Looks like I post a lot more about Google AdWords these days. Last time I tried this the highest ranking term was “shopping.”

Are there any other topics you’d like me to post about? Please let me know…

What is Remarketing/Retargeting?

Retargeting works by tagging every visitor to your site and then displaying your ads to those customers on other sites in the Advertising network. These types of ads usually perform better than standard display ads. This is because the potential customer has already been to your site and will recognize your brand.

There are many retargeting companies out there such as Fetchback, AdRoll, Collective etc… This guide is specifically for Google AdWords because the setup is very simple and can be done without opening up new advertising accounts or committing to large ad budgets. This can be done in your existing AdWords account.

How do I set it up?

Step #1 — Set up Audience Profile

Go to the Shared Library section in the left hand menu of your AdWords account.

This will take you to a page where you will want to click “New Audience” and select “Remarketing list”. Fill out the form with a name and enter the number of days you’d like to track people for. If you enter 30, your ads will be displayed to anyone who visited the site in the last 30 days.

After you save the form above, you will need to click on the “Tag” link in the list of audiences. This will show you the code that needs to be installed on your site. There is an option for HTTPS, be sure to select that if your site serves pages through a secure connection (as most eCommerce sites do).

Step #2 — Install Tracking Pixel(s)

After you finished clicking around in Step #1 and you have the final code, you need to get it installed on your site. However, before you install the code you will need to figure out what pages should collect retargeting info. Keep in mind that you can set up multiple audiences in AdWords and show different ads based on the audience profile.

For example, let’s make believe we have an apparel site that we’d like to run a Remarketing campaign on. It would probably be best if we made separate audiences for Men, Women and Children’s apparel. This will allow us to tailor the ads based on the visitors buying preferences. Someone who was shopping for kids t-shirts will see a relevant ad and someone who was looking at a men’s sweatshirt will see what they were looking for. The more granular you get, the better performance your ad will have. Keep in mind that you don’t want to get very granular if you do not have a lot of traffic on your site.

Once you decide how to set up your audience profiles, circle back to step one create them all and copy the code into your website.

Step #3 — Set up Campaign

Set up a new campaign with separate Ad Groups for each audience. You will need to enter the same information as a regular campaign. Make sure that you have the Display Network turned on.

Go to the Audience tab in your Remarketing campaign. If you do not see it, you need to enable it by clicking on the “more” arrow.

Once you get to the Audience tab, click on the “add audiences” button and select your Campaign/Ad Group. A new screen should pop out with the audience profiles that you created in Step #1. Click “add” to add these to this Ad Group. If you have several Remarketing list, you will want to put them in separate ad groups so that you can target the ad creative accordingly.

Step #4 — Design/Upload Banner Ads

This is the part where you want to upload existing banner ads or use the Google AdWords Display Ad Builder.

Image Ads

To upload standard image ads, go to the “Ads” section of your campaign, click “New Ad” and select “Image Ad”. You will then need to upload image ads one at a time.

Display Ad Builder

If you do not have any display ads or if you would like to build ads featuring several different products, you can use the Display Ad Builder. In the “Ads” section click “New Ad” and select “Display Ad Builder”. This will take you to a page with many different options. I like to use the “Product Showcase” which Google describes as follows:

Templates that show a selection of product images with different destination URLs. Promoted products are shown like a catalog in these templates.

You will be given a form where you can enter information for multiple products and it will automatically build a dynamic ad in a variety of sizes.

Once you upload you ads, just make sure all the standard campaign settings are filled out properly (keywords, bids, budgets etc…) — At this point you should be done.

Keep in mind that a Remarketing campaign takes a while to pick up because it needs to collect visitor information so that your “Audience” can be targeted properly. Every time someone visits your site where the code is installed they will be tagged with the audience profile and they will start seeing your ads within the Google Advertising Network.

Good luck. Happy Retargeting!

Think you spend a lot of money AdWords? Think again… Here is a breakdown from WordStream of where Google gets its money from.

Create a Google+ Page

The first step to getting set up with Google Plus is to create your Business Page. This is different from a Personal Profile. You can set up a Business Page here:
https://plus.google.com/pages/manage

Add The +1 Button

In order to facilitate easy sharing of the products and pages on your website, you will want to add the “plus one” button. The code for that can be found here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Add A Google+ Profile Badge

Then ext step is to get customers and site visitors to follow you on Google+. The best way to do this would be to display the Google+ Profile Button. Go to your Google+ Business Page and copy the URL. Paste it into the form on this page and it will output the correct code for your profile:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/profilebutton/

Image Credit: Hongkiat / Artbees

Google recently started testing a new ad extension called the Communication Ad Extension. This allows merchants to collect customer email signups directly in the ad. As of now, this seems to be a beta program with no information published by Google besides for in the AdWords support forums.

What is this?

The communication ad extension is a new extension that allows AdWords advertisers to collect leads directly from Google search.

There are two types of this ad format:

1. Communication Ads for Daily Deal sites: This type allows Daily Deal sites to collect email addresses and zip codes of new sign-ups to their
offer emails.

