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Filed Under Uncategorized

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Estimating Your Local Traffic

Filed Under SEO

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Fine Tuning Your PPC Campaigns

Filed Under PPC

Finally, Google has announced the ultimate enhancement to their search query report.

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The search query report is one of the best kept secrets in PPC management.  It is a tool that can be used to really expand and fine tune your account at the same time.  Advertising on terms that are phrase matched or broad matched can be somewhat risky because you do not really know for sure what terms Google will display your ad on.  Boy have we had some funny terms we’ve seen in our client accounts at the agency.

The search query report helps with this – it tells us, for phrase and broad match search terms, the term actually typed in by the visitor.  It shows only those terms that resulted in a click through so you can focus your efforts.

Since its inception, this report had a flaw.  For all the low volume terms, Google would lump them into “Other Unique Queries”.  Sometimes the majority of the traffic seemed to fall into this field.

Not anymore. Google has removed this field and going forward all terms will be displayed in the report.

Here is how I use the Search Query Report.  I like to run this report weekly to be sure to catch all the terms that are costing money.

1. Create a Search Query Report – have it generated automatically on a weekly basis so it is already there for you when you go to work on it.
2. Download the report into a CSV file and open it in excel
3. Sort the Cost column – largest to smallest and work on the top 20 terms every week. Don’t feel compelled to go through every single one.  
4. Create a list of Negative keywords to add and a list of new keywords to add with their ad group.
5. Import the list into Adwords Editor and Post.

Quick.  Easy.  This is a great tool to keep your account fine tuned.

Keep in mind that this information is now available also in the new interface.  However, I am finding that for large campaigns with many ad groups, I can still save some time with using the report itself.  The actionable report within the interface is good for quick spot checks, though.

SEO Basics: Pages vs. Website

Filed Under SEO

A common myth about SEO is that you are optimizing your “Web Site”.

“How does my site rank on Google?” is really a misnomer.  

You are optimizing page by page.  Search Engines care about the specific page on your website, not the site as a whole

Now, you can definitely use your site’s structure to promote different pages and “lift selected pages up” in the eyes of the search engine. 

For example, if your home page ranks well – in terms of Page Rank and Search Engine Position – you can use that to your advantage to drive some of that “ranking” or “Google love” to other pages on your site.  So, it’s not to say that the pages on your site each live in a vacuum.  But when you are looking to optimize for various terms, you need to focus your attention page by page.

 

 

SEO Basics: What is SEO?

Filed Under SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of convincing the Search Engines that you are the most relevant option to display to their customers in a search.

This involves strategically designing your site and your pages to clearly position their relevance.  And it involves getting other sites to identify you as relevant.
The components of SEO are actually fairly basic:

1. On Page factors - Keyword placement & density
2. Site Structure – Navigation, organization and spider-friendly factors
3. Off Page factors  – Number and quality of inbound links – Consensus among the inbound links as to what your page is about.

These SEO basics all come together to serve 3 major goals:

1. Tell the Search Engine what your page is about
2. Make it easy for the Search Engines to index your site
3. Tell the Search Engines what Other Sites think your page is about.

 

PPC vs. SEO

Filed Under PPC, SEO

Should you focus your attention on PPC or SEO? 

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How about Both?! 

The best SEO strategy starts with a PPC campaign. 

Why?

No matter how much keyword research you do on the front end, you have no idea, really, which keywords will work for your business.  Which ones bring the most traffic based on your offer? And most importantly, which ones CONVERT?

Running a PPC campaign before you begin your SEO efforts is a surefire way to find out the answers to your most important online marketing questions:  

• How is my target market looking for what I offer?
• What kind of offer will they respond to?

Create your PPC campaigns based on your keyword research and refine them until you have your answers.  Then, take the highest converting, most expensive keywords and optimize your site to rank for these keywords.  This method will save you from optimizing your site from non-converting keywords and will save you money on PPC when you start ranking organically for the expensive keywords.

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The Truth about Social Marketing

Filed Under SEO, Social Media

Social Marketing. It’s all the buzz.  Everyone’s doing it. 

Some say with Social Marketing, SEO is dead . . . ???

NOT!

SEO will never die unless the Search Engines themselves die.   (never say never . . .)

SEO = Search Engine Optimization = Optimizing your page/site/video to be presented when a user searches for what you are offering.

What IS changing and will continue to change are the methods you need to use to appear relevant to Google for the search in question.  Google’s mission is to create algorithms that can provide the most relavant results to their visitors.

In the beginning, you used to be able to just “tell” Google “My Site is About This” – then they figured out we could just make that up – (keyword stuffing anyone? )

Then you could make Google think “everyone likes me”.  Paid links, reciprocal link exchanges.  Again, they figured it out.

Social Marketing is the most recent method that Google can and does use to figure out what the masses are thinking about and finding useful.

This is why social media is becoming such a popular topic in the SEO world.  Social Media has some great PR and general marketing benefits, but Google also recognizes that there is a lot of power in understanding what the populations within the social networks are finding relevant and interesting.

And as with all SEO techniques: Use it wisely. Don’t try to "game" Google.  And it will be a useful and powerful technique for you.

 

All Traffic is NOT created Equal

Filed Under Marketing, Traffic

So many online marketrs today are focused on getting traffic.  The more traffic the better.  What is the Alexa ranking?  Just a measure of the traffic your site is getting.

But what good is traffic if it doesn’t lead to sales? 

You can find ways to get traffic all day long, but if the traffic you bring to your site isn’t interested in your offer, you are wasting your time and money.  There are ways to benefit from traffic in terms of branding, etc., but the typical small online business needs to monetize the traffic directly through a sale.

