The 2019 Local SEO Guide for Beginners

WHAT IS LOCAL SEO?

If you’re a local business who wants to sell your products or services to a local audience, you want to be ranking as high as possible on your local areas search results.

Simply put, local SEO is the process of optimising your website, local profiles and online reviews to ensure that you rank higher when searches are made geographically near your business.

Get the best SEO for your business listing

How is Local SEO useful?

Approximately more than half the searches on Google are made by people looking for local products or services when they search for something.

If you don’t get your local SEO right, you’re losing out on earning more customers for your business.

SEO has improved drastically ever since Google started rolling out its Panda and Penguin updates. It’s now more difficult for users to hack their way and rank well on searches without providing rich, accurate and relevant content.

In other words, you’ll need to put in an effort to optimise and get your profiles and websites ranking for local searches.

The bad news is that there is no shortcut and a digital agency like CLIX4U has the tools to assist and make this process so much easier for you.

Customers can’t find you if you aren’t listed with local SEO

How do you optimise your Local SEO?

The main things to focus on are website optimisation, managing your Google profile and online business citations to cover the basics of local SEO.

WEBSITE OPTIMISATION

Title Tags
These are really important in any SEO strategy.

Not only are title tags used for search engine results to highlight exactly what your page is about, but they are also used by users to understand the content of the page in a nutshell.

It’s the “cover of the book,” but in this case, the book is actually judged by its cover.

A title tag needs to accurately represent what the page’s content contains. And more importantly, it needs to be concise, because search engines will only capture about the first 50-60 characters of a title tag.

A good format for title tags is to focus on your primary and secondary keywords, followed by your brand name, such as, “Pizza in Carlton | Stuzzichino’s Pizzeria.”

Your online page title is judged by its cover.

Tips:

Title tags should be between 50-60 characters.-Priority keywords should be placed in the title
Priority keywords should be placed in the title, preferably in the front.
If you have a recognizable brand, use that in the title tag.

Create title tags that are easy to read and evoke emotions that make people want to click on them.

While your HTML may tell Google exactly what you want your title tag to say, there are instances when Google will display a different title based on Google’s understanding of your brand.

Keep Clean

A clean URL is one that is clear and comprehensible to the human eye, with no complicated parameters.

For example, “example.com/shop/prodid=282&cmp=518451274 is a dirty URL. A better version of the same URL would be example.com/hop/ men’s-shirts/white-satin-shirt

This is important because it gives the user a direct message about the product, and gives search engines a better understanding of what the page is about as well.

Tips:

– URLs shouldn’t be longer than 2048 characters; older browsers can’t process pages that are over this length.

-Hyphens should be used to separate words so that they’re easily read by both users and search engines. (don’t overdo hyphens as they could be picked up as spam)

Duplicated Content

Search engines aspire for diversity in their results. The same page, referenced multiple times, makes a weak user experience.

If I’m searching for lions, I want to read different articles on lions, not three identical pieces. Therefore, duplicate content is also frowned upon by search engines and you could be penalized by Google.

Duplicate content can be crawled by search engines or removed entirely. You can use a robots.txt to hide duplicate content from the search engines.

Duplicate content is frowned on by search engines and makes a weaker customer experience.

Tips:

-800-1500 words are ideal for content.

-Make the content easy to read and add keyword rich headings (H1 and H2 tag) to break up sections.

-The main keyword should be used 2-5 times throughout the copy.

-Use variations of the keywords to make it more readable to your visitors (and appeal to other search phrases).

Indexable menus:

All the content on your website needs to be visible to search engines to achieve rankings that reflect the content phrases.

This means that the content, including menus, should be in HTML text format. Menus that are in flash, Java applets, images, or anything else will be disregarded by search engines.

NAP:

Make sure the NAP (name, address, and phone number) of your business displayed on your website is consistent with your Google My Business page.

Consistency is key if you want to be found and ranked high against your competition. Any type of inconsistency can affect your overall rankings.

Your NAP should be consistent throughout the Internet, whether on your site or on a service provider recommendation site or on any citation sites that you have.

GOOGLE PROFILE

Your Google My Business profile is what shows up in the local search results of Google, alongside search results. Completing and optimizing your Google My Business profile will ensure that your business appears when consumers are searching for keywords with a location intent.

