Christos Kyliakoudis

Getting more from Adwords using Local Business Centre

Written by Christos Kyliakoudis Tuesday, 16 February 2010 11:46
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AIGIALOS_SANTORINI

There is a lot of value to the geo-targeted campaigns and advertising. In this post I will try to show the value local business centre in adwords and search marketing. Let’s say that we search for Santorini car hire.


Desktop Experience

Look the results of a query in google.com
local_business_centre_1

  • SantoriniCarHire has the first position in adwords with 2 clickable texts
  • There is also google map with link. Again the same Car rental (SantoriniCarHire.com ).The second box is a free link from Google and you don’t have to do a lot of SEO. Just put your company in the Google local business centre .
  • I have to admit that the third is there because of the relevance of the keyword with the website.
However we can expand (click show map) this improves the chances of advertising of getting a visit.

local_business_centre_2

This is even better for the advertiser. Both boxes have map with the advertiser. Especially adwords ad text has not 1 but 4 links to click.

Iphone experience

Mobile internet is growing and this is the Iphone experience. It is good to be 1-click away from telephone booking especially for last minutes bookings.

Iphone_google_Adwords_and_local_business_centre_LBC-1

 

Writing the query "Santorini Car Hire" this is the first screen. Google does not have even 1 organic result. Google believes that feeds from Local Business Centre are more relevant than organic results. Some years of SEO effort could be out of date and replaced by this new feature.

Iphone_google_Adwords_and_local_business_centre_LBC-2

You have to be blind not to click in the first 2 screens. Users can also interact with iphone google Maps or call the advertiser with one click. This iphone experience is much better that just having links.

How you can benefit from Google Local Business Centre?

# 1- Put your Company in the local business centre

 

 

It is good to include any picture services , coupons , special offers , video and a lot of information. The more information and content the better.

# 2- Link your adgroup with your local business centre

Log in to you AdWords account in the campaign settings tab you can connect the campaign with LBC or  just insert the address manually.


link_adwords_with_LBC

However this is not optimal because you may have different business locations for different search queries. For example Santorinicarhire.com has only one physical location. That's why I have put at least 5 different locations depending the search query (Santorini airport cars , Santorini port cars etc).  You probably want to link the most relevant address.

# 3- Link the specific Adtext with the Relevant Business Centre Address

This is new to AdWords . You can now link each ad to the specific location. Let's say that you have 10 different location you cannot trust google to choose the most relevant. You can choose what is the most relevant location for each ad.

Link_adtext_with_one_address

Statistics from Local business centre in Adwords

You can measure the interactions in AdWords versions with Local Business Centre. This will help you understand what you get when AdWords serves not just texts ads but also your position in LBC (Local business centre). There are statistics in AdWords reports and now there is a section just for the Local Business ad interactions.

local_business_centre_ad_interaction_columns

Generaly I think that this geotargeted search will be more important. Mobile internet, iphone , mobile browsing , Google will realeases applications for the  mobiles first.

Schmidt said the fundamental shift to focus on mobile first was driven by the expected shift in advertising from traditional media to the internet and then to mobile phones. "Mobile advertising should ultimately be much better [than PC advertising]," he said. "With a mobile device we know where you are so we can offer much more enhanced localised opportunities."

Are you going to miss the opportunity. What is your experience with LBC? Do you have any other advices/ideas/suggestions to add?

Christos Kyliakoudis

Christos Kyliakoudis

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