Ozdachs

About Ozdachs

San Francisco Internet Marketer and web designer gets you on the Internet in a cost-effective, responsible way.

How to Spend Lots of Money on Google Ads and Get No Clients

Google AdWords and the advertising programs of other search engines can be immediately effective tools to drive potential customers to your web site. (If you’re not familiar with AdWords, it is Google’s program that lets web site owners put ads next to the results Google displays in response to searches. You bid for your ad to appear when searches are made for specific keywords. The higher you bid, the higher up on the page your ad will appear… more or less. You pay only when people click on your ad and visit your web site, an approach called Pay Per Click, or PPC. More information is on Google, and other search engines have similar programs.)

AdWords should be a low-risk venture:

You’d think it’d be difficult to waste a lot of money on Pay-Per-Click ads since, well…, you’re paying Google (or Bing or whomever) only when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website.
You’d think that people who see your ad would only click if they thought that your product or service would be valuable to them.
Therefore, you’d pay Google only when a genuine potential client clicked to your site after seeing your ad.

But, I recently fixed the AdWords campaign that had been racking up hundreds of dollars a month, getting visitors, and no clients.

How did my client waste his money?

He did not limit where his ads appeared
He bid on keywords without including his location in the phrase.
His ad text didn’t give his location.

Let’s say he was a San Francisco accountant (the profession and the keyword have been changed for this example!) He bid on terms like “income tax preparation”. His ad text was “Tax Preparation by Professional Accountants.”

Because there was no geographic limitation, Google users throughout the United States and Canada were seeing his ad, clicking on it, and visiting his site. We could tell where people were coming from by the hit tracking report we used. Very few came from within 100 miles of his business. Some visitors had actually searched for terms like “Income tax preparation in Corpus Christi”. My client’s ads had come up offering tax help, the the poor user in Texas was taken to the site of a San Francisco accountant. And, my client was paying over a dollar for each of these misdirected souls.

What to do?

Google AdWords Map Limiting Where the Ads will Appear to the Area in Blue

Allow your ads to be displayed only by users who are browsing from specific geographic areas. Google lets you specify countries, geographic areas (San Francisco – San Jose Bay Area), and even lets you draw the boundaries for your ads on a map.

Limit all your general keyword ads to the area you serve.
Start a second campaign that you allow to run country- or world-wide. Use the same keywords you use for the geographically targeted ads above, but include the geography as part of the keyword you bid on. In the example case, you’d bid on “income tax preparation San Francisco”.
By specifying that a user has to include your location in his search, you can get business from people who may not be in your area now but who specifically want service in that area. In the case of the CPA, maybe a businessperson is on trip to Boston and they want to find an accountant back home in San Francisco to set up an appointment next week.

Specifying a location for your ads works.

My client is now able to bid more per click, and is showing up higher on the ad lists. His ads are truly being clicked on by potential clients. And, he seen results walk in his door.

By Ozdachs|2011-02-22T12:52:11-08:00February 22nd, 2011|Google, Marketing|0 Comments

Why I Recommend NOD32 Anti-Virus Software

I’d forgotten how intrusive the major anti-virus programs are.

So, when I was helping a friend and working on his PC, I was surprised when the machine locked up. I looked around, and saw an icon indicating that the computer had just downloaded the automatic update of the virus list. I cannot remember if it was McAfee or Norton, but it was one of the two.

I asked what was going on, and my friend said that whenever the virus update comes, he takes a break because the anti-virus program takes over his computer. The program rescans the hot spots on his disk to make sure that they hadn’t been infected with any of the viruses that it now knew about, and no other work can be done. He said that starting his computer takes an extra couple minutes, too, because the anti-virus program runs a similar scan when the PC boots.

As we were working, we got warning messages every so many minutes about possible problems or actions we might — or might not — want to take. Again, it was the “anti-virus” computer security program flexing its security center muscle. The alerts weren’t about actually finding anything, but the security software seemed nervous that my friend’s style of computing was not safe enough for its standards. He opened email attachments, for example, and he went to unapproved web sites. I don’t remember his exact crimes, but the nervous Nelly security program seemed to act like a Harpie, stealing his machine and preventing him from using his computer the way he wanted.