Google My Business listings also appear across desktop, mobile and tablet searches and are prominently displayed – making it one of the most important focus areas if you are a local business.

Get your business verified and listed:

1 – Start by going to Google My Business Console and searching for your business.

2 – If you see multiple listings for your business, that’s fine! Just select the one that’s closest to your accurate business information in the dropdown

3 – Once you click on the most appropriate listing for your business if you see a message that says “Someone else has already verified this listing”, this means that your business listing has already been claimed.

4 – If your listing is unclaimed you’ll be asked to either verify by post or by phone or text. Once you’re done receiving the postcard or phone call, you should receive the instructions to claim/verify your Google My Business listing!

ONLINE BUSINESS CITATIONS

Citations are references to your business that can be found on online directories, association pages or government websites.

More structured citations, like listings, include your NAP and may even link back to your website.

In order to be ranked well on any search engine, you need to make sure that the data on your listings are consistent across the internet.

It improves your credibility and also makes it easy for customers to find you and contact you for any queries they may have about your products/services.

Another form of citations comes from mentions in news articles, blogs, and any memberships your business may have in a city or country business index.

Search engines place a degree of trust in the information supplied by established and well-indexed sites such as YellowPages or Yelp.

This means they will use information from these sites to corroborate your business’ information as well as category.

It’s even more important to work hard on your listings if you work in an industry where service providers generally don’t have websites.

The top citation sites:

Google, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare and Bing, for starters.

Your local Chamber of Commerce, YellowPages, Whitepages and industry-specific directories for extra support

With all the data being pushed out there, it is essential that you keep track of your listings. You can use a product like Synup to get a free business listing scan report to see how your business is listed on the internet.

Inconsistent NAP data can lead to lower rankings on search engines as well as provide the wrong information to customers seeking out your services. This can really hurt your overall digital presence.

By monitoring all your listings, you can identify and fix any incorrect information you find. If you need assistance, CLIX4u offers a full management solution.

Best 5 Tips for Small Business

1) Marketing doesn’t feel like marketing

One of the big misconceptions is that digital marketing and social media are two completely different forms of marketing. However, social media is just one of the available channels of digital marketing.

You can reach your customers anywhere today and on so many different mediums. The important thing is don’t make it difficult for clients to contact you.

Set up multiple opportunities and avenues for clients to reach out to your business.

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing” – Tom Fishburne

There are multiple mediums for your clients to reach out to you

2) Be Where Your Customers Are.

With the launch of Google’s Search Engine in 1998, the game has changed. Customers use the internet in a much more specific way to find what they want.

Advertising online has become the main way of communicating and getting potential customers.

Rather than going to a shop, a user searches for what they want and with a few clicks, places their order and gets it delivered to them.

With the explosion of smart mobile devices, along with high capacity, high-speed mobile networks, the game is changing again.

The current generation is very tech-savvy. They are an e-marketable audience no longer tied to a desk when they look to engage. Content must be interesting and clear so as to keep customer engagement.

“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis

Connect with your audience any time, any place

3) Understand Your Customer’s Needs.

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time.

Today, that means that you need to meet them where they are already spending time: on the internet.

Although the digital world is rapidly growing, the basic concepts of marketing still have not changed.

You still need to:
– Understand your target audience and what problem/need they are trying to solve or fulfil.
– Know what makes you different and why your target audience would want to do business with you.
– Write a compelling message to make your target audience want to engage you.
– Choose the right platforms or medium to reach your target audience

4) What Social Media Channel Fits Me?

Social media is a great tool to create awareness and spread the word when you launch your website, new content or new products.

For your social media campaigns to be successful, you need to have a large following and you also need to have great content.

There are a few things to consider :

Who is your audience?
What is your company culture?
What are your strategic marketing goals for the year?
Do you have the resources to manage an additional social media account?

ie: If you have clients 40 years + and conservative staff, Snapchat would not be a good fit. Companies that do great on Snapchat usually have a demographic of 12-34 year-olds. This platform is great for showing a behind-the-scenes or unpolished content. It also relies heavily on the personality of the staff running the account.

Whatever you choose, stick to it and do it well. You will have more success doing one or two types of social media well rather than using too many that you can’t manage.

5) Tactics For Your Digital Marketing.

