A Beginner’s Guide to Google Ads

A Beginner’s Guide to Google Ads

A Beginner's Guide to Google Ads 2024

We'll try to tell you everything you need to know about Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords, and today as Google Ads) in this text, a beginner's guide to Google Ads, in order to boost your business.

It doesn't matter if this is your first or 100th Google Ads campaign.

This beginner's guide to Google Ads will address the following questions:

The Google Ads Beginner's Guide will explain everything you wanted to know about Google Ads. Google advertising is fast and cost-effective…The Google Ads Beginner's Guide will explain everything you wanted to know about Google Ads. Google advertising is fast and cost-effective…

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is a bid-based online advertising platform that includes search engine text ads, video ads, banner ads, YouTube ads, and other display options.

Google ads can appear in search results on Google and millions of partner sites.

Google Ads is the largest publisher of digital ads in the United States, accounting for 28.4% of total ad revenue.

This ratio varies by country, but Google is considered dominant in the field of digital advertising.

How do Google Ads work?

You write an ad, place an offer, wait a bit and the sale starts. That's basically it...

It seems simple, but it's not.

We'll explain in detail how to create a Google Ads campaign later, but essentially Google ads work on a pay-per-action model, usually calculated as cost-per-click (CPC).

This means that you pay a certain price every time a user clicks on your ad or on an action that you have defined as a goal.

That price changes often and depends on a number of factors, including the number of other brands currently targeting that keyword, search volume, expected reach, time of day or year, and more.

When you place an ad, you set your "maximum bid" - the most you're willing to pay for a click (or impression or other defined action).

The three main bidding options are:

Cost Per Click (CPC)

You pay when a user clicks on your ad.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

You pay for 1,000 impressions of your ad

Cost per engagement (CPE)

You pay when the user performs a specific action on your ad (subscribes to the list, watches a video, etc.).

For example, if your maximum bid is 50 dinars, and Google says that the value of that click is 80 dinars, your ad will not be displayed.

However, if your maximum offer is 81 dinars, your ad will have a high chance of being displayed on the search engine. It's important to know that with Google advertising bids, there is a minimum and maximum bid figure for displaying the campaign.

Just so you know, this figure is different from the total campaign budget. You have the option to set a daily average budget and let Google manage individual ad bids, or set an overall budget and set a maximum bid for each ad.

For beginners, we recommend setting a daily budget and allowing Google to optimize individual ad bids.

But this should only be done at the beginning, until you gain experience and understand what actually looks like placing ads on Google.

For example, if you want to spend a total of 10,000 dinars, you can start a 30-day campaign with a maximum daily budget of 330 dinars. And you can create a campaign that will have a maximum daily budget of 660 dinars during 14 days.

It is very simple and you decide when, to whom and how your ad will be displayed on the Google search engine.

That's budgeting in a nutshell, but there are exceptions for certain industries.

However, there is another important factor when bidding, and that is the Quality Score.

Does Google Pay Attention to Quality Score?

Quality Score is how Google Ads determines who has the "best" ad to display for a given keyword. It is a numerical ranking from 1-10.

For example, a lunch restaurant might get a 10 (high rating) for the keyword "prosciutto sandwiches" but would probably get a 1 (low rating) for the keyword "local plumber."

Your Quality Score does not directly affect your ad position or budget, but it can have indirect effects.

A high Quality Score means that your ads match the search intent of potential customers.

Creating ads that match what people are looking for means they'll be shown more often, which means you'll get more clicks.

Quality Score is not a metric you should track in detail. It's more of a guide to show if your ad targeting is fine.

This way, you can easily compare yourself to other ads competing for the same keywords.

What is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization and stands for website optimization for search engines

Types of Google ads

Google Ads has changed over the years, always adding new features and ad types.

Currently, Google Ads includes the following types of ads:

1. Google Responsive search ads

These ads are the basic ad format and should be a part of every campaign. These are text ads on the Google search results pages.

Instead of writing just one ad, responsive search ads allow you to write several small variations, and Google's AI technology chooses the best combination of ad components that match the search and user intent.

Advertisements are marked with "Sponsored" above them and usually appear in the first four positions on the page.

When to use them:

  • Google Search ads are the most basic form of Google ads and any brand can only benefit from them.

Specifications:

  • Titles: Minimum three and maximum 15 titles. Up to 30 characters each.

  • Display URL: Must contain your domain, but does not have to be the final URL. May include a simplified "Path" of up to 15 characters.

  • Descriptions: Ad text. A minimum of two descriptions is required, but you can have up to four. Maximum of 90 characters each.

2. Google Performance Max ads

Google Performance Max ads are less of a type of ad and more of an entire strategy. Google describes Performance Max as a combination of all of its best machine learning algorithms and AI-powered bidding strategies. Along with data you provide, such as target groups. The idea is to get the best possible results for your goal.

Google claims Performance Max campaigns get 18% more conversions than traditional search engine advertising campaigns.

When to use them:

  • Google suggests using a Performance Max campaign as a supplement to basic search engine ad campaigns.

  • When you have a clear goal.

  • When you have additional data that helps Google target your ads, such as target groups from Facebook, previous campaigns, e-commerce, etc.

Specifications:

  • It provides different ad formats and creative formats. For best results, create different elements - images, video, text options.

    This is how you will achieve the most in Google Ads campaigns.

3. Google Discovery Ads

Google Discovery ads appear in places where people are most likely to research products or view product reviews. This includes YouTube front pages and "Watch Next" pages, Gmail inbox ads, Google search ads and on the Google homepage itself.

As a mix of display ads and shopping ads, Google Discovery ads use existing content in different formats.

When to use them:

  • When you already have several other campaigns and resources in Google Ads. Discovery ads use your existing resources in different formats.

  • To increase sales.

  • For retargeting previous customers by defining the target group.

Specifications:

  • Google Discovery ads include different ad formats, including text, graphics (display), and video. For best results, have multiple options for each visual format.

  • To run a Google Discovery campaign, you must have a Google tag installed on your site (formerly known as "sitewide tagging").

4. YouTube ads

Known to almost all Internet users. YouTube ads play either before you watch a video, during a video, or appear elsewhere on YouTube. Most often, these are the homepage, subscription pages, watch later or playlist pages.

Who will see your video ads depends on several factors. Most often, whether the user is logged in or not, their interests, viewing history, campaign objective and campaign targeting settings.

When to use them:

  • For product launches, new offers or increasing brand recognition. YouTube video ads work for almost any goal and campaign, but only if you have high-quality video content.

Specifications:

  • Skippable in-stream ads: No maximum length, recommended to stay under three minutes.

  • Non-skippable in-stream ads: 15-30 second intervals.

  • In-feed and outstream ads: No maximum length. Existing videos from your channel can be used.

5. Google Display Ads

Google Display ads are images or videos that appear on millions of websites around the world that are part of the Google Display network, as well as on Google sites like YouTube.

You can define each ad yourself or upload a collection of resources - graphics, videos, logos and headlines. You can let Google Ads use artificial intelligence (AI) to come up with the best combinations to target your audience, as part of a Google Smart Display or Google Performance Max campaign.

As a 2024 recommendation, it is considered a best practice if you want to convert your respective Display Ads campaigns to Performance Max campaigns. This is because individual image ads no longer appear in Gmail and other high-paying places, while Google Performance Max ads can. In addition, Google claims that advertisers who convert their campaigns to Performance Max campaigns achieve an average of 15% more conversions at a similar cost per action.

When to use them:

  • As soon as you finish the graphic or video. In our opinion, everyone should try Google Display Ads.

  • If you want to retarget an existing audience, such as re-engaging past customers.

Specifications:

  • Image ads: Various specific dimensions, including banners, square ads, and more. For best results, create versions of your images in all ad sizes under Display ads.

  • HTML5 Ads: Brands that have spent $9,000 or more on Google Ads and have an account older than 90 days can apply to access the HTML5 ad format. You create HTML5 ads using Google Web Designer.

6.Google Shopping Ads.

Google Shopping Ads use your product catalog to show optimized ads across the Google Search and Display Network, YouTube and Gmail. Google's automatic targeting displays what it considers the most relevant product for the user's search.

When to use them:

  • This is the required Google ad format for every e-commerce store.

  • Google Shopping ads are especially valuable if you use Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or GoDaddy to take advantage of Google Performance Max Shopping ads.

Specifications:

  • Product data must be structured in a way that Google Ads understands. This means it includes a unique ID number, description, URL, images and other data for each product. Product information must be updated (manually or automatically) every 30 days.

7. Google App Ads

As the name suggests, Google app ads direct users to download your iOS or Android app. However, there are a few additional campaign options available for Android campaigns compared to iOS because Google owns the Google Play Store.

When to use them:

  • If you have an app, though you need 50,000 app installs to be eligible (not valid for Android pre-registration campaigns).

Specifications:

  • Images: In .PNG or .JPG formats up to 5 MB each in recommended sizes of 1200x1200, 1200x628 or 1200x1500 pixels.

  • Video (optional): You must first upload a video to YouTube or use a video from your app's store page.

  • Text: Up to five titles of 30 characters or less and five descriptions of 90 characters or less.

  • HTML5: Select advertisers may use HTML5 resources as part of an app campaign.

8. Google Smart Campaigns

Normal mode, smart mode, expert mode... What to choose? Essentially, any campaign can be a "Google Smart Campaign" if you set it up to use Google Ads' AI-powered bidding, targeting, or ad placement strategies.

When to use them:

  • If you're new to Google Ads, Google Smart Campaigns are a great way to get started and take less than 15 minutes to set up.

  • For experienced brands, Google Smart campaigns often still deliver better results than standard campaigns with less time required to manage.

Specifications:

  • Each ad in a Google Smart campaign consists of several separate components: Title, description, URL, name of your business and, if possible, phone number, address or map location (for physical locations).

How much do Google ads cost?

Google ads cost as much as they are bid for. Each keyword has a minimum and maximum value. It is determined by all those who participate in Google advertising.

The one who bids the highest price will be in first place.

But if there are two identical maximum bids, Google will determine which will take the first place at the top of the page based on some other parameters.

Below we will give you several examples of how much Google ads cost in 2024. They are based on the average CPC (cost per click) by industry in the United States of America. The education industry on Google has an average CPC of $9.35, but the same niche in Germany has an average CPC of $1.89.

The situation is similar for real estate: the average CPC is $1.87 in the United States, $0.78 in England, and $0.63 in Canada.

Each industry has a significantly different cost per click which also varies from country to country. So there is no "true" average cost of a Google ad.

The average cost per click on Google Ads in the US is $1.99 and the highest in the world. There is a big difference even between North American countries.

In Europe, England and Switzerland take the top spots with $1.22 and $1.13 on average per click.

Average costs will vary even among competitors in the same industry and location. There are so many other factors that affect Google ad costs, including:

Targeting strategy

Creative ad content

Keywords

Copy of title

Campaign objective

Whether it is a Performance Max campaign or not

Do you use manual or automatic bidding

Prices for Google ads in Serbia are significantly lower.

If you use the Google Ads platform, you can easily check the prices for the keywords you are interested in.

How to create Google ads in 5 steps?

We will try to explain it as simply as possible.

Well, let's get started:

1. Open a Google Ads account

  • First, complete all the basic steps, including opening a Google Ads account

  • Enter the name of your business and the URL of your website

  • Link any existing Google-owned accounts, such as a YouTube channel and/or Google My Business profile

  • Fill in your billing and payment information

2. Create your first campaign

  • Click "New Campaign" at the top of the main Google Ads dashboard.

  • Select a goal for your campaign and click "Continue".

3. Set up a bidding strategy

  • Once you've chosen an objective and ad format, tell Google Ads how much you want to spend and how you want to optimize that budget (eg conversions, leads, traffic, etc.).

  • Optionally, you can set a target cost per action, although we recommend leaving this unchecked for new users. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to let Google optimize your bidding as much as possible.

4. Target your audience

  • Here you tell Google where to find your audience. Select the locations and/or languages you want to target as well as an optional additional interest category. Advanced users can upload custom audiences, fine-tune demographics, and more.

