Archive for category Search Engine Marketing
Seattle SEO & The Long-Tail Keyword
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization on December 10, 2013
If you do anything with SEO or marketing, then you are sure to hear about the long-tail keyword. With new Google search algorithms, new search results, and more people using longer searches, it is now becoming increasingly important for Seattle businesses to utilize longer keywords in order to keep up.
What is the Long-Tail?
The long-tail keyword is essentially a short phrase or specific search term that someone would use to look for something specific. While many people do use short-tail keywords to look for items, the results are much more vague, and usually used by someone first looking into an industry. So, for example, someone who is just starting to look into SEO might search for ‘SEO’ which wold bring up the Wikipedia page.
On the other hand, once that person has looked at the Wikipedia page, they are going to move on, and probably start looking for SEO companies to hire. A long-tail search for ‘Seattle SEO Company” is much more specific and as a result typically offers slightly more specific results.
About the Search Process
Right now, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm offers priority to websites that have the same long-tail keywords as the consumers search. So, if someone looks for ‘Marketing company SEO and Social” then they are going to get results that have all of those words. However, most people don’t start out looking for a long-tail keyword.
For example, if you’re considering hiring a Seattle SEO company but don’t know anything about SEO, your first search is going to be for ‘SEO’ or a similar ‘beginners guide to SEO’ where you would then read the Wikipedia Page, or browse around on sites like SEOMoz or