SEO - Visitor Traffic Analysis

It is perceived by many people that the main goal of a Search Engine Optimization campaign is to rank within the top ten on major search engines. Although this plays a very big factor in SEO, it is overpowered by the need to get qualified traffic to your site and converting as much of this traffic into leads or sales.

The visitor traffic analysis can be done in the following ways:

Traffic on keywords: 
 It is important to understand which keywords are working and which ones are not. Keywords have the ability to attract targeted and UN-targeted traffic. The targeted traffic are the consumers who are looking for more information related to your industry. These people find your website through searching for specific keywords.

Keywords on landing page:
The question to be asked here is "which keywords are directing the visitors to which pages." One should spend time to distinguish which pages are generating more traffic and the reasoning behind it. In order to attract more traffic, it is important to include more content for different products and services.

Whether the call to action was followed for conversion:
Marketing experts generally expect the visitors to take a few additional steps when visiting a website such as downloading things, registering, writing reviews, and making further inquiries about certain products. As an SEO consultant, one must have a grasp on whether visitors are taking these actions or not.

Qualified traffic:
Qualified traffic is also known as targeted traffic. You must know the demographics and psycho-graphics of the traffic the website is obtaining for the client. The conversion rate will be only be high if you attract qualified traffic. This can be done by having more precise and targeted keywords.

Converted traffic:
The final aim of a marketer is conversion in terms of sales. You must be able to track how many sales are generating for the client. If you are getting huge traffic but no conversions, this will ultimately be no use to the client.

Understanding Bidding Basics

AdWords gives you several ways to bid for your ads, depending on what matters most to you and your business. Having a perception of what you would like your ads to do will help you decide how to bid. Most advertisers focus on clicks, impressions, or conversions. 

Focus on Clicks 

If your main goal consists of having people visit your website, clicks are a great place to begin. By utilizing cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, you will only be required to pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your site. CPC bidding is made up of two specific choices:

• Automatic bidding:
• This is known to be the easiest way to bid. By setting a daily budget, you will be allowing AdWords to adjust your CPC bids in order to bring you the most attainable bids within that specific budget. 

• Manual bidding:
•  With manual bidding, you will be in full control of you CPC bids. This type of bidding gives you the ability to set your bids at the ad group level. This confirms that you are bidding just what you want for the clicks that hold the most importance for you.

Focus on Impressions 
In opposition to the cost per click method, Impressions focus on paying by the number of times your ad is shown, if your campaign is targeting just the display network. This is refered to as cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding because you are paying for every 1,000 times your ad appears. It is important to remember that CMP bidding is only applicable for the following campaign types:

• "Display Network Only - All features"
• "Display Network Only - Remarketing"

Focus on Conversions
Conversions are the most advanced bidding method. With this method, you specify the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion, or cost-per-acquisition (CPA). A conversion (also refereed to as acquisition) is a particular action you want to see on your website. You will still be paying for each click but ad words will assist in setting your bids up for you to try and obtain as many conversions as possible regarding the cost-per-acquisition you previously specified. This type of bidding is primarily for more advanced AdWords users.

Tips for Creating Succesful Text Ads

Successful text ads are specific, relevant, attractive, and empowering. The following tips will help you achieve these terrific text ads:

 Watch: Ads that Attract Customers

Highlight what makes you unique 

Tell people what exactly differentiates you from the rest. Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive. Competition plays a big role in the marketing world therefore it is essential to separate yourself from the crowd. 

Include prices, promotions, and exclusives

Google search is the #1 provider for people when making an important decision about something. Having essential information such as the prices and promotions will give the customers the basis of making a decision. 

Empower customers to take action

Make concise statements on how customers can take the next step in the buying process. If you're selling something, tell customers what they can buy. If you're offering a service, inform clients on how they can contact you. Examples of these concise statements may be: purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, and many more.

Include at least one of your keywords
 Keywords in your ad text portray your ad's relevance to what exactly the customer wants. For example, if you've chosen Arabia coffee as your key word, your ad headline could be "Best Arabia Cofee."

