If I had a penny for every time I’d been asked “Does Google Adwords Work?” I’d certainly be a wealthier man.

The question usually derives from a bad experience where someone has tried setting up their own account, spent a bucket load and sold next to nothing. Sound familiar?

Well, like most forms of advertising the fact is that Google Adwords does work for some applications, and for some it doesn’t.

When Adwords campaigns fail it tends to be for one of two reasons:

1) - The campaign was set-up and managed poorly.
2) - The product isn’t suitable.

1) - The campaign was set-up and managed poorly.
Google Adwords provides 2 methods for a user to achieve high positions for their ads. The first is to optimise the search keyword or phrase (this involves creating optimised ads and landing pages).
The second method is to pay more per click. As many users fail to optimise their ads they pay more per click than many of their competitors.

Additionally, most users fail to:
a - Optimise the correct keywords
b - Lock down their keywords
c - Configure correct campaign settings
d - Make best use of negative keywords
e - Use Analytics or the Diagnostics tool
f - Split test their ads
g - Maintain and update the account

Without doubt Adwords is a powerful advertising tool but its only as good as the person using it. If you plan to run your own campaigns you should attend a 1 day Google Adwords Training Course.

However, if the hand on approach is not for you then you should consider having your Adwords account professionally managed.

2) - The product isn’t suitable.
Not all products are suited to Adwords. The sheer volume of keyword competition and low profit margins can make some products impossible to market effectively with Adwords. In such circumstances there are various other forms of online marketing to try.

If you’d like to discuss the possibilities of using Google Adwords to advertise your website please give us a call us on 01709-373911.

Established since 1996 Eye4Design Active Media Ltd is one of Yorkshires most experienced web design companies.

When it comes to entrusting your web design project to a web design agency it makes alot of sense to select one that has all the skills and expertise not only for the initial build but also in areas such as:

Search Engine Optimisation
Email Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
and
Social Media Marketing

Working with our customers we have been able to develop their websites into highly profitable businesses and in many cases their online sales now exceed their traditional sales.

Our ethos is based around an all encompassing high quality service which has resulted in an impressively high customer retention rate. In fact, we’re proud to say that we still work with many of the same customers that joined us in 1996.

It’s true to say that there will always be a market for cheap bottom end ‘template’ based solutions, where quality and performance are compromised.

However, for serious applications, when serious results are required - there’s Eye4Design

To discuss how Eye4Design can help you develop your online business please call us on 01709-373911.

It has long been assumed that your server IP address was taken into account by Google when establishing PageRank (PR). The theory being that the broader the spread of back-links from sites with different server IP addresses, the more genuine the recipient site.

After all, if it was simply just a matter of the sheer quantity of back-links, a webmaster could easily set up hundreds of satellite sites all on the same server and link them all back to a main site, artificially increasing its PageRank.

However, until we concluded our own trails we couldn’t be sure just how important it was.

We took our own website (PR5) that was hosted on its own dedicated server and whose back-links were predominantly from our own client base and we moved it to our client server so all sites sat on the same server IP address. As a control we also placed a second website (PR3) on the same client server. However the back-links to the PR3 site were largely Internet wide and not from sites on the client server.

No other factors were altered.

After 2 months the control site with a PR3 remained at PR3. However the site with PR5 had dropped to PR3. Whilst a 1 point drop was perhaps to be expected from the Sep/Oct 2008 PR update we should not have seen a 2 point drop.

This indicates to us that when back-links originate from the same server as the recipient site those back-links are severely diluted and the PageRank value is significantly reduced.

If we are correct we should see our test sites’ PR3 increase in the the next PageRank update expected around March 2009.

Watch this space!

:: Eye4Design are specialists in web design and online marketing and can assist you in promoting your website.
Calling 01709-373911 is the first step to driving traffic to your site and creating a successful online business.

If there are lots of links on the Internet pointing to your website, there’s only one direction you’re going in and that’s higher up in Google … right?

Actually no, that’s not necessarily the case. Recently we’ve seen quite a few cases where website owners have gone flat out obtaining as many back-links as possible and in the process have ignored the quality and relevancy of the sites they’re linking from.

The result has been a huge decrease in PageRank value and total disappearance from search engines.

This only demonstrates that back-link building is a highly skilled process and should only be undertaken by a professional search engine optimisation company or someone with search engine optimisation training.

Affiliate marketing is the practice of selling your goods or services through other websites in return for a commission on each sale.

