IT Milk: entry

A few days ago I wrote about doing search engine optimization for the website of my mother-in-law’s nail spa. I just realized a stupid mistake on my part for the SEO aspect, and this weekend my personal project was to start a pay-per-click campaign for that site.

First, the search term that we should focus on is not “Pure Spa.” Pure Spa is a brand name, and potential customers would not search for the name of the store; rather, they would seek out nail spas and massage services in their proximity. So I should concentrate my efforts on ranking for terms such as “Hackettstown Nail Spa” or “New Jersey Nail Salons,” because those terms are more relevant to gaining quality traffic to Pure Spa’s website.

Next, this weekend my mother-in-law gave me permission to advertise her site on Google (”permission” means she agreed to pay for the expenses). We would list Pure Spa on Google’s sponsored links using AdWords pay-per-click advertising.

Although I’ve studied the subject of Pay-Per-Click Advertising in the past, I’ve never tried it because it costs money and none of my websites are money makers. But since the costs are not coming out of my own pocket, my balls just tripled in size and I am eager to try. So I am excited to experiment with Pure Spa, because it is a great opportunity to gain experience in search engine marketing.

Currently I am working on a few major key words: massage, nail salon, nail spa, waxing, skin care–each followed by nearby towns and cities. Pure Spa is in Hackettstown, NJ. So one of the key phrases would be [nail salons dover nj] (Dover is one of the larger towns near the store). Pure Spa has customers driving from over 20 miles away, so I made sure to include all the nearby towns in my keyword list.

The idea is, someone sees our sponsored link when she’s trying to find a nail spa service in her area, and she checks out Pure Spa’s website because it’s one of the first listings on the search results. But we have a problem. How do we measure the effectiveness of our AdWords campaign with a physical business such as a nail salon?

I could stare at the Google AdWords statistics all day and try to guess how many of the click-throughs are making an appointment at Pure Spa. But that’s dumb. The solution is lotion. Check it out.