June 2014 - Hopping Mad Design

Retargeting, Google Retargeting and Remarketing Sydney

Have you ever been on a website and seen an ad appear that is totally unrelated to the website you are on and this ad looks somewhat very familiar? This is what is termed retargeting or remarketing. What happens is that an advert will appear on a website, as a result of a previous search you have done.

For example, you might have searched for ‘ SEO Companies in Sydney’, landed on a particular website, but never made an inquiry. What happens is that this website ( if they have implemented a retargeting campaign), will have a display ad appear when you look at other websites. Remember, this is not a Google search result. These ads will only appear on other websites.

Some people might think that these types of ads are annoying BUT statistics have shown that the click through rate or buy rate is much much higher when your potential customers see a RETARGETED DISPLAY ADVERT.

RETARGETING ADVERTISING IS A VERY POWERFUL MARKETING TOOL

Australian research has shown that up to 93% of visitors to a website leave without making an inquiry or buying from the site. Add ing to this, 73% of consumers abandon and exit a shopping cart website, even though their trolley cart is full, they simply leave the site. This is a frightening statistic and leaves the door wide open for another marketing platform to help businesses reach their audience.

Retargeting is a potent and highly efficient way of re engaging these consumers again, who are predisposed to buying from you. That is, they are nearly over the line, but just need that gentle reminder.

WHY USE HOPPING MAD DESIGNS FOR YOUR RETARGETING CAMPAIGN?

We will partner closely with you to achieve your business objectives.
We will always:
> discuss your business objectives with a face to face meeting in our Sydney studio.

> prepare a targeted and well thought out plan, formulated in conjunction with you to
set out milestones and KPI’s

> examine and prioritise areas of your business that are in urgent need of extra sales and web traffic.

> undertake keyword research,that aligns with your key products or services.

> create awesome looking display ads by using our graphic design team – plus we have in house copywriters that can come up with catchy text to compliment the graphics.

> work our appropriate landing pages for these retargeted ads – that is, which pages on your website will your customers land on once they click on your ad.

> constantly test, measure click through rates and conversions – refine and modify ads on an on going basis.
ensure CPC rates are managed effectively

> prepare monthly reports and campaign analysis with regular meetings to go over campaign strategies.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF RETARGETING FOR YOUR COMPANY?

You get to promote your business or brand on other high quality websites. This is a great way to increase your exposure online and get communicate to your audience again. If they didn’t buy from you in the first instance, then this gives them another opportunity.

It really reinforces your brand. Let the team at Hopping Mad Designs come up with a great looking display ad for you that will stay in the mind of the consumer. If it’s memorable, then the consumer will be more likely to buy from you and not your competitor.

It increase the amount of leads you are likely to get. SEO and Adwords are a great tool, but retargeting TURBO CHARGES your online profile and will BOOST sales.

GOOGLE only allows you to write so much text on your adwords and will only display around 20 word snippets in the search results. Retargeting opens this window wide open and allows you to be as creative, loud, expressive and as ‘over the top’ as you like to capture the attention of the consumer. RETARGETING IS A REAL GAME CHANGER. You are able to personalise your offerings and be as targeted as you like.

You can change the advert depending on; special promotions, events, product specials, anything you can think of and this can be done relatively very quickly. If an ad is not working we can redesign it for you in a matter of hours and have it live that day! It’s any extremely dynamic and responsive from of advertising and if used properly can be a great addition to your online marketing arsenal.

SEO + ADWORDS AND RETARGETING should all be used together to give your business and website maximum exposure to your client base. The advantage of retargeting is that your SEO company can handle this for you, so there is no need to outsource this work to another third party. It is a simple add on.

TYPES OF BUSINESSES THAT SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT RETARGETING.

Retargeting is for any business that relies on their website and Google to bring in new customers and business.

HOTELS > promote specials and discounted room rates.
AIRLINES > offering last minute seat deals
RETAILERS > who have specials or products they need to promote quickly
ONLINE BUSINESSES AND ECOMMERCE WEBSITES > looking for more exposure
INSURANCE COMPANIES > promoting, car, travel, health, business and home insurance.
LAWYERS, SOLICITORS, ACCOUNTANTS and all other B2B’s > wanting to expand their customer base or promote a new service ….perfect for accountants trying to get extra customers for the end of financial year – great for lawyers offering a new conveyancing arm to their practice.
TRADIES and BUILDERS > looking to get new business.
PUBS, BARS and CLUBS > promoting their events, restaurants or bars

If, after reading this, you are a bit curious and would like to know more about retargeting. why not get in touch with us and find out all the great benefits it can bring to your business.

Website Rip Offs You Should Know About

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OR CMS LIES

This is a beauty and I know for a fact that most web agencies that are using their own in house customised CMS solution will lie to you and never flinch. They have got their story so well refined and so well rehearsed that they actually believe their own lies.