Your ‘affiliates’ place links on their sites to drive visitors to your website and subsequently purchase your products.

Affiliate marketing alone is an excellent way to dramatically increase your sales. However, there’s a huge additional benefit, as we’ll explain.

As you probably know, ranking high in search engines depends heavily on the number of links there are on other sites to your own site (known as back-links). The more links there are pointing to your site the better the search engines think your site must be, and the higher in their search results your site goes.

Therefore, because affiliate marketing results in many links from your affiliates’ websites it’s also great for increasing your position in search engines.

Affiliate marketing can be applied to almost any site selling products or services so if you’d like to increase your sales and at the same time increase your search engine rankings give us a call on 01709-373911.

Well we finally got around to throwing a few new colours and features on the Eye4Design website. (and not before time but then our customers’ sites always come first).

A particular feature of the new site is the addition of our Internet Marketing Training section with online booking facilities for our range of new training courses. Topics include:

Google Adwords Training
Search Engine Optimisation Training
Email Marketing Training
Selling on Ebay
Affiliate Marketing Training
Web Accessibility & Usability Training
E-commerce Training
and
Social Media Marketing

We decided to have a little fun with the Eye4Design team page and we still have lots more content to add over the coming weeks so please check back regularly for latest web design news and updates.

Being able to update your own website in-house has obvious benefits, not least that search engines often list recently updated sites higher in their rankings.

Having the flexibility of being able to log in from any PC in any location and amend page content, product information, latest news, prices etc is becoming more and more important.

Eye4Design build 100% web based bespoke Content Management Systems (CMS) that can be updated by anyone, without the need for web design experience. In fact, our interface is almost identical to Microsoft Word so if you can use that you can easily update an Eye4Design CMS.

Its not just text that can be updated either, in our CMS you full can add images, tables, animations, change font colours, in fact almost anything you could ever want to do to your web page content - even add bespoke Meta Tags which helps with search engine listings.

To discuss our CMS give us a call on 01709-373911, we’re here to help.

Most companies not currently selling their products online were not doing so because they either didn’t have the time or thought it would be too expensive to set up and administer, according to a recent questionnaire sent out by Eye4Design.

Interestingly, in follow up discussions with the same companies 88% stated they were surprised at just how little it does actually cost to set up a professional e-commerce website.

At Eye4Design this is a familiar story, in particular to the amount of time customers think they will have to spend adding their product ranges. In fact, this is far from the truth and in most cases Eye4Design can bulk import thousands of products in just a few hours. Many suppliers are ‘web-ready’ nowadays and often have product images, descriptions, specifications, prices etc available electronically which usually makes adding them to a website very easy.

In addition, Eye4Designs’ state of the art e-commerce software makes processing orders and maintaining products a breeze.

So, the message is clear, if you thought your business couldn’t afford the time or the investment to trade online, please think again. Call us on 01709-373911 to discuss your plans.

For the uninitiated, the term ‘brochure style’ refers to websites built in standard HTML (web design code) and cannot be amended in-house by the website owner. Changes to the site are done by a web designer.

In this age of high tech, fast moving E-commerce the question often arises - do brochure style websites still have a future?

Well the answer is that whilst there’s no doubt that they are drastically on the decline there are still applications that warrant nothing more than a brochure style site. The service industry is a good example of how someone may well just require a showcase of their services as they may well offer bespoke services that quite simply cannot be priced online.

If it was also the case that the site wouldn’t require updating too often then brochure style would almost certainly fit the bill.

If you are looking at a website project and are unsure what type of site to choose, call Eye4Design on 01709-373911 who will be happy to assist you.

In a recent survey conducted by Eye4Design an amazing 74% of companies said that they never (or very rarely) marketed to their own customer base. Considering how difficult and expensive looking for new customers is, this figure is quite incredible.

As you already know your existing customers its easier for you to get a foot in the door. You’ve supplied them before so they trust you and they know you deliver. Added to that, you know they pay their bills so your risk of bad debt is minimised.

Imagine how many of your customers bought a product or service that you provide, from one of your competitors, just because they didn’t realise you supplied it too!

When asked why they didn’t market to their own customers most companies cited time and cost as major factors. The sad part is that the remedy does not require much time, and it certainly doesn’t require alot of investment.

Eye4Design can provide your company with a bespoke email campaign that enables you (or us) to email your entire customer base with your latest news or products at the push of a button.

The cost? Starting from just £25 + Vat per month. Now tell me you can find new customers  for less than that!

To get your account up and running call us on 01709-373911.