The tactics section of a business’ digital marketing plan is how the business’ marketing strategy will be implemented. This is dependent on where your business is on its overall life-cycle and its digital marketing journey.

What works for one business may not work for another.

Scenario 1: A new music store business needs help in creating new leads to its website for music lessons and instruments. Once the website has been built, paid ads along with 1 or 2 social media channels to create the awareness would work well. SEO is important too and will be a more cost-effective strategy over the longer term.

Scenario 2: An established restaurant has recently renovated and freshened up its menu and operations. The marketing activities would centre around social media channels, creating awareness and excitement through content creation for events, the new look and the menu. SEO activities and website optimisation are still required to leverage the funnel created by the social media campaign.

Scenario 3: A business that is looking to increase its online retail sales. With good SEO and Social Media campaigns, there will be a flow of leads to the website. However, conversions are the focus to become a market leader. Options here may be to have a retargeting campaign showcasing compelling offers or specials to customers.

“Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.” – Chris Brogan

DIGITAL MARKETING PLATFORMS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

How to choose the Best Digital Marketing Platform for your Business

As an entrepreneur, I often found myself grappling with the following questions:

Do I need digital marketing for my business?

Should I be using a social media platform like LinkedIn or Facebook?

What about spending my money in PPC for promoting my businesses products and services?

Sometimes it is hard to find the right answers to these questions and, at the same time, the best solution that fit the budget.

I can try to give you some good bits of advice and help you find the right solution to your business problems 🙂

If you are a small business owner, as I am, we have the same problems and a shared vision: I want to reach my targeted audience and convert them into sales.

Nothing more than this and it seems pretty easy, but it’s not!

1) Digital marketing platforms and strategies

First of all, it’s important to understand that the traditional media age is gone!

Papers ads, leaflets and every other traditional marketing methods that were effective before, may not be as effective in the current environment.

With the advent and growth of digital channels, the marketing landscape has changed dramatically and things have become confusing for business owners wanting to create an online presence but not knowing where to start.

Today business promotion happens mostly online and finding the right online channel to promote your business is a big opportunity for its growth.

We are doing business in times when the audience is constantly searching for information readily available online.

This new trend, that could appear overwhelming for the most, poses a huge opportunity for these businesses that choose to reach out to their audience in a quick and effective way.

New technologies give you a total control of what’s happening with the money that you decide to invest.

With a good digital marketing advertising campaign, you can find the right audience, convert leads in sales and have tons of data to know the exact number of people that you reached by investing a certain amount of money in the campaign.

You can choose between multiple advertising platforms and each of them tells you the exact number of impressions and clicks you will receive from an online advertisement. So,

2) What is a digital marketing platform?

A digital platform is a hardware or software infrastructure that provides technological services and tools, programs and applications, for the distribution, management and creation of free or paid digital content and services.

According to Smart Insights a digital platform can facilitate exchanges between different groups who don’t necessarily know each other, even through the integration of multiple media (integrated digital platform).

3) Which digital marketing platform can help my business the most?

The million-dollar question, the answer will depend largely on the type of business you have and the kind of customers you are targeting for.

There are so many tools on the market today that it’s really hard to find the right one for your needs and not all of these digital marketing tools are applicable or will work with your business.

As with any major business decision, research is required, this is especially true when kicking off your search for the digital marketing platform that will take your business to the next level.

And knowing whether a particular platform is suitable for your business or not is the most critical decision you can make.

To help you should ask yourself these simple questions:

1. Are you B2C, B2B, or both?

2. Are your target audience (influencers, consumers, payers) using the platform?

3. Do your competitors promote their businesses using the platform?

4. Are your competitors getting results (engagement, views, subscribers, followers) from that specific platform?

If the answer is yes to the above questions then the platform would be a good fit to promote your business.

With digital marketing, it is also good to not put all your eggs in one basket.

In the beginning, start with one platform and then as your budget grows you can expand to other platforms.

Infographic by Clix4u Digital Agency

4) Primary Considerations in the Selection Process

As touched on in the previous section, the various digital marketing channels can be used by business owners independently or as part of an overall digital marketing campaign.

A) Define your primary company goals for using Digital Marketing channels

When planning your campaign, you should first define your primary company goals that your business may be wanting to achieve include.