That is, that they will never tell you that the website they are building for you is on their own CMS platform and not an open source CMS like; WordPress or Joomla. They will omit this point unless you press or pressure them into telling you what CMS platform they are using.

They are going to do everything possible to avoid this question because they know that deep in their heart of hearts that their web cms solution is flawed and is not the ideal solution for your business.

Why I hear you ask?

Because, you are stuck using their CMS. You cannot go anywhere or use any other company that has anything to do with your website. You are tied to these guys for the life of your website and they have you completely locked in.

If you want to move companies, too bad. If you do not like the service you are getting; too bad. If you feel that you would like to make some web additions and want to test the market with pricing…well that’s a big issue, it cant be done and its too bad. If you are unhappy with the way the CMS works, well that’s just too bad.

Guess what? You have just made the first fatal error when it comes to your website and this is not a good start.

To add to the problems, these shonky web agencies and I mean shonky, will start charging you a monthly fee for the use of this content management system. Over time, you will find that these monthly ‘so called’ fees are going to rise.

What for?

That’s a great question. They will tell you it’s for security upgrades to your website and that these CMS fees are necessary for updates you may have etc etc.

It’s all a lot of hot air, bull, and baloney. Don’t get suckered in or ripped of by these guys who are offering their own CMS platform. You are only going to regret it in the short to medium term. This I can promise you!

So before you commit to a website design agency, please make sure you ask them what CMS platform you will be using! It’s a simple one off question that can save you a hell of a lot of grief in the future.

A point to not here is that most Sydney based Web Agencies will NEVER tell you about the CMS platform – they are going to dodge an d weave around this question and try to throw you off the track – don’t fall for this routine and don’t believe ( and excuse my language here) all the BS surrounding their custom CMS.

It’s all designed and devised to take your money and to keep on taking it on a monthly basis!

NEVER OUT SOURCE OVERSEAS

If you think you are going to save a few dollars by using cheap web companies or offing it to crowd sourcing sites for the best deal, you are going to get hammered and completely ripped off online. You might as well throw away the couple of hundred dollars – in fact, if you are in this head space and want to even try this out, you probably should think twice about being in business or having a website. Sorry, but this is the truth!

Yes, this is a harsh statement, but if you don’t understand how important a website is and if you are wanting to scrimp and save a few dollars on your most important marketing tool…well, then you are heading down the wrong path – that is the path to failure. The successful people are the ones who are willing to fork out money for a website and are the ones who know the value of true creativity and marketing from the outset.

I am not saying that you have to pay a fortune…I’m just warning you about these cheap online deals and shonky web players.

WE DON’T NEED A MEETING, JUST FILL OUT THIS DOCUMENT.

How are they going to get an accurate design brief and know about your business from you filling out a silly form. This is your business, this is your livelihood and these people think that hey can advice you properly without a meeting.

Get real!! This is a joke and the fast, slick sales talk, that is, fill in the form, read our wordy, graph filled, pretty pictured document and we will do wonders for your business…..what a load of utter nonsense. These people are on real heavy sales targets and they couldn’t give a dam about you ever succeeding. Their primary concern is to lock you into a web contract, even worse a SEO contract that is going to siphon off your marketing budget before you even begin – I hate these guys and I hate they way they ruin the good name of decent agencies like ours.

All I can tell you is be warned and be on guard for these types of tricks!

OUR WEBSITES ARE VERY SEO FRIENDLY and YOU WILL RANK QUICKLY.

Come on, this is a joke. Sure they may have some elements that are SEO friendly, but without a SEO campaign, your new website will have absolutely no chance of ranking.

These web guys are so full of the sales pitch and are so motivated to get you suckered in to believing them that they will even use the whole…oh you website is going to rank once we have finished. I have never heard such an inventive and outrageous lie in my life.

For gods sake…these web designers who claim to be SEO experts, are going to cause real harm to your business and chances of ever succeeding.

My advice is to be very wary of any ranking claims and ask for real evidence. I bet they can’t show you anything. Go with a proper SEO agency in Sydney – if you look hard enough you will find them.

A GREAT TIP here is to avoid web agencies that are not prepared to meet with you face to face. If they have fancy documents that are 30 pages long, then they are hiding something. These guys are trying to cover up their inefficiencies, lack of design skill, over inflated pricing for their CMS and crappy SEO.

I am not just writing this because I am in the web and SEO game and I’m trying to promote our business. I am blogging about this because I have a genuine passion about business and I just hate good, honest, hard working people who want to get a website, being ripped off and conned out of what could be a good opportunity.

