Five Tips for SEO

Every year, search engine optimization seems to change in some ways. Here are five helpful tips for you to keep track of how to best optimize your content in 2014:

1) Don’t slack off on your company’s social media presence

Although social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ have been around for years now, that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. If anything, your business needs to have a strong social media strategy now more than ever to help build awareness for your brand and to drive web traffic.

Also, remember people want to share relevant, quality content that relates to your audience’s lives in some way—don’t just create things for the sake of sharing. SEO optimization for your website isn’t just about creating and sharing content—it’s about creating and sharing content that people will care about.

2) Keep your writing natural

In the past, Google may have been more likely to pick up word-for-word keywords. Now, though, with the introduction of Google’s latest search algorithm Hummingbird, natural writing is taking center stage. This ties back to your company having strong content that drives traffic. Instead of focusing on writing around a keyword, make your keywords flow more naturally—if a few words are separating a keyword phrase, that will be OK. Google now recognizes ideas more so than just words, allowing your writing to really shine.

3) Don’t forget about local search optimization

Local content and search engine indexing will not be slowing down this year. More and more, Google is localizing search results to better cater to users’ needs. Look more into Google+ Local to see just how powerful localized results can be. In fact, the more you can use localized long-tail keywords and build out your local listing profiles, the better.

4) Keep your sites responsive

In the past, web and mobile sites largely lived in separate worlds—sites looked and performed completely differently on mobile devices and desktops. Now, though, if a company wants to not only look fresh but be indexed well in search engines, it should create a responsive site that can be viewed on all of today’s modern devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. This not only creates happier users because they get a consistent, functional website, but it can also increase your search engine visibility and shares on social media.

5) Establish yourself as an expert

Whatever your business’s focus is, you’ll want to come off to your clients as an authoritative voice in your field of expertise. To do this, continue to create content for your blog, but make sure you can provide your viewers with helpful information. When you can provide practical tips for your readers, your website will be more valuable, as will your search engine optimization. Your viewers will begin to trust your voice more on important industry issues, and you can become their one-stop shop for important information.

How to Establish a Goal Plan for Your PPC Campaign

Pay Per Click online marketing campaigns can be highly effective at driving traffic to your website. However, a PPC campaign that does not have specific, well-defined objectives is next to useless. Without a target in mind, it will have no coherent result. These objectives must be in line with the company’s strategy and image, and have real-world, measurable results that advance the company’s interests. Take the time to learn about goal-setting for successful PPC advertising campaigns. With proper planning, they can have a powerful effect on sales and conversion rates.

Make Both Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

When organizing your PPC campaign, set goals on every timescale, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. The short-term goals should be steps involved in achieving the long-term goals. The short-term goals can then serve as benchmarks for progress toward the long-term goals. When planning campaign goals, compare similar timeframes and make sure that none contain an unreasonable number of goals for that length of time. Also make sure that all of the goals are in their proper order. Finishing half a task and then waiting for the results of a task that isn’t scheduled to start for a week is something of a waste of time.

Make Your Goals Both Challenging and Achievable

There is no point in a goal that is easy to achieve. Your goals should inspire you and your team to go the extra mile in order to achieve it. Similarly, a goal that is impossible to achieve prevents all progress. A good goal is just a step beyond your present grasp. A good goal will put you and your team a little out of your comfort zone, but not entirely out of it.

Focus on the Results, not the Tactics

Your goals need to be based on the results that they can achieve for your company. Making goals that are nothing more than a tactic for getting results is putting the cart before the horse. In other words, your goals should read like “Increase sales by 5 percent over the previous month and decrease costs by 3 percent,” instead of like “Add another 400 keywords.” Only after you have defined your goals in terms of the results that you want should you choose tactics to get you there. Use both baseline goals and stretch goals. Baseline goals focus on the minimum threshold for success, and stretch goals should set the standards for success that goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Create Benchmarks by Reviewing Past Performance

The best way to set goals for your PPC is to analyze the performance of previous campaigns. Conduct a review each month of the month before it, and set your goals on the basis of continuous monthly improvement.

