The last newsletter dealt with Google Places and Finda, both technologies that feed into the mobile sphere. But apart from those, how do you know your business has the mobile revolution covered? What have you heard and who can you trust. Take a minute to read the basics and be informed.

There is a bit of scaremongering and misinformation floating around out there. There is even one large NZ traditional print advertising company aggressively selling a package that amounts to nothing more than an online directory listing and some logins to readily available free social media products. Call me cynical but without content these ‘accounts’ are redundant, and they may not even be a great fit for every company anyway. We know people in New Zealand are accessing websites in various ways, on desktop computers, mobile laptops / netbooks, tablets / iPads, and smart phones. How do you know your website works in all these places?

Your Surefire website is designed with technology to work across these platforms. However, the simple way to find out is to try it! Chances are you have access to desktop and laptop computers at home and work. If you don’t have a netbook or a tablet/iPad, just go to your local mall and pop into Dick Smith electronics or Noel Leeming. They have all the toys and these days many of them are connected to the internet. It might feel cheeky but, pick up an iPad and browse to your site! If you can see your core messages clearly, can click on your call to action buttons, and access the menu, then that is a good mobile experience!

Unfortunately smart phones in stores aren’t typically connected to the internet. So ask around friends and family to view your site on their phones.

Some companies are offering mobile websites for additional cost to your main website. The direction is either a) a mini cut down content version of your full site or b) a specifically crafted site with contact and location information, but excluding product and general content. If the testing explained above of your main site was satisfactory then a) is covered. If you have had your Google Places account setup for you, this essentially covers b).

As is the way with internet fashion, there are also techniques coming back into vogue for stretching or compressing your website automatically to fit a space. With modern pinch zooming on mobile devices this is largely solving a problem that doesn’t exist, and has funny side effects on full size screens. It remains to be seen what niche mobile sites will fill. For the typical business owner at this time we would recommend concentrating on your website and Google Places, and feel confident your bases are covered. We will certainly inform you when things change!

Is local business important to you?

If so, there are two pieces of the online puzzle you need to have in place. Finda is the one free directory listing your business must have in New Zealand. We aren’t biased towards Finda. There are great directories out there that cater to specific target markets and industries. These can be a really important part of your link strategy. It is simply a fact that Finda are the directory that have a partnership with Google, and the listings are fed directly into the Google juggernaut for search and Google maps search results. This ties in with Google Places and they work together.

So the other must have is the free Google Places. It’s not an exaggeration to say it is a must have for every single business in New Zealand. There are so many good reasons why you must have a Google Places page, and no bad ones. Obviously it is a native Google product and they like you using their products, and it’s them ranking you in searches!

The idea is that when people search, you have a Google Maps result come up. This works really well when people are using mobile devices like smart phones and tablets. They get your location on a map, and nice features like contact details that are instantly clickable to call you from their phone. It behaves like a mobile optimised website. There are all sorts of other bells and whistles for displaying branding, images, opening hours, deals and general content.

The disappointing thing with both Finda and Google is that they are not especially easy to deal with. Especially when you are discovering an old listing for your business and you want to take control of it again.

They also have reasonably convoluted processes for sending out postcards or confirmation codes or even phone calls. It all seems a bit hit and miss at times. Some of this is to do with them being careful about security and being sure who they are dealing with. You wouldn’t want someone else getting hold of your Google Places page and changing content.

Here are some tips for getting you started.

#1 Update your Finda listing first!

Claim and Upgrade Your Existing Finda Account

• In Google search for your business name followed by “Finda”
• If it exists browse to the page and click on REPORT LISTING ERROR.
• Then follow the proces to upgrade your business details and submit to Finda, they will confirm who you are and make the changes.

Setup a New Finda Account

• If you can’t find an existing listing, setup a new one.
• Do this at http://www.finda.co.nz/account/register/
• There are decisions to make about descriptions (making sure you SEO these), locations/regions and categories.

Setup Your Google Places Account

• Start this process at http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter by clicking on the red SIGN UP button.
• It is a reasonably long process with a lot of decisions to make. So keep in mind your key search phrases, and approach your Google Business Places page like it is your Mobile website. These places pages rank really well and appear on smart phones and tablets. The content is everything people are generally looking for when they are mobile, and it’s in a mobile friendly format.
• At the end of the process Google will confirm a PIN with you by Post or by phone if you are lucky. This can take some time. If you stay the course and get it completed, then well done!

Earlier in the year something changed in Google for everyone searching in New Zealand.

You probably didn’t even notice, but this will impact on your search engine optimisation. Here is an explanation of what you should do about it.

Google moved the filter for viewing search results for just New Zealand.

The change was so subtle most people probably missed it. Can you remember how there used to be a button that said something like ‘Pages from New Zealand’. This meant you could search, see what you found, and then limit that search to just New Zealand websites.