5. Create ads

  • Creating ads is an extensive process and we can't cover everything in a few sentences. A lot depends on your industry, goals, existing resources and more. But you need at least a few ad groups to start advertising on Google.

  • Google guides you very easily through this process, looking for your URL and relevant keywords.

  • Finally, Google Ads asks you to write several ads. You will be shown a preview on the right as you build your ad.

For everything to be good and complete, you must include the following:

  • URL

  • Up to 15 titles

  • Up to 15 titlesUp to 15 titles

  • Pictures

  • 4 or more additional specific links that appear below your ad.

  • Additions: Short attributes, e.g. "free shipping, open 24/7", etc.

  • Plus, all optional details like phone number, app store link, etc.

  • You don't need to have all of these items right away. If you're new to Google Ads, keep things as simple as possible. You can always measure and adjust your ads later.

4. Tips for Creating Winning Google Ads

1. Focus on headlines

You can include up to 15 headlines per ad, so take advantage of that opportunity and maximize your ad's potential. Depending on the ad format, Google will shuffle them to show the ones most likely to convert, each separated by a hyphen.

2. Test and experiment

Even your most successful ads can be improved by testing new variations. Conduct A/B testing frequently and don't be afraid to experiment with new ad copy, visuals, and more.

3. Have a clear CTA

For pay-per-click (PPC) conversion campaigns, keep your call-to-action simple and descriptive about what you want the viewer to do.

4. Make use of all the available ad attributes

Although optional, including additional fields such as "callouts" and "sitelinks" can make your ad stand out from the crowd. This ad grabs attention by adding a "callout" about financing

Conclusion

In the world of digital advertising, Google Ads has become a key tool for brands and businesses that want to reach their target audience. Whether you're new to advertising or already experienced with campaigns, this beginner's guide will provide you with all the essential information you need to get the most out of Google Ads in 2024.

It is important to emphasize that Google ads are a powerful tool for business promotion and improvement. Through this beginner's guide to Google Ads, you've got an alphabet of key information about Google advertising, from basic concepts to specific ad creation strategies.

It is important to understand that success on the Google Ads platform requires careful planning, monitoring of results and adaptability of strategy. Through steps like setting up a campaign, choosing a bidding strategy, targeting an audience and creating different types of ads, you have the opportunity to optimize your online presence and attract quality traffic.

We also emphasize that monitoring costs and ad quality through tools such as Quality Score and analytics is a key contributor to the success of your campaigns.

Taking into account the different types of ads that Google Ads offers, adjust your strategy according to the specifics of your business.

Through constant experimentation, testing and optimization of ads, you have the opportunity to build a strong online presence and achieve a significant return on investment.

Don't forget that Google Ads is a dynamic platform, so regularly follow new trends and functionalities to stay competitive.

Basically, Google advertising requires a combination of expertise, creativity and an analytical approach.

Let this beginner's guide to Google Ads be your foundation for online promotion success. Google Ads is a powerful digital advertising tool that allows you to reach a wide audience. Through different ad formats and bidding strategies, you can tailor your campaigns to specific goals and target groups.

We recommend monitoring the performance of your ads through Google Ads analytics to gain insight into what works best. Regular testing and experimentation with new strategies is key to optimizing campaigns and achieving better results.

We hope this beginner's guide to Google Ads will help you successfully create and optimize your Google Ads.

If you have additional questions or need more information, feel free to send them to our email info@smartthink.rs

We can help you with everything related to SEO, website development, Google advertising and much more!

If you have a special request, we are at your service.

Good luck with your Google advertising!

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website!

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website!

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website!

If you are looking for the best WordPress plugin for creating a website, you are on the right page. We will recommend you which plugins are worthy of attention in 2024.

There are countless plugins for WordPress, but the vast majority are useless or unusable. Take care not to overdo it with the number of plugins when creating a website, because they know how to load each website.

That's why it's important to use only plugins that can really help you. We have tested many, so we will make it easier for you to find the best solutions for your website.

Choosing the right set of WordPress plugins for creating a website will improve your online business. They are important for the speed, security and adaptability of your website.

With their help, you can significantly change the functions of your website.

Plugins are used for literally all options that can exist on a website. From optimizing images, reducing loading speed, improving SEO, adding an e-store, etc.

Literally, whatever you imagine your website needs to do, it can be done with the help of WordPress plugins.

In this text, we will suggest plugins that have proven to be very important in our work.

Image Accordion Title
Image Accordion Title

HUBSPOT

A great tool to grow your business without marketing.

It will allow you to easily manage contacts, track potential customers and conversions, communicate with visitors via forms and much more.

This plugin will seamlessly integrate your website with HubSpot CMR. By tracking analytics, you will easily get data on how successful your efforts have been.

The HubSpot platform is designed for users who want to connect marketing, sales, content management and customer service.

If you don't have too many requirements, you can choose the free version, while the paid version starts at $20.

If this sounds interesting to you, try the demo version to learn more about this plugin.

WPForms

Every website needs a contact form to communicate with its visitors. WPForms is a great contact form plugin for WordPress websites.

This online form builder plugin will allow you to easily create contact forms, email subscription or online order forms, payment forms, surveys and actually all kinds of online forms.

WPForms has over 1,200 pre-made form templates to make your life easier.

WPForms can integrate with all major payment platforms such as Stripe and Paypal.

With the help of this plugin you can create a very good form in less than 5 minutes.

Looking for the best WordPress plugin to build a website in 2024? We will tell you which ones are the best! This is our top 15 plugins for WP

You get powerful features that don't exist in other form builders. Over 6 million websites are currently using the WPForms plugin. There is a free version for those who are not too demanding. If you're not in that group, the Basic annual subscription starts at $49.

WooCommerce

Want to sell your products or services through your website?

Then the best option is WooCommerce.

This is the plugin we use for all e-stores we create. This is a very important plugin for all websites dealing with online sales.

With its help, a basic website can be turned into a very powerful and functional online store.

Thanks to its almost endless user customization, you can sell literally anything you can imagine.

From digital files to physical products.

It's easy to set up payment currencies, display reviews and ratings, and easily add features like sorting and filtering.

You can set up multiple discounts, enable subscriptions, upload unlimited photos per product…..

Almost everything can be adjusted!

This plugin is free and made by the same company that made the WordPress platform.

This ensures that you are using a high-quality and reliable plugin.

In our opinion, WooCommerce has practically become synonymous with WordPress eCommerce.

YOAST

Yoast is one of the most popular SEO plugins that will make it easy to optimize all your pages and posts for search engines.

It is very useful if you want your website to rank as well as possible on Google or another search engine. It is very easy to use and you will get space to define SEO titles and meta descriptions.

In this way, you will learn how to properly create parts of the page that work according to the best SEO practices.

This plugin analyzes your content and its readability and gives you recommendations on what and how to correct it.

So you can correct mistakes in content writing to achieve high SEO quality. This is one of the plugins that every website should have.

There is a version that is free and will be more than enough for beginners.

For more advanced users, we recommend the Yoast SEO Premium plugin, which costs 99 EUR for an annual subscription.

Jetpack

Jetpack is a plugin that we would describe as a collection of great tools and functions that will complement your website with many useful functions.

It has a lot to offer and was developed by the team behind WordPress.

It works from improving website security to optimizing and engaging users.

With the Jetpack plugin you will easily add a share button for any social network, contact or email subscription forms, CDN and many other services.

Jetpack can easily become the focal point for your website's needs.

It processes and generates leads, backups which makes it great for users who don't want to overload their website.

This is a modular plugin, so you can choose only the tools you really need to develop your website.

That way, it offers a lot of plugins in one place that you may or may not need to use.

Jetpack has a free option, while paid options start at $4.95 for a monthly subscription.

Take a look at their website and decide for yourself which package suits you best.

Šta je SEO? To je skraćenica od Search Engine Optimizationi predstavlja optimizaciju web sajta za pretraživače

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular plugins for caching websites based on WordPress.

Caching is a method of storing the content of a website in order to load that data even faster the next time we access the same page.

In fact, the W3 Total Cache plugin shortens the loading time of your website.

This reduces the loading time, which Google especially appreciates, but it will be even better for your visitors.

That's why we definitely recommend this plugin or something similar for every website.

The problem is if your website pages load slowly.

This is penalized by Google, but even worse is that visitors give up on your website very easily, regardless of the fact that it may be the best in its field.

W3 Total Cache helps keep your pages fast and reliable with minimal effort.

As with most, there is a free version.

If that is not enough for you, there are PRO packages whose price ranges from 59 USD for one website to 299 USD for an unlimited number of websites.

Smush

If we talk about website performance, images are the main culprit for slow loading of a website.

There are tools like Photoshop that easily adjust the size of any photo, but if you don't want or don't know how to use it, we advise you to definitely adjust the size of photos with the help of a plugin.

Overall, we are very happy with Smush.

As we mentioned, our favorite for organizing photos is PhotoShop, but if you don't have time or have a lot of photos to process, the right solution can be the Smush plugin.

It automatically compresses images, which will significantly affect the loading time of the web page.

Smush will provide you with an easy way to reduce the size of your photos, no matter what builder you use to create your website.

It currently has more than a million active installations, which is always a good sign when choosing a plugin.

There is a free version, while a monthly subscription on a year-long contract ranges from $1.8 per month for 1 website to $20 per month for an unlimited number of sites.

Akismet Spam Protection

Another very important plugin. Akismet Spam Protection is the most popular antispam plugin for WordPress and is used by more than 5 million websites.

Akismet checks contact forms and suspicious comments. In this way, your website will be more secure and partly free of spam.

Installing and activating Akismet is very simple.

It automatically checks all comments and singles out those that it deems undesirable. The editor can see the number of accepted comments for each user.

That's why we recommend it!

Akismet is a plugin that works in the background and will save you a lot of time and disk space.

The free version will be quite enough, but if you are a more demanding user, the PRO version of Akismet starts at $9.95 for a monthly subscription based on an annual contract.

XML Sitemaps

With the help of this plugin, you will make it easier for search engines like Google to find important pages and articles on your website.

XML Sitemaps supports different types of pages generated in WordPress. That way, you can be sure to send search engines enough data to index.

XML Sitemaps is highly adaptable to different types of WordPress pages and URLs. In this way, you inform the search engines when you have published a new post, category or product.

XML Sitemaps is free, but there is a paid version PRO account that costs $4 per month.

It is very easy to use, and it helps search engines to understand your website better. Thus, you will efficiently index the page.

This is very important if you want to avoid theft of your content.

In any case, XML Sitemaps will help you rank at no additional cost, while saving time.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a premium plugin for optimizing websites built on WordPress.

After downloading and running, this plugin implements several methods to reduce the required loading time of the web page.

It provides various forms of caching, minification of CSS and JavaScript files, removal of unused JavaScript, lazy loading of photos and GZIP compression.

Given how important loading time is to the user experience, this plugin is a must.

It is especially important for business websites and e-shops. It is important to mention that WP Rocket will not cache the pages where the product the user has placed in the cart or the checkout page.

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website in 2024? We will tell you which ones are the best! This is our top 15 plugins for WP

We use it with all serious web sites because it provides us with a large number of functions. The support is very good and they answer your every question very quickly.

Annual subscriptions range from $59 for one website to $299 for an unlimited number of websites.

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website in 2024? We will tell you which ones are the best! This is our top 15 plugins for WP

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is the most popular free WordPress contact form plugin. With Contact Form 7 installed on your website, users can contact you through simplified contact forms.

With the help of reCAPTCHA and Akismet, spam will be prevented.

Since it is Ajax compatible, your forms can retrieve information and update their appearance without reloading the page.

That's why we recommend the Contact Form 7 plugin to administrators who need a free and easy way to grow their contact list.

This plugin will make it easy for you to create and use a contact form with all the basic functions you may need. As an agency that creates websites, we can tell you that we use Contact Form 7 very often.

We're still impressed that it's free, but first and foremost, it's very efficient with a great user interface.

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is one of the most popular conversion rate optimization plugins.

In short, it will convert a large number of visitors into your subscribers or customers. This WordPress plugin is very effective in getting more subscribers to your emails.

OptinMonster will let you use hundreds of their templates, which in our experience can provide high conversion rates.