While setting your campaign’s monthly goals, remember that some produce better results than others do. Look at the effects that time of day, date, month, and quarter have on performance. When doing this, avoid comparing time periods that don’t have a lot to do with each other. You cannot compare weekdays and weekends, for instance, or first quarter results to second quarter results. Set your goals to be relevant to the nature of your performance data. For instance, if November sales are high each year because of the holidays, then November should not be compared to October, but to November of the previous year.

Keep a record of special events that skew performance results. For instance, a special sale that significantly boosted conversion rates for July, a problem with the manufacturing process that caused a loss of sales, and a software problem that made your online order forms inaccessible would all be examples of special events that make figures for those months atypical. Expecting other months to have similar figures to months containing such events would be a bad idea.

Keep Track of Your Goals

Write down each of your goals as you create them. Record who is accountable for each of them. Keep track of benchmarks and progress toward each goal in the same document.

These goal documents not only help you to remember details and keep track of who is responsible for what, they also give you a ready way of seeing the big picture. They should also inspire you and your team to greater efforts.

Analyze Goal Achievements

Analyzing the goal achievements of previous PPC campaigns is an important part of setting future goals. Your analysis must go beyond the level of merely asking whether or not you hit the goal. You must also figure out why the goal was or was not achieved, and how it could be done better next time. You must develop a sense of whether the obstacles can be overcome in the future.

Summary

The precise amount to optimize or expand your PPC marketing campaign depends on the specifics of your business and industry, as well as a host of other factors, such as time of year. The only way to establish realistic goals is by knowing your company and its capacities, and experience running other PPC campaigns. Learning how to set the best goals is a matter of trial and error.

How to Establish a Goal Plan for Your PPC Campaign

Pay Per Click online marketing campaigns can be highly effective at driving traffic to your website. However, a PPC campaign that does not have specific, well-defined objectives is next to useless. Without a target in mind, it will have no coherent result. These objectives must be in line with the company’s strategy and image, and have real-world, measurable results that advance the company’s interests. Take the time to learn about goal-setting for successful PPC advertising campaigns. With proper planning, they can have a powerful effect on sales and conversion rates.

Make Both Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

When organizing your PPC campaign, set goals on every timescale, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. The short-term goals should be steps involved in achieving the long-term goals. The short-term goals can then serve as benchmarks for progress toward the long-term goals. When planning campaign goals, compare similar timeframes and make sure that none contain an unreasonable number of goals for that length of time. Also make sure that all of the goals are in their proper order. Finishing half a task and then waiting for the results of a task that isn’t scheduled to start for a week is something of a waste of time.

Make Your Goals Both Challenging and Achievable

There is no point in a goal that is easy to achieve. Your goals should inspire you and your team to go the extra mile in order to achieve it. Similarly, a goal that is impossible to achieve prevents all progress. A good goal is just a step beyond your present grasp. A good goal will put you and your team a little out of your comfort zone, but not entirely out of it.

Focus on the Results, not the Tactics

Your goals need to be based on the results that they can achieve for your company. Making goals that are nothing more than a tactic for getting results is putting the cart before the horse. In other words, your goals should read like “Increase sales by 5 percent over the previous month and decrease costs by 3 percent,” instead of like “Add another 400 keywords.” Only after you have defined your goals in terms of the results that you want should you choose tactics to get you there. Use both baseline goals and stretch goals. Baseline goals focus on the minimum threshold for success, and stretch goals should set the standards for success that goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Create Benchmarks by Reviewing Past Performance

The best way to set goals for your PPC is to analyze the performance of previous campaigns. Conduct a review each month of the month before it, and set your goals on the basis of continuous monthly improvement.

While setting your campaign’s monthly goals, remember that some produce better results than others do. Look at the effects that time of day, date, month, and quarter have on performance. When doing this, avoid comparing time periods that don’t have a lot to do with each other. You cannot compare weekdays and weekends, for instance, or first quarter results to second quarter results. Set your goals to be relevant to the nature of your performance data. For instance, if November sales are high each year because of the holidays, then November should not be compared to October, but to November of the previous year.

Keep a record of special events that skew performance results. For instance, a special sale that significantly boosted conversion rates for July, a problem with the manufacturing process that caused a loss of sales, and a software problem that made your online order forms inaccessible would all be examples of special events that make figures for those months atypical. Expecting other months to have similar figures to months containing such events would be a bad idea.

