a Goal in Analytics and it will be tracked under Conversions.

Go to Admin Tab -> View Column -> Click on Goals Click on +New Goal

Choose Custom Goal radio button from Goal Setup Section. Provide a name for your new Goal and Choose Destination radio button from Goal Type Section.
It takes you to the Goal Details section. Type your Destination URL by choosing “Begins with” from drop down and enter “/contact-tks” in the edit box.
Click on Save to create this Goal.

From now on, this page will be tracked as a Goal in Analytics.

Linking Analytics with AdWords:

Note : If you are new to AdWords, please go throughChapter 8. You can do this step only after signing up for AdWords.
Step 1: Click on AdWords Linking fromAdminTab ->PropertyColumn
Step 2: Select the AdWords Account to be linked
Step 3: Choose All Website Data from theLinked Viewdrop down
Step 4: Click on Save.
AdWords is now linked with Analytics. AdWords data will be populated in Analytics.

Linking Analytics with Google Webmasters Tools:

Go to Propertycolumn inAdminTab. Scroll down and click onEditunder Webmaster Tools Settings section. It takes you to the Google Webmasters Tools Application to select your website. Select your website and click on Save.

Note: If you are new to Google Webmasters Tools, please go through theChapter 11Google Webmasters.
Click on OK for “Add Association” Dialog box.

Click on Save to finish. Your Webmasters Tools is now linked with Analytics.

Summary:
We have explained the key reports and settings in this chapter. There are various reports, tools available in Google Analytics. Get started by implementing the steps listed in this chapter. It will be very interesting to analyze these data for our website. It is very important to take action based on the data received through Google Analytics to improve your ROI.

11

Google Webmaster

Now that your website is up and running, informing Google about it is to be done through Google Webmasters Tools (GWT) by submitting the URL details (also called as Sitemap). By reading the sitemap, Google crawls (read) the content of your website such that it indexes (stores) your web pages.

It further enables you to perform additional operations related to issues present in your website.

Snapshot 11.1: Google Webmaster Tools sample screen

How is this going to help me?
 It is an added advantage for you to see whether Google Search Engine has indexed your website from Google Webmaster. Google also lists the various website crawling errors, from which fixing up those issues are made simpler.

 You will be able to track the keywords entered by your visitors to reach your website.  You will be able to find any spam and security issues related to your website.

There are various features available as mentioned below. Let’s take a look at key features.  Add a site and verification
 Site dashboard
 Site messages
 Search appearances  Search traffic
 Google index
 Crawl
 Security issues
 Other resources  Settings

Add a Site and Verify:
Step 1:Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and Click on “Sign in to Webmaster Tools” (Snapshot 11.2). Sign in with your Gmail ID.

Snapshot 11.2: Google Webmaster Tools screen

It will take you to the GWT home page (Snapshot 11.3).

Step 2:Type in your website domain URL (Snapshot 11.3) and Click onAdd A Site. Assume in this case we entered a new website domain URL www.startupinindia.org.

Snapshot 11.3: Google Webmaster Tools sample screen

Now, it’s time to verify your website and test its authenticity and ownership.

Step 3:Verify your website with one of the 2 following methods:

 Recommended method

 Alternative method

In recommended method, you would be asked to Sign in to your Domain Name Provider (Snapshot 11.4).

Example used here for explanation is GoDaddy.com. Click on Verify once you have chosen the Domain Name Provider.

Snapshot 11.4: Verify Ownership

Once you click on verify button, it takes you to the domain provider login window to verify your domain ownership.

.

Confirm the access to Google by accepting the request from Google (Snapshot 11.5). Click on Accept.

Snapshot 11.5: Provide access to Google

Google verifies Domain access and creates necessary records in your Domain DNS settings. It finally shows “Verification steps completed message” (Snapshot 11.5).

There are Alternative methodsfor Website verification as mentioned in Snapshot 11.6. You can do so just by logging into your Google Analytics Account or Google Tag Manager Account or by adding a simple HTML tag in your website.

Snapshot 11.6 Alternate Verification method

Once you verify your website, it will be added to your GWT.

After verification, it opens up the following Tips message (Snapshot 11.7) from Google to get started.

