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Welcome to the Alpha Wave Media blog. Our posts cover a variety of topics, from social media to best SEO practice, to hints and tips and the latest industry news. Be sure to subscriber to our RSS feed for the latest updates. We welcome your comments, positive, negative or otherwise so please start a conversation by posting a reply to our posts in the form at the end of each page!

20/ May By Igor Lungo

What are Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns?

Since Google announced plans to introduce Enhanced Campaigns within AdWords, there has been much discussion about the potential impacts of the change. For those managing Google AdWords accounts, it's clear that there's a need to understand the purpose of these changes and what they will mean for your campaigns.

 

Enhanced Campaigns explained

 

Enhanced Campaigns are Google's reaction to the fact that people are increasingly using a range of devices, such as tablets, smartphones and laptops. The existing AdWords platform has not made it easy for advertisers to react to this changing landscape and to target potential customers accordingly.

With Enhanced Campaigns, it's possible to manage tasks for multiple devices within a single campaign. This means that you can quickly update bids and create bids, without requiring multiple campaigns.

There are some specific elements that can make your advertising more effective. For example, you can choose to alter bids at specific times of the day. This could be useful, allowing you to bid more to advertise to those who are within close proximity to your own location.

Ads can also be created that are designed to appeal to users of specific devices. In addition, Google has added some new reporting facilities, enabling you to track a variety of conversion types, including digital downloads, telephone calls and conversions that occur on differing devices.

There are also some features that have received considerably less publicity. It's possible, for example, to show potential customers the number of Google+ followers that you have. By adding this information into your campaign, Google is suggesting that you can expect to see higher click-through rates on ads that are within your Enhanced Campaigns.

 

What will the impact be?

 

It's fair to say that Enhanced Campaigns have received something of a mixed reaction. Some agencies have suggested that the new campaigns make it easier to manage budgets, but there has been some concern about the fact that desktop and tablet targeting settings appear to have been merged.

Right now, your legacy campaigns will be unchanged. It won't be long, however, before Google will ask you to migrate across to Enhanced Campaigns. Given this situation, it makes sense to take a closer look at Enhanced Campaigns now.

The changing functionality may be somewhat limiting in some cases and it will be important that you grasp the impact that it will have on your own AdWords accounts. In effect, it's likely that you will need to manage fewer campaigns. The clear downside, however, appears to be a loss of flexibility.

If you currently like to use different bidding approaches for varying devices and carefully monitor the impact of your changes, then you may find that Enhanced Campaigns limit your abilities to get the best possible returns. As a result, you may not be in a rush to make the switch.

 

Call Tracking

 

For those countries where the functionality is being put in place, call tracking is being offered free of charge. This is a clear advantage, compared to the current situation, where it's necessary to pay for such leads from desktops and tablets.

This will be good news for those businesses that currently rely heavily on the power of incoming calls.

 

Conclusions

 

There are some clear advantages associated with the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns. You may be able to take advantage of the free Call Tracking feature and there's scope to limit the number of campaigns that you need to maintain.

You do need to be aware, however, that Enhanced Campaigns will limit the flexibility that's available to some advertisers. Before making the leap, it's important that you've considered your requirements in full.

 

by Igor Lungo

Comments: 0
23/ April By Igor Lungo

How To Succeed With SEO In A Post-Panda, Post-Penguin World

Following the seismic changes that have engulfed the SEO industry over the past 2 years with the Google Panda and Penguin algorithm updates it is now increasingly clear, as the dust has started to settle, that new strategies and approaches to achieving high rankings are needed. In the following article we will look at the most effective methods available to any business or agency to succeed with SEO in a sustainable, cost-effective manner.

 

Consistently Produce High Quality Content

 
To build your brand within your niche and attract the type of high quality links that will contribute to high rankings it is essential to regularly produce high quality content. Publishing low to average quality content is, quite simply, no longer good enough in today's increasingly competitive SEO environment.
 

A Smaller Number Of Higher Quality, More Relevant Links

 
With the Penguin and Panda updates, the 'Good Old Days' of blasting thousands of low quality links at a site and hoping it will rank highly are gone forever. What's needed now is an integrated approach for obtaining high quality links from a variety of sources, mostly made up from sites related to your niche. This can include guest-blogging, producing high-quality content that naturally attracts links and being active on social media channels to attract a following who will, of their own volition, link to your site. This may be more time-consuming, however, it is the only strategy for long-term success in your niche. 
 

Avoid Unnatural Linking Methods

 
While some slightly shady tactics like mass blog commenting and article spinning used to be highly effective they are now downright dangerous to your site's rankings. Google is far better at detecting any attempts to "game" the system and so such tactics need to be avoided. It is crucial to be aware of which techniques are likely to land your site in trouble and make a decision never to use them.
 

How The Support Of An Agency Can Help

 
The field of SEO has become increasingly complicated and to successfully implement an overall strategy that will see your site soar up the rankings requires a lot of time, effort and knowledge. Hiring an agency team of skilled, knowledgeable SEO experts to carefully construct a winning SEO strategy for your website can save you a lot of time, effort and worry. What's more, it can produce an extremely attractive Return on Investment for your business.
 

Igor Lungo

Comments: 0
03/ April By Kesia Tucknott

Career Opportunity: Business Development Manager

Alpha Wave Media is a growing Lewes based internet marketing firm specialising in cutting edge websites, search engine optimisation, social media and pay-per-click marketing. We have some great clients both locally and nationally including East Sussex County Council, The Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce, Britannia Movers International PLC and more. Our website, www.alphawavemedia.co.uk gives a flavour of who we are and what we do.

 

We are looking for someone to manage our business development process. This role requires someone with an ability to pitch marketing technologies and techniques to senior decision makers. We are in the market of selling bespoke, well researched and high value marketing campaigns. Cold calling? Forget it. We go for quality over quantity, targeting companies where we can get a warm referral, go in at decision maker level, and impress with a consultative approach.

 

Our business has grown over 50% year on year for the last three years. With the right person, we believe we can push this further and accelerate our growth to becoming one of the leading search marketing companies in the South East.

 

To help make sure you are working at a high level, we are providing a dedicated sales assistant to help you with, research, diary planning and data entry.

 

Key skills required:

  • Presentation
  • Confidence
  • Driven
  • Determined
  • Business sense
  • Communication
  • Networking

Experience required:

  • 2+ years in digital marketing (preferably search marketing)
  • 2+ years in sales
  • Driving licence & own car

Benefits:

  • Own office within our Lewes offices
  • Sales Assistant
  • Company car after year 1
  • Shiny, new Mac Book Pro laptop
 

If you like hard-closing, a boiler room workplace, cold-calling, back-stabbing and eating dogs then this is probably not the role for you. If, however, you are an expert in search marketing and web technology, believe in the power of the internet when it comes to making businesses successful, and can present concise messages in a powerful way this could be the role for you. Our office is full of bright, hard working grafters who believe in what they do. We want you to thrive in this environment.

 

Our last Business Development Executive had this to say:

"Working for Alpha Wave Media was a brilliant experience and very different to other sales roles. I was encouraged to become an expert in web techniques which gave me an ability to advise clients in a way that naturally encouraged sales. Ben helped me hit my targets within six months, and I was able to reap the benefits of a generous uncapped commission scheme."

Will, who wrote the above, now works for Ogilvy.

 

To apply send a CV and covering letter to careers@alphawavemedia.co.uk

 

No agencies. Really no.

Comments: 0