If you Google ‘WEB DESIGN’ you will see these shrewd, dishonest, shady, deceptive and fraudulent companies either advertising through adwords or ranking organically – obviously I cannot name them BUT I strongly urge you to do your homework, make the right inquiries, ask the appropriate questions and if you are still confused give me a call on 02 9360 8514 – even better come in for a chat and I will clearly outline the best web solutions and digital marketing strategies for your business.

Googles Latest Panda 4.0 Update How It affects Your SEO.

Panda 4.0 will hit about 6.95% of search results. So what? Well, this is going to affect a lot of websites whose content is lets say very poor. So no matter the type of quality of back links your site might have, if the on page content is not relevant or is weak, it will be devalued.

Let’s go back about 18 months and look at what was achievable in terms of search engine optimisation. You can, realistically rank a site with a powerful linking campaign. A few links from some high page rank sites that gave you authority was all that was needed.

Kiss those days goodbye. Panda 4.0 has meant that they want their users to find only quality content with meaning. This means that anyone wanting to engage a SEO firm must also be looking at utilising the services of a web copy writer. They now both go hand in hand. trying to rank by just back linking will get your site penalised.

I think this is an absolutely fantastic outcome. I for one, am fed up with sites ranking that are light on actual content. It’s a scam and its these kind of sites that are going to feel the full brunt of Panda 4.0.

What Kind of Sites Have Suffered Because of Panda 4.0?

Panda 4.0 is designed to help authentic small business who have useful content and are there to provide a local service. These guys are the winners. The losers are sites that had very thin content. Businesses who were lazy in their approach to their online marketing, ignoring their website and never updating it with new content or information.

Moving forward as more updates rollout, Sydney businesses really need to come to terms that if they are going to have the kind of success online that they want, they are going to have to think larger in terms of their marketing. As the rules become more stringent, they need have have a larger budget for SEO, copy writing and social media strategies. A $500 per month meagre budget for these services is not going to cut it anymore.

I don’t make the rules, I am just explaining to you in harsh terms, the realities and consequences of these types of algorithmic updates. It may take some time for the message to sink in but those Sydney entrepreneurs who are quick on the uptake will see the benefits first.

As an SEO Company Sydney agency I get so many phone calls everyday from businesses that have been affected by these new Google rules. many of the folks understand what they have to do now and in the future to succeed, but there is still a resillient bunch of people who have their heels dug in deep and are still clinging to the old ‘black hat‘ ways of SEO. That is, they refuse to pay for a proper service, they want to rank within a week and they are not committed to adding any content. These are the people who are the real big losers when these updates happen. I do try to explain, but it just falls on deaf ears.

So the message I want to say loud and clear to all you businesses out there: WATCH OUT as Panda 4.0 is not taking any prisoners. If you do not comply your are going to get slapped down on the rankings.

Is SEO As We Know It Dead

In April 2013 Google implemented a massive change in their ranking algorithm – this was known as the Penguin change and it affected an unbelievable number of websites across the whole internet. Basically, it penalised sites with poor content and rewarded websites that had rich content.

The affect, in my opinion was needed as sites that offered a poor user experience ( if they were optimised) often ranked higher than legitimate sites. Companies could launch any type of website, implement a SEO campaign and have it ranked very quickly.

The follow up algorithm change by Google, known as Hummingbird was the death knell for these type of weak sites. It happened very recently and and now means that websites must now look at a raft of variables if their website is ever going to have a chance of ranking.

Simple put, the more organic, the more natural, the more informative a website is, the better chance it will have of ranking. Google will rank sites based on the quality of the content and the authority of the in bound links as opposed to a scatter gun, over optimised strategy.

Many businesses suffered tremendously with these changes and sites disappeared overnight. It also killed off many SEO providors but has left an extremely bad taste in the mouth of some people who have a complete distrust of seo companies.

Forget About Doing The Following – these practices are LONG GONE!

The recent Penguin, Panda + Hummingbird algorithm changes have outlawed some past SEO practices which were once favoured and approved by SEO teams and the search engines. These techniques were so common, because they worked – how times have changed! If you find that any of these following practices are being implemented by your SEO company, and you find that your rankings are suffering, then you might end up in worst case scenario, a Google penalty. My advice: stop all SEO work immediately.

Keyword Spamming – Most clients I used to work with with had one main concern or request. That is; can you optimise 1 keyword for me. Please put it on my home page as many times as possible and have it linked throughout my site where ever feasible. This used to work, nowadays, it looks terrible, reads poorly and in some cases will get your site penalised. If you are looking at your web pages, and you see this, delete them immediately.

Link Swapping – If I link to your site and you link to mine and I link to another site and then they link to you etc etc. You get my drift and so does Google. These fraudulent activities are going to get noticed and you will end up paying the price. If you receive emails from dubious companies offering links or swapping links, just ignore them.