Let’s go through the tips suggested by Google and complete the account setup:

 1. Add all your Website versions  2. Select the preferred Version  3. Choose targeting Country  4. Share access with co-workers  5. Submit a Sitemap file

Add all your Website versions: Make sure to add all the versions of your website domain. You should add other version of your websitestartupinindia.org (Withoutwww.prefix).

Snapshot 11.7 Tips to get started

After adding both versions of your website, GWT lists your websites underHome(as shown in Snapshot 11.8).

Snapshot 11.8 With and Without “www.” prefix

Select the preferred domain:
Once you add the versions of your website domains, set one as your preferred version as mentioned below.

Snapshot 11.9 Gear Icon -> Site Choose Targeting Country:

To set a preferred domain, click on the gear icon on the top right corner of the website. You would see “Site Settings” option in the drop down menu.

The Site Settings page looks like the snapshot given below. It lists all the versions of the website added. Choose the preferred domain and click on save.

Settings

To choose the targeting country, we have an option calledInternational Targeting underSearch Trafficreporting (Snapshot 11.10).

Choose the country you want to target and click on save.

Snapshot 11.10 International Targeting

Share access with co-workers
If you want to have someone else manage your GWT, you can provide access to other users. To share access with co-workers, we have option “Users & Site Owners” option under the settings (Gear icon on the top right corner).
ChooseAdd a new useroption, and provide the email id of the person whom you want to provide access. Choose the Permission access level for every user you add and click onAdd.

Submit a Sitemap file
It is important to submit a Sitemap file to GWT since it helps Google to crawl our website faster and makes it easy for Google to index our website.

Sitemap is an xml file which can be generated from https://www.xmlsitemaps.com/. Once after creating a sitemap, you or your web developer can add it to your website root folder. You can then access it by enteringwww.yourdomainname.com/sitemap.xml.

After adding the sitemap to your website, you can submit the sitemap in GWT, so that Google can index your website faster. To submit a sitemap, you have option called “Sitemaps” under Crawltab (Snapshot 11.11).

Snapshot 11.11 Add/Test Sitemap

Click on “Add/Test Sitemap” button and submit the Sitemap.
Once we are done with the basic steps of GWT account setup, we can get into the analysis and reporting part that can help you to understand the performance of your Website.

Site Dashboard:
Site Dashboard contains the overview of the reports available in the GWT. It shows “New Message Notifications”, overview of “Crawl errors”, “Search Queries” Performance and the Sitemap indexing details.
Let’s learn the basic important reports in detail now.

The Crawl Errors Report:
The Crawl errors report is present under the Crawl option. Crawl errors include site errors and URL errors.

Site Errors:Site errors list any DNS, Server Connectivity and Robots.txt fetch errors.

URL Errors: URL errors include 404 errors and other errors which stop Google Bot from crawling specific pages of the website. It provides crawl issue data for Desktop and Smart Phones (Snapshot 11.12).

Snapshot 11.12 Site Errors and URL Errors

Snapshot 11.13 shows sample URL errors (404). These issues can be by you or your web developer. Fix it and choose Mark as Fixed button. You can select one or multiple pages and choose “Mark as Fixed”.

Snapshot 11.13 404 URL Errors

Search Queries Report:
Search Queries report is available under Search Traffic reporting.
It lists Google Search Queries, Impressions and Clicks (Snapshot 11.14) data for your website.

This report is helpful as we get to know about the list of search terms for which our website is appearing in Google Search. We can tune our Content Strategy for our website to improve the performance our website.

You can view up to 90 days of historical data. You should review these search queries and Click Through Rate (CTR = Clicks/Impressions) for specific search terms. To improve CTR for specific search queries, you should tune your website’s Title tag and Meta description (ref. Chapter 5 SEO) in a more attractive way, as that’s what displayed in Google Search for specific queries.

Snapshot 11.14 Search Queries

Search Appearance
Search Appearances shows how your website appears on the Google search results. These are otherwise portrayed as snippets. The more rich snippets present for your website, Google can present your data more attractively.

