Make it click

Her solution for Dinein was to create very specific phrases such as ‘Indian food home delivered’.

Conroy pointed out that they can even stipulate negative keywords, such as ‘recipe’, ‘calories’ or ‘ingredients’ to narrow it down even further.
“The higher your click-through rate the cheaper the ads become. It’s possible for someone to be paying a lower CPC [cost per click] and still appear higher than you on the page if their ad has a high click-through rate. Google does this to give maximum exposure to the most relevant ads with the highest click-throughs as it wants to improve the user experience.”
For Jennings and Bachtiar the other big learning from the day was about the importance of social media.
“We were scared about incorporating comments into the site, but after talking to Google’s head of strategy and sales, Jason Pellegrino, we had a better understanding that not only was it easier to generate content through letting visitors write reviews, but users trust that content,” says Jennings.
The Google team drummed in the importance of testing as the only way to really find out if a landing page or AdWords are working.
Jennings says he and Bachtiar headed back to New Zealand intent on consolidating and simplifying their message, as well as creating an iPhone application and mobile browser. “We’ve been given the tools, most of which are free from Google, to optimise our website and improve the customer experience.”
Their next step is to start signing up restaurants around the country — oh, and for Jennings to call his mum.

Google’s top five tips for building your online presence:

Get a website and invest in it.
You can use ready-made sites with free tools, such as Google Sites and Google Blogger, or build your site from scratch. Improve the design of your website with free services like Google Website Optimiser, which tests variations of headlines, images and text to identify the best combinations.

Find out what parts of your site customers like — and what parts send them packing.
Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you understand where your visitors are coming from, how they’re finding your site and what pages they’re visiting the most.

Increase visibility to attract potential customers.
Google’s Webmaster Central helps site owners understand how they can improve their ranking in Google’s search results. And with Google AdWords, businesses can reach shoppers at the exact moment they are searching for their products and services.

Measure, test, adapt.
The beauty of online marketing is that you can get real-time feedback about which keywords attract the most clicks and use that data to adjust your marketing campaign.

Identify new opportunities.
Insights for Search helps to grow your business by letting you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories and time frames. You can see where customers are already searching for your service/product and even compare search volumes by city.

— Will Easton is Google Australia’s sales industry lead