Archive for the ‘Local Internet Marketing’ Category

Geo-Targeting AdWords PPC Campaigns : Part 2 - Keyword Targeting

In my previous post I covered geo-targeting PPC ads by IP but mentioned that the IP tracking system has flaws that let some users fall through the cracks. Here we will be creating new ad campaigns that attempt to cover these searchers. We’ll also expand on the ideas to apply them to ad and landing page copy to help improve click through rates and conversions.

Geo-Targeting with Location Keywords

For all the ads you’ve created using IP targeting you want to create another set, without setting the location preferences, that uses the same ad copy and landing pages except your keyword list will be slightly different. Here you will add the city name or community name into all your keywords. So, keeping with our previous examples in Houston, “kitchen cabinets” becomes “houston kitchen cabinets” for the ad groups that are targeting Houston metro and “pasadena kitchen cabinets” for the ads that target the community within the metro area.
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Posted in Local Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click | 13 Comments »

Geo-Targeting AdWords PPC Campaigns : Part 1 - IP Targeting

Localized internet marketing is all about geo-targeting. A business servicing a specific geographic area wants internet traffic from primarily that region. Whether that traffic is organic search traffic, pay-per-click (PPC) search traffic, referral link traffic, or type-in direct navigation traffic you want it to be targeted to your specific area. This series of blog posts will focus on PPC and geo-targeting methods through Google AdWords for businesses that operate in one city or metropolitan area.

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Posted in Local Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click | 2 Comments »

Lack of Flexibility in Ad Titles in Google Adwords Map Ads

I love working with Pay Per Click ads through Google AdSense. It’s like instant gratification. And the local targeting opportunities are amazing when working with a local business. But there is one thing that really bugs me, Map Ads.

When creating an ad to be displayed on Google Maps you’re stuck with using the business name as it is within the Google Local Business Center (LBC). Your business name then becomes the default blue linked headline of your ad copy. You can’t readily rename it to specifically target your keywords like you can in the regular ads, unless you change it in the LBC.

For this reason I see click through rates for Map Ads at mere fractions of what I can get out of normal ads. Being that we are paying Google to create ads which appear within Google Maps they should allow us the flexibility to give whatever title we feel would better speak to searchers. Again, like we can in the normal ads.

Here’s an example;

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Posted in Local Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click | 1 Comment »

Getting Your KML files to Open in Google Earth

A few weeks ago I posted a few neat things you can do with geo-data for your website and delved into adding KML geo files to your website. Well, I noticed one small problem. When adding a link to a KML file, on a web-page, when you click that link, the KML file just opens in the browser as any old un-styled XML file.

I was wanting these to automatically open up in Google Earth so I can watch the globe spin round and fly into the spot specified on the map. No such luck.

But I found the solution(s). One complicated, one easy.

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Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

Cool Stuff with Geo Data for Your Local Website

Mike Blumenthal just wrote a great post about adding Geo Sitemaps to websites. So I got to tinkering with some of these KML format geo data files and discovered a few new things and revisited some older ones.

So here are a few cool geo data things you can do for a local website.

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Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 4 Comments »