The main contents of search appearance are:
 Structured Data
 Data Highlighter
 HTML Improvements
 Site Links

Structured Data
The overview of structured data is given below
This report provides you the stat information of total no of URL’s that contains data type, the number of pages under every data type and if there are any issues in the website.

Snapshot 11.15 Search Appearance

What are rich Snippets?
Rich snippets help the users to discover a site in a more precise, easy and direct manner that are relevant to your search queries. This would eventually results in highest click through rate (CTR).
Ex, if your website content is about restaurants, the rich snippet appears as average review, number of stars and price range in Google Search Results. Talk to your web developer to implement rich snippets mark-up tags for your website.

Data Highlighter
Data highlighter is a similar process to that of structured data. But, this process is done after Google indexing. This is purely user defined, an easy way to tell Google, the structured data on your page. Similar to structured data, you can define the reviews, stars, price range, etc. which has to be shown in the Google Search Results Page along with your website link.

Snapshot 11.16 Data Highlighter

You can do this without modifying the URL or HTML of your website’s page.

 Get into the page, where you need to make use of the data highlighter with regards to your rich snippets.
 Highlight the data items (related to your snippets) to be highlighted and select their category say name, date, location, events, movies, products etc.
 Tag that particular page and publish. It will be automatically highlighted alongside the snippets.
 Once you have tagged in a single page, data highlighter will automatically tag similar pages and sync them based on your data item.

HTML Improvements
To bring your website to the top or to be best ranked in the Google search results, it is always wise to make sure the HTML tags of your website are clear, crisp and precise. This is mainly concerned with the issues related to Title tag, Meta description and non-index able contents (Snapshot 11.17).

Meta description
Meta descriptions are the main content that appears on the Google Search results. GWT statistically shows you the report of the issues related to your site’s HTML tags. The maximum allowed word count for Meta description set by Google’s search quality team is 156(recommended) 160(highest). If the Meta description exceeds or fell short beyond this limit, GWT will intimate you to resolve the associated issues. The Meta description issues are categorized into three types. Either the Meta description would have been short or too long or the Meta description might have been duplicated in various pages.

Title Tag
The recommended Title tag for a website’s page set by search quality team is 60 (max) and 58 (recommended). If Title of your website’s pages is inappropriate, it will be clearly shown by the GWT in order to rectify it accordingly.

Snapshot 11.17 HTML Improvements

Site Links
Site links are the links that appear below the website link content in Google Search Results. It provides additional information about your business and a way to easily navigate or access through your site to fetch the information they are looking for.
Since these are automatically generated, your website on the search results may contain unwanted or unimportant site links, they needn’t be shown relatively on the Google Search Results. On that case, you can demote a particular site link from displaying. This could be accomplished with the help of GWT.

To do this, follow these steps in GWT (Snapshot 11.18),

Snapshot 11.18 Sitelinks

Under Search Appearance, click onSite links.
“For this search result”edit box: Provide the URL for which you don't want a specific site link URL to appear in Google Search.
“Demote this site link URL”edit box: Provide the URL of the site link you want to demote. Once you have demoted a particular link, it will take some time for the changes to appear on the Search. You can demote up to 100 URL’s.

Search Traffic

The main reports under the search traffic reporting are given below.

Links to your Site
One of the best ways to increase your website’s ranking is acquire more links to your site. The more links your site receives from quality websites, the more it is highly rated. Usually this happens naturally if your website is provided with valuable information for the potential customers. “Links to your Site” report (Snapshot 11.19) lists your external links to your website.

Snapshot 11.19 Search Traffic
In GWT “Links to Your Site” page, you will be displayed with three sections.  The domains linking most to your site
 The pages on your site with the most links
 A sampling of the anchor text external sites are using when they link to your site.

By clicking on more option under each section, you will receive the complete list of data. From that list, if you click on a particular domain, you will be given with the information of all the pages linked to by that domain.

If you drill into the “your most linked content” on the overview page, you‘ll be able to see list of most linked pages of your site. It will also show you the links count for each page and the no of domains linking to that page, including the leading domains linking to that page and the links count to that page.

Internal links
Internal links are the links between the pages of your website. Internal links are mainly used to navigate from one page to another passing the Link juice.