Match your ad to your landing page
Be sure to take a look at the page you're linking to from your ad, also known as the landing page, to make sure the products and promotions included in your ad are also available on the website. People will be quick to judge and leave the website upon not finding what they are looking for.

Appeal to customers on mobile
 People viewing your ads on mobile are more likely to want to know your location or be more prone to call you. Be sure to show your location and phone number in addition to any further extensions. Also, consider creating ads devoted to people on mobile devices, using the mobile version of your website as a landing page, and offering specials suited to a mobile audience.

Experiment
Create three to four ads for each ad group, and use different messages for each to see which does the best. AdWords rotates ads automatically to show the best-performing ads more often.

SEO - Pay Per Click Campaigns

Pay per Click campaigns, also known as PPC, are advertising campaigns that are based off of search engines results page. PPC campaigns are also commonly referenced to search engine advertising in which the payment is based off of the number of times the ad is clicked from the results page. Now the question arises, how do PPC(s) actually work?

One must bid the amount of money he/she is willing to pay per each click. Whoever attains the highest bidding amount is honorary to the top position of the list. In addition to this, you are able to choose specific keywords which will be correlated with when your ad comes up through a search. PPC is known to be a fast and cost effective way to advertise. Small investments can take you a long with Pay per Click campaigns. You will be able to get your target marketing directly to your website in just a few clicks and a small investment. On the other hand, a search engine optimization for any site may take from 3-6 months. With PPC, it only takes about 5 minutes in order to get your ad up at the SERP. 

With the effectiveness of this concept, it is also crucial to keep in mind that bidding on the right type of keywords is the most important aspect of this. Bidding can vary depending on which keyword you are bidding for. Along with this, the ad must be well depicted through its design, persuasion, and information.

Hubspot - Integrating Smarketing

For those who are not familiar with the term, "smarketing" is used to describe the combination of sales and marketing. What many people fail to realize is that although marketing and sales are labeled together many of the times, 87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative. The goal is to bring these two opposing teams in to one in order to gain revenue. Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment get 20% annual growth revenue. Now the real question here is, how can companies integrate smarketing?

There are 5 steps associated with the integration of this term: 

Speak the Same Language

 In other words, have a transparent marketing goal. As I mentioned before, revenue is the key goal for both sides therefore having a prospective number in mind should be the goal. Having the transparent marketing goal so closely related with the sales goal will help assure that the marketing efforts help support sales. Below is an example of how one can work backwards from sales in order to set a marketing goal. 

Set Up Closed-Loop Reporting

There are a few questions one must ask when determining when he or she needs closed-loop reporting. These questions consist of:

• Do you send leads to Sales and never hear if they were good?
• Do you end up creating and trying to manage duplicate leads?
• Do you send leads to Sales with the basic content information without intelligence about what content those leads consumed?
• Are you unsure of the impact your marketing efforts have on revenue?

Implement a Service Level Agreement

A Sales-Marketing SLA defines what each team commits to accomplishing in order to support the other. The SLA formalizes the goals of each team to make sure the company is set up to reach its revenue goal.

Maintain Open Communication

Having weekly smarketing meetings is crucial in this aspect. This will assist in your entire Sales and Marketing teams get on the same page about: team success, product info, persona education, and SLA waterfalls. However, it is also important to remember that meetings are not the only means of communication.

Rely On Data

A key part of the smarketing relationship is relying on the data. A great tool one can use are marketing and sales dashboards. These initially include all the common reports that are lined along the set revenue goals. By creating a shared dashboard and making it accessible to the teams, it will become easier to track progress from both sides. 

Understanding ad reach

To begin with, reach is an estimate of the number of users which are residing in a selected location target, based on the cookies. With the reach number, you are able to attain a slight idea of how many users your AdWords could potentially reach in a specific geographic area. For example, you can easily estimate  how many customers will see you ads in Chicago versus in Michigan. With this, you will be able obtain details on the reach level of each area and eventually decide if you have targeted the right area. When selecting a location to target in AdWords, the locations estimated reach can be found in the reach column. This is seen below:

Reach in AdWords is generated through the estimation of numbers that were seen on Google properties within the indicated geographic area. This is mainly the reason behind why reach numbers in AdWords may differ extensively from census population numbers. The following factors play a crucial role in estimating reach numbers:

• Number of devices
• Number of web browsers
• Number of temporary visits
• Length of time
• Cookies
• Search partner or Google display network

SEO - Google Toolbar Links

There are three different types of links found in the Google toolbar that assist in building a campaign. These three links consist of :

• One Way Linking
• Reciprocal Linking
• Triangular Linking

 Now let's go into more depth about each one of these links.