Any opt-in form or campaign proposal can be easily customized with its tool. OptinMonster has powerful features that will allow you to personalize campaigns for each user, in order to show the message at the right time and to the right person.

The bottom line is that if you want to earn more money through your website, then OptinMonster is the logical solution for you.

There is a free version, but if you want real results, try one of the offered options, which range in price from $9 to $49 per month.

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website in 2024? We will tell you which ones are the best! This is our top 15 plugins for WP

MonsterInsights

The MonsterInsights plugin is a very powerful tool for those who don't like GA4. It is much simpler and more understandable for beginners.

It is very popular and has more than 3,000,000 active installations. A very important plugin that will help you find out the habits of your visitors and what they are most interested in on your website.

Because knowing your audience is essential if you want to grow your business.

Once you understand this, you can adjust your marketing strategy to increase sales.

And that's why you need a plugin like MonsterInsights!

It will connect your website with Google Analytics GA4 in order to get relevant data about the users who visited your website.

The MonsterInsights plugin is easy to set up. When you finish the installation, you can start checking the analytics after a couple of days.

You will easily determine which pages are performing best and which pages need to be fixed.

The plugin exists in a free version, but it has limitations.

But you can try some of the paid packages, which range from $99 to $399 for a year of use.

The best WordPress plugin for creating a website in 2024? We will tell you which ones are the best! This is our top 15 plugins for WP

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is a trusted plugin for over a million WordPress site owners.

It is designed to improve performance and reduce page load times. Thus, it improves user experience and ranking on Google SERP.

This plugin works in four clever ways:

1. Performs web site caching, which temporarily stores the HTML version of the site on the server, enabling faster page loading.

2. Compresses images, identifying and compressing large images according to the desired settings.

3. Cleans the database of unnecessary data, speeding up the site and saving server resources.

4. Minifies HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, improving performance and page load times.

This plugin provides detailed options, including cache tuning, image compression with lossy or lossless options, database cleaning and optimization, as well as minification and combining of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The premium version of this plugin offers additional features such as multi-site support, flexible scheduling, WP-CLI support, caching support for different types of users, lazy loading of images, and more. WP-Optimize was created by the UpdraftPlus team, behind the world's most trusted backup, migration, and restore plugin. There is a Starter option that is intended for up to 2 websites and costs USD 49. The most expensive is the Unlimited option, which is for an unlimited number of websites and currently costs 199 USD.

MemberPress

MemberPress allows you to create online courses, communities and member sites through WordPress.

It represents one of the best WordPress plugins for logging in to a website. It is possible to create subscriptions and restrict content access to users based on their subscription plans.

It is compatible with all popular payment solutions including Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.

As a premium plugin, MemberPress comes with many powerful features, including drip content, course management (LMS), quizzes, certificates, group memberships, paid forums, powerful access rules, automation and more.

You can connect MemberPress with all popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit and others to communicate with your users.

MemberPress helps creators generate over $1 billion in revenue each year.

The annual subscription is not small, but they currently have a great promotion, so the basic package is already offered at the price of 179 USD for a year.

The best, but also the most expensive package is the Elite and currently the annual subscription is $499.

Unfortunately, there is no free version for the MemberPress plugin.

Conclusion

Choosing the right WordPress plugins for creating a website can significantly improve the performance, security and functionality of your website. In this article, we have explored, in our opinion, the top 15 WordPress plugins for creating a website on WordPress that have proven to be extremely useful in our practice.

Selected plugins offer a wide range of functionality, from contact management and analytics to image optimization, SEO and online store creation.

HUBSPOT stands out as a powerful tool for business promotion without marketing, while WPForms is ideal for creating various online forms.

WooCommerce is undisputed when it comes to eCommerce on WordPress, and YOAST provides effective content optimization tools.

Plugins like Smush and W3 Total Cache contribute to loading speed, while Akismet protects against spam. Jetpack is a comprehensive tool for improving security and optimizing user engagement.

For analytics, MonsterInsights provides easy-to-understand information about visitor behavior.

Each of these plugins has its own advantages, and the choice depends on the specific needs and goals of your website.

Whether you're looking to optimize performance, improve SEO, or simply improve the user experience, these WordPress plugins are a great start to achieving those goals.

Considering the dynamism of the digital space, it is important to follow the latest trends and technological innovations in order to keep your website competitive. By properly using these WordPress plugins, you can significantly improve functionality and user experience, thereby creating an attractive, efficient and safe digital space.

Also, don't forget to adjust the choice of plugins according to the specifics of your industry and target audience.

For example, MemberPress stands out as an excellent tool for creating online courses and communities, while OptinMonster can significantly improve conversion rates and increase the number of subscribers to your email lists.

Your choice of WordPress plugin for creating a website should be aligned with the goals of your business, providing support in areas that are critical to your success.

Always keep an eye out for updates and news related to your chosen add-ons to ensure you take full advantage of the latest functionality.

Make sure that all plugins are updated regularly.

The conclusion is that the right choice of WordPress plugin can have a significant impact on the performance and success of your website.

Take the time to research and test to find the best combinations that suit your specific needs and create the optimal online experience for your visitors. If you have any question, feel free to contact us.

We can help you with everything related to Google Ads, SEO or website development. It will be enough to click on our e-mail address info@smartthink.rs and ask a question.

What is SEO?

What is SEO?

SEO?

Here's everything you need to know about website search engine optimization!

So let's get started...

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and the simplest explanation would be that it is the process of optimizing a website for search engines so that the website has the best possible position on the search engine.

Considering that Google is dominant in that market, everything we will tell you will be related to the optimization of websites for the Google search engine.

The optimization process itself aims to improve the quality of all pages of a website in order to increase organic traffic.

SEO has nothing to do with paid traffic and refers only to natural or organic results. Those searches can be across multiple channels or search types. These can be texts, images, videos, news, maps, books, etc.

Anyone who aims to be on the first page of Google search will not achieve this without SEO optimization. Many think that creating a website is enough to position themselves well. However, only those who are on the first page of Google search know the real truth.

A high place in Google results means that your sales will inevitably jump. But how to succeed in it?

We will give you some tips to help you succeed.

Image Accordion Title
Image Accordion Title

How does SEO work?

Today, it has become quite normal for people to search for answers to their questions on Google. For everything you are interested in, it will be enough to enter a question or keyword.

So you get thousands or millions of results.

However, you probably don't know how it all works?

All search engines, including Google, use a process called indexing and thus provide you with the best result in their opinion.

Web site indexing can also be done in Google Search Console. You can index all pages, but you don't have to.

The decision is up to you.

If the page is not indexed, you will never be at the top of the search.

Many people think that just creating a website is enough for positioning, but things are not like that.

When you index a page in GSC (Google Search Console), Google sends its Googlebot to do the job. Our advice is that whenever a page ends, you let Googlebot index that page.

For many reasons.

One of the more important is content theft. Because the first person to index some content is the owner of that content for Google. And that means that your effort will be taken over by someone else.

In other words, Google will ignore your page and you will be treated as if you copied the text.

When the page is indexed, the Google algorithm compares your page with other results it already has in the database.

It seems very simple, but it is actually very complicated.

No one knows how that algorithm works and there are only assumptions.

There are some other factors that affect the ranking of any page, such as:

Faktori van stranici

Ovim metrikama (Offpage) se bavi Google i one se odnose uglavnom na backlink-ove.

Faktori na stranici

Od njih se uvek kreće (Onpage) i odnose se na sadržaj i ključne reči za koje je ta stranica optimizovana.

Tehnički faktori

Misli se na faktore koji pokrivaju performanse celog web sajta, a ne samo neke pojedinačne strane. Ovo je važno za SEO, ali još važnije za UX (User Expirience)

If you noticed this is mostly about Search Engine, but where is the optimization?
The very optimization of any web site essentially boils down to content, i.e. written content. To make it easier for you to understand, we will explain how Google works. He doesn't look at how interesting a site is and whether it has nice photos.
He doesn't understand photos and that's why he's looking for as much text as possible to find out what you do and what you can offer users.
That's why good content is the basis of every On Page SEO!
That's why a post like this one will try to explain to you and Google what SEO is. There are tools like Ahrefs or Semrush that can help you a lot in market and competition research.
Their only drawback is that they are not cheap. But do some research, there are some alternative approaches to them.
If you want to overtake the competition, you have a big job ahead of you. You need to first analyze what factors brought them to the first page.
It can be quality text, good backlinks, high DA (Domain Authority), and maybe all of that together.
You can determine everything through Ahrefs or Semrush.
What is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization and stands for website optimization for search engines
Sometimes it will be very difficult to position yourself for some strong keywords, and sometimes just a little effort will be enough.
Quality content that loads quickly is always the best way to start your climb to the first page of Google search.
Such text should explain to your visitors as best as possible what you can offer them, and at the same time you will provide search engines such as Google with keywords, title, meta descriptions and internal links.
So Google will clearly know what you do and when and to whom they should show your website page.
These are just some basic factors that determine whether you are successful in SEO. Of course, we will mention some more later.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is important for every website. It is necessary for every website and the better it is done, the better your position will be. We think it's stupid to create a website that won't be seen.

However, many people do not know that SEO exists and that your position depends on it.

Only a few years ago, website owners began to take a little more interest in optimizing websites for search engines. It is really so fair that it allows a small business to rank better on Google if it has done a page better than the competition, no matter how powerful it is.

It is enough to have better content and strong backlinks.

Each website has its own strength.

We use Moz's website rating called Domain Authority (DA). It is rated from 1 to 100 and the higher the rating, the better the quality of the website. However, it does not mean that if you have the highest score you will be in the first place, it is only one of the important details.

Google again favors written text. And visitors always trust the top 5 results on the first page the most.

They believe that the answers at the top are always the best, which is usually the case.

That's why SEO is important!

Well-done SEO allows you to increase the organic traffic of your website, and at the same time ensures that you do not spend money unnecessarily on Google Ads.

From our experience, we believe that SEO is the best investment of money in the digital world.

What is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization and stands for website optimization for search engines

It is not cheap and can without any problem be significantly more expensive than creating a website. It is needed even if you are not an e-commerce website.

Because the goal of every website is to increase the traffic of its owner.

If the client does not have a large enough budget for SEO and Google advertising, we always suggest doing SEO first. It takes a few months for everything to be done and for the results to start, but again it depends on the size of the website. The good thing is that once you get to a good place and Google recognizes you as a good website, you can stay on the first page for a long time. Of course, then maintenance and addition of content follows.

But in any case, the work is much smaller and easier.

Changes happen with every Google Core update, but if you've done everything well and honestly, you don't have to worry.

Changes happen on a daily basis, but from the SEO point of view for the Serbian market, it will be enough to follow the Google Core update that happens several times a year. You should always go for the quality, not the quantity of texts and the number of words in them. Make sure that you don't overdo it with the keywords you target for each page.

In the past, this was a technique to repeat the keyword as many times as possible in the text and thus ensure the highest possible position.

Today, forget about this technique because Google will punish you for it.

What are SEO factors?

This is a bit more complicated question, but we will try to be as clear as possible.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to increase three separate factors of any website.

Those are:

Quality Of Traffic

The quality of organic traffic. It means that your content should be great to ensure that people become more interested in your products or services. You must precisely define the keyword for each page and create the best possible content, much better than the competition. Often people make mistakes when choosing a keyword for H1. For example, if your keyword on the front page is video games, and you have a computer service, you will certainly not have sales of your services, because visitors are looking for a website that can offer them video games.

Quantity Of Traffic

In translation, it is the amount of traffic that has been achieved. Once you are sure that your website is indexed by Google and has taken a position on a page, you can start or continue with website optimization. There are several methods that should be used to increase traffic and gain a loyal base of visitors that will eventually turn into customers

Organic Search Results

In Serbian, it would be organic search results. This includes everything that you got through an organic search, in this case on Google, and for which you did not pay anyone

How to write text for SEO?

We have already mentioned that you should not repeat the keyword too many times in the content. You should write simply so that everyone can understand you. Take care that not every visitor of yours is knowledgeable about what you are writing about, so think about him and let him be in your head while you write.

Most often, SEO writing is equated with writing blog posts, which is partly true.

