Jon’s In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

The 2nd feature of Google AdWords that has seen improvements added is the Ad Diagnostics Tool. Basically, the tool is for those keywords you believe your AdWords ad should be showing for - but itsn’t.

It can be very frustrating to aim an ad at a specific audience and/or keyword phrase and come up empty. The Ad Diagnostics Tool is intended to give you an idea of why that is happening. It should be kept in mind that the answer you get from using the tool isn’t necessarily the actual reason for the problem. So what’s the difference from before? Good question.

Before, when asking for an answer from the tool, that’s what you got. An answer, as in 1, and only 1, answer as to why your ad might not be showing. While that reply was often helpful, if not completely dead on, you were usually missing some side of the problem and how to solve it.

Now the tool gives you multiple answers and pointers for curing your AdWords ill(s). Again, keep in mind that these are possible solutions you’re getting, not necessarily The Solution to the lack of success in appearing for your intended keyword(s). Still, getting more than a single answer gives you greater odds that you’ll get closure.

After all, if it’s one thing causing it, you have a better chance at getting the right answer in the multiple answers you now get, instead of the one shot you formerly got.

If the solution arises from a combination of factors, then you no chance of completely fixing it before with the single output available. Think of it as getting more pulls on the slot machine lever. For those in Hawaii, that’s probably the best metaphor I could use.

Are you a Google AdWords user/advertiser? Google AdWords has added a couple of new features to aid you (and me) in running your campaigns. Here’s the breakdown:

IMPROVEMENT #1 - Location Targeting

If you used the AdWords geographic targeting tool before, you know that you chose could choose areas, but if you only wanted to choose one certain part of a country to target, you had to create a separate campaign for it. In other words if you wanted to choose all of Asia and just the Western states of the U.S., you had to do 2 campaigns. 1 for Asia, 1 for the US states. Now you can choose both in one campaign.

The new targeting tool takes the form of an interactive map. That’s a great improvement over the old-school list of nation/state/city names that preceded this. With the map you can make choices in different countries at different levels of specificity.

Still, having not used this yet myself, I’m unsure how well you can tell the campaign is doing in one area over another if they’re in the same campaign. There’s always the option of an analytics campaign tracking it, but that adds another step to getting to that data - assuming that you can’t see it from inside AdWords, that is.

Improvement #2 will be addressed in the next post. Stay tuned.

According to ZenithOptimedia (try spelling that 5 times fast), Internet advertisings will pass radio next year, making its piece of the global advertising pie that much bigger. This is a massive gain in a short period of time. Then again, that’s been the story of the Internet from 1995 on.

What does that mean to you? It’s not necessarily a call to get on board. What this prediction actually says - by itself - is ‘More businesses will be using internet & search engine advertising’. That’s a bigger crowd online vying for the eyes, and the wallets, of people using the Web. These days that’s almost everybody.

The lesson you should take away is that your search engine/internet advertising needs to be better. As more competition comes online and puts their ads next to yours on Google, you’ll need to stand out more. It’s the old story - making your message grab the customer despite the presence of other businesses.

You’ll need to advertise smarter, not necessarily harder. You’ll probably have more company next year, but that doesn’t mean the party’s over. It’s just means you’re going to have to do a little more to get prime floor space.

The Honolulu Advertiser had the usual story on the insane lengths shoppers go to on the day after Thanksgiving. One was a lady who stood in line 10 hours at a local Wal Mart(!). The article also reported that many people were telling reporters that this year would see a smaller budget. The cost of gasoline and the high price of living in Hawaii was having its effect here, even if Mainland news sources didn’t see similar factors affecting their localities.

These tales of being squeezed locally - while merely anecdotal - do have the ring of probable truth. Even with a good economy here in Hawaii, it’s difficult for most to get ahead. Or even close to the constantly rising cost of Island living. What does that mean for local businesses?

It means we must expand our internet marketing and online presence. If we depend consistently or fully on the overtaxed consumer here, we may be facing a very tough year. Hawaii businesses still think largely in terms of face-to-face and conventional advertising outlets.

This theme is not a new one for this blog, but the conditions remain, so I keep coming back to it. If you’re a Hawaii business start looking at internet and search engine marketing. Look at doing Google AdWords ads. If you’re already doing them, look at how you can do them smarter. If you don’t you might be looking at a difficult road ahead.

People often forget to do regular checks on their site. For exampe - are you absolutely sure that every picture on your site actually shows up? I’ve learned the hard way that one wrong letter in the path can screw things up. Having a ‘broken picture’ icon proudly displayed on one of your pages can do wonders for your credibility.

Another thing people forget is to check their links. Are your outgoing links still pointing correctly? Are there still working pages and sites at the other end of your links? You’d be surprised how often a site will delete or change the address of a page.

Why Broken Links Can Hurt Even High Ranking Sites

What can happen is your site left high and dry with a bad/broken link. It won’t kill your site, but it is a black mark in the eyes of Google and other search engines. It gives the impression of a badly maintained site - and therefore an ‘unreliable’ one. Unreliable sites have a habit of dropping in the search engine rankings.

So - check your outgoing links periodically. 1 or 2 may - or may not - hurt you. But they add up and anything that drags your SEO down should be eliminates. Give yourself the best chance possible - your search engine rankings are sometimes the backbone of your business. Why fool around with that?