A. Brand Awareness – Increasing your targeted audiences recall of your company and product names, as well as familiarity with your business, brand, products and services.

If brand awareness is one of the major goals you should be looking to use:

I. Social media channels particular Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to promote engagement with your targeted audience.

II. Channels that promote visual elements like Instagram and Pinterest.

III. Channels that promote video materials like YouTube and Vimeo.

IV. Use of promotional campaigns with coupons.

V. Participation in online and offline events.

B. Lead Generation – One of digital marketing’s biggest capabilities is connecting with potential customers to create funnels and generate leads.

Digital marketing channels that are good for lead generation include:

I. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

II. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

III. Display Advertising

IV. Google Search Network

V. Blogging and other content marketing channels

VI. Email marketing

C. Sales Generation – ABS data shows 3 out of 4 people are involved in some form of e-commerce, statista data places Australian e-commerce revenue of $ 16.7Bn in 2018 and a growth rate of 8.9%.

If you have an online store, e-commerce site, or have products and services to sell online, the following channels can be used for digital marketing:

I. Amazon Resellers

II. Facebook Storefront

III. Google Shopping Feeds

IV. Google Search Network

V. Google Display Network

VI. Affiliate Marketing Networks

D. Educating and Informing – It’s all well and good to have a promising new product or service, but without an established market segment that is familiar or even knows that the product exists its potential is limited.

If you are at this stage then educating your targeted customers first, especially on what the products/service does and how they help resolve problems, is your primary focus.

Blogging, press releases and content marketing will be ideal for this purpose.

Infographic by Clix4u

B) Setting your budget allocation

Knowing what channels, you will use also helps to identify the budget required for implementing these campaigns.

Budget allocations may need to cover the following:

I. Fees for digital marketing manager and staff

II. Paid advertising budgets

III. Payment for content creation services

IV. Fees for graphic artists, photographers and videographers

C) Identify Your Available talent

Digital marketing campaigns require personnel with certain skills and knowledge on your channels.

You need to identify if these skills exist in-house or will there be a need for outsourcing.

These skills should include:

I. Development Skills – for your website design and development needs.

II. Creative Skills – includes both writing and visual creation skills.

III. Search Skills – talent needed for search marketing.

IV. Social Skills – talent needed for engaging potential customers through social media.

Managing your digital marketing channels is a complete marketing effort.

It’s not just a set-it-and-forget-it, if you do not have resources with the time and skills to manage them, then you should outsource.

Trying to do it on the cheap inevitably will lose money.

5) Types of Digital Marketing Platforms

Sometimes it’s hard to perform a clear comparison between all the digital marketing platforms that exist on the market.

Many people often confuse digital marketing tools with digital marketing channels, to assist you in familiarising yourself with the various channels available we have identified some of the key ones below:

A) Email Marketing

Email has been around for more than two decades, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

The reason is simple: consumers are very attached to their emails.

For example, how much time have you all spent on your email today?

But your emails must be well constructed, engaging and entertaining or they will simply be treated as spam.

The five core attributes:

• Trustworthy

• Relevant

• Conversational

• Be coordinated across channels (Make sure the information in your emails are consistent with websites, social media, etc.)

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing channels that can give businesses ROI of up to 4,300%.

This is why many businesses have said that they are planning to increase email-related marketing activities.

Examples of emails sent include emails for brand building, conversion, and newsletters.

B) Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click advertising can deliver highly targeted traffic to your website within a very short period of time.

You can think about the PPC as a funnel.

It drives traffic to your website, but it’s your responsibility to convert this traffic into sales.

The key for this channel is how much you are willing to invest in bidding and placing ad placements, this is known as the Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC.3

Importantly though your advertising budget is still within your control, allowing you to set how much you wish to spend for a day, a week or a month running your PPC ads.

PPC ad effectiveness can be impacted by a number of variables, from how well you choose your keywords, optimizing the visual and contextual information in your ads, and finally the landing page experience.

C) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Up to 93% of all online interactions usually begin by using a search engine.

People use search engines to look for information about a brand, product or services, with many of those searches resulting in finding a local business to satisfy a particular need.

Improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or non-paid, organic search results is what SEO tries to achieve.

In general, the higher ranked and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.

SEO experts consider how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience.

Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Components of SEO include:

On-Page:

• Incorporating selective keyword naturally into title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, alt text, etc.

• Blog posts and page copy that is written and optimized with quality

• Clean and formatting page URLS

• Optimized page load speed

• Google authorship incorporated

• Social sharing integration within your content (Facebook, Twitter, etc. links)

Off-Page:

• Creating a high quality, natural backlink profile (aka having other high quality/authoritative sites link to your site naturally). Great opportunity in a Traders Association to build links between sites, especially the main site

• Social bookmarking using a centralized online service which allows users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks or web documents (Stumbleupon, Reddit)

D) Display Advertising

Display advertising is where a company’s promotional messages appear on third-party sites or search engine results pages such as publishers or social networks.

The main purpose of display advertising is to support brand awareness as well as generating highly targeted traffic that may convert into leads or sales.

Payments for these display ads are usually based on Cost-Per-Impression (CPM) which is usually more cost-effective compared to the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) scheme typical of PPC advertising.

Types of display advertising include banners, boxes, interactive ads, video ads, interstitial ads, overlays and other similar ads that are linked to a landing page or website.

E) Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media is a great tool to create awareness and spread the word when you launch your website or new content (or products).

In order for your social media campaigns to be successful, you need to have a large user base -(fans, followers, and friends) and you also need to have good content.

I always get asked should I be on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.?

There are a few things to consider before jumping on a new social media.

• Who is your audience?

• What is your company culture?

• What are your strategic marketing goals for the year?

• Do you have the resources to manage an additional social media account?

If you have slightly older clients and your staff is relatively shy, Snapchat would not be a good fit.

Companies that do great on Snapchat usually have a younger demographic (about teens-34 years old) and because this platform is great for showing a behind-the-scenes or raw unpolished content, it relies heavily on the personality of the staff running the account.

Whatever you choose, stick to it and do it well.

You will have more success “going deep” with one or two types of social media rather than “going wide” with many that you can’t manage well.

You do not need to be all things to all people.

6) Top social digital marketing platforms 2018

That’s a list of some of the biggest Top social digital marketing platforms in 2018:

• Pinterest – Useful for your posting of ideas that users can then click through to your website, 80% users female. Most “Pinners” use Pinterest to save things that inspire

• Youtube – Share videos of your business, products, events, etc.. 82% of users are teens with an average viewing time of 40 minutes

• Google PLUS – Build “Circles” or networks for sharing specific private content to that circle, i.e. if you have a VIP Customer group with a special offer, 51% of users are men, average monthly time on the app is 7 minutes

• Reddit – Good for awareness building by sharing content and links which can then be voted (live feedback), 8% of users are 14-17, average monthly time on the app is 85 minutes

• Instagram – upload photos and videos of your business, which can be edited with various filters, and organized with tags and location information, 90% of users are younger than 35

• Snapchat – similar to Instagram however content is designed to be viewed once and then it is inaccessible. 71% of users under 34

• Twitter – Great for sending quick online news/updates on your business to which users post and interact with, Tweets are restricted to 280 characters. 29% of millennials on Twitter. 44% read and comment only

• LinkedIn – used for professional network, including employers posting jobs. Good to create links for B2B selling. 79% of users older than 35. 57% of companies have a LinkedIn page

• Facebook – Great for creating awareness, posting rich content (Videos). Can be used in lieu of website but has restrictions. 91% of millennials on Facebook, Average daily usage 20min per day

7) Content Marketing

We’ve all heard, “Content is king., so here are few examples.

If not, you have now. Great content is the fuel that drives your digital marketing activities:

• It is a key pillar of modern SEO

• It helps you get noticed on social media

• It gives you something of value to offer customers in emails and paid search ads

Creating educational and inspirational content, that is not promotional in nature, is tough but well worth the effort.

You want content that is relevant to your audience so that they see you as a valuable trustworthy source of information.

Many potential customers rely on social networks to discover, research, and educate themselves about a brand before engaging with that organization.

The key is to weave social elements into every aspect of your posts to create more peer-to-peer sharing opportunities.

The more your audience engages with your content, the more likely it is that they will want to share it, not only leading them to become customers but hopefully influence their friends to become customers, too.

Conclusion

If you’ve found this content useful and you have any question, please leave a comment below.

