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Organic vs Pay Per Click Traffic

Which is better for small businesses, organic traffic driven by Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or pay per click advertising?

70% of the time, searchers are clicking on organic links. Some surveys have shown that 70 – 80% of searchers purposely ignore the ad listings because they feel that paid ads = them being pressured to buy once they reach the site

This can be an advantage. If you are having a sale, an event, or you are running a weather or time-dependent service, then focusing on the 20 – 30% of users who happily click paid ads can eliminate most of the information seekers and tire-kickers.

Organic Traffic vs PPC

But, long term, relying solely on PPC can miss out on a huge portion of your potential customers.

In many businesses, the close rate for SEO traffic climbs as high as 15%, while ad-driven leads close at less than 2%.

This varies by industry, but the numbers speak overwhelmingly in favor of organic traffic. The situation can flip when it comes to “emergency” services, i.e., plumbers on sub-zero nights, roofers during heavy rain storms. In those cases, they numbers even out. But, the rest of the time, organic heavily outperforms PPC.

Want the Most Leads and Sales? Use Both PPC and SEO

While organic out performs PPC in most cases, there are times when you need PPC ads to survive. The problem usually arises when small companies treat PPC as the holy grail, throwing money at it, hoping for the best.

The truth is that pay per click ads must be:

Highly focused – use them during the best times, then get out of the market. If you’re having a sale, launching a new product or event, or you are offering a product or service that tie-in with the weather, time of year, or new-event, use PPC to leap-frog your competitors.
Well written – most PPC ads are awful; poorly written and playing follow-the-leader. Would you send out a mailer that looks exactly like your competitor’s mailing? OF course not. Don’t waste capital on PPC ads if you’re unwilling to stand out
Used to boost organic traffic – when you’re first starting, it can take a while to get the SEO/organic search ball rolling. PPC is very useful during this time because it brings in much needed traffic.

Combining focused, well written ads with a strong SEO platform will have your business accessing 100% of your potential customers, driving in new traffic and leads year-round.

July 31, 2016/by chris

Content, Digital, Marketing, Social Media, Website

How to Use YouTube to Generate Leads for Your Business

YouTube is a fantastic marketing tool and is the second largest search engine in the world. It is behind only Google and tops Bing. Many savvy marketers have found ways to exploit YouTube to build their brands. Here we lay out two tactics to use YouTube to grow your business and sell product:

Create How To Youtube Videos

No matter what you sell, or which services you offer – YouTube can help. Having your videos rank on YouTube can bring in a significant amount of traffic, leads, and sales into your business.

One of the easiest ways to get your videos ranked (and watched) is to create a series of “How To” videos.

How To content is being watched more than ever. A recent study showing searches for this type of video increased by over 70% in 2016.
Many of these searches coming from millennials (nearly three-quarters). The same research shows that 1-in-3 millennials will purchase a product after watching a How To video tied to that product.

This can be tricky for service businesses. Educating a customer on how to do a job that you offer seems counter-intuitive. But, if you follow the methods of the Home Depot , they often post How To videos of DIY jobs. More complicated projects may get a video too. These companies are quick to point out that the jobs are difficult, costly to do alone, or dangerous, and that a professional should be called in for help.

This allows you to give your customers a great deal of free content, creating a positive feeling toward your services. When the time comes to call in a pro, you’ll be top of mind.

Just about any product would benefit from a How To series. Never underestimate how little your customers know about your product. Or how to use it. You may love your product, and know it’s every detail. But consumers are blasted with ads for hundreds of products and services every day.

Ask for the Lead

Just because content is free doesn’t mean it comes without a price tag. Most web users know this, so asking them outright for something in return for their free video is well accepted. Don’t be shy about asking for the lead at the end of your How To content:

A “subscribe” to your channel
Comments, shares, and likes
Their email or contact info
Them to contact you for help (call, comment, or email)

July 31, 2016/by chris

Content, Digital, SEO, Website

How to Improve Your Site’s Crawling Ability and Increase Rankings

Has your site been stuck on page 2 or 3 of Google’s search engine results pages (SERP)? Or, worse yet is it foundering in the great beyond of pages 4 through oblivion? Well that could be based on how Google is crawling your site.

Maybe you’ve managed to tweak your site and get it onto page 1, but you can never seem to nudge it into the top 5 results.

In all of these cases, a quick focus on both your on-page search engine optimization (SEO), content, and your site’s craw-ability will boost your rankings, and may even push you into the top three spots on page 1.

What is Crawling?

Crawling is a term for how search engines read a website. They send out bots that search or “crawl” through the content, internally, of every site on the web. The exact pathways are unknown, as Google never reveals all, but the basics are well established.

The good news is that many of the ways your site is crawled by Google are similar to how it’s read by your human visitors.

The bad news is that technical issues need to be turned over to a professional because they are complicated.

Internal Links

If you build a site that is easy for humans to read, Google will favor your website. In the early days of Google domination, a common theme was that Google liked to give a site the Grandma Test. Could the average grandmother navigate your website without becoming confused and frustrated.

This is still a good measure. And one of the ways to make your business’ site more Grandma ready is to increase interlinking.

Link internally on your site, from page to page
Make sure your home page is easy to find no matter where on the site the user is – no more than two clicks, one is preferable
Link to all email, phone numbers, and contact methods

Think of interlinks like tiny bridges. If your site is a huge park with lots of paths, small streams, islands of grassy land, it can become easy for someone to get lost. But, if you install enough bridges with good directions, it will be easier to find one’s way home.