A new Hawaii record label has just started, run by the Baraquio family. Locals will know the sisters from their tv show, Living Local. The first release is coming out next week, a CD entitled ‘Lost & Found’. The Baraquios have shown a great understanding of not only the right way to do business, but how to do it ‘Local style’. Others here in Hawaii would be smart to follow their example.

Tribute Records

This is old news in some ways, but the update is still happening so I consider it fair game. You may have experienced a drop in both PageRank and keyword rankings. This seems to be a bigger update than usual.

Google’s new system, introduced in the last couple of years, was supposedly to be one of ‘Constant Updating’. The idea being that we wouldn’t see the sudden catastrophic drops across the board that the search word experienced before. Businesses who have been around for a few years online can tell you stories of Google updates that came close to putting them out of business.

The lesson there might be ‘Expand your marketing to create other sources of business’ instead of ‘Google Sucks…sometimes’, but I don’t want to preach. The current concern is that this update is reminiscent of those old days, bringing mass upheavals that have affected a lot of industries.

What should you do if your search rankings dropped? Keep working on your SEO, pushing ahead. Look for anything you might have done that created problems (like selling links on your site). Don’t Panic. If you’re doing the right thing(s) you’ll probably rise back up in time. And start looking for other ways of generating business. Depending on one search engine, especially the occasionally volatile Google, puts you at their mercy for your livelihood. Think about that and plan accordingly.

Hawaii is always behind the Mainland on trends and developments. Some say we’re 10 years behind, some say 5. That lag may have shortened due to the Internet, but it still exists. Frankly, the Islands’ slower movement forward is fine with me. While I lived on the Mainland I grew tired of the new ‘thing’ that was going to save us all from our boring lives. Usually this ‘thing’ was dogpiled on by hipsters and the clueless, whose greatest talent was finding a parade to jump in front of.

Here in Hawaii we aren’t as inundated with press lauding the latest 20-something who will lead us to the Promised Land with yet another new social/bookmarking software/site. It’s nice to be somewhat out of that loop. But, Hawaii is dangerously slow on adapting to the Internet market.

Hawaii needs to be expanding now to get in the web marketing and selling game. Otherwise, there may come a day when the catch-up factor may be too large for local businesses to overcome.

Many Hawaii businesses are still in the ‘I have a web site and that’s enough’ mindset of ten years ago. If the Islands are going to move away from dependence on tourism, one of the brightest alternatives is surely the Web. This is especially important as we lose longtime local businesses here more and more. If they could expand online, gaining access to new markets, they wouldn’t be pushed out of existence so easily.

With all the talk of protecting ‘Local Businesses’ in Hawaii, it’s time that we actually do something substantial to back it up. If we (ie the State government) don’t - and if Hawaii businesses themselves don’t act themselves - we’re going to be stuck here with Mainland and Foreign businesses taking over the market completely.

I’m always surprised by sites that either do not have a sitemap (or is it site map? I never know) or hide it away. It’s like they’re ashamed of it. They shouldn’t be, because it’s an important part of any web site. Some visitors actually look for the site map immediately on arriving. For others it’s the first place they think of if they don’t see what they’re looking for on the home page. So why do so many site owners make it so difficult to find. Answer: Beats me. But they shouldn’t.

Your web site should have a prominent link to your site map somewhere toward the top of your home page. And every other page, if at all possible. It goes back to the #1 rule of site building & layout - give the visitor what they want. It’s difficult to satisfy every conceivable want and need, though. Especially if you offer a range of products or services. So you do the next best thing as a backup - you give the visitor an easy way to find what they’re looking for. You do that by making it simple to get to the site map page, where they’ll see everything you offer. And, if you’re smart, that page is laid out in an easy to read & understand structure.

Now - your humanoid aren’t your only market. You also have to think of your other visitors, who are just as important. They are the search engine bots. Those guys from Google, Yahoo, MSN and everybody else in the search game today. You want to do the same thing for these visitors - make it easy to find everything, and everywhere, on your site.

That starts by putting a text link - NOT a graphic link - to your sitemap on the home page. Serve it up to them on a platter so they can go there and locate every area of your site. It’s easy to do, yet so many sites miss this. They use a graphic link, which search engine bots can’t follow or they don’t have a link to it at all on the homepage.

Do yourself and your visitors a favor. Put that sitemap text link on your home page and make it stand out. It’s that easy.

Target is being taken to court. Is it because of employee/employer issues? No. Is it because of unsafe products they sold? No. Is it because of alleged discrimination against a customer? No, but you’re getting warmer.

The National Federation of the Blind is taking Target to court over their web site. Specifically, the fact that they feel Target’s web site is not accessible to the site-impaired. It’s a case that could affect retailers everywhere. After all, every store and every business has a web site.

What this all boils down to is Web Usability & Accessibility - making and constructing your web site so it is easy to understand and to navigate. Not only by the blind, but by everyone. It’s a major point that many businesses miss. And that affects their profits more than they think.

Making your web site usable and accessible isn’t the same as adding a wheelchair ramp outside your shop. It’s much more than that. Usability and accessibility ultimately greases the slide customers ride from entering your store down into the Checkout line. If you can’t get behind it just from a legal obligation, surely you will appreciate it if you understand that it will affect your bottom line. For the better.

Not only does usability open the site fully to all your customer - it also will help your SEO efforts. After all, feeding content clearly to your visitors should also make it easier for search engine bots to collect and understand it as well. It’s a win-win all around.

The implications of Target’s case aren’t clear yet. But, requiring businesses to improve their site’s usability might be one of the few things the government could get completely right.