However, the blog and its posts should serve to help some people and explain to them how to solve a problem. Of course, every post should have a link that will lead to the sales page of your products or services.

There are SEO writers who know exactly how to write content for websites.

Whether it is a post, landing page or some other page, each of them has its own rules for how to write and link. An SEO writer knows how to highlight keywords in text and headlines. A good SEO writer isn't cheap, but it's money well spent.

You receive a text that is your property and can only be used by you. Good content will raise you on the Google ladder and increase visits to your website.

And with the increase in entries, sales on the website also rise proportionally.

If, for example, you are a website that deals with the sale of flowers and plants, it would be good to have, in addition to all the necessary pages for work, a blog where you will publish posts. These can be articles like "how to grow flowers" or "top 10 products you can buy from us online".

By writing such texts that are detailed, you will convince your visitors that you are an expert in that field. And through the titles and text, you will insert keywords for better positions on Google.

Let's not forget to mention the links to other pages on your website. Be sure to link to other posts that link to the page your visitor is on.

Of course, don't forget the CTA (click to action) button that will take them to your sales page.

Once you've mastered all of that, be sure to explore the WDF IDF formula.

What is WDF IDF analysis?

WDF IDF is a text analysis method that can be used within search engine optimization to determine keywords and terms.

By analyzing the WDF text using the IDF method, you increase the relevance of the published texts, and thus the entire website page. WDF stands for "within document frequency", and IDF stands for "inverse document frequency". If you are a beginner, we believe that you do not understand anything.

The simplest explanation of this analysis would be that this is a tool that compares the frequency of keywords in the text.

This means that it analyzes the text and tells you whether you have mentioned some words too many or too few times in the content. Or you completely forgot and left them out.

And that's the most important thing, it will show you some words that you haven't used, but your competition has.

WDF The IDF formula actually analyzes your text and gives you suggestions on what to change in it. This way you will be sure that the keywords are mentioned enough times on the page or they will tell you that you have used them too many times.

And even more important than that, they will suggest some words that your competition has used and you haven't.

There is another method which has the abbreviation TF IDF.

It is very popular in SEO circles in America, but it has a much simpler formula.

In order not to explain in detail why it should be avoided, our advice is to use only WDF IDF tools.

Google uses IDF WDF in its algorithm, which a lot of people don't know.

So if you want to check your text, use some WDF IDF tool.

We recommend SEOlyze.com

It is very accurate, comprehensive in reports and you will get the best data you need to optimize your text for search engines.

Everything on it is quick and easy!

Šta je SEO? To je skraćenica od Search Engine Optimizationi predstavlja optimizaciju web sajta za pretraživače
This is a small business in the end and an ideal opportunity to make a point and surpass the competition with the perfect content.
And what is very important for us, it has the Serbian language in the options.
If you work for foreign clients, it also handles the most popular languages.

What are keywords in SEO and what types are there?

When people search for something on Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine, those are actually keywords. That is, what they type in the search box. For example, if you want to buy a new 55-inch TV, one way to search will be to type in 55-inch 4k TV.

The keyword in this case is 55 inch 4k TV and if you want to appear on Google for this keyword your H1 will need to read just like that.

If you have well-done SEO, quality backlinks and high website authority, it will be easier to take a place on the first page.

There are still a lot of things to do, but we will write about that in another text. If you have not done the title, meta description and basic and mandatory settings well, it will be difficult to expect anything.

In that case, everything depends on how your competition did the job.

There are many types of keywords, but the basic division is into Short Tail Keywords and Long Tail Keywords.

Both types are very effective. Mostly, there are more monthly searches for short keywords, there is a lot of competition and they know how to be general.

Long keywords have a smaller number of searches, the competition is much smaller, but sales are much more certain with them.

An example of a short keyword would be a t-shirt, where you don't know if it's male or female, what color it is, and if it has a collar. That's why we say that short keywords can have a broad meaning.

However, a good long keyword would be navy polo shirt for men.

And that's why she's better because she hits such a shirt exactly.

Short Tail Keywords consist of 1 to 3 words. They are most effective when your goal is to attract a large number of visitors. Regardless of the fact that they have a larger number of searches, it is not easy to position yourself for them.
Even in some niches, it is very questionable how effective they are in sales. But don't give up on them, but do research in some tool on how much it makes sense to have a short keyword in the title of the page.
Long Tail Keywords, they always have more than 3 words. The longer they are, it means you can enter a short description of the product.
For example, a dark blue men's two-button polo shirt. This will make it much easier to target your audience, and visitors will get exactly what they were looking for.
Are short tail keywords more sought after than long tail keywords?
No, because 70% of Google searches are based on long tail keywords. Long Tail Keywords overall will not generate as many visits as Short Tail Keywords.
But in the largest number of niches, it will be easier to rank high with the help of Long Tail Keywords, and sales will certainly be more successful.

How to find the best keywords for SEO?

Before starting any website work, start with keyword research. However, this is not necessary because the majority of websites do not include optimization of the website for search engines.

This is done only by those who know that it is necessary for good placement on Google and who, of course, have a budget that will cover all these costs. However, you know that SEO can always be done, at any time.

Even if you work at the very beginning of SEO, later you will have less work and it will be easier for you.

Researching the best SEO keywords for any website page is done by an SEO writer. He researches keywords, changes them and adjusts depending on the situation in relation to the competition.

Analysis for specific concepts within a niche is very important, and without a good understanding, mistakes are easily made.

That's why it's a job where you don't rush and where it's always better to do something then wait for tomorrow and do another research.

Keyword research always reveals more questions to ask the employer.

You will discover a lot of illogicality, but actually these are the search results.

None of us think in the same way, and that's why it's impossible to do quality research without help, that is, using good tools. Keyword research is always a work in progress because the rankings of all types of keywords change over time.

However, when the work is well done, re-analysis will be sufficient once or twice a year.

In SEO, 70% of the work is analysis.

You need to have basic keywords prepared and do further research based on them. Then, with a good tool, you'll find out about similar keywords being searched for that might be better than the ones you thought were the best.

There you will get how many monthly searches they have on average, how difficult it is to position for each of them, which months have the least and most queries and much more.

But these few facts are enough to get you started.

Top 4 SEO Keyword Search Tools

Newbies in SEO may have trouble finding the best keywords at first. You must understand that for SEO the use of tools is essential.

There are many sites and applications that can help you. Over time, you will discover which ones are the best for you.

We don't want to be extensive, so we will only briefly refer to the 4 SEO tools that are the best in our opinion:

Google Planer ključnih riječi

It is located in your Google Ads account and is called Google Keyword Planner.

This is surely one of the best and most accurate tools. Its big plus is that it is completely free! Google has other apps that are great, but Google Keyword Planner is number 1. It's very easy to use. By typing in a keyword, you will get suggestions of what other keywords you could use. In addition, if you are interested in advertising on Google, you can get the minimum and maximum cost per click for a campaign that contains a specific keyword. There is also the average number of monthly searches, the graph of their searches by month, the change compared to the previous year expressed in percentages, how big the competition is and many other analyses. Great app, equally good for beginners and agencies.

Google Trendovi

Another great tool for searching and comparing keywords. It does not require an open account and is accessible to everyone. It is enough to type Google Trends in the searches and click. When the page opens, type the keyword and then the explore button. You will get a page with a chart where you can use the drop down menu to find out the search trend from 2004 to today. There you can compare a few more keywords to determine which one is best for you. Great tool, very easy to use and gives results that will be very helpful. You can choose the results by countries, search time, categories and species

SemRush

In our opinion, the number 1 tool for SEO professionals!

If you work for the needs of the Balkans, SemRush is certainly the best choice. For the USA or Western Europe, it is worth trying the Ahrefs site. The only drawback is the price, currently there are 3 subscription packages. The price at the moment is as follows: Pro package $129.95, Guru package $249.95 and Business package $499.95. Just so you know, these are the prices for a monthly subscription. A very expensive tool, but necessary for advanced SEO. This is a very complex tool and keywords are only a small part of its capabilities. It's great for deep analysis of websites, backlinks, search, competition, positions, advertising, social media, trends, content... It's amazing how many things it covers. It continues to expand services. So don't look at other tools, SemRush is surely the best for the Balkan market.

Screaming frog

Although this is not a classic SEO keyword research tool, it is a must-have for any SEO professional. Besides him and SemRush, you won't need anything else. Screaming Frog is a website crawler that will tell you the status of every page on your website. This is the easiest way to determine if you have and what is the title, meta description, H1, H2 and a lot more. The easiest way to see your site on one page and what needs to be done on it. You can download it from their official website and it's free for sites up to 500 pages. If your needs are larger, the paid version costs 239 euros per year. If you're into SEO, this tool is a must have!

How to start SEO for a website?

We wish there was a universal answer to this question, but there isn't. Each website requires a different approach and work on it. That's why tools like SemRush are essential. With them, you will best understand what the situation is in that niche and what the competition is like.

Based on the results obtained, it will be much easier for you to see how much time and money should be invested in optimizing the website for search engines. You will see how much content needs to be written, how many backlinks your competition has and literally the entire situation in your niche.

When you create a website or a page on it, you should immediately do the indexing process in Google Search Console in order to appear on Google as soon as possible.

We are not talking about other search engines because it is understood that SEO is done in 99% of cases for Google. Very soon after that you will find yourself in search engines. We advise that when you create a page or add content, be sure to index it immediately after creation in GSC (Google Search Console) so that you do not become a victim of content theft.

It is very important that you know that the owner of the text is the page that Google found first. Maybe this is not so popular here, but you should be careful.

You must be sure that Google has analyzed you and included you in its search. Search by entering your website address or by entering your domain name.

If after a few days you can't find your site on the Internet, you need to check a few things:

Za početak pozovite hosting i proverite da li je sve u redu

Proverite da li je stranica dobro povezana

Možda je web sajt loše dizajniran i Google ne može da ga indeksira

Tokom izrade web sajta se preporučuje da se uključi opcija da se web sajt ne indeksira

So make sure that option is still not turned on.

Google je naišao na neke greške na Vašoj web stranici i blokira indeksiranje web sajta

These are some basic recommendations to get you started. If it's not any of these, start further research or hire someone who understands it. A large number of problems can be solved by the hosting on which your website is located.

That's why we advise each of our clients to open an account on Google Search Console and GA4 (Google Analytics 4) when creating a website.

These two tools are necessary for every website in order to detect possible errors and make an analysis in which direction to move.

That's why a Sitemap should be created in GSC, which will give Google an order to periodically review your website. A sitemap allows Google to analyze each of your pages well. It is important that you entrust the creation of content to proven people who are capable of writing good text, that is, content that is better than the competition.

Written content is the most important, because it is the best way for Google and visitors to understand what you actually do. But don't leave out video content if you're able to make it. But if you're not good at making video content, stop at writing.

You can always "borrow" video content on YouTube.

As we wrote, you need to do keywords for each web page.

Also, each website page must have Title, Meta Description, H1.

It's amazing how many good sites there are, we won't even mention the average ones!

You can check every site with the help of a free Google extension. Search for extensions at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions

That is why it is necessary to analyze the situation on Google before creating a website.

To begin with, here are a few facts that are most often mistaken:

Vodite računa da Vaša stranica nije prespora

To nije od ogromne važnosti za SEO, ali će Vas posetioci brzo napuštati ako učitavanje ne ide glatko.

Jedan od najčešćih problema je učitavanje fotografija

Zato obavezno optimizujte svaku fotografiju pre postavljanja na web stranicu.

Uradite obavezno linkove

kojima ćete povezati stranice na Vašem web sajtu

Objavljujte redovno postove

kako bi se posetioci navikli na Vaš web sajt

Vodite računa da budete optimizovani

za pregled preko mobilnih telefona i tableta, a ne samo na računarima.

Odaberite dobar hosting

jer često učitavanje može biti sporo baš zbog njih

Da svaka Vaša stranica web sajta

mora da ima dobar Title, Meta Description i H1

Offpage SEO

All this was Onpage SEO until now and is part of the basic SEO strategy. However, when you do that job well, then you should switch to Offpage SEO. There are several areas and directions, but for us, Backlinks are the most important for Offpage SEO.