Snapshot 11.20 Internal Links

The internal linkshighlights the internal link structure of your website. The no of internal links a particular page holds signalizes the Google, the relative importance of that page. Every page of your website must be linked to more than one other pages of the website.

In case, if you wish to rename or delete a page on your website, try to keep a track of these data to avoid broken links to your site.
There are three ways that can improve your internal links to your site:

 Sketch out a map of your website
 Look at the topics that you frequently write about
 Think about every other page that could link to your ranking page

Manual actions
Do not buy links from link brokers to improve your ranking. Do not do keyword stuffing. Do not do any unnatural activities to improve your website ranking. If you do and Google identifies, it will be listed under Manual Actions. If you make serious violation, your website may be suspended for a period from Google Search.

Google Index
Indexing is the process where the pages of your website are indexed by the web crawler to save in the Google database. Google sends a small program (Crawler) called Googlebot to crawl (read) and index your website. Google index lists all the URL’s and web pages it crawled.

Index Status
Index status is nothing but the stats information report of the total no of links and pages to your site that has been indexed to Google index. It gives the complete data of the indexed pages for the past one year as a report. In addition to this, it also displays the updated data of the URL’s that has been indexed recently (Snapshot 11.21)

Snapshot 11.21 Index Status

A good quality report should have a steady state rise in the index graph. If you counter any unusual drops or unusual high index volume of your site, there occurs some serious problems in Google indexing your web pages.

Content Keywords
In content keywords (Snapshot 11.22), the GWT will show you the list of “keywords” that has been most frequently used in the contents of your website and its pages. The occurrence of a particular keyword and its associated variants on your website’s pages will be listed. This is one important aspect. So before you add any content or keywords to your site, you need to do ample research of which keywords would best suit your website that would eventually make it come up on the Google Search Results Page.

Snapshot 11.22 Content Keywords

Crawl
Yet another important feature in GWT is the crawl. In this section, GWT provides you complete report and the issues faced while Googlebot crawls your web page.

Fetch as Google
This tool is a diagnostic tool that helps you to stimulate how Google crawls and renders a URL on your site.

Security Issues
One of the recent additions in the Google webmaster tools is “security issues”. As the name implies, security issues tool is aimed at taking care of your website’s security levels. The security issues may include site hacks, malware and so on.

12

What is Google AdSense? Google AdSense

After a long walk along the roads of Digital Marketing we came across various processes through which your website can be made popular and how to display it to the entire world. Assuming that your website now has many visitors and you want to generate income through ads distributed by Google. That is when Google AdSense comes in. Google AdSense is a platform through which Google displays ads on websites registered with it.

Google Ads can be placed in any part of the website you wish. In the below example ( Snapshot 12.1), ads are placed at the right hand side and below the Company’s name. In order to place similar ads on your website, you have to register with Google AdSense.

Registering With Google AdSense:
Let us assume that we are going to register the site (Snapshot: 12.2), startupinindia.org in Google AdSense.

Snapshot: 12.2

Visit adsense.google.com, from where signing into it has to be done using your Gmail ID. In case you do not have an account the option of creating one is also made available when the ‘Get Started Now’ button is clicked. Click onGet Started Now.

There are three conditions to sign up for Google AdSense ( Snapshot 12.4).
1. Age>=18,
2. You should need to have a Website.
3. A Postal Address to receive your Bank Statements.
Click on “Yes proceed Google Account to Sign In” and sign in with your Gmail password

Snapshot 12.4

( Snapshot 12.5) In the text box next to the ‘I will Show Ads On’ field, enter your website address. Now select the preferred language from the drop down menu box and carry on to the next step by clicking continue.

And finally submitting the Google AdSense application with the required fields is to be carried out (Snapshot 12.6). Enter the Country or Territory from the drop down menu box. Doing this will automatically allocate the time zone.

Select the desired account type. If in case you select ‘Business’ as your account type, the payee name must be the Name of your business and the address must be the location of your workplace. If ‘Individual’ is the choice you go for, fill in your personal details.

Snapshot 12.6

-After filling in the requirements submit the AdSense Application.
-The next page asks you to verify the phone number given either through a text message or through a voice call (Snapshot 12.7).