I’m not sure why they changed it. The feature is still there but it’s hard to find and use. Now after searching, you need to click through a menu ‘Search Tools’ -> ‘The web’ -> ‘Pages from New Zealand’. There are other clever filters available, from time frames to Sites with images.

On this test Google pre-set my Christchurch location as Nelson. I do wonder how long this feature is going to last. But what should you do in the mean time?

Geographical locations in the search phrase have become more common anyway. Searches such as ‘house and land packages christchurch’. Maybe this is Googles’ response to try and automate that.

One thing to consider might be to optimise your general key search phrases with NZ in them too. So something like ‘residential builder NZ’ still counts as a key search phrase of ‘residential builder’ but used in its full version also covers NZ.

It’s unlikely people are typing the full New Zealand at the end of their searches. NZ may be a simple and natural way of picking up on New Zealand searches only. If one thing is for certain, it is that Google will continue to change and evolve their search algorithm and search page in their quest to organise the worlds’ information.

I like saying Google Adwords is the fastest way in modern history to spend money. And for the uninformed it is!

However it does have its’ place in the marketing mix. And to Googles’ credit, they were the first search engine to really effectively rank searches for us to more accurately find things on the ever growing internet. They went on to find a way to monetise their business, and continue on to provide a huge range of free tools and products for businesses and individuals. We shouldn’t really expect them to be a not for profit charity!

At least being informed about how Adwords works, will reinforce your decision to go down that route or not. This is a very general narrative of the concept, so if you are an Adwords expert  – don’t read on.

So what IS Adwords? These are the three-lines-and-a-link-ads on the right hand side of your search page when you have made a search for something. The most expensive ones also sometimes appear in a yellow box at the top of the ‘normal’ search results.

Setting up Adwords starts with the same question you should start with when optimising content on your website directly. That is ‘what key search phrases do you want to rank for’? Through the Adwords admin, you say “I want my advert to appear when people search ‘classic cars nz’ in the New Zealand region searches “. Then it’s like an open auction for which page you want to make it on to. For instance you might be prepared to pay 6c for every time someone clicks on your advert. But Google might tell you that only gets your ad on page 7. Not ideal. So you bump up your per click amount you are prepared to pay. You might end up saying ok I’ll pay 12c per click, and that gets you on page 1. It is going to be different for different key search phrases, and dependant on how competitive they are, i.e. how many people want their ad to rank on page one for that key search phrase. The more competitive, the more you are going to have to bid.

This is where you can get clever. Less competitive phrases may be more specific and cheaper. However, this can be good. If it is more specific you will be more likely to hit your target market more accurately. You may not get as many clicks, but the quality will be better. The idea is to be delivering qualified visitors to your website and try to convert them into customers or contacts there.

If you simply get mass clicks from people interested in your topic, but most of them are unlikely to be actual potential purchasing customers, then what’s the point? So potentially better-quality, cheaper-per-click, but less volume.

Once you decide your key search phrases and per click spend, you simply decide your budget for the month. Google displays your advert when the relevant searches are made by people. People click on your advert. Your money is spent until your budget is reached for the month. That is how it works.

The decision for you as a business is largely around if this fits in the mix of advertising that you do. Our first newsletter for the year talked about organic search results. Are you already doing everything you can in optimising your website (for free) for similar search results? Would you be better off putting effort or money into creating new content on your website instead? Are you trying to hit a mass market and large numbers with Adwords? Is your target market likely to respond to a three line advert? Can your product or service be expressed in three lines? Do you have a special offer or product that may work well in this format?

Google Adwords has its’ place, but you need to know who you are trying to reach, and it needs to fit with your offering and your overall marketing strategy. If you are unsure we can introduce you to an online marketing specialist for a chat.

There is a world of searching going on, and not everyone knows about it.

You could be missing out on a slice of image searching action. All those images on your website and in your eCatalogue have the potential to add to your onsite search engine optimisation. I’m surprised how often I meet perfectly computer savvy people who aren’t aware of Google Image Search.

Next time you do a search, either start by clicking on Images on the top menu bar in Google, or even click on images after you have made your initial search. I find myself lazily clicking on Images to see if I can identify my desired item, service, company, attraction. Visually searching can sometimes be easier than reading text search results.

If I was starting the search for a new product, say a car trailer, I would typically search by images. This is the initial product investigation phase, while I’m still developing an idea of what might work for me and getting a feel for what is out there. I might see something out of the box. I might decide the industry has nothing inventive to offer. It can be very hit and miss.

While lending itself to product searching, it can also be a very quick way to find a specific company based on their brand. Searching ‘BP New Zealand’ brings up immediately recognisable images to their site, articles, even Greenpeace image links!

So how do you harness the power of images on your own website? There is a little field called the Alt Text. In the editor, right click on the image, select image properties. The Alt Text field should contain your key search phrases, and possibly describe the image. This is the information Google uses to identify the image and provide it in searches! Nice and simple.