In the simplest terms, backlinks are links from a website to your website. Very difficult and painstaking work that is not for everyone.

They are one of the most important things in SEO. As a rule, first you need to arrange the website completely, and only then proceed to the creation of backlinks. Every site has its own rating and in this case it is called Authority Score.

It goes from 0 to 100 and the higher your Authority Score, the more valuable a link on a site that goes from you to it will be. Or vice versa.

Of course, for a backlink to be valuable, it must be Dofollow, never Nofollow because it will not transfer link juice to your page.

Not to confuse you, backlink juice is slang used to describe and measure how much power will be transferred from one page to another.

And it's important that that backlink is Dofollow, because with a Nofollow backlink you give Google a signal that you don't want to waste your juice and give power to another website.

Offpage SEO is not done on your website and it only includes activities that happen outside of it.

The higher the Authority Score of the site that gives you the link, the better result you will get. Quality is important here, not quantity. Because you can buy thousands of backlinks for $100 that will be completely useless to you.

In fact, never buy backlinks like this because Google can penalize you for it. It often happens that Google bans you because of this practice.

There are bad backlink farms that your competition can use against you.

And it's almost imperceptible!

Google will never inform you about this and will not tell you the reason for which you are penalized. That's why using a tool like SemRush is a lifesaver in such situations. There you can easily find contaminated backlinks, copy them and enter them into GSC (Google Search Console).

So you will give up these backlinks and tell Google that you don't want them.

Many have this problem without even realizing it. They spend huge sums on content and other SEO methods without knowing that toxic backlinks are a problem.

Unfortunately, it's cheaper for the competition to destroy you like that, without you even realizing it!

However, Offpage SEO is not just about backlinks.
They are the most important, but there are a few more important things that you still need to pay attention to, namely:
$

Link building

$

Content marketing

$

Social media marketing

$

Guest posts

$

Podcasts

$

Video marketing

These may be some advanced techniques, so to begin with, focus on quality links to your website. Pay attention to the strength of their website, especially the strength of the website from which they send you a link to your website. And be sure to ask for it to be Dofollow!

Can I do SEO for a website myself?

Of course, but it won't be easy. Because there is no single pattern of how to do it. What we have written about so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We didn't even mention the real work, only the preparation.

If the website is functional, an SEO audit should be done for a good result. This is actually the state of your website.

Everything that needs to be done, corrected, inserted, removed is written there. Lots of data!

Each website is a separate business. SEO audit can be on 10 or 100 pages. It all depends on the size and the problems you have noticed on it.

We always advise that before starting the optimization, an audit must be done in order to determine what needs to be done.

In order to understand SEO, you will need at least a few months.

Only then can you start studying, which for the basic level lasts intensively for at least another 3 to 6 months. According to us, only after 6 months of study will you have basic knowledge that you will be able to apply. In our opinion, this knowledge will be sufficient in a large number of cases.

After all, we all learn and progress through work!

By working alone you will surely achieve success and learning will surely pay off. However, if you don't have time, involving an agency or an individual who understands and knows how to do SEO may be a more acceptable option for you.

A big problem in our country is that people do not understand what SEO is and how necessary it is. They think that by creating a website, all the work is done!

However, you are just at the beginning of your journey.

In order for a website to move, you need fuel, in this case it is website optimization for search engines. Simply put, no website will succeed without the SEO services of someone who understands it.

An agency specialized in SEO knows how to rank on the first page.

There is a shorter way to be on the first page, and that is Google advertising. However, you will be on the first page while paying, when you stop your place will be taken by someone else.

However, with SEO, the situation is reversed.

It takes a lot of work and patience in the beginning. However, after a few months, the results arrive and once you take a position, with a little maintenance, you can be on the first page for years.

In the long run, advertising always loses compared to SEO, and convincingly so!
Another important fact - Many people do not like ads on Google and trust organic search more.
That's why if you're thinking, we always advise our clients to do quality SEO first.
SEO is much more than website positioning. It ensures excellent content that is optimized and competitive, and will provide you with a website that will be understandable and easy for your visitors to navigate.
And all that results in more sales!
People think that a photo or video sells a product. However, that is only one part. By describing that product and its advantages, you will much more easily convince the visitor to buy your product or service.
With the combination of a good image and text, you are on the right track!
It is the most difficult solution, but in the long run it is also the best.
If there are shortcuts, we would be happy to reveal them to you!

If you hire an individual or agency for SEO, you will have more time to improve your business. SEO is difficult in the beginning, after that it follows a well-established path.

You should know which methods and strategies to apply and not waste time with peripheral matters.

An SEO master has knowledge and experience and knows how to set things up.

Very often, websites do not have a good structure, so people find it difficult to move from page to page and cannot find their way around. And that is one of the SEO jobs, how to make the website easy to use.

Because a bad structure loses the link juice that is at the top of the pyramid of your website. You're wasting your hard-earned power on some pages that don't mean much to you, while important pages have no power and can't rank well on Google regardless of everything being fine.

A good SEO company has its own team of designers and developers who will help make all of this happen.

We know what and how it can go, analysis is enough. You can have a good idea, but bring it to us so we can shape it.

With your help, the best results will be achieved!

Black hat / White hat SEO

As in any other industry, in SEO optimization you will come across different approaches to get the best results.

In this case, how best to optimize a website. Thus, in SEO there are two directions, two schools - Black hat and White hat. You can probably guess that one way is correct and the other is not.

Here we will briefly explain what and how these two directions work. Of course, we will also give you a few examples.

We will also mention Gray Hat SEO, which slips between them. This is a very important topic that you need to know something about so that you don't put your business at risk.

So let's go!

What is White hat?

In short, it is the correct and honest way to optimize a website for Google and other search engines.

It is based on three principles:

Sledi smernice koje Google preporučuje

Google ima svoja pravila koja bi trebali da se svi pridržavamo. On želi da posao bude pošteno odradjen i da posetioci dobiju pravu vrednost. Bez obzira da li je to lični blog ili e-commerce. Ukratko, ne smete biti manipulativni i morate raditi posao pošteno, a Google će Vas za trud nagraditi. Zato Google vodi računa da ne prevarite njegov algoritam.

Neka fokus bude na posetiocima

White hat traži sadržaj i promene koje mogu biti još korisnije posetiocima. Google ima prioritet da svojim korisnicimapruži što bolje iskustvo, pa zato njegov složeni algoritam na osnovu pretraga odredjuje ko treba i gde treba da se nalazi. Zato Google smatra da je White hat jedini ispravan način SEO optimizacije

Radite uvek na duge staze

Sve ove Google strategije se zasnivaju na tome da prečice ne postoje i da biste pružili dobar sadržaj neophodan je veliki trud i poznavanje teme o kojoj pišete. A to znači da će biti potrebno puno vremena i veliki budžet da se sve uradi kako treba. Ali sem dugoročne visoke pozicije, ovim pristupom se poboljšava korisničko iskustvo što dalje utiče na Vaš autoritet na mreži i povećanje prodaje

What is Black hat?

It is the opposite of White hat, which means that Google prohibits it, that is, punishes those who apply it.

Black hat is the other side of the coin and it has principles on which it is based, which are:

Krši Google pravila i smernice

Taktika u Black hat SEO metodi se potpuno razlikuje od White hat pristupa. On pokušava da prevari Google algoritam i da se za kratko vreme rangira što je više moguće.

Baziran je na metodama koje su manipulativne prirode

Black hat princip je da manipuliše Google algoritam kako bi on uspeo da pozicionira stranicu što bolje. To se neretko dešava jer postoje milioni web sajtova koji to rade. Google-u je teško da to otkrije, ali pre ili kasnije će to otkriti i kazniti Vas. On obmanjuje Google da je njegov sadržaj najbolji, iako je to daleko od istine.

Black hat fokus je meteorski rast.

Google nije savršen iako ima najbolji algoritam u odnosu na druge pretraživače. Upravo te rupe se koriste kako bi se prevario sistem. Google nekada ignoriše takve pojave do odredjenog trenutka. Nekada vrlo brzo banuje takve izvore. Black hat metoda dovodi vrlo brzo do visokih rezultat uz vrlo malo rada. One mogu trenutno da daju rezultat, ali je on kratkog veka.

Now you are probably wondering, what should we do?

Our advice is the same as in life - Be committed, work honestly and you will be rewarded!

There are no shortcuts to success online either. Even if you get away with something and manage to bypass the Google algorithm, you won't have the value that others can offer.

What is the difference between Black hat/ White hat SEO? Is Gray Hat SEO Good?

 

The main difference between these two techniques is in the way they work. White hat SEO respects Google's principles and rules, while Black hat SEO violates all of them.

Everyone's goal is to make money, the only question is which way is right?

The goals of both methods are the same, but the way to reach them is completely different.

In order to practically explain it to you, we will mention the techniques on which both methods are based.

We start with White hat SEO:

Guest Blogging.

To je pisanje tekstova ili neki drugi sadržaj koji se nalazi na nekom drugom web sajtu i na kome se nalazi veza do Vašeg web sajta. Na taj način dobijate backlink-ove (povratne veze).

Pisanje kvalitetnog sadržaja

Ovo je vrlo važno kako bi Google prepoznao vrednost u Vašem tekstu koja će pomoći posetiocima. Tekst mora biti originalan i razumljiv

Ispravke

Vrlo važno, kako bi Google dobio što bolje objašnjenje o čemu pišete na stranici. Naravno, pre započetog rada je potrebna detaljna analiza.

Link Baiting

To je metoda stvaranja kvalitetnog sadržaja koji ima za cilj da dobijete backlink-ove. Da bi imali što bolje rezultate, pisci često pribegavaju kontraverznim naslovima

We continue with Black hat SEO techniques:

Cloaking

Ništa drugo nego prikrivanje sadržaja. Jedno se prikazuje pretraživaču, a sasvim drugo korisnicima

Dodavanje ključnih riječi

Ovo je bilo jako popularno do pre 10-ak godina. Radi se tako što ključnu reč ponovite bezbroj puta na stranici. A često je bilo nevidljivo posetiocima

Skriveni tekst

Tehnika gde posetilac ne vidi tekst koji Google bot vidi. Tehnika od koje možete samo dobiti kaznu

Kopiranje sadržaja

Ovo je način kako najkraćim putem doći do kvalitetnog teksta. Medjutim Google ingnoriše sadržaj koji je on već indeksirao, a prekopiran je kasnije na neki drugi web sajt

We have mentioned only a few techniques, but there are many more. We promise to make one article only on this topic.

Let's not forget Grey hat SEO.

You can guess what it is about. This technique is not mentioned that often. It is between Black hat and White hat SEO and takes the best of both worlds. It uses more techniques than the Black Hat method, but within limits to avoid a possible manual penalty.

And that's the worst thing that can happen to a website. Google simply removes you from the search.

There is an option to go back, but Google is very strict about this.

You have to know that something Google tolerates today doesn't mean it will be like that forever. Bad things just happen in some Google update and you simply disappear.

When you do it right, things like this can never be so radical.

This is exactly what Grey Hat SEO relies on.

If you don't work according to Google's guidelines, two things can happen: By updating the Google algorithm, you simply disappear, or even worse, you get a manual penalty from Google!

The first significant update in this regard happened in 2012 under the name "Penguin". .
On that occasion, many websites were removed that Google determined were using manipulative methods in order to achieve the best possible position.
Google continued on that path and that's why our advice is not to use Black hat SEO techniques because it's only a matter of time before you get the bill for it!

Conclusion

We hope that through this text you have learned something that you did not know. We tried to explain some basics in SEO, but you have to understand that SEO is much more complex. Of course, there will be new articles where we will go even deeper into a topic.

With every Google Core Update, things in SEO change a little bit.

That's why it's important to follow the Core Google Update! They are the most important for us and the changes are then for everyone. But don't worry, they are not that frequent and happen a couple of times a year.

Be sure to research On Page and Off Page SEO. Read some of the Black hat/White hat SEO debates to help you decide which way to go.

SEO is the most important thing after creating a website. The sooner you understand this, the easier it will be for your website to progress to the first page of Google. Be sure that people whose websites are highly ranked know what SEO is.