One Way Linking

One way linking is seen to be one of the best ways to increase a campaign's rank within search engines. This is primarily because your link is being put on the site without an exchange of another link. Since other websites are acclaiming your your site without linking back, it gives search engines the idea that your site holds a higher standard of importance. With this, they believe you can provide outstanding customer service to your clients.As mentioned before, since there is no exchange with other links, the outcome of associating with bad links can be easily avoided. It is crucial to remember that if the back link being exchanged is not relevant, the page rank of this site will eventually decrease due to the little or no value given to and by the customers.

Reciprocal Linking 

This type of linking is known to be the most popular of the three when building a campaign. Reciprocal thinking means exactly what its name depicts. This is when two websites consent to an agreement of linking to each other. It can often be referred to as different titles such as link swaps, link exchanges, and link partners.Reciprocal linking enhances trust between two websites as well as assurance of your website. This link basically clarifies that they the site at the other end believes your site is worth linking to. This is when the element of trust falls in. Since the other site has established that they believe you are worth the link, it is vital to maintain your own site to keep the other site in good ranks. Before setting up a reciprocal link, there is an efficient amount of information that needs to be acquired. Just like many other campaigns, a competitive analysis is a must. Initially, this will assist in giving you more valuable information in regards to potential link partners. 

Triangular Linking 

This type of linking emerged shortly after people discovered that one way linking was near impossible. Triangular linking is looked down upon search engines because it was generated as a way to fool these engines into thinking you have not actually engineered a reciprocal link trade. This is done by placing a link on the website but putting the others link on a different website.

Building the best keyword list

A list of keywords can be very useful in regards to the target market you would like viewing your ads. Since customers search for particular terms, your keywords should counterpart the terms that your prospective customers would use in order to find your products or services.

As far as choosing and organizing your keywords goes, there are a few basic tips which you should follow for the best outcomes:

1. When you create your list, think like a customer: Take time out to write down the main categories of your business including the phrases that would under each of these categories.
2. Choose broad or specific keywords  which are contingent to your goal: By selecting terms which directly relate to to your ad's theme, your ad will only appear for terms that apply to your business. On the other hand, choosing more general keywords will help reach as many people as possible. 
3. Set similar keywords into themes: It is more effective to group your keywords into groups based on your different products, services, and categories. This will help refrain from confusing and unwanted ads towards the customer.
4. Pick an efficient number of keywords: Although you are allowed more than 20 keywords per ad group, many advertisers find it convenient to have between 5 and 20. 

In addition to these starter tips, one should also consider these advanced tips in order to better control who sees his or her ads:

1. Use keyword match types to more efficiently control who views your ads:  Here is a quick video on How to choose keywords
2. Choose keywords that relate to the websites your customers see. 

Hubspot - Social Media's Impact on Inbound Strategy

In today's age, social media has become a normality in many people's lives. It is a way for people to communicate with others, express their thoughts, and share their lives with one another. Similarly, social media has made a big impact on the progress of inbound methodology. Social media are where most of the prospects lie therefore it is crucial to be apart of it. This can be proven by a study that concluded that internet users spend four times more time on Facebook than Google. No matter your persona, chances are they use social media. The numbers listed below will help gain a better understanding of the importance social media plays in people's lives today. 

Active Users

• Facebook: 1.3 billion
• Twitter: 645 billion
• LinkedIn: 300 million
• Google+: 300 million

With so many prospective clients lying within social media, social media is a great way to attract traffic towards your sight. In addition to this, chances of increasing visits, leads, and customers is at great heights. Customer acquisition has made its way to the top through the help of many of these social media sites.