The easier it is for Google Bot to crawl your site with well-placed interlinks, the higher it will rank your site. Good interlink pathways increases the number of pages the bot will crawl, increasing your Page Rank.

Detours Wreck Rankings

Do you hate driving through traffic then being forced into a detour without much direction for an alternate route? So does Google Bot.

Broken Links, 404 Errors (page not found) and dead-end links frustrate the bot, and your users. If you have 404’s fix them with good re-directs. Use Google Webmaster Tools to scan your site for broken links. Find them and either delete them or have them fixed with a re-direct.

July 28, 2016/by chris

Content, Digital, Marketing, SEO, Website

Using Re-Purposed Content To Boost Your SEO

Even business owners who’ve bought into the concept of content marketing often complain that creating all that content is a lot of work. Yes, it pays off, but even the most dedicated content marketing gurus can go through lulls. These are the lulls where fresh content is hard to come by. This is why re-purposed content can be critical to your content marketing strategy.

If you’re in a lull, don’t worry. Learn how to easily re-purpose your blogs, videos, and articles. You’ll have a never-ending stream of content for your site and your social media campaigns.

Here are three ways to easily re-use content without getting duplicate content penalties from Google:

Transcribe Videos

Transcription of your videos: long or short, self-generated or professionally made, gives you a great piece of SEO friendly content that would normally be lost.

If you have review videos, having them transcribed gives you a double dose of credibility and status.

Re-Purposed Content vs Fresh Content

Not only does the text from your videos give you fresh content, but it gives those with slow internet connections, or those who simply don’t like video content, a chance to read what your video was all about. You can add on to this, tying-in a strong call to action, or boosting thin areas with helpful explanations, or you can simply have the video transcribed, give it an SEO-solid title, and post it as a new blog, page, or article.

Having this done may seem like a lot of time-consuming work, however you can have the task performed on sites like Fiverr or Upwork. It will only cost a few dollars per video and leave you freed up to do more important tasks.

Turn Blogs Into Social Media Posts

Taking the best lines from your blogs and using them as text-content on Social Media is a great way to re-purpose content. You can generate several good posts from a single blog post.

You could also create a small graphic of the quote and then post a picture and text. Graphic “quotes” tend to be very sharable on Facebook and can give your new content even more life.

Use Blog or Video Content for Infographics

Infographics are popular because they deliver bite-sized chunks of info in a striking, visual package.

This helps you catch the attention of those who only scan information, rather than read it. This makes infographics ideal for your mobile marketing efforts.

Users seem to engage with infographics more frequently than text. This makes them very sharable and highly engaging. This will help your social media marketing efforts, and can help get your blogs and articles get shared more often, giving your SEO a boost as well.

July 24, 2016/by chris

Analytics, Website

What are your Business’ Website Goals?

Without Concrete, Measurable Website Goals, Your Site is Nothing More Than a Brochure Sitting Online.

In the early days of the internet, brochure sites were all a business needed to succeed. You put up a cheap site with Home, About Us, and Contact pages. If you were really cutting edge, a page that allowed users to purchased directly from your site.

The build it and they will come days are long dead. It’s now a must that your company’s site delivers value and information to your potential customers. This means that your site has to actually have an objective. And, that objective (or objectives) must be met if you are to sell products, generate leads, build credibility, or sell services online.

SMART Goals – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time based.

A Site With No Website Goals is a Site That Sucks

When someone wants to lose weight, they go on a diet. Most people make vague proclamations like “I want to lose weight,” “I want to get healthy,” or “I want to tone up.”

Then they proceed to fail.
Why?

How do you measure these website goals?

If you have a lot of weight to lose, you’re in it for the long haul….and you can lose steam along the way unless you have specific, measurable goals to shoot for.

The same goes for your website. Why do you have one? Why did you invest a good chunk of cash in building a site?

Because everyone told you that you should have one?

Because you want to show off your work (before and after pictures and videos, etc)

Are you simply listing your services?

Are you looking for more leads?

There is no wrong answer. And, in most cases, you’ll have multiple objectives. Though, one will always be dominant. For most businesses, that is generating leads or sales.

Choose the Most Relevant Goals for YOUR Business

You can have more than one goal (which can be placed on other pages on your site), but, there should be a primary goal. As mentioned above, that is usually to increase leads or sales.

Ideally, you want to bring people to your site from Google with a combination of organic (free) and Pay Per Click (paid ads) traffic. Once a customer lands on your site, you need to make sure it is set up to achieve the goal of turning them into a lead and getting them ready to be sold.

How To Map Out Your Website Goals

Accomplish this with high quality content that shows them what you do, how you do it, proof that you’ve done it successfully, and why they should choose you for the task.

From there, you can add your secondary goals. For example, if you want to give yoru scuomers visual proof that your service or product is the best, you’ll want a great portfolio page where you show off your best before and after work.
You will also want to build your credibility (review videos and testimonials), places you have been featured (newspapers, TV, magazines, trade papers, etc), and good reviews you’ve gotten from sites like Yelp or Angie’s List.

Build a Website Funnel to allow you to achieve your goals.

This can be spread out over a Reviews Page, your Blog and throughout your site. When you have multiple objectives, it is best to give each a specific page or blog post. A common mistake is to attempt to stuff multiple goals into a site’s Homepage. This is a hold-over from the days where users actually typed in a URL to reach a website. Now, they’re much more likely to find you through search, and will land on various pages on your site. Your Homepage can house your main objective, but give secondary and tertiary goals their own page. This will make your site user-friendly, and Google will reward you with higher page rankings.

July 10, 2016/by chris