Research SEO whether you're going to do it yourself or hire a professional to do it for you!

That way you will get answers to some questions. In digital business, visibility is everything if you want to get ahead. The time will come very soon (for some niches it has already come), when you will not exist if you are not on the search engines. InStore sales are still a much stronger segment of the business, but be aware that this is also changing.

Imagine how it was 10 years ago and try to imagine how it will be in 10 years?

If you have a website, take advantage of the opportunities provided by SEO. It is a long-term job and from our experience we can say that the results are always visible. You have to be patient because it takes at least a few months for the results, but know that Google always rewards those who provide good content!

We have suggested a couple of tools that we also use in our work. There are a lot of good tools, so that will be one of our next topics.

Use them because they can help you a lot in your work. You must understand that the competition on the Internet is huge and that what you are planning to start, someone has already been doing for a long time. But keep in mind that with good work you can overtake almost all competition!

SEO is not just a recommendation to increase your business, SEO is necessary if you want someone to find you on Google.

Today, almost all people in Serbia use the Internet and online traffic will increase from year to year. So be wise and optimize your website!

Be ready for what's coming.

If you don't have time to learn about it, but still want to optimize your website for search engines, give us a call!

You can write us an email at info@smartthink.rs or visit our contact page www.smartthink.rs/kontakt/

For more information on how we can help you, visit our website www.smartthink.rs

In addition to web site optimization for search engines, our specialty is web site development and Google Ads advertising. In any case, we will be glad if you call us and we can help you.

How much does Google Ads cost?

How much does Google Ads cost?

How much does Google Ads cost?

How much does Google Ads cost is a good question that we hear at the beginning of every conversation when it comes to advertising on Google. We understand that every client initially wants to know how much Google Ads costs for their campaign.

The good news is that anyone with a website can create a Google Ads campaign. The bad news is that we cannot tell you right away how much the campaign will cost you.

There is no quick and accurate answer. It depends primarily on the price that others have bid for a keyword. That is why it is necessary to do a little analysis through some tools to find the minimum and maximum price for some keywords on which your business is based.

The price and position of the ad on Google are affected by some other factors that we will mention later.

But don't worry, through this text we will show you all the variables that affect the formation of the price in Google Ads.

So you will be able to understand the whole process yourself and determine the budget for advertising on Google Ads.

Image Accordion Title
Image Accordion Title

What factors affect the cost of Google Ads?

As we have already mentioned, there is no simple and quick way to give you an answer, which would be the price of your Google Ads campaign.

It depends on your activity, current trends, but first of all on the price offered by your competition for certain keywords.

It depends on the area. It depends on whether you are a retailer or a wholesaler.

For example, legal and accounting services, insurance, real estate sales are areas where the cost per click, or CPC (Cost per click), is generally high. The reason is that the client can make a bill of several million dinars with one purchase.

That's why the competition calculates that one click can pay more than 10 euros and that it will pay off in the final sum.

On the other hand, there are many niches where the price per click is only a few euro cents.

No matter what the keyword is, you need to make a good strategy.

For some products, customers do a lot of research and need more time to make a decision. This means that they will return to your website several times until they make a purchase decision.

However, consumer trends and advertising platforms like Google Ads never stand still. Even when you start a campaign, you must frequently monitor changes and adjust your offer against the competition.

Sometimes an event can affect the price of advertising.

Take for example covid and the men's t-shirt keyword. In the middle of the corona, the price per click was over 40 Eurocents at one point. To date, this has reduced to an average of 3,600 Google searches per month for the keyword men's t-shirts.

At the moment, the minimum bid for the top of the page is 4 euro cents, and the maximum bid for the top of the page is 14 euro cents.

Use Google Ad Manager for Google Ads

For any keyword, you can check the price yourself in Google Ad Manager.

It is enough to go to the keyword planner, type in a keyword and discover some other keywords that it will offer you for the campaign.

Actually Google Ad Manager is the best tool for these things and it is completely free.

Recent research has shown that for highly profitable niches, the average ROI (return on investment) for Google Ads is 800%. This means that for an amount of 100 euros invested in Google Ads, it brings a turnover of 800 euros.

However, it all depends on how well you manage your account.

Because if you have the knowledge and follow the events within the campaign, you can save a lot of money in the advertising campaign by making changes.

The most popular way of advertising on Google Ads is CPC (Cost per click). You don't pay to display an ad, but only if someone clicks on your ad.

You can let Google do all the work for you, but we do not advise you to do so. The reason is primarily that such a campaign will be much more expensive than setting it up yourself.

If you want your Google Ads costs to be lower and your return to be higher, you need to be aware of a few things.

First, maintain the proper structure of your Google Ads account. Make a report on the performance of advertisements at least once a week and optimize the ads based on the results. Analyze the list of keywords.

If necessary, remove some keywords and add others.

How does Google Ads determine cost per click (CPC)?

What's interesting about Google Ads is that it works like an auction. But that doesn't mean that whoever offers the most money will be the first.

You are probably wondering what kind of auction is this?

It's strange for everyone at first, but you will understand that in addition to money, Google Ads takes into account some other things to determine the place of advertisements on a page.

The first thing Google evaluates is quality. When one of us searches for something on Google, it looks to see if any of the advertisers are bidding on a keyword that is relevant to that query. If there are multiple bidders for that keyword, Google chooses the winner based on the Quality Score it assigns to each advertiser.

Ratings range from 1 to 10 and depend on the ad, the relevance of your page for that keyword, and the expected click-through rate based on your history.

Not to confuse you further, this means that if you have a high rating but have a lower bid for a keyword than someone who has a lower rating than you, it can easily happen that you are ahead of them.

That's why the place on Google Ads is not determined by the highest price, but also by the rating you get from Google Ads.

With the help of its tools, Google calculates the ad rank of all providers for a keyword.

This is how it determines where and in which place it will place more ads.

In practice, this means that the quality score is multiplied by your highest offer and whoever has the best result is in 1st place.

But this means that Google doesn't necessarily have to charge the highest bid you've given it.

What is a successful click through rate in a search campaign?

The most popular way of advertising on Google Ads is CPC (Cost per click).

This actually means that you don't pay for the display of the ad, but only if someone clicks on your ad. One of the important metrics for analyzing the success of ads is the percentage between the number of impressions and the number of clicks on the ad.

This is called CTR (click through rate). A successful CTR is from 3% to 5% for search campaigns, and 1% for display campaigns.

Anything over 8% for search campaigns is considered an exceptional result.

We have already explained the formula by which Google Ads calculates the price of ads. With a lower price and a higher rating, you can be the first.

And that's a good way because Google Ads doesn't give anyone an advantage that way. In the digital world, this means that your ad can be placed in front of a large company without any problems.

We mentioned that there are variables that depend on the position of your ad on Google.

We have mentioned the most important ones. Less important are the relevance and UX (user experience) of the website, quality at the time of the auction, location, user context, alternative bidding methods and ad formats.

What is the best way to determine the budget in a Google Ads campaign?

This is very important for any client starting a Google Ads campaign. If not set up correctly, it can happen that Google spends the daily budget in a few hours or spends the monthly budget in a few days.

This often happens to inexperienced people who set up a search campaign and let Google manage their campaign.

And that's why many say that Google Ads is unprofitable and expensive.

However, you should do some research on how Google advertising works or leave it to an experienced agency. This does not necessarily mean that it will be more expensive in the final sum.

From our experience, a good marketer who has practical knowledge in Google Ads will always make you a cheaper and better advertisement than you.

So let's get started:

- First you need to determine how much you are willing to spend monthly on Google advertising.

- Then take a good look at which products are most important to you on the web pages and do keyword research for those products or services (we advise you to use Google Ad manager).

- Once you've done that, determine how much you're willing to pay the most for each keyword.

- Determine the average daily budget to form the monthly budget for Google Ads.

This will be quite enough to start with. You can do the shared budget feature later, but to start with, it's best to have each campaign have a separate budget. That way, you'll have a better idea of which ads are working and which aren't. Based on this, it will be easier to make changes.

But you should know that Google Ads will not spend the same amount every day. Sometimes it will be more than the daily budget, and sometimes less. Only at the end of the month will you see the total consumption, but it will always be around the set amount.

With a budget, you tell Google Ads how much you want to spend in 1 month.

By doing so, you limit the spending of your money for the purpose of advertising. Everything is very transparent and you will receive a detailed report every month on how much and where advertising was spent. Google may one day spend significantly more if it thinks it will lead to more clicks and conversions.

But on a monthly basis, the consumption will be close to the amount you set.

The monthly budget is determined by the client and by dividing by the number of days in the month, we get the daily budget.

To know that the largest number of agencies do Google Ads campaigns at the level of 1 month.

Use the keyword planner within Google Ads Manager

Use the best tool to determine what price to set for each keyword. And that is the keyword planner within Google Ad Manager.

There are other tools, but even the best marketers must use Google Ad Manager. It is free, provides a lot of relevant and true information. It also has additional tools and results, so you can see when and in what period a certain keyword is searched more or less.

You will also receive a list of similar keywords that will surely help you to do a better campaign on Google Ads.

When you advertise on Google, you have the right to create several campaigns, each with a different budget. It often happens that some ad spends the daily budget, and some does not. That's why you can change your budget during advertising by better optimizing your spending for each campaign.

At the end of the month, you will certainly see in the analysis how much was spent for each ad per day for all campaigns. It might seem a little confusing, but you'll figure it all out very quickly.

You can play with the daily budgets to see how it will affect the daily consumption, i.e. sales over 1 month.

You need to advertise for at least a few months to figure out what works best for you and how much your monthly budget should be.

In Google Ad Manager you will find everything you need for bidding and what amount your competition has offered for each keyword.

Always try with the minimum price or something slightly above it.

Track and change the amounts for each keyword as you see fit. To know that once an ad has been placed in Google Ads, it is not a done deal. As we mentioned, you need to monitor each campaign to get the most clicks and conversions for the lowest possible cost.

Try to make your quality score as high as possible so that you pay as little as possible for the ad. Monitoring will ensure that your keyword bids are good and that you are a successful competitor.

If you bid manually you can set a maximum CPC per ad group or you can set different bids for each keyword in that ad group.

A worse and more expensive option is automatic bidding, but it's ok if you don't want to deal too much with analysis and costs.

What else affects Google Ads costs?

Just as there are elements that influence the quality assessment of each ad, i.e. website, there are other factors that depend on the position of your ad. There are methods with which you can save on your monthly budget.

Ad scheduling is actually deciding when and to whom your ads will be shown. This is where you will define to Google Ads when you want your ads to be displayed.

This is particularly useful for some industries. For example, if you are a bakery and you work from 6 am to 4 pm, it might not make sense to advertise after hours because you probably don't have online sales.

If you are an e-commerce company, it makes sense for your advertisement to run 24 hours a day. Basically it all depends on your business and niche.

There is a useful alternative. Your campaign can run 24 hours a day, but your budget can be higher during certain parts of the day. Thus, you will get increased visibility during a part of the day when it is needed.

After a month or two of the campaign, with a little better analysis, you can optimize it for each ad.

Geotargeting is very important for all businesses, especially small ones.

Within the budget, you can allocate larger funds for advertising for certain areas. This technique is also known as location targeting. Geotargeting allows an ad to be displayed only on Google in certain areas.

It can be the whole country, city, municipality or a small part of the city where your store is located.

Google Ads geotargeting is a great way to take advantage of the mobile search and on-the-go shopping trend.

And here you can have a budget that differs at the level of the state or city, and even the neighborhood.

Many people are not aware that 80% of searches take place via mobile. That's why, since a few years ago, Google attached great importance to web sites that are adapted to mobile devices.

It is even recommended that the development of each website is done first for mobile devices and only then for desktop devices.

How to plan pay per click and daily budget?

Long gone are the days when people surfed exclusively on computers. Today, there are several devices from which visitors access the Internet. Searches via mobile phones are definitely in the first place.

This means that you have to pay special attention when creating an ad that will appear on a mobile phone.

You can limit the display of the campaign to desktop devices only, although we don't think this is useful. That's why we recommend that every ad be displayed on mobile phones, desktop devices and tablets. Determining the daily budget and how it will be spent is the most important factor in budget planning for PPC (pay per click).