But, if you use Norton or McAfee, you know what I’m talking about. Both of those programs are big bullies. They want to run your computer their way, keeping you safe, keeping you slow.

I removed my Norton and my McAfee years ago. I just couldn’t stand the slowness those programs caused as they intruded on my computing. With Norton, the daily (or more frequent) updating of the virus database was painful. I had to stop working while Norton re-scanned my critical computer files.

In place of the major anti-virus hogs, I installed a program called Smart Security with NOD32 anti-virus by a company called ESET. I heard about this alternative while listening to Leo Laporte’s radio show. He was recommending NOD32 to callers, even as he acknowledged that ESET were advertisers. I checked out what industry gatekeepers like CNET said about the ESET security suite. Everything I saw was positive, so I downloaded the free 30-day trial.

I have never gone back.

The anti-virus scans that had locked up my computer for minutes now took less than a minute AND I could use the computer at the same time. I did have to persuade the security version of ESET’s product to stop scanning my incoming mail for spam characteristics (I can figure that out myself, thank you). But, the ESET program has been far, far less bossy than any other security program than I had used.

If you’re ready to reclaim your ownership of your computer, consider, dumping McAffie and Norton… at least don’t renew them when you’re subscription runs out. Check out ESET and NOD32 instead.

By Ozdachs|2011-02-12T09:37:51-08:00February 12th, 2011|Product Recommendations|0 Comments

Forget About the Customer… or, How to Market Like Microsoft

This morning I went to a big-hotel San Francisco area roll-out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM2011 software and services. Microsoft pulled out all of the big corporation stops and filled the elegant meeting room — which came complete with truly tasty buffet food — with their software partners and potential clients. It felt like a Big Deal.

My client and I walked out at the first break.

Perhaps it was a good thing we attended this event and discovered that Microsoft is targeting large enterprises and not small- and medium-sized businesses. But, even so, the product would have been so much more tempting if Microsoft hadn’t executed its presentation with the subtlety of a phone-company-like monopoly.

Solve Your Prospect’s Problem

The tag-team parade of opening keynoters at the presentation all lead — and dwelled on — how big and important Microsoft was. How much effort Microsoft had spent in developing this product. How big sales had gotten. How many countries the product was now sold in.

What problem of my client’s that Microsoft Dynamics CRM2011 would solve was secondary. What Microsoft Dynamics CRM2011 would do for the basic work of my client was not clearly described. I found that even the brief demo was gimmicky, talking about Tweets and coffee shops near client businesses. I think I could pull up a Bing map of Starbuck’s near a prospect’s office, but I am not sure I could display a Bing map showing where all of my prospects were in any given ZIP code, for example.

Talk in English, Not Jargon

Outlook windows on your computer are now called “Outlook Experiences” apparently. One demonstrator kept talking about what was going on in his Outlook experience. I must have been under a rock when it was decided that you ALT-TABbed among program experiences on your computer.

Long, elegant, and meaningless marketing phrases were woven in a grand tapestry of fluff in the handouts and speaker narratives.

“Productivity. Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps increase productivity and create a connected organization that is equipped to please your customers. The result is a compelling and engaging experience for customers that sets your business part.”

Delicious. And low in calories, too.

Maybe CRM software and services are sold primarily to marketing types who go through their day talking in hyperbolic babble. But, to me, it was over-the-top and tone-deaf selling.

I readily believe that the complex CRM 2011 software that Microsoft has developed is wonderful for high-powered international organizations. I don’t mind discovering that I (or my client) is too small to be a target. I deduced the scoping issue from the references to sales forces talking to marketing forces who talked to customer service forces. Okay. A 15-person firm doesn’t need this much power.

But, still, I wouldn’t let my clients talk to their prospects as Microsoft talked to us.

By Ozdachs|2011-02-03T12:56:07-08:00February 3rd, 2011|Marketing|0 Comments

Where to Find a Top San Francisco Hairstylist?