-Select the desired option click on the ‘Send Verification Code’ button.
- Enter the verification code sent to your mobile in the next step and verify.

Snapshot: 12.8

Google thanks you for applying to AdSense, though the ads aren’t displayed right away on the website. Google analyses your website and comes to a conclusion on whether your website is AdSense friendly or not. The reply will be sent to the email address associated with the AdSense account within a week’s time.

Snapshot: 12.9

Visiting your AdSense account now would display a banner as shown below as your account is yet to approved. Wait for an approval email from Google.

Snapshot: 12.10

Working with Google AdSense:
Once your website is verified, logging into your AdSense account looks similar to the image displayed below (Snapshot: 12.11).

Snapshot: 12.11

You being the owner of your website, choosing spaces for the ads to be displayed fall on you. Besides the Ad space, sizes and types for the ads too can be chosen by you.

Creating an Ad Unit for your website:

The following steps are to be followed when creating an Ad.
Click on the ‘New ad unit’ button listed under the My Ads Tab (Snapshot: 12.11). In the next window (Snapshot 12.12) fill in the name you desire under the ‘Name’ text box.

Snapshot 12.12

Snapshot 12.12: Select the Ad size based on the space available in your website. (Recommended sizes are preferable, whereas you could change the sizes according to your wish from the drop down menu)

Snapshot 12.12: Select the Ad type. (Text Ads, Display Ads or Text and Display Ads)

Move on to the next section.

The next step is selecting the Text Ad Style ( Snapshot 12.13). Few predefined textures are present from which one could be selected. But the option of customizing the display ad too is made possible. Matching it according to the theme of your website is necessary. This step only applies if the case where ‘Text Ad type’ is designated.

Snapshot 12.13

Click on the ‘Save and get Code’.
An Ad code is generated (Snapshot 12.14), which requires its embedding in the source code of the respective webpage where you want Google to display ads.

Snapshot 12.14

An example on how the Ad code is placed in the source is displayed below for LocSea. (To verify, Right click on your webpage and click on Show Page Source or View Page Source or View Source from the dropdown (Snapshot 12.15))

Snapshot 12.15

Analysing the Ad:
After the Ad code is placed in the source code, it appears under the My Ads Tab with a status defining it as new.

Once Ad Serving has been approved by Google, your webpage will be showing Ads from Google (Snapshot: 12.16).

Please never click on Ads from your own AdSense account. Never ask anyone to click on Ads in your Website. It is a violation of policy. The clicks should happen naturally.

Snapshot: 12.16

Snapshot: 12.17

Now in order to view the reports of an ad, click on the view report which is displayed below the Ad Unit (or) click on the performance reports tab (Snapshot: 12.17).

The reports page is similar to the picture displayed below (Snapshot: 12.18).

Snapshot: 12.18

The reports page ( Snapshot: 12.18) consists of various attributes that define the behavior of that particular ad. Ranging from units to geographic locations (Snapshot 12.19), the flow of where the ads served well and the types of ads that served well can be analysed. Generating an Ad strategy based on this would enhance the performance of the ads.

Allow and Block Ads Tab: (Snapshot 12.20 & Snapshot 12.21)

Including and excluding categories, URL’s and sensitive categories of Ads that are being displayed is possible.

 Rejecting ads from websites that you or your customers dislike can be removed through the Advertiser URLs tab.
 Unwanted categories too can be blocked in Google AdSense. Based on the impressions obtained from the select category, one could either add or eliminate the categories. Or in order to make the ads relevant to the website content, all categories with the exception of the relevant category can be blocked.
 Ads relating to Sensitive categories such as Religion, Politics, Dating, Drugs and Supplements too can be eliminated or added to your Ads.

Snapshot 12.21

When Do I Get Paid?
After you acquire $10 through the Ads displayed in your account, Google AdSense will present you with address verification through post. Postal card will have verification code.

Snapshot: 12.22

Click on Gear Icon -> Payments (Snapshot 12.22) to enter the verification code.

Once you verify your address details, Google enables you to enter the payment details. When you acquire $100 through Ads, Google releases your payment.