Once you master the basics of Google Ads, there are advanced features that can better target your audience and reduce your budget.

We hope you understand how the basic Google Ads advertising process works. We'll come back to the question of how much does one click cost?

It depends on the area where you intend to run the campaign. The price for the men's t-shirt keyword differs whether you run an ad in Serbia or France.

As a rule, the price per click is always much lower in Serbia than in the West Europe.

You can check all prices for keywords in Google Ad manager. How ungrateful it is to give someone a price off the top of your head is proven by the fact that the price of one click ranges from a few eurocents to several hundred euros. Just in 1 click!

The most expensive clicks are for insurance, lawyers, loans, donations and education. Digital marketing is quite different from traditional advertising.

The most popular way of advertising on Google Ads is CPC (Cost per click). You don't pay to display an ad, but only if someone clicks on your ad.

In newspapers, you pay for the amount of space you occupy on the page, while on the website, the size of the ad is determined by the owner and is the same for everyone.

As we explained to you, the ad price is actually affected by how much your competition bid for a certain keyword.

This means that it is better to avoid the keyword "roof repair" and use "how much does roof repair cost" for the campaign. If you have a bigger budget, use both keywords, and if you have to somehow fit in, use keywords that have a lower price and a sufficient number of searches.

This may sound easy, but it really isn't.

If you are running campaigns for the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Australia or Switzerland, know that the cost per click can be incredible for our opportunities. You can't advertise there with a small budget.

But in proportion to the budget, turnovers are also high. But that is another dimension of business.

To begin with, it is more than enough to limit your advertising on Google Ads through search and display campaigns.

As a rule, we are much better, but also more expensive search campaigns. But if you choose, we always give priority to the search campaign.

If you want to save money, it's not a bad idea to consider long tail keywords. Searches for them are much lower than for some general keywords.

But they are many times cheaper and have a much better performance when it comes to sales. And that's actually the goal of all advertising!

We will give you an example, monthly men's shoes in Serbia are searched an average of 8100 times and the price per click is currently 0.12 euros. Google Ads Manager gave us another 42 suggestions where no one had ever bid for a large number of keywords.

This means that you will set the price, and even better than that you have no competition for that keyword.

Practically, your ad will be the only one in the search.

Long keywords, despite having fewer searches, are actually more commercial. It is important that in the aggregate they have a larger search volume and a lower cost per click. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are great for research.

We use them, especially for SEO research.

The only downside is their high price!

The most popular way of advertising on Google Ads is CPC (Cost per click). You don't pay to display an ad, but only if someone clicks on your ad.

How important is Quality Score in Google Ads?

Quality Score is a user experience rating that is obtained based on your campaign and the landing page on the website for a keyword.

Ratings are from 1 to 10.

There are reports where you can check the quality score for each keyword. The essence of the rating is an indicator of how useful your campaign is to consumers.

There are 3 factors that affect the Quality Score:

CTR (click through rate)

means how likely someone is to click on your Google ad for the keyword being searched for.

Ad relevance(ad relevance)

proves whether it makes sense for your ad to appear for a specific keyword, i.e. whether it is relevant for it.

Landing page experience

it tells whether the information on the landing page matches what the ad is offering and vice versa.

Now we come to the question of how to improve the quality rating? All ads and pages on the website where they lead should be fine-tuned. It's the most effective way to improve CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience.

CTR shows how many people who see your ad click on it and go to your website. It is very important and should be used to evaluate the success of each ad. Based on its results, we make ad corrections and later compare the results to see if we managed to increase the CTR.

It can be "average" or "above average" which means that there are no big problems with CTR for your keywords.

It is not good when the result is "below average" and it is a clear signal that something needs to be fixed. The simplest way you should start is to increase the mention of your keyword in the ad.

But don't overdo it in any way.

Ad relevance is another way you can improve your Quality Score. Here it is important how well the keyword matches your ads.

Here too there are three statuses as for CTR - Average, above average or below average.

That's why it's important to pay special attention when writing an ad. But the good thing is that even if you make a mistake, you can easily and quickly correct the ad text in Google Ads.

Because a good ad tells your potential customers what value you can provide them.

We still need to improve the landing page experience.

First, it is important that the ad and the landing page have the same keyword.

To make it easier for you, you can ask yourself a few questions:

Is my website organized well?

Will that website be useful to someone who clicks on the ad?

Is everything clearly explained on the landing page?

Does our website have the keywords we have advertised for?

Make sure that the ad leads to exactly the page that the visitor wants. This means that if you advertise men's polo shirts, clicking on the ad should lead to the men's polo shirt category. Do not let clicking on the ad take you to the entire men's collection or any other category.

Take care to avoid pop-ups when visitors arrive on your website. This will create resistance from visitors and is not good for SEO.

This often causes them to leave the page without viewing your website.

This is one of the reasons why it is important to have a well-designed website, with good texts.

It is important to:

That you have good and useful information.

Links to other pages so visitors can explore your website

A clearly displayed shopping cart if you are e-commerce

Contact information

There are many more factors, but this is enough to get you started.

It's a good idea to use multiple ad groups instead of placing all your keywords in one ad group.

Group your keywords into similar categories, and then start creating ads that are relevant to each category.

How to find the best keywords for a Google Ads campaign?

There are a lot of ways, but not all of them are that good. We use only two tools, GA4 and keyword tool within Google Ad manager. These are free Google tools that will be quite enough for you.

There you will find various keywords that you would never have thought of. You will see how much they are in demand and what is the price per click.

Keyword Tool will give you suggestions and variations, so you won't waste time and make mistakes with keywords.

In GA4 you can check how you stand with certain keywords. If you don't have a big budget, it might not be a bad idea not to publish an ad for some keywords for which you are already at the top of the search. But if you can stand it, it wouldn't be bad if you still have an ad for the terms for which you are in the top 3 on Google.

Check what and how the competition is doing, and it will be enough to review the first and second pages of the search.

You will get some ideas and you will be able to easily conclude where they did well and where they went wrong.

If you want to have good results and make the most of your budget, don't fall into one of the most common traps:

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Avoid wasting money on a bunch of useless keywords without any plan and order. That way, you'll only turn away a potential customer when he realizes that your landing page isn't what he was actually looking for.

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Do not make the ads have a home page as a landing page, but make a link exactly to the product you have advertised.

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Measure and analyze results. It's not a difficult and complicated job, and it can make a big difference.

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Change ads that aren't working. It's normal to make mistakes, it happens to everyone.

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Don't forget campaign optimization. Sometimes quite a bit is enough for the results to explode.

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Analyze the competition. Already in the text itself, you will see whether they are good or not.

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Measure conversions. It's the best way to determine whether or not an ad should continue its journey.

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Take care of ROI (return of investment).That's the best way to know if the campaign paid off.

Let's not forget AdSense and the Display Network

So far, we've only talked about one advertising channel on Google. However, there are others, and AdSense and Display Network are definitely worth mentioning.

What's AdSense

You must have noticed that there are advertisements on many pages on many websites. Some are leased and paid directly to the website owner, while most other ads are leased from Google. This means that Google shares the earnings with you to display ads on your website by doing all the work.

You don't have to worry about advertisers!

For each click, i.e. view, you get a pre-agreed amount. This way of earning is popular with informational websites, while it is hardly present with e-commerce websites.

A website owner who wants to make money from advertisements just needs to open an AdSense account and insert the code sent by Google to the place where he wants them to be displayed. But you should know that based on the content of your page, Google determines which ad will appear on your website. If you sell televisions on your website, there is a good chance that an ad will appear from a website that sells blu ray players.

Or, based on your search, an ad will appear on the website you opened for a topic you previously researched.

Mostly all search engines follow what you are searching for and accordingly send you ads in order to possibly buy something.

The most popular way of advertising on Google Ads is CPC (Cost per click). You don't pay to display an ad, but only if someone clicks on your ad.

And Google does all this based on the advertisements that advertisers have created in Google Ad manager. On the basis of that database, it is not difficult for him to always insert an advertisement concerning the pages you have visited.

They are simply so powerful that there is no tool that will show more relevant results. And all this means that Google Ads and AdSense are part of one system.

On one side you have the seller and on the other side the advertiser.

Almost the perfect way to advertise!

To know that there is another way of advertising besides CPC. That's CPM (cost per mile). It is used less and calculated differently.

CPC is calculated not by the number of clicks but by the number of impressions.

With CPM, a fixed price is paid for 1,000 impressions, not 1,000 clicks on the ad.

The biggest part of Google's earnings, that is, Alphabet Inc., which, among other things, is the owner of Google, is Google Ads advertising. In 2013, they had advertising revenue of $51 billion.

In 2022, the revenue from advertising on Google was about 250 billion dollars. It's almost unbelievable how you can increase your traffic 5 times in 10 years for something you hardly notice on the page.

We also mentioned display campaigns on Google so that we don't forget them.

It's a type of ad that combines text, images, and a URL that leads to a website where the customer can learn more. There are many display ad formats, they can be as an image, animated or in the form of a video with or without text.

The most common form of these ads is within a banner.

Be sure that you have seen such ads without even realizing it.

Display ads also run on Facebook, but Google display ads have powerful audience targeting features and ad formats that other platforms don't even come close to.

The most important terms in Google Ads!

This won't be anything new for people who are already into this, but it will certainly help beginners to understand some terms or abbreviations.

So let's get started:

Google Ad Campaign

A Google Ads campaign contains your ad groups, which can be divided by location, ad schedule, budget, and so on. Campaigns are used to organize different categories of services and products. As an option, Google allows you to choose several types of campaigns.

Google Ads search campaign

These are actually ads that are shown to you when you search

Google Ads display campaign

Popular for online retailers. The most popular advertising channel after the Google search campaign.

Google Ads video campaign

Advertisement in the form of a video advertisement lasting from 6 to 15 seconds. Appears on YouTube.

App Campaign

It allows you to advertise your application in different places on Google

Google display network

Abbreviated as GDN, it is a network of websites that allow Google ads to be displayed on their pages. This is an optional setting for Google Ads users, so be sure to consider whether you need it

Conversions

A conversion is recorded when a user performs a specific action after clicking on your ad. Conversions can be micro, and it can be anything like going to the next page. However, macro conversions, such as the sale of an item or service, are much more important.

Keywords

Keywords or phrases are chosen to match or match the terms that users search for on Google. There are 3 basic types of keywords that differ in terms of matching. These are broad match, exact match and phrase match keywords

Ad Extensions

By using ad extensions, you can provide additional valuable information and increase the result of your ad

Bidding Strategies

It's a bidding strategy. As we have already written, every created ad goes through an evaluation process on which the price and position of your ad depends

Google Search Network

This includes publishing ads or campaigns on Google and its partner search engines

Conversion Focused

When you want customers to take a specific action on your website

Brand awareness

A way to raise awareness of your brand. Here, sales and conversion are not as important as the brand itself

Interaction Strategies

When you want to increase views or interactions on your ads

Product Awareness

When you want to increase awareness of your products or services with the help of Google Ads

Negative Keywords

We haven't mentioned them, but they are very important. They help prevent your ads from showing for certain keywords, hence the name negative keywords.

Impressions

Impressions represent how many times your ad was displayed on the search results page, regardless of whether someone clicked on the link or not

Click through rate

Known as CTR, it is a metric for the success of your PPC campaign and measures the ratio of how many search visitors saw your ad and clicked on it. It is measured in percentages, and the higher it is, the better

AdRank

The higher your AdRank, the higher its position in searches. It is determined by your maximum bid and your quality rating.

Quality Score

It's actually a quality score for your ad to help Google determine where you'll be in paid search

Ad Group

An ad group is the next level in Google Ads manager. We may not have mentioned it, but every campaign consists of at least two or more ads

Landing page

It is actually the page where visitors will come to your website by clicking on the ad in the search engine

Average CPC

It is the average price per click throughout the entire campaign. It is obtained simply by dividing the price of all clicks by the total number of clicks.

Maximum CPC

This is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for 1 click on your website. It can be set for one or all keywords in your campaign

CPM

Cost per mile is calculated at a fixed rate for 1,000 impressions of your ad in searches, regardless of whether the ad was clicked or not

ROI (return on investment)

It is a representation of how much your earnings are, i.e. profit after deducting all expenses.

