Category: Google

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Get Google Calendar’s Goals to Organize Your Life

Get active and let Google Calendar book the time in your schedule for you.
Get active and let Google Calendar book the time in your schedule for you.

Do you use Google Calendar? Want to squeeze more out of each day? Google will now schedule time for you to squeeze more out of each day when you set up a Google Calendar Goal.

This is a new enhancement to the Google Calendar app. If you already have Google Calendar installed, use these quick steps to check it out for yourself.

If not, go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.calendar and download the app to get started.

Get Started!

  1. Open the app and then click the big red circle with a + at the bottom right.  Choose the blue “goal”.
  2. Let Google know what you want to have as your goal – exercise time, building a skill, time for family and friends, me time,  or simply stay organized.
  3. Based on the activity, you will see different questions. I selected stay organized and my menu is plan the day, clean, do chores, custom. Each step has different questions to fine tune what Google will do and how frequently it will add a note on your calendar.
  4. When you are done click the checkmark at the top right of the last page. Google will then flag time in your calendar based on your criteria. And, Google will remind you to stay on task to accomplish your own goal.

If you are having trouble finding time to do something regularly, it’s a good idea to allow Google to scan your calendar, add the item, and then remind you that you need to do it. You can mark the goal done or defer it as needed when your reminder pops up.

Using goals in Google Calendar is just another great way that Google Calendar can make your life easier and for you to live smarter.

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Where Should You Spend You Money for Online Activities

You can recoveIf your business isn't in recovery yet, where can you trim money?r from a hack.
If your business isn’t in recovery yet, where can you trim money?

If your business is pulling back where can you realistically chop in your marketing plan and not get hurt?

Chop Away

Social Media – if you are paying to update Facebook, Twitter and Google+ you could easily take a break to save money.

Blogging – try not to kill all your writing as the SEO juice you get from well-written blog posts helps you in the long run, but maybe consider moving from three days a week to two or from two days a week to one.  Try to still keep the momentum up but maybe lower the word count or frequency.

Chop Not!

Google AdWords – don’t touch it unless you absolutely have to. AdWords is hands down the best way to generate new leads and start cash pumping back into your business.

e-newsletters – they build loyalty and repeat business. Newsletters are especially important to businesses that have annual renewals for service plans like pest control firms and HVAC firms.  If you chop this, your name is not kept in front of your customers and come time to renew, they may not see the value of renewing; which will hurt your sales even further.

Need some practical sense to make the most of the budget you do have or to get AdWords to work harder for you? We’re the firm to call and chat with first especially if you are looking for honest advice you can trust with no sales pressure.

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Google Removed Sidebar Ads – What Happened to Advertisers? Part Two

Nancy McCord
Nancy McCord – Point of View for Today.

Continued from Monday.

The full impact of what happens to AdWords advertisers is not known yet, but the data is flowing.

For now it appears that for advertisers not limited by budget:

  1. Clicks have dropped
  2. Impressions have dropped
  3. CTR has improved
  4. Average cost per click has increased about 5%
  5. Cost has dropped by about 1%
  6. Average position has increased by marginally
  7. Conversions have increased
  8. Cost per conversion has gone down
  9. Conversion rate has gone up

For advertisers with small ad spends and budget limited:

  1. Clicks have gone up
  2. Impressions have gone up
  3. CTR has declined
  4. Average cost per click has gone down about 3%
  5. Costs have gone up
  6. Average position has decreased significantly
  7. Conversions have dropped
  8. Cost per conversion has gone way up
  9. Conversion rate has gone down

Clearly for those with a limited budget the landscape of AdWords has changed and there is increased pressure from large advertisers wanting to fill the top spots. It may be that the drop in conversions is due to the fact that small budget programs now are showing in the off hours versus in prime time impacting click through rates and conversions.

I’ll know more as we get more statistical data, but for now, large advertisers won’t notice much of a change, but smaller advertisers with limited budgets will have to increase the cost per click to be more competitive now that ads only appear at the top and the bottom of the page at Google.com.

 

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Google Removed Sidebar Ads – What Happened to Advertisers? Part One

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

It may still be too soon to know what impact the removal of the sidebar ads from Google will have for AdWords advertisers, but here’s some of the data from the number of clients that we manage for the last month.

Client Results Not Limited by Budget – Large Ad Spends
Average clicks dropped 1.2% – some as much as 10%
Average impressions dropped 3.2% – some as much as 8.39% drop
Average cost per click increased 3.5% – some as much as 6.37%
Conversion rate increased by 14.1% – some as much as 44.95%
Average position dropped by 2.49% – some saw a 8.9% drop

Client Results Limited by Budget – Small Ad Spends
Average clicks increased by 18.8% – some by 59.8%
Average impressions increased by 23.7% – some by 42%
Average cost per click decreased by 7.5% some by 20.2%
Conversion rate decreased by 30.3% – some by 73%
Average position dropped by 16.2% – some by 27.6%

I expected to see a stronger increase in the cost per click and not a decrease. For lower spend accounts the big change was drop in ad position which caused a drop in conversion rate.

Come back on Wednesday for more details on the impact of Google’s removal of the right sidebar ads and what it means for you the AdWords advertiser.