Len has trained in top hair salons and has over 20 years experience with precision hair cutting, hair coloring, highlights and lowlights, and other facets of hairstyling.

A few years ago he had a spiffy-looking web site created for him by a team with a graphics design background. He loves the site’s look… and he should! But, he’s been concerned that over time he has gained no clients from the site. In fact, when he searched Google for his site using any terms potential clients might use, his site didn’t came up. Len wants clients in Sonoma and San Francisco — he works in two studios — but anyone searching for a “top stylist” or other related term wouldn’t be told of his site.

Search Engine Optimization has helped Len’s site show up in the top 10 Google results within one week. He’s #4 in Google for “top stylist in Sonoma” one of his chosen keyword phrases. Eleven other of Len’s selected phrases now show up in the top 100 Google results. We don’t know when Google crawled his site for the updated pages, and we’ll be watching for additional result improvements in the coming weeks as all of the site’s changes are noticed by Google. And, his site improved in a similar way in Bing and Yahoo! results (the site is #1 in Yahoo! for “Precision Haircutting in San Francisco”).

The original, graphics-designer-published site had no page titles that focused on Len’s keywords. The pages had no descriptions, no text headings, and no ALT tags for the images. These HTML codes are all keys to Search Engine Optimization. Overall, the site was very pretty, but it didn’t tell Google and other search engines much about its content.

I went through Len’s site and featured one of the keyword phrases Len had picked on each page. Then I put in meaningful <title>s, headings, text, and ALT tags on every image. I also fixed a gross HTML coding error that wrongly told Google and other search engines that one of the pages ended in the middle. See his top San Francisco and Sonoma hair stylist site — and if you’re a techie person, view the source code to see what I did.

Frankly, I was surprised to see any improvement in Len’s rankings in just a week. When I first started optimizing web pages, it would take weeks for Google to revisit an established site, index it, and change the search results.

I wouldn’t want to guarantee results in a week, either. But, if you or someone you know need help with your search engine rankings, let’s talk about what can be done! I’m at 415.347.6479.

By Ozdachs|2011-01-23T09:55:29-08:00January 23rd, 2011|Search Engine Optimization|0 Comments

Boris and Svetlana are in their seventies. Supplemental Security Income, their only source of income, is not enough to pay rent on their Richmond apartment, utilities and buy food. — San Francisco Food Bank

When I help serve breakfast to men sleeping at my church during the February homeless shelter, the breakfast food — like the dinner ingredients — comes from the San Francisco Food Bank.

When 90 children from poor Tenderloin and Western Addition families get afternoon snacks while attending the free Up On Top after-school program, the food comes from the San Francisco Food Bank. I’m a volunteer for Up On Top, and I appreciate being able to feed hungry kids.

When friends distribute groceries to neighborhood families at the Interfaith Food Pantry, the food comes from the San Francisco Food Bank.

Three of the outreach activities that my friends and I are involved in are sustained by the Food Bank. The Food Bank touches me personally, but I am not alone.

In fact, a network of over 200 food pantries get their supplies from the food bank. An individual earning $14,079 a year is only eligible for $14 in Food Stamps monthly. Folks like that need additional support from pantries.

Over 300 non-profit agencies “shop” at the Food Bank. Some of the city’s largest meal programs, including Glide, St. Anthony’s and Project Open Hand, receive the bulk of the food they need to serve their clients from the Food Bank.

Charity Navigator, an independent monitor of non-profits, gives the San Francisco Food Bank 4 out of 4 stars for its efficiency and for money going where it’s supposed to. 97% of the Food Bank’s budget is dedicated to program expenses. Only 1/2 of 1% of its budget goes for administration.

The Food Bank provides badly needed support to a lot of local people. It’s well run. It uses money for the right purposes.

At this holiday time, I give money to the Food Bank.

Will you please join me in helping hungry people get food?

Donate in the holiday spirit. Donate for the charitable deduction on your income taxes. Donate because it will make you feel good.

Donate Now! Please.

By Ozdachs|2010-12-12T06:35:23-08:00December 12th, 2010|Tips and Resources|0 Comments

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