SEO - How to do Branding with SEO

Branding is known to be one of the most crucial objectives of all marketers throughout the world. Many successful companies spent millions of dollars on branding and advertising campaigns before the internet became such a big part within the advertising industry. Ever since the realization was made that search engine listings drive large volumes of traffic to various websites, Search Engine Optimization has become a central online marketing strategy. Many advertising methods have been known to be interruptions to consumer behavior. On the other hand, search engine users actively pin point information which ultimately drive them to the essential source.

Why is Branding Important:

• It helps customers identify  particular business
• "Good branding" helps the brand by  having a specific business bring in loyal customers while maintaining the existing customer base. 
• Branding is an important function of SEO:
• The main aim for search engine optimization is to drive targeted traffic to the marketer's website which results in lead generation as well as online and offline conversions.

The working Mechanism of Search Branding 

1. You index a website
2. Search engines use website's title and description to create the text link (This appears in the SERP's)
3. The title and description work as an advertisement for your business when the users view your search engine listing
4. Each time the viewer uses the listing in the SERP's, it results in branding.

 Search engine optimization aims at increasing website traffic by better search engine listings. This is primarily accomplished by strategically placing keywords in the website content. If keywords that have the brand name are selected, it can do a great job of assisting with the branding process. Hence, promotion of the brand will depend on the selection of relevant keywords and the proper usage of them.

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