I try to answer to everyone as soon as I can 🙂

If you feel like you want to share this content, please use the share buttons you find just over there, on top and on the right of the page.

Thank you Andrea 🙂

Andrea Abbondanza

Andrea is the Digital Marketing and Content Leader at Clix4U, a Melbourne based digital agency. With 6 years of practical experience in SEO, SEM and Social Media, Andrea loves to share his knowledge by publishing useful guides and comprehensive articles about the digital marketing world.

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How Much Does Google Advertising Cost?

When advertising with online technologies today, many people are unsure of where to start.

There are so many different platforms, such as Facebook, Bing, and Google overall.

Google alone has a number of specific platforms for advertising such as YouTube In-Stream Viedo Ads & Google Display Network, Google+ for Brands, and of course the ubiquitous Google Ads.

Each of Google’s products has different advertising costs, today’s Blog will focus on Google Ads’ advertising costs.

“How much does Google Ads cost?”

It’s one of the first questions from prospective newcomers to paid search.

After all, those new to pay per click are probably most interested in how much they’ll be expected to pay to advertise on Google, and whether they can even afford it!

Unfortunately, there’s no easy, one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to Google search engine costs.

The most common (and infuriating) answer is, “It depends”, as it is going to vary based on your industry, targeted audience and several other variables.

We’ve seen the cost per clicks as low as $0.25 when advertising on behalf of a real estate agent in a small town, to upwards of $20 per click when running ads in competitive small business software.

Before we can answer some of the basic questions, such as what is the cost per click?

We need to look at how Google Ads actually works.

How does Google Ads work?

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google Ads is that whoever has the most money to spend has the most influence.

While a bigger ad budget never hurts, it does not have a major effect on what you will pay for Google Ads which provides a more level playing field than many new advertisers realize, providing real advertising value for even the smallest of daily budgets.

Google Ads functions in essentially the same way as an auction. Let’s take a look at how this process works.

The Ad Auction

The ad auction begins when a user enters a search query, after which Google determines whether the query contains keywords that advertisers are currently bidding on.

If advertisers have bid on some of the keywords in the user’s search query, the ad auction begins.

The purpose of the auction is to determine Ad Rank, or where each ad will be positioned.

The auction determines the inclusion and placement of ads according to the Ad Rank formula based on two main factors – maximum bid and Quality Score:

So, back to how Google Ads works. Once your Quality Score and Ad Rank have been calculated, Google Ads Cost Calculator uses this data to determine how much you’ll pay each time someone clicks on one of your ads.

This formula looks like this:

Notice how Advertiser 1 can pay less for a higher position due to their better Quality Score?

This is essentially how Google Ads works in a nutshell.

As documented above, Google advertising costs in Australia are affected by a number of variables.

By using the Google Ads cost estimator, the information in the table below shows an example of keywords and their bid costs for different industries in different geographical locations.

It should be noted that the Google Ads cost per click calculator, provides an estimate of the costs per click that tends to the high side of costs.

Wordstream’s estimation, for example, shows costs between 25-30% of the Google costs. The reality is generally in between.

Competition is also another key variable

The more businesses that are advertising in a particular industry, the higher the price point will be. Since you bid on keywords, more bidders will drive up prices, just like in a standard auction.

Understandably these costs can be quite a shock to first-timers who may be wanting up to 120-150 clicks per month.

Advertisers might assume their ad budget will last them for a month, based on the above estimates they may discover that they’ve blown through their small budget in a matter of days.

This can lead to yet more misconceptions about paid search, namely that it’s prohibitively expensive.

However, this isn’t necessarily the case and is more often than not the result of a misunderstanding of how budgeting works.

How Do I Manage My Google Advertising Costs?

There are a number of strategies that can be employed to lower your Cost Per Click (CPC).

Dayparting

Also known as ad scheduling, dayparting is the practice of specifying when you want your ads to appear to prospective customers.

Although your ads will still have to go through the ad auction process, you can tell Google when you want your ads to be displayed.

This is especially useful for local businesses that want to drive customers to a physical location through their ads.

If you run a bakery that closes at 7 p.m., for example, you may not want your ads to be shown outside your normal business hours.

Alternatively, you can specify that your ads run continually throughout the day but allocate a greater portion of your daily budget for hours during which you want increased visibility.