SEO - The Importance of Content

You would like to attract more visitors to your site but are unsure how to do it? This is when content comes into play! Content is the initial aspect that labels a website as good or bad. Not only does content bring the website to ranks within the visitor's eyes, it also leads search engines to give it higher importance. It is crucial to remember that information is primarily what makes up these websites therefore search engines will put the most emphasis on the content in contrast to everything else.

It takes more than just one look at the website for a search engine to rank its content. There are many factors which contribute towards this very rank. The visitor's benefit should be one of the bigger concerns for a website therefore the content must consist of important information which pertains to the target audience. In addition to this, most search engines believe that users are always looking for new and original content. With this being said, original and well written content is greatly admired by many. 

Although content is one of the main factors in creating a website, it is not the only one. It is given so much importance by search engines because it is known to be the backbone of any website. However, the main purpose of a website is to offer as much information and detail as possible. As I mentioned before, the target audience plays a key role in this process therefore one should know exactly who his or her target audience is and what interests them. 

Some core questions to ask yourself when developing content:

• What does the audience want to find?
• Will you have to do additional research?
• Are you an expert writer or do you have one on staff?

Interpretating Your Campaign Status

Once you have started a campaign, it is crucial to regularly review its status in order to establish it is running the way you would like it to. The status column of your "All Online Campaigns" page tells you whether your campaigns are active as well as limited by budget you had previously set. 

How to find your campaign status:

1. Sign into your AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com 
2. Click on the campaigns tab to be directed to the "All Online Campaigns" page
3. Find the "Status" column located near the "Budget" column.

This status column will depict the present state of each campaign in your AdWords account as shown below. With this, you can view how each campaign is doing as well as detect any errors that may have occurred.

 

 Each campaign can withhold one of seven different statuses.

• Eligible: active and can show ads
• Paused: Inactive because it has been paused. This means your ads do not show or accrue new costs until they are resumed.
• Removed: Inactive because it has been removed. Similar to paused (ads will not show or accrue new costs until re-enabled.)
• Pending: Inactive but scheduled to start at a future date.
• Ended: Inactive because it has passed its scheduled end date.
• Suspended: Inactive because the balance you previously paid has been used. No ads will be shown in addition to any accrued costs until further funds are added under the billing section.
• Limited by budget: Active, but due to budget constraints, ads are only shown sporadically.

SEO - Search Engines vs. Directories

As the internet has developed over the past decades, fetching information became a big struggle for day-to-day workers. With the web being so assorted, it can often be found difficult to obtain the exact or relevant information someone is searching for. This is primarily the reason why search engines were made. The  concise definition of a  "search engine" is a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. According to a nationwide phone survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project shows, "84% of internet users have used search engines."

Examples of Major Search Engines: Google, Bing, and Ask

Although directories hold many of the same factors as search engines, they differentiate through the human factor behind it. A web directory is a web search tool compiled by human editors. While sites within search engines are scanned and resulted by a program crawler, sites are edited manually within directories.
 
Largest Directories: Yahoo and DMOZ

Both search engines and directories intertwine on the basis of supplier and receiver.  Since there are numerous search engines available on the internet, it is not possible for each and every one to constantly maintain and update their database. The supplier and receiver relationship is a crucial part of understanding the ranking system within websites.

Hubspot - Creating Remarkable Blog Content

A business blog is a collection of articles that provide helpful, valuable, educational, and remarkable content to your target audience. With this value, blogs can easily and effectively draw prospects to your website. When drawing these prospects to your blog, it is vital that you have the right type of content which he or she may be searching for. In other words, the content must be worth talking about. With remarkable content, you can gain rewards in many different forms such as social shares or more importantly, inbound links. Inbound links are a way for search engines to establish the ability level of your website.

Steps to Creating Remarkable Blog Content:

Keep your buyer persona in mind:  The visitor (ideal buyer) should be your main focus.

 Address one topic per blog post: This will help keep posts clear and concise

Blog consistently and frequently: Publish often as often you want to get found online. Consistent blogging boosts inbound ROI as seen below

Concentrate on formatting and imagery: Use formatting to draw the attention of the reader and keep them there.

Don't miss out on lead conversion opportunities: Add a call-to-action to your blog and blog post.