Optimise your adverts too not just your website!

There are only three ways a user can find your website. The first is by typing in your website’s URL - this method can never bring in new visitors, as can only be used by those people who already know you.

The second method is via a hyperlink, these are commonly seen as text in blue and underlined, that once clicked on take you to a different website or page. Apart from boosting your SEO, hyperlinks can genuinely be a good source to bring traffic to your website. The third and final method is from Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo or Baidu which is very popular in China. These Search Engines match and list websites which are relevant to your search query, the results are then displayed in the results page, known as the SERP which stands for Search Engine Results Page.

However you will notice that in Google’s SERP there are two types of results - websites and adverts. The websites which are called “Organic Results” are unpaid and their ranking is only affected by their SEO. The adverts or Ads on the other hand are appearing because they are paid for, however the Ads displayed are also relevant to your search query. Google does this so that everything you see in the SERP is related to what you are looking for, both Organic and Paid. Hence yes you can use Google Adverts to increase the visibility of your website especially if your SEO is not that strong yet, since SEO takes a long period of time to build. Google Ads are also a brilliant way to expose your products or services to the right audience if they keywords set to trigger your Ads are chosen well.

Since only a set number of Ads can be displayed on one SERP page, Ads too undergo ranking and it is important to ensure they are optimised to benefit from the highest positioning. Payment is one key factor that influences ranking - the higher the bid for each click, the higher your Ad will rank - however payment is not the only factor that influences Ad ranking. The Quality of your landing page and the quality of your Ads both greatly increase the ranking of your Ads. High Quality Ads, linking to High Quality Landing Pages can outrank Ads of lesser quality that have a higher Bid. Google does this to ensure the user experience is always positive and if taken advantage of, can enable you to publish highly visible Ads with less budget, thus increasing your value for money.

Adding Ad extensions such as site-links is one way to optimise your Ads and can also aid your ad to send traffic to different landing pages from the same Ad. While on the other hand to optimise your landing pages ensure they provide original content relevant to your Advert, offer in-depth information, are easy to navigate, load quickly and keep users engaged.

There are various aspects that need to be considered when setting up a Google Advertising Campaign, however if your Ads and landing pages are cor- rectly optimised, you’re well on the right track to reaping good results and return on investment.