Geotargeting

Just as you can allocate more of your budget to certain times of day, you can also spend more of your budget on certain geographical areas.

This technique is known as geotargeting.

Geotargeting allows you to prioritize the display of your Ads to searches coming from specific areas.

These areas can be as large as a state or province, or as small as a three-block radius from your store.

The example above shows a geotargeted area with a 20-mile radius around London.

Geotargeting can be an excellent way to capitalize on growing mobile traffic trends and on-the-go shopping habits of today’s consumers, and it might factor into how you allocate your daily ad budget.

For example, you may want your ads to appear alongside relevant searches in a particular state, but you could also allocate more budget to searches conducted in a specific city or even neighbourhood.

To learn more about geotargeting and local PPC, check out this guide.

Device Targeting

As with geographical targeting, device targeting is a valuable strategy.

Let’s say that you want to appear on results across both desktop and mobile searches, but that mobile traffic is more valuable to you.

You could specify that a portion of your budget is used for desktop, but a greater portion is allocated to mobile devices.

Test new ads continuously

The only way to test which ads will have a higher click-through rate or lower cost per click is by constantly testing your ad copy.

The ad may look great to you, but you may be unknowingly sending a confusing message to users.

Work to increase Quality Score

Google also takes into account how relevant and useful an ad will be to the user when deciding which ads to display on the results page.

For example, if your practice specializes in cosmetic dentistry, you may be able to bid less and still have your ad show before a dentist who bid more but doesn’t mention cosmetic dentistry in their ad or on their website.

Prioritize Long-Tail Keywords

People sometimes like to point at the grand, show-stopping keyword categories above as a definitive example of how expensive PPC can be.

The reality, however, is that these keyword categories only make up a small portion of total search volumes.

Long-tail keywords actually account for the majority of Web searches.

The short-termed keyword “Lawyer” may cost advertisers $100+ per click, but long termed keywords like “Melbourne Workers Compensation Lawyer” can help advertisers attract more specific traffic at a lower cost per click.

This is the kind of opportunity that long-tail keyword targeting presents to advertisers.

In addition to making up the vast majority of searches, long-tail keywords are also often significantly cheaper than shorter keyword-rich queries and can have as much – if not more – commercial intent.

How Much Do Small Businesses Spend on PPC?

Usually, once someone has asked about the average cost-per-click of a PPC ad, their next question will be how much do “typical” businesses spend on PPC as part of their larger online marketing costs.

Unfortunately, this is another question without an easy answer.

Some only spend around $3-5,000 per annum (and I say “only” purely for the purposes of context – that’s still a lot of money to many small businesses), whereas others at the higher end of the market may spend upward of $30,000 per month.

On averarage, we could say that a middle company budget for ads in USA or Australia could easily be around $10,000 per month.

What Other Costs Are Involved in PPC?

Your ad budget will always be the largest, most direct cost associated with your PPC campaigns.

However, while your ad budget is important, it’s not necessarily the be-all and end-all of your paid search efforts.

There are other potential costs you may have to consider, depending on your business, marketing goals, and individual situation.

Agency Costs

Some small businesses opt to have a Digital or Online Marketing company who specialises in Google Ads handle their PPC work for them.

This approach offers several benefits, such as minimal personal investment of time and effort in actually managing your PPC account.

These companies can also provide other services such as Search Engine Optimisation, Web Site development and hosting.

They boast many years of experience in these areas, making them trustworthy partners who can offer expert advice and guidance.

PPC Management Software

Google Ads is a great advertising platform.

It offers advertisers a high degree of control over the precise variables in their accounts and can be extremely powerful in the right hands.

The biggest complaint we hear from our clients is that, for all its power, Google Ads can be intimidating – especially to new advertisers.

That’s why many businesses opt to use PPC management software.

Some business owners opt to manage their PPC accounts manually, however, if you’re pushed for time or aren’t sure what you’re doing (or both), investing in PPC management software is a great way to save time, reduce costly mistakes, and get on with actually running your business.

The Price Is Right

As I’ve stated throughout, there are numerous factors that can have a significant impact on the cost of running a PPC campaign, but remember: almost any type of business can make Google Ads work for them!

If you’re not sure about anything I’ve covered in this guide, or you have specific questions, leave a comment and we’ll answer them as best we can.