What you need to focus on is Targeted Traffic. 

Traffic that you know will have a very high chance of buying what you are selling. 

How do you find this traffic?  This is where your Market Research comes in. 

You have to really understand your target market. 

• Where do they hang out?
• What do they think about?
• What are their concerns or issues?
• What makes them happy? 

Based on all of this target market analysis, you can start to piece together a strategy to “be in the right place at the right time” for your potential customers. 

Be there when they are searching for your product or service.
Be there when they are searching for a solution to their problem.
Be there when they are discussing their problems or concerns with others.

The key is – you need to be out where your customer are at the time when they need you.

Simply SEO

Filed Under SEO

Understanding SEO and How to succeed with Optimizing your website is actually very simple. 

SEO is about understanding Google’s Goal. 

So What is Google’s Goal?  To present the most relevant

information to their visitor so their visitors come back for more again and again.

In order to present the most relevant search results, Google is looking at two major clues about you:

1. What is Your Page About?
2. Do Others Agree?

Now it all comes together: These two topics relate to the main steps in SEO: 

1. On-page Optimization (What is your page about?)
2. Link Building (Do Others Agree?)

It also helps you to understand why certain tactics come and go.  When faced with a new “sure-fire” SEO tactic, ask yourself: Are you trying “fool” the search engines to a. believe your site is about a certain topic or b. believe others agree? 

You can count on the fact that Google will work very hard to prevent anything that jeopardizes their ability to present the most relevant results.

Just Look at some of the old tactics that used to work – keyword tag stuffing, paid links, etc.

Now all that said, you still need to compete with the companies that are using these tactics.  What is one to do?  Just understand the underlying concepts, use “tactics” carefully – completely understanding the consequences and know that Google is a lot smarter than we are and any tactics your less-than-ethical competition are using will not build their traffic for the long term.

 

What Comes First, Conversion or Traffic?

Filed Under Conversion

You can’t sell a thing without some traffic.  However, what good is a bunch of traffic if your sales funnel is broken and you can’t convert any of the traffic to sales. 

Websites with poor conversion are literally throwing away the money it costs them to bring people to their site.  And make no mistake – even the "free" traffic we get from our SEO efforts has cost us a pretty penny in time and effort.

It is like running a huge promotion to your new brick & mortar store but then neglecting to put a cash register in the store.

Of course, we need to get started with a small amount traffic – no matter how good your conversion is – anything times zero is zero.  But once you get the flow started, you need to quickly turn your attention to conversion tactics. 

When you are just getting started with a new site, it is best to start with some conversion best practices right from the beginning.

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Then, once you are generating some decent traffic, come back and apply detailed testing and conversion methodologies to constantly improve your ability to convert the traffic you are getting.

Here are some terrific resources for learning about conversion:

Future Now ’s Marketing Optimization Blog - Jeffrey & Bryan Eisenberg

Always Be Testing – Andy Edmonds

 

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Is Your Site Getting Votes But Wasting Traffic?

Filed Under SEO

One of the most important ways to optimize your site and get good rankings with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN is to get links coming into your site. Think of links to your site as votes — if you have a lot of links coming to you, that says “this site is important”. And common SEO practice is to create inbound links for many different keywords from several types of sites – the more popular the better.

But . . . once visitors arrive at your site, it can’t throw away that traffic by not being structured correctly. And although your content should mention your keywords, it can’t be so keyword dense that it’s written for machines.

A simple analogy is through word-of-mouth getting a lot of people excited about coming to a store grand opening for a shoe boutique and when crowds of people arrive they discover you’re a clothing store with a rack of shoes in the back. If you’ve got links relevant to shoes, then make sure your site sells plenty of shoes.

Outsourcing – You Can't Do It All!

Filed Under General Biz

You can’t always do it all! I know, I know . . . sometimes you just have to. I’ve been there, done that, so I know exactly where you are coming from.

There are two problems with trying to do it all:

First, you just don’t have the time. One thing that small business owners can be really bad at is . . . assigning a reasonable value to YOUR time! You may have a really good understanding of the value you put on the hours of everyone around you. But we tend to feel that there is nothing we can’t make time for – there are 24 hours in a day, right?

You need to assign a value to your own time. If you are working on the most important aspect of your business, what would that be? Marketing, Sales, Consulting? Only you can answer that question. But then assign a value to that activity. $75, $100, $250 per hour? Once you have assigned a value to your time, you can assess whether you should be performing a specific task.

For example, if you can pay a company the equivalent of $15 per hour to answer your phones and your time is worth $150 per hour when you are working on mission-critical tasks – that’s a no-brainer, right?

The second problem with trying to do it all – - no matter how intelligent and business savvy you are, you CAN’T be great at everything. You have to admit to yourself that there are many cases where an expert in a certain area can do a better job than you can. They have applied themselves and focused on a specific area of expertise and can devote their time to knowing everything necessary to be really good in that field of study. For example, a CFO or a CPA will do a much better job than you will of managing your business finances (unless of course you run a CPA firm, in which case, switch out “Web Designer” for “managing your website” above )

I learned this lesson when I was working on my first eCommerce business. One thing I am not that great at is Web Design. When I finally decided to bite the bullet and hire a web designer for my site — My Sales Quadrupled!! When I did another Site Redesign 1 year later – guess what – My Sales Quadrupled AGAIN! What did I learn? My skills at web design were holding us back. If I tried to keep “doing it myself”, my lack of skills in this area would have hurt our business.

I LOVE to learn and master new skills. I am passionate about learning. But I realize I can’t learn and master everything – not even with 24 hours a day