Bevelwise Blog

Google AdWords has a new keyword "status" message called "Low Share of Voice." We are getting to the bottom of what this means and how it impacts our clients' campaigns.

If you hover your curser over this status message, it explains that "Low Share of Voice" indicates that you are missing out on opportunities (impressions). This is most likely because of budget constraints.

Here is what an AdWords rep said: "..Long story short, I have been looking into this since I first saw this thread a couple of hours ago - and am trying to get to the bottom of things. At this point, though, I am sorry to say that I don't have any definitive information.

However, a tech contact with whom I have been working had an interesting comment that I'll pass along. He has been able to check the accounts of a few folks who have written us, and he is seeing no drop in traffic as has been reported here. His thought is that those in this thread who have reported such a drop may have been looking at their stats mid-day, rather than for a complete day - thus the apparent drop in stats. And, looking at the time stamps of these posts, I think that is a real possibility.

In any case, my colleague Stephen who has posted here in the past as 'AdWordsPro Stephen' (and whom Sarah and I are actively be trying to lure back into the forum) will continue to look into this, and update the thread when he has a clearer picture of what's up.

In the meantime, my apology for the confusion and discomfort. Not fun, I know."

We are wondering if AdWords is having a bug or if it is a bigger scheme than that. Most of the business owners that we work with have a specific/strict online advertising budget. Is the only way to get rid of this message to dramatically increase your budget? Sometimes this is not possible. Should we just ignore this message? Until we get more info, we are thinking we should.

What are your thoughts on Google's "Low Share of Voice" status?

Labels: AdWords, Google, PPC, Search Ads, Search Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long-term investment. You'll often hear it when an InternetMarketer sets expectations at the beginning of an SEO program. If someone promises "instant" SEO results, run to the nearest exit – it is generally not possible following ethical practices. Meanwhile, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs, a.k.a. paid online advertising, are known for delivering immediate returns on investment. But sometimes clients expect SEO projects to return PPC-like results, leading to unhappiness all around.

I have heard PPC vs. SEO to be described as a farmer and a grocer. This may help demonstrate the primary difference between results that can be expected from SEO and PPC advertising. A grocer buys a product, and then immediately turns it around for a profit. A farmer invests his time, along with seeds, water and fertilizer, and then, over time, harvests a crop that can be sold.

The grocer is dealing in PPC, while the farmer is taking on SEO. Both processes offer a return on investment, but success in either requires an understanding of what can be achieved. The great part about PPC is that you can adjust you budget anytime you want. You can also get a good idea of which keywords are getting searched the most on a day-by-day basis.

Your website is the best way to reach customers and prospects 24 hours a day. Working with the right search marketing firm will ensure realistic budgets and attainable targets. Search engine optimization doesn't happen over night. Typically, a solid campaign takes a minimum of three months to move the needle and really 9-12 months to really of concerted effort to maximize your results.

Bevelwise Media can turn the faucet on with certain PPC, but true optimization will take more time and effort, especially on a national or global scale versus local, but the results can be incredible.

Can't figure out what to do? Contact Bevelwise for a free Website x-ray analysis. We can check out how your website is performing right now, and give you steps to take to optimize for success.

Labels: online marketing, paid search, PPC, Search Advertising, SEO, social media optimization

When you go to a website, say Bevelwise for instance, do you type www.bevelwise.com or bevelwise.com in the address bar? If you care at all about SEO what your users type into their address bar should concern you.

Personally, I type the www because technically bevelwise.com is the main domain, the house that all of the services live under. By typing the www I am telling bevelwise.com that I would like to see the website of bevelwise.com. If I were to be transferring a file I would be using the File Transfer Protocol, and I would expect the bevelwise.com house to be looking for this type of access request at ftp.bevelwise.com.

I understand that www, ftp, cdn, rss, etc, are all just sub-domains on the main domain of bevelwise.com and that what really matters is what protocol / port is being used to make the request.

To take this to a more relatable direction, let's take a street address: 1313 Mockingbird Ln. We can analyze this address in much the same way as we do a domain. Consider if we think of the domain "bevelwise.com" being the equivalent of the street "Mockingbird Ln." Now, if we wanted to go to the Munsters house (1313 Mockingbird Ln. is their address on the TV show), we could technically find the house by going to Mockingbird Ln and looking around. I assure you we would eventually find it and get what we came looking for. But, if we add the house number (1313) to that address, we have the complete street address of what we are looking for, much the same as when we put the www in front of a domain when we want to go to a website.

I know there are a lot of people out there in the technology industry that are of the belief that the www is irrelevant and unneeded and is only added as a DNS record to help those people out there who don't know any better. However true this may be from a purely technical standpoint, we need to think about the users of the internet who, as a majority, are not technically savvy.

So, from my understanding, Google will see www.bevelwise.com and bevelwise.com as two different and separate sites regardless of the fact that one is a sub-domain and one is a primary domain. It will be seen as 2 sites with the same content and will get a negative mark.

Now to help with this issue, we basically have 2 choices in this scenario. Forcibly add the www via 301 redirect when someone goes to bevelwise.com, or forcibly remove the www when someone goes to www.bevelwise.com. I personally lean towards adding the www in any case where the address requested is not already a sub-domain request (i.e. bevelwise.com will be changed to www.bevelwise.com, but ftp.bevelwise.com will not be changed to www.ftp.bevelwise.com because ftp.bevelwise.com is already qualified with the ftp prefix).

Just for fun, take a look at your browsers address bar right now, when coming to this site, did you put the www in there or no, any reason why you did one way or another? Call it a personal and professional curiosity.

Labels: Domain Names, google analytics, SEO, subdomain, web development, www