2. Communication Ads for Newsletters: This variant allows large businesses to collect email addresses and zip codes of people interested in joining a
newsletter or email list from a given merchant.

How do I get this?

I wanted to test this for a client, so I emailed Google AdWords support requesting additional signup information. I received a reply from Google within a day or so requesting specific information so they can review the account in question.

Once they review the account and see whether you are eligible, the ad extension goes live pretty quickly. When the ad is live, you’ll start receiving email notifications whenever someone fills out the form.

There are no guarantees about which sites Google will accept into the beta, however it seems pretty straightforward and can’t hurt to ask. I would suggest you email AdWords support and see if they will let you in the program.

How does it perform?

I have been testing this for a few weeks already. Currently there are no reports in AdWords for this ad extension. However, it seems to work reasonably well as we have been getting quite a few signups on a regular basis since this went live.

Image Credit: Search Engine Roundtable

The folks at CPC Strategy just published a cool infographic on Amazon’s amazing growth. Check it out below.

Source: CPC Strategy Blog

Jimmy Rodriguez is CTO and co-founder of 3DCart, developer of an e-commerce suite for businesses of all sizes. As an authority on e-commerce best practices, Jimmy combines more than 8 years as an e-commerce developer and web programmer with SEO, social marketing and business intelligence.

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of selling more product is shipping, a feared part of the online purchasing process during the holiday season. It’s easy to fall to become disorganized during the busy holiday season, but it won’t reflect well on your brand and will turn what could have been loyal customers into one-time shoppers. Luckily if you prepare now and have a system in place you can easily avoid holiday shipping debacles.

1 – Offer a free shipping deal
Make it an exploding offer—or, if you can afford it without cutting heavily into revenues, offer it to all customers throughout the holidays. Shipping costs typically make up 5% or more of the total cost, a significant dent in profits. Still, over 46.5% of small to mid-sized businesses say that offering free shipping increases their profits.

2 - Extend the standard shipping deadline
Inform customers that standard shipping prices will go up on a day before they actually do, then announce an extension to the standard shipping deadline.

3 - Use a shipping aggregator for international sales
Shipping aggregators like Bongo consolidate your international products coming from different warehouses into a single, neat package. Merchants can simply ship to to the aggregators Domestic Facility, and the international shipping experts handle the rest.

4 - Stock up on shipping supplies
If you’re shipping products on your own, make sure you stock up on twice as many shipping resources as your projected sales. Being over-prepared is much better than being under-prepared because you can always use the excess materials for post-holiday shipping.

5 - Give customers the ability to track their purchases
Shipping through popular carriers and linking them to your backend CRM and email autoresponders makes it simple for customers to track their purchases.

6 - Showcase contact information prominently
Online merchants need to go the extra mile to make their customers feel safe and protected. You can put a customer’s mind at ease by displaying your contact information prominently in multiple locations on your site. Also consider listing your phone number and alternative email addresses in your auto-responder emails.

7 - Follow up on shipped orders
Through your order management system, track when shipped items are received and set autoresponders to send follow-up emails with links to feedback resources. Also consider jazzing up your holiday autoresponders with a seasonal images and sayings. It never hurts to spread the holiday cheer!

8 - Include physical promotions in shipped packages
Surprise your customer with a coupon! There’s nothing like the feeling of a coupon in your hand; send physical coupons with every order in hopes of inspiring a return customer. It also makes sure that your customer’s last impression of the purchase is a great one.

The above is an excerpt from 3dcart’s FREE eBook 12 Days of Online Shopping. Download yours today to automatically receive a $75 Google Adwords certificate & $100 Amazon Ad certificate and be entered to win one of 20 $100 Google Adwords certificate!

Image Credit: Drewski2112

This post was written by Helen Fang, marketing manager for Vendio.  Vendio offers ecommerce software and helps users in every phase of online selling, from finding the best products to sell online to opening a 100% free web store.

Auctioneers of the modern era are posed with multimedia challenges they’ve never been forced to deal with in the past. A poorly laid-out website or confusing product image can be the difference between making the sale and losing business. In this quick tutorial you’ll learn the basics for writing effective product titles and descriptions, and how to take quality photos of the items you are selling.

Product Titles and Descriptions

The descriptions you put forth of your products play a major role in the bidder’s purchasing decision when they are unable to physically see or touch a product for themselves. If they inquire via email about the product, not only should you be sure to email them back promptly, but you should go above and beyond what is required of you based on their question. If they need clarity on something, do not leave your description lacking. Your extra attention to detail will be remembered by the bidder and, as such, leave open the possibility of spreading good word about your business.

Titles should be as descriptive but short and snappy as possible, leaving nothing desired on the part of the bidder. Additionally, your initial product description should show clarity in shipping and various extra charges – don’t leave anything open-ended. You want your readers to trust you as a professional; your credibility will come along with how well the overall description is written, as well as the quality of the information provided.

Photographs

No, as an auctioneer you are not required to be a professional photographer or own an elaborate camera (a simple digital camera should do just fine). You are, however, expected to be able to take quality and visually appealing photographs of your products. When taking your pictures, consider what you would look for in a photograph as a consumer. Pictures should not be blurry, should be (ideally) taken in natural lighting and should be taken from a close enough distance so that viewers can assess the intricacies of a product. Do not use the zoom feature if it is not necessary, as it tends to distort or blur the image quality.

When finally uploading the images, make your site’s layout is conducive to your users. Do not upload large image files or small thumbnail images; these will only frustrate users who do not have the Internet connections to quickly open these files or, in the case of a thumbnail, who just want a bigger view of the product. Also, take into consideration what is included in the background of your photo. None of the photos you take should look like they were “home taken” pictures; these should be photos with plain backdrops or specifically setup to a fit a theme.

Following these simple tips can help make sure you’re appealing to your potential online customer base as much as possible.

Photo Credit: Stéfan

Google AdWords has allowed advertisers to show sitelinks since the end of 2009. Back in April Search Engine Roundtable showed examples of ads showing up to 4 sitelinks per ad. I am now seeing some ads with 6 sitelinks. It would seem as if this is somehow connected with Google’s push to expand organic sitelinks in the SERPs.

It seems that the Google help center has recently been updated to state:

If a user search triggers your ad to run with Sitelinks, our system may include up to six of your additional links on your ad, along with the main landing page link. The higher the quality of your ad, the more likely Sitelinks may be able to run on that ad.

How many sitelinks are you seeing?

Thanks David.

Alice Delore is an education specialist for SaleHoo.com, an online community of over 95,000 online sellers and retailers. Their product range consists of an online selling course, ecommerce software  and their flagship product, a wholesale directory. 

Most store owners graduate to owning their own website after learning the basics of selling on giant marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon. There are a host of benefits to owning your own store including having more control over the direction of your store and not having a percentage of your earnings eaten up by marketplace fees.

However, the one major drawback is that when you branch out from a marketplace, you no longer have traffic spoon-fed to your listings, which usually means very slow sales in the early days of owning your store.

It won’t come as news that one of the most effective way to attract buyers is by capturing them in search engines. However, knowing how to go about doing this can be the tricky part.

Here are my top 3 essential search engine optimization tips for new web store owners:

#1 – Write content-rich product descriptions

One of the ways that Google and other search engines determine which sites to rank is through the text content on the site. Therefore, it is crucial that your product descriptions contain keywords that your buyers will search for when they search for items you stock.

Try to write descriptions that are at least 250 words long and remember to include the keywords that closely relate to the product, but remember not to stuff your description with too many keywords. Doing so could tell Google that your content is not genuine. It’s also an eye-sore for buyers!

If you aren’t sure which keywords to use, try the Google Keyword Tool. It’s a free tool by Google which allows you to swoop in and identify exactly which keywords your potential buyers are searching for.

For example, if you are selling women’s dresses, you can enter ‘womens dresses’ into the keyword tool and hit search to see a list of related keywords that buyers are searching for.

#2 – Write a killer meta description

Your meta description is the text that displays in search results.

Above is a good example of a meta description. This company, Inch Blue, ranks on the first page of Google for the keywords “baby shoes”. Their meta description contains these keywords but, more importantly, it provides information to the person searching which encourages them to click-through and visit the web store.

Therefore, meta descriptions serve two purposes:

a)      They help you rank better in search results when you include relevant keywords

b)      They give you a chance to lure buyers into the store. Make use of your meta description by stating, as Inch Blue has, what makes your product different from other options.

How to alter your meta description depends on how your store was built or which store builder you use but, if you know HTML code, the meta description appears in the header code of your website.

#3 – Keep your content fresh!

Google and other search engines love when you update your site with fresh, new content. When you update your content, Google knows that your website is a ‘live’ one, not just a static website that is never updated, which improves your rankings.

There are a number of ways that you can easily update your web content to keep it fresh. One is by simply re-writing your listing descriptions every couple of weeks. You can still say the same things about the products, just freshen up the order of the wording. Adding customer reviews of the products or general feedback is another easy way to add new content. It also encourages customers to purchase because they love hearing positive feedback from other buyers.

Blog writing to increase your search engine placement

Writing blog posts on a regular basis is another way to brighten up your content. Additionally, when you write about the products that you sell, you show off your passion for the products which inspires customers to hit the “Add to Cart” button!

Most products or product lines are relativity easy to blog about.  If you sell handbags, you can write about the latest season’s color and style trends or about an outrageously expensive new designer bag that your audience would adore, but never be able to purchase themselves!

If you sell gardening equipment, you can write blog posts about gardening tips or keep a photo blog of the world’s most beautiful gardens.

Your blog posts do not need to be long or sophisticated: Web readers will engage better with a shorter, snappier and more personal blog post than a dry, boring post.

Above all else, aim to give valuable, informative or entertaining content to readers and avoid blasting them with advertisements for your products.

How well does your website rank in the search engines? 

Image Credit: Mike Atherton