Thinking about an SEO website audit? Have you ever received an offer for a free website audit and wondered what the heck it was all about? Or, have you ever wondered just how consumers are finding your website online and once they arrive there what the chances might be of them converting to a new customer? Have you simply just wondered how visible your website is on Google? If so, then read on... So just what is an SEO website audit? An SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) audit is offered by many digital marketers as a way of examining how your website is optimised for search. It's ..read more

My Top 10 AFFORDABLE marketing ideas for a quiet economy The general consensus among small business owners in WA is that 2020 was a very tough year. A drive through the CBD or any light industrial area shows an alarming commercial vacancy rate. In fact, official figures in the CBD hover around 18% or almost one in five vacant commercial premises. For B-grade CBD office space it's somewhere around 24%! So to help you help out just a little, here are my top 10 affordable marketing ideas for a quiet economy: 1) Analyse everything! Try to really understand the fundamentals of your c ..read more

Why businesses can become disillusioned with one-dimensional digital marketing With well over 20 years of small business ownership in Perth I think I can say I've tried my fair share of marketing methodologies. Some have provided me with a great deal of success and others were an outright waste of time and money. I still shudder at the thousands I threw away on 3 x 3 booths at the wrong expos! And I've found that what might be an unmitigated disaster for one business might be hugely successful for another (yes, including 3 x 3 booths at expos).  But how could ..read more

Adwords and expectations... In recent months I've been working with several clients I felt needed to shift their thinking away from viewing Adwords as the be-all-and-end-all of their sales & marketing. Don't get me wrong, Adwords is an extremely powerful marketing tool. However for some businesses, throwing all of their marketing resources at PPC advertising can be a very one-dimensional, if not flawed, strategy.  Adwords' strength lies in providing awareness, consideration and lead generation. It won't convert a consumer into a client for you no matter how hard yo ..read more

Getting the most out of Adwords leads... One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how business owners often believe that paying for traffic is the be-all-and-end-all of digital marketing. As a result they usually make the mistake of throwing all of their marketing eggs in the Adwords basket. Yes, Adwords is an extremely powerful marketing tool but its effectiveness actually hinges on the business' ability to convert traffic, not necessarily on exposure to great volumes of consumers. Word of advice 1: Adwords is quite simply one part of your marketing armoury and shou ..read more

Reducing digital marketing costs and increasing sales with a Landing Page... Did you know that a landing page is one of the best ways to reduce your spending on Google advertising?  The reason is simple. Landing pages, if built correctly, should provide users with content that closely matches their search intent. Put simply, if you were a furniture store and one of your potential clients was to search for say "TV Cabinets" they should land on a page that is solely concerned with TV Cabinets. It should not include details of your entire range of furniture. So why does that matter ..read more

Website User Experience (UX)   It amazes me how often businesses go out of their way to obstruct customers. I see it regularly online and in the real world and it seems to me such an obvious way of losing sales – and yet it’s seemingly everywhere. Back in the eighties it was common to visit your local retailer rather than a big department store or multinational warehouse for most common household purchases.   I remember my local hardware store. The owner would stand on the wooden steps of his single doorway, arms folded and brow furrowed.   It was as if he was moonlighting as a ..read more

The true value of your website   Current day search engines have moved on from a time where they crawled and indexed a web site based on its keywords then retrieved it from a static database. The first generation of SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) resembled an old library catalogue from a bygone era. They would return results  in a regimented fashion – often with the good bits being hidden way down the results list – never to see the light of day. Now, search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo use thousands of powerful servers, complex algorithms and even Artificial Intelligen ..read more

Google Search versus Google Display   Clients often ask me about the differences between Google Search and Google Display Advertising in their Adwords accounts. Most are not really aware of the key differences between the two main modes of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising so I thought I might tackle it here.   So what does Google Search mean in my Adwords account?   Google Search is the most common way for businesses to get involved in Adwords. Bids are placed for specific keywords that relate to or are relevant to a business’ products or services. On the search network, ads are ..read more

Why Adwords is not for every business   My early business experience taught me plenty of lessons – most of them expensive. But one thing you gain with experience is the ability to filter out the wheat from the chaff, and this is particularly important when you’re talking about the many forms of marketing available to a business – not just the digital stuff. Many clients make the mistake of thinking the more dollars you pump into Adwords the more money you’ll make. I’m hear to tell you that if it was that simple every single one of us would be millionaires. The fact of the matter is that A ..read more