Keep Track of Your Goals

Write down each of your goals as you create them. Record who is accountable for each of them. Keep track of benchmarks and progress toward each goal in the same document.

These goal documents not only help you to remember details and keep track of who is responsible for what, they also give you a ready way of seeing the big picture. They should also inspire you and your team to greater efforts.

Analyze Goal Achievements

Analyzing the goal achievements of previous PPC campaigns is an important part of setting future goals. Your analysis must go beyond the level of merely asking whether or not you hit the goal. You must also figure out why the goal was or was not achieved, and how it could be done better next time. You must develop a sense of whether the obstacles can be overcome in the future.

Summary

The precise amount to optimize or expand your PPC marketing campaign depends on the specifics of your business and industry, as well as a host of other factors, such as time of year. The only way to establish realistic goals is by knowing your company and its capacities, and experience running other PPC campaigns. Learning how to set the best goals is a matter of trial and error.

The Difference Between SEO VS PPC

When first embarking on a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign, you may be confused about the difference between SEO and PPC and where you should allocate your marketing budget. Over 85% of Internet users will go to their favourite Search Engine first when looking for products or services, but 95% don’t look past the first three search results pages, so SEM should play an important part of your overall SEO marketing strategy.

What Are SEO and PPC Exactly?

With an SEM campaign, Search Engine results pages are divided into two main parts: organic SEO results and PPC advertising. Research shows that around 70% of Internet users click on SEO (natural or organic search) results and only 30% of users click on PPC (paid search results).

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation: This is the process or art of making a website achieve high rankings on Search Engine results pages (SERPS) for given keywords.

PPC or Pay Per Click: This is where an advertiser bids on keywords associated with an advertisement in order to achieve higher position on Search Engine results pages (sponsored links section) for searches on that keyword. Other options for advertising include Google’s display network (banner ads), remarketing (which serves ads to users who have previously visited your site), shopping ads (which appear as product listings next to a search result), and map ads (ads for physical locations delivered in the Google Maps tab).

What Are the Key Differences Between SEO and PPC in an SEM Campaign?

Position: SEO focuses on natural or organic search results which are displayed in the main body of the SERP. PPC listings are displayed as the ‘sponsored links’ on the top and bottom of the page (in addition to the other types of ads previously mentioned). Organic search results include all web pages which the search engine determines to be relevant to the query, while PPC reflects a targeted SEM campaign and may show results only in a specific geographic area, to certain audience demographics, or be time specific.

Promotion results: With an organic SEO campaign, a new website or Web page may take up to three months to show up on Search Engines as Google takes time to index and rank a site. However, SEO results in continuous traffic over a longer period of time. PPC can give an initial boost in traffic and is useful when launching a brand new website which is not yet appearing in organic results. However, when a PPC campaign is stopped and the budget is removed, any paid traffic stops immediately.

Perception: Organic ranking positions that happen as a result of an SEM campaign are seen to be unbiased and have a higher level of credibility. SEO rankings are unpaid and based on the relevance of the page to the keyword, but with PPC, the more you bid on a given keyword, the better your position in the search results. For both organic and PPC SERPs, a higher position is more trusted by searchers and will get more clicks.

Price: With an SEO and/or a PPC campaign, there may be an initial set-up and ongoing fee if you engage an SEO company or PPC specialist to create a campaign for your business. With an SEO campaign, there is no cost per individual click or visitor, only the costs incurred during the efforts of your in-house team or SEO vendor. However, with a PPC campaign, there is an ongoing cost per click or visitor – the greater your budget, the more traffic your website will receive.

Professional advice: Ideally as part of an SEM campaign, both SEO and PPC require an SEO expert or PPC specialist to manage the campaign and make sure that you have selected the best keywords within budget and your marketing campaign delivers the desired results. You can manage the campaigns yourself, but you cannot be assured that you will get the desired results.

Whether you choose to invest in an SEO or PPC program will ultimately depend on your marketing strategy. When launching a new website, you may need to see fast results and use a short term call to action PPC campaign but over the long term, an SEO strategy will return more money on your SEM investment. Contact us to find out more about SEO and what strategy will best fit your SEM campaign objectives.