It's a question that we're asked a lot and the answer is unequivocally 'yes!'. Our client data tells us that yes, people do click on Google Ads. But don’t just take our word for it: when AdWords first launched in 2000 it had 350 advertisers, now there are estimated to be over 1 million advertisers spending tens of billions of dollars in ad revenue. 1 million advertisers certainly must think they’re onto something! People often have a 'Marmite approach' to Ads – they either love ...

Have you heard about Google’s RankBrain? Here’s why you need to take it into account for your search engine optimisation. What is RankBrain? Many of the details (like much of Google’s operations) are shrouded in secrecy. But since it was revealed in 2015, more information has come to light. Basically, it’s an artificial intelligence machine learning program. It teaches itself and applies its learnings to search results. It first came about (as far as we know) in 2013 when Google were...

You might have looked at how many people are visiting your website, but do you also pay attention to how many are leaving?Using Google Analytics to find out where people leave Google Analytics can give you insight into where people are leaving your website, and you can then do a bit of detective work to try and work out why that might be. Here's three metrics to look at. Related blog: Learn how to set up Google Analytics1) Exit pages Go to 'Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages' and cli...

Struggling to find the stats you’re looking for in Google Analytics? Then you’re going to love Google Data Studio! A relatively new product from Google, Data Studio allows you to create at-a-glance reports from multiple data sources, including Analytics, Adwords and Google Sheets. And even better, since February this year, Google Data Studio has been free to use for all businesses. Why use Google Data Studio? Instead of having to go into Analytics and spend time unearthing the key statis...

Looking for ideas on how to improve your AdWords results? Here’s five ways to optimise your AdWords copy for better results. 1. Include benefits Now that AdWords text has expanded, there’s more space to share the benefits of your product or service. How will what you’re selling remove a problem or change someone’s life for the better? For example, Bruno uses the second headline to sell the benefit of their product, "You've never slept like this", while Soda Stream has added “Save £...

If you use AdWords, you may be aware that there's some fairly big changes to how much text you can include in your AdWords copy – expanded text ads are here! What are expanded text ads? It's exactly as they sound, the amount of space for your AdWords copy has been increased. The new text ads have:Two headlines (previously there was only one). Each headline is 30 characters and will be separated by a dash. One longer description – now up to 80 characters. Previously there were two d...

Thinking about advertising on Google AdWords? Here's two things you should know before you get started to get the best results from your investment... 1) Be as specific as possible with your keywords One of the mistakes AdWords newbies often make is adding a couple of broad keywords, then leaving their account for a few days. They then come back to see they’ve spent hundreds of pounds on clicks and have nothing to show for it. Luckily, you can reduce the likelihood of this happening by u...

In previous posts we've explained why you should use Google Search Console, plus provided instructions on how to get set up. This is the first in a series on how to actually start using Google Search Console. A lot of the features of Google Search Console aren't something you need to use every day, and that's certainly the case with the disavow tool. In this blog, you'll learn how you can use Google Search Console to disavow backlinks, and why you might need to do that in the first place.W...

In the second of our posts on using Google Search Console, we look at how you can tell Google that your site is no longer compromised if a "This site may be hacked" message is displaying above your website in search results. This can happen if your site has been the victim of hackers, spam or phishing scams.Sign up to get updates via Google Search Console If Google add “This site may be hacked” to your search listings, they will notify you via your Google Search Console. Even if your si...

Ever wondered where your website traffic comes from? How do people find you and end up on your site? Thankfully, it’s easy (and free!) to find out with Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics yet, here’s how to set it up.How to check your website traffic Once your website is set up on Google Analytics, head to Acquisition > Overview in the left hand side menu. From here you will see an overview of all the different sources that are sending traffic to your website.Ide...

If you’ve looked in Google Analytics and seen that people are finding your website through search engines, you might have wondered what they typed in to find you. You may have tried to find the answer within Google Analytics, in which case you probably came across the unhelpful term “(Not provided)” where you expected to see the keywords. So does that mean you’ll never know what people are searching for to find you? Thankfully not! Although Google Analytics no longer displays search ter...

Measuring your progress is an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy. Google Analytics is a great free tool for measuring and analysing your web traffic, plus it’s fairly straightforward to get set up. If you’ve never used it before, here’s how to get started... Sign up to Google Analytics If you don’t already use any Google services, you will need to create a Google account at google.com/analytics. Ignore all the stuff about premium and sign up for a free account...

To find out if your website stats are already being affected by referrer spam please read our blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics? Many websites are hosted on web servers that use .htaccess files to control how the server should behave in response to specific requests. The .htaccess file is found in the root of your site directory and can be accessed either by FTP, SSH or web admin control panel such as cPanel. There are two possible methods to block referrer spam to your ...

There are a number of WordPress plugins designed to block referrer spam from accessing your website and affecting your analytics data. To find out if your website is affected read our earlier blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics? You can find instructions on how to block referrer spam with WordPress below: The following instructions assume you are familiar with both WordPress and installing plugins. We cannot be held responsible for any detrimental effects and we do not pro...

The most effective way to block ghost referrer spam from accessing your website and affecting your analytics data is to set up a custom filter directly in your Google Anaytics account. To find out if your website is affected read our blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics?Set up a View in Google Analytics Before you can begin to use any of the techniques below we recommend setting up an additional view in Google Analytics. The benefit of views is that you can see the effect...

If you are a serious business owner or marketer you probably use Google Analytics or another web analytics solution to help you to measure the results of your investment in marketing. However you may have noticed some strange changes in your metrics lately, including:A large increase in recorded traffic A reduction in your average page views per visit Decreased visit duration Higher bounce rate (visits to a single page)One possible cause could be the recent huge upsurge in referre...