Reach and Frequency

It's an option you have in the reports where you can see how many people saw your ad during a certain period. Reach is the number of unique users, and frequency is the average number of times it was shown to those users

Ad Schedulling

This refers to determining in which period and how your ad will be displayed. There are several options, they can be displayed 24 hours a day or as you choose

Demographic

In the settings, you can define your target group demographically, that is, to which people your ad will be shown

Conversion Rate

A conversion is a click, and as a result it can be a certain time spent on the page, a purchase, signing up for news from the website and other options.

Conversion Optimizer

Be sure to use this option!

It serves to optimize campaigns, and by activating it, you will certainly achieve more conversions

Language and Location Targeting

An excellent option with which you can show, for example, an advertisement only to Serbs living in France. Google Ad manager gives you the option of displaying advertisements by country, region, city or part of a city. In the language you want

Conclusion

 

If you are a new or future user of Google Ads, don't worry. It will be a bit complicated and confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it very quickly.

Google Ads manager is very good and very intuitive. Try some simpler options to get started, and if you need some training, we recommend a course on Udemy.com, and we would recommend Ivana Petrović as a local lecturer.

Don't rush anywhere, and if you need some help, write to us at info@smartthink.rs

Be sure to properly open your Google Ads account to publish campaigns. Let each type of product or service have its own campaign, and within each campaign you can have multiple ads. Make sure that the ad has a well-placed link exactly to the page of your website that corresponds to the content of your ad.

If you advertise vacations in Palma de Mallorca, do not allow the link to go to the page on your website where all the vacations in the Mediterranean are listed.

Take care of keywords, but don't forget negative keywords.

Analyze the competition to make it easier for you to achieve even better results. If you are doing a Google Ads campaign for Croatia for example, search the results in their market.

If you do not use a VPN, the simplest way is to add site:hr after entering the term in the browser (this is for Croatia, for France fr, for Germany de, etc).

It looks like this, men's shirts site:hr

Review campaigns and ads every few days. Correct the things you think are not good and optimize the ads.

You may need to change some or all of your ad text, display time, change keywords (whether subtracting or adding), display location, pausing or canceling some ads if they're not performing well, etc.

Don't forget to connect the website with your GA 4 account and Google search console. These are two free Google tools that are necessary for every website, but not only for Google Ads advertising.

You will not find better and more accurate tools with a lot of useful data that are also free!

However, we do not advise you to start without training. If you don't have time, better find someone who will help you.

Because the damage can be more than you expect. A good marketer can optimize your ad and save a lot of money.

Once again, feel free to contact us if you have any questions about Google Ads, SEO or website development at info@smartthink.rs

Do you really need a website?

Do you really need a website?

Do you really need a website?

Yes, if you want to expand your business and reach a large audience. Online presence is becoming more and more important every year.

A large number of companies and individuals use the Internet to better present themselves to their audience. Although today there are still many options with which you can create an online presence, our opinion is that a website will be necessary for a long time to come for most businesses.

In combination with social networks and various platforms, you actually get the best model of representation in the digital world.

Social networks are very popular today for advertising, but consider that for a large number of physical or digital products they serve only as a channel to the website where the sale will actually take place.

Social networks will never have the level of control or customization that websites have.

We will try to briefly explain why you really need a website in 2023.

Image Accordion Title
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For which areas can the website be used?

Literally for everyone!

For any job, for presentation, for learning, whatever comes to your mind. However, the most common use of web sites is related to presentation, sales, branding and advertising.

A user-friendly website with information about your business and the products you can offer is currently the best advertisement with the help of which you can reach potential customers across the country or the world.

Regardless of whether you reach the customer through paid or organic means.

We are always in favor of a combination that includes both methods!

The website provides an opportunity to show your brand in the best light and be side by side with the best in your industry. And even better if you're in the right hands. There is no more effective way to promote than a website and no way to advertise in the real world is as good.

However, there are no shortcuts here either and the name has been building for years.

But if you've been online for a long time, posting good articles and videos or offering interesting products, success will come. People easily recognize quality even if they do not understand a certain area.

This is the easiest way to communicate with potential clients and build relationships with them.

The good thing about any website is that customers can access it whenever they want. This is a fact that everyone knows and that enables customers to shop with you 24 hours a day.

This is what we call shopping from the armchair!

Even if you are small, in this way you are given the opportunity for your company to grow at an incredible speed and reach people that you would not have reached in any other way. With a well-designed page that is clear and has a good product description, half the job is done.

There are lots of little tricks when building a site that will easily boost sales.

A website can be an informative knowledge base, such as Wikipedia. A large number of people find answers to their questions quickly and easily in places like this. For video tutorials and entertainment number one is YouTube.

That's why many websites draw information from exactly such places. This makes it easier for some companies to provide information and present their product as well as possible.

Is a website a mandatory tool in business?

Absolutely, you won't be aware of it until you have your own website. You will see people contacting you that you never dreamed you would reach.

With a lot of work, success is inevitable.

Having a website is very important if you want your business to remain competitive in today's digital world. A website that is well positioned provides more traffic and improves awareness of your brand.

Those are two key components if you want to succeed in today's market.

A website is especially important to small and growing businesses. They now have the ability to display their storefront online and to customers outside of their geographic area.

So they go beyond the "buy local" box.

It's a great opportunity for small businesses to grow their business, and that's why it's important for them to have their own website as well.

A strong online presence can be a real success for any business.

A website shows that you really exist!

Every company needs a website to start a web business in today's digital world.

Do you really need a website? Yes, if you want to expand your business and reach a large audience. Online presence is a must!

Without a website, you are giving up a lot of things, first of all you are holding back your business. If nothing else, a website will prove to your audience that you really exist.

Thus, you will present a product or service that is available to customers in a few clicks. Today, when people need something, they turn to Google. They look to him for answers to anything and everything. That's why search engines like Google play an important role in the business of every website.

Without a web presentation, you absolutely do not exist in the digital world, and increasingly in the real world. Customers will not find you in searches and someone else will take over the work that you could have provided.

If nothing else, today it is almost impossible to successfully do business and progress without a website.

Can social networks replace a website?

No!

The biggest advantage of social networks is that they do not require too much knowledge to start a business on it. However, operations on them are limited. But social media is one of the best tools, besides Google Ads, that can direct customers to your website.

You don't need any programming knowledge or other skills to create an Instagram or Facebook page.

These platforms are constantly developing and supplementing functions, which makes it significantly easier to update your site.

Social networks have another great advantage, they are free. But only to a certain extent. In order to be visible on them, you will almost certainly have to use paid advertisements on them.

They are somewhat good for companies that do not have large budgets. But if you think and work in the long run, don't give them too much importance. Think of them as one big advertisement that will serve to bring the audience to your website.

Be sure to use GA4, because it is the best free analytics that will allow you to track which channels your visitors come from.

It is very important that you know one thing that many social media users overlook.

You must know that you are not the owner of the account and the content, but the platform on which you make the posts.

Do you really need a website? Yes, if you want to expand your business and reach a large audience. Online presence is a must!

In fact, a website is one of the few things in the digital world where you own it. In all other cases, you are the owner as long as you pay or comply with the rules of the platform you are on.

This means that if the social network goes down or decides to discontinue its services, all of your content will be gone.

And that means that your followers that you have been gaining for years will simply disappear in an instant.

A good website makes you look more professional

Most people lose trust if a website is bad. That is why it is very important that it is clean and clear. By regularly updating and adding new articles, you increase your credibility.

Potential customers will trust you more, because in the digital age, visitors want all the information they need on the website to be in one place.

And all this can be achieved without any problem even by the smallest company. If you don't have a big budget, let your website have only 1 page. It's easy to top up later. Anyone can create a Facebook page or Instagram account with fake information.

But a professionally designed website legitimizes your company in a way that is not possible on any social network.

If you want to start a business or expand it, there is no better way to do it than using a website.

A good e-commerce website will bring you more customers and increase your conversions. But you must know that a well-made website is only the beginning of your digital business.

Many people have not heard of website optimization for search engines.

Without it, it is almost impossible to get to the first page of Google if there is competition.

That's why our advice is to always set aside a budget for SEO when creating a website. Without it, there is no success, not even the first page on Google.

And try different channels.

In some business, social networks can bring you a lot of visits, in another, paid advertising on Google may be more effective. The fastest and most effective way is Google Ads, but potential customers always trust organic search results more.

But as we said, the most ideal scenario is to appear twice on 1 page of Google.

Organically and paid advertising.

A website can become the center of your business

Today, it has become normal that when you search for some information or product, you do it through a search engine like Google. So that the website becomes the first place where potential customers get to know you.

It is up to you to explain to them as simply as possible what you do and why they should choose your product or service.

An online presence, regardless of industry, has become a must today.

Many businesses still do not realize that customers have found them online and that they have prepared well for the purchase. You can literally do more than half of the work through a website.

By this we mean both online and offline sales. The result of a strong online presence can only lead to an increase in your income.

The first impression is important. The website practically becomes the face of your company, and consumers get their first impression of your brand based on the appearance of your website.

Even if you are a small local restaurant, chances are that a certain number of your clients come to you precisely because of the good presentation of your website. This means that based on your website, they decided to have lunch at your restaurant.

That's why a professionally designed website can be crucial for business. Consider it an investment in the future of your business.

Often it can be a difference of a few hundred euros between a bad and a good website. A bad website becomes anti-advertisement very easily.

So be careful who you work with and spend some time researching what kind of website you would like someone to build for you.

We make sure to use the questionnaire that we send to our clients before building the site in order to have an idea of what they actually want and which sites they like.

For the client, it's half an hour of work that makes the website creation process much easier.

What aspects are important on a website?

Just having a website is no guarantee that you will make a good first impression on visitors. Your website must load quickly and be clear and easy to navigate.

Otherwise, you will lose customers very easily. Research shows that 90% of visitors get an impression based on the design of the website.

That is why it is important to focus on the following things:

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Simple navigation.

Nothing should be complicated and visitors should be able to surf your site without any problems. If the navigation menu is complicated, it will discourage visitors from further exploring your website.

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Attractive design.

It must be error-free and consistent on every page. The choice of font and its size is very important. The choice of colors and photos can go a long way in getting visitors to continue exploring your website. But care should be taken not to overdo it. When creating a page, we always try to adhere to the 60-30-10 system when it comes to colors. Professional web design must have a combination of easy-to-read content and modern design

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Quality content.

Content is king! Good content is very important to any website. Not only for visitors but also for Google because it cannot conclude what you do based on the photos on your website. It also helps your audience by providing content they haven't seen elsewhere. Its task is to help visitors understand your brand and the products or services you can provide them as easily as possible.

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SEO.

We have already mentioned how important it is to optimize any website for search engines. You won't realize how important it is until you do it. Actually google this topic. You will discover how important it is for online business. There are specialized agencies that deal only with this work. We strongly recommend that you research SEO as soon as possible! To know that no one can be on page 1 on any search engine without doing search engine optimization

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Loading speed.

Today's internet is very fast so why not take advantage of it? But you need to know that website loading speed depends on several factors. In the first place from the topic on which the website is built and on hosting. It depends on whether it is a presentation or e-commerce website. How many and which plugins the website uses. But don't worry, there are a lot of tools that will help us to reduce the loading speed of the website. If the page is made by professionals, it means fast loading

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Fast and easy transactions.

This relies on simple navigation. The website must be designed so that the shopping process goes smoothly and that every step is simple and understandable for every visitor. The shopping cart must be visible, and checkout must be quick and easy.

Conclusion

 

Our sincere advice is that if you don't have your own website, start thinking about it. It is something that is taken for granted today.

Research the competition, it will help you understand your position. Everything depends on you. The website will allow you to connect with new people.

Some of them will start following you and you will build a faithful community that will follow your new posts. Over time, you will gain credibility that will allow you to increase your turnover and earnings after a while.

It will be much easier to reach clients who are not only from your city. With a good analysis with the help of GA4 or some other tool, you will understand what your customers are actually looking for.

Anyway, don't be afraid of a fresh start!