Putting your link on many Blogs – its really easy to do this. There are so many blogs out there and they all allow you to voice your opinion, publish your thoughts and guess what? You can add a link back to your website. How good and easy is this for promoting your business. WRONG! These are a huge NO NO and once you get picked up for this type of online spamming, you are going to see your website plummet. Thats for sure!

Build Dodgy Links – Businesses who used to employ SEO companies for this specific purpose are now crying. They built thousands of links and in turn over optimised their site. Once easy to do – you could buy 1000 links for $45 – now probably the worst thing you could do .

Have You Submitted Articles to Poor Websites – Article submissions to article websites are a waste of time. what these guys do is takes your article and resell it off to other companies looking for content – this gets syndicated all over the internet and the results for your website is catastrophic. Far too many links that appear spammy pointing to your website are now spun throughout the internet. Delete as many of these articles as you can and do it now!

Poor web Content – If you think you can write one or two lines for your main landing pages, think again. This won’t work. Google needs to index content and display this to users. If you cant satisfy this, then don’t bother ever thinking about ranking. It just wont happen. I tell all my clients to keep the word count up and keep on publishing valuable information. It is hard to do, but thats the way it is online for the moment.

What Hopping Mad Designs is doing Properly to Help Clients with their SEO.

Forget about the bad SEO practices, they are so so 2012. Let’s look forward to the future and I will tell you ways in which we are helping over 500 client’s with their SEO – what we are doing properly and why we are considered the ‘go to’ company for search engine optimisation in Sydney.

Content and On Page Amends – This is rally the first place to start when it comes to your SEO. 3 years ago it was all linking, but today, you need to have a serious audit of your website to make sure that its site wide compliant. Of course linking is vital and a massive factor, BUT you will go no where unless the proper semantics, URL structures, titles and a whole heap more are in place.

Build a Websites Authority Naturally – Its not a one size fits all. Many SEO companies will take your dollars and just do back linking. This is not how it works. We fully customise a SEO campaign to fit your business niche. For example if you are a local real estate agent your campaign will differ vastly than that of a national freight carrier. We employ different methods and tactics to rank sites and build authority. Local sites will get local citations with local directories and positive links from relevant geo specific websites. National websites looking for authority will receive links for larger more recognised sites as well as a greater push with the social media. Our point of difference when building authority is that we actually care and pay attention. We look at the best custom fit solution to your digital marketing and implement this in a very organic and natural way.

Focus on Social Media – Hummingbird has meant that websites need to focus on their social media. Getting liked, tweeted, shared, commented and playing in the Google + space is a good way to generate interest in your business. Not only does it drive traffic to your site but it is a good trigger for the search spiders. We are able to strategise and plan social media campaigns a year in advance so we have an actual plan and expected outcome. We don’t want to have a rambling, scattered, disorganised approach to your social media marketing, but one thats co ordinated and planned. Its perfect our designers can come up with the graphics or ads, our copywriters can come up with the campaign wording and we are able to monitor its effectiveness and adjust based on results.

Conversion Rates – We monitor your websites performance through analytics and watch whats happening religiously. We monitor bounce rates, time spent on each landing page, site speed and make sure that your pages are converting into paying customers. The advantage of using a company like Hopping Mad Designs is that we are a web design and SEO company. So, if you need any on page graphic amends to compliment the SEO we have the skill set to do this. ALL UNDER 1 ROOF. You can leave all your worries behind about working with 2 sets of people of companies. We can do the lot, which is a blessing for your business. You have to trust me on this. If we are able to co ordinate the design and SEO, you are going to be a big winner!

We Never Pay For Links – we own our own website and are able to drip feed authority into your website. We can control this like a tap and do this uniformly over time. Our SEO is so sound and effective and this practice works so well that all our clients are ranking on page 1 – the litmus test is see for your self. Have a look at our own awesome rankings – this should be proof enough! We have been at the top for years and will continue to remain there. So if you want to be a winner and work with a company that has sound SEO knowledge and experience, call us today.

A point to note – if you are thinking about a SEO campaign – think long term SEO – short term gains do not exist any more so ideally you need to be in this for the long haul. It’s not a bad thing once you are on page 1 – you will want to keep this going on forever.

In conclusion, SEO is NOT DEAD, it is very much alive. What is DEAD, is the unsound and disreputable practices of a majority of SEO companies.

Google has tightened its ranking criteria, and closed many loopholes that allowed these types of companies to exist. I say, well done Google and I look forward to the future to see what new updates will bring and the challenges they present us with.

Fed up with NOT RANKING? Need Some Sound SEO Advice

If you are fed up with you poor rankings or feel that you have been given a bad deal, please call us on 02 9360 8514 and we will show you exactly how SEO is done properly. 3o minutes with me, will turn you entire thinking around and enlighten you to the full potential and magic that is, SEO.