FREE ADVICE ON HOW TO INCREASE YOUR SALES

Some companies make a lot of money using Google Ads, others lose money. What’s the difference? The company who manages your Ads.

CONTRACTS

Never sign a long-term contract with a company to manage your Google Ads. If they do a bad job you are stuck paying them and the ads for length of the contract. Agreements should be on a month to month basis and you should have the ability to walk away at anytime.

PASSWORDS

Immediately fire any company that refuses to give you the passwords to your Google Ads account. Withholding your passwords is a clear indication the company is hiding something from you and does not want you to know they are doing a bad job. Some companies want to hide that they go months without doing any actual work on your account. Don’t believe any company that says, “it’s proprietary”. Afterall, you can Google search and see your ads and so can everyone else.

REPORTS

Don’t trust reports from companies that manage your Google Ads campaigns. Most companies giving out reports on Google Ads are showing you only a snapshot what they want you to see. Instead, hire a company that will show you have to evaluate their work inside the actual Google Ads campaign. Look inside your Google Ads account to verify what phrases people typed before clicking your ads, etc.

SHOWING UP FOR COMPETITION’S NAME

Beware! Some companies managing Google Ads think it’s a good idea to make your ads show up for your competitions name. IT’S NOT! It’s a financial disaster waiting to happen. Paying for clicks when someone is searching for your competition by name is absolutely one of the worst things that can happen because those people are unlikely to flip and hire you instead. Money wasted! In addition, showing up above your competition for their company name in Google Search can make your competition angry and that can lead to them repeatedly clicking your ads every day (click fraud) just to waste your money. This can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. This is one of the reasons it’s critical that you own your Google Ads account, and have full access.

CLICK FRAUD

Absolutely do not hire a company unless they are protecting you from competitors, former employees and other bad people clicking your Pay-Per-Click Ads over and over again. To learn more about click fraud and how to protect yourself visit ClickFraudDefender.com and watch the short video.

WEBSITES

When running Google Ads or even doing Search Engine Optimization, the home page of your website can make or break you. Here are some important considerations for your website’s home page.

PHONE NUMBER

Your company phone number should be at the top of every page. It should be very large and stand out. You also need to test to make sure it’s clickable on the mobile version of your website. People are lazy. If you make them look for your phone number you will have wasted a lot of the money you just paid to get people to your site. The phone number should also be readable (instead of a graphic or on a drop-down menu). Desktop computer users need to see the phone number to dial it. Many mobile phone users will also want to write the phone number down to call later. Especially if they are visiting your website during the hours you are closed.

PHONE HOURS

If a company builds you a website but does not put your business hours next to the phone number this might be a sign you need to find a different website company. They either do not understand your customers or they do not care about you making a profit. If you do not post your telephone hours at the top of your website next to your phone number you could be wasting a lot of money you paid for Google Ad clicks and losing thousands of dollars in potential sales. Many business and cleanout companies answer their phones beyond the traditional 8 to 5 hours most businesses operate. However, many people who are searching for business services do not realize that. Imagine your Google Ads are running late in the evening and on weekends and people are clicking your Ads, but they are not calling you because they think you might be closed. That’s money wasted. Your money. Most business owners don’t understand that people visiting their websites may be shy. They may be afraid they are calling the business owners’ cell phone after your business has closed, when you are eating or with your family. Each time this happens you could be losing $5, $10, $20 or more because they clicked your pay-per-click ad and did not call. Some of them may do a second search the next day, find another company, or if they do find your company you could end up paying for a second click. More money wasted.

SERVICE AREA

It is extremely important to list all of your service areas towards the top on the home page of your website without people on a desktop having to scroll down or click to visit a different page because “most people don’t scroll down” and less than 50% of people click to visit a second page on a website. If they can quickly, in seconds, see they are in your service area without clicking or scrolling you will sell a larger percentage of your website visitors than if they have to click or scroll to see this same information.

SERVICES

Beware! Many website companies are more concerned with selling you – than they are in trying to help you sell to your customers. Their primary focus is their profits – not yours. These companies have learned if they build a website that focuses on pretty pictures of the owners truck and pictures of the business owner that most business owners will buy. However, most people searching for business could care less how pretty the website is. They are searching for four things. (1) Do you provide the services they are looking for, (2) Do you go to their area, (3) What is your phone number and (4) What hours do you answer the phone. And that’s where these website companies make the big mistake that can kill your sales. For example, most people assume that every business company will come out and pick up a single item such as a couch, appliance, etc. However, if they are looking for a company that can handle a bigger job such as a big estate cleanout, tearing a fence out of the ground, knocking down a shed, etc… they don’t know unless you tell them (on the website). Unfortunately, most people don’t click or scroll and so many are too shy to call many business companies lose most of their biggest potential sales because their website company focused on selling the business owner, instead of helping the business owner sell to their potential clients. Make sure your biggest services are shown in the visible area of your home page.

PAGE LOAD TIME

One of the most important factors in advertising on the Internet is “how long does your home page take to open” for visitors. Have you ever gone to a website but left because the page took too long to open? Now imagine someone just clicked your pay-per-click ad. How long does your website’s homepage take to open for a first time visitor. Web pages should open in less than 1.5 seconds for desktop users and less than 3 seconds for mobile users. To test the speed of your website please click the following link at developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Did You Know That Most Search Engine Optimization Companies Have Never Even Had One Website At Number One In Google?

CLIENT RANKINGS

Most people hiring a company to do Search Engine Optimization have no clue how to know if the company they are hiring is any good or not. Let’s start out by helping you understand that over 95% of companies selling SEO have never had a single website at number 1 in Google. Think about this too… Only one website can be number 1 in Google Search for the phrase you want to rank for and only the top three spots make money. So if you are competing with over 100 other websites (Competitors, phone directories, etc) that means that while 100% of the SEO companies will make money over 97% of these companies clients will “lose” money. The best way to avoid losing money on SEO is to request the SEO company show you at least 5 websites they have built that are currently ranking at number 1 in Google. If they can’t do it – Hire someone else.

BLOGS

Many years ago, a salesperson who worked for a social media company doing a presentation got the idea to tell a group of business owners that having his company blog for them would increase their website rankings in Google. It did nothing for their rankings but other social media companies heard about it and started saying that if people paid them to blog the business owners websites would rank higher in Google. The reality is that blogging works to attract people who want to read the blog (For instance it works well for celebrities) to a website, very few people want to read a blog by a dentist, garage door replacement company or business company. For these types of businesses the only person making a profit from the blogs is the company’s who are charging you to write and post the blogs.

YOUTUBE

Many SEO companies (most of which have never built a single website that ranks at number one in Google) are promoting the idea that business owners like you should pay them to create YouTube videos and that if you keep paying them a monthly fee for at least 6 months your website will move to the top of the free listings in Google Search. This information is false. It’s a sales tactic. It’s a way to get you to continue paying them for a long time and at the end they may say something like “Google changed the rules… Now you need to let us do (something else) for 6 months or so). Don’t fall for it. Google Search could care less if you have a YouTube video.

YEXT AND MOZ

If you are familiar at all with Search Engine Optimization then you’ve certainly heard that the more links (recommendations) there are on other websites pointing to your website the higher it will rank. What’s just as important is that the information about your company (Name, Address and Phone) match what is on your website (If not Google kills rankings of your website). The two biggest companies that provide this type of service are Yext and Moz (combined they can create hundreds of citations about your company on the online phone directories and fix the ones that are incorrect). Without one or both paid services (or this work being done by hand which is a huge amount of work) your website is unlikely to rank in Google Search or show up in the Map Pack in Google. To verify if your website company is using the paid versions of these go to Yext.com/business/business-scan/ and Moz.com/products/local/check-listing. If these programs are not being used as part of your monthly SEO fee and you have a large number of missing or incorrect listings you should fire your SEO company and hire someone else.

LOCATION PAGES

The idea of location pages to help you rank for specific keyword phrases (such as business) for specific cities sounds great. However, if you are not using Yext and/or Moz they are likely a waste of time and money. Worse, some companies are running basically what amounts to a scam. They create the pages. Then they email you a list of links where you can click the links to see the pages. So everything sounds good. However, with some of these companies there are no links on the website to these pages. If there are no links to the pages “Google can’t find them”. And if Google can’t find them Google can’t rank them. Some companies will say “we only linked to them from the site map”. Imagine you worked at Google writing their software and you heard there were website companies building pages “that only Google can see”. Wouldn’t you write into your software to penalize websites that have pages that appear to be created only for SEO purposes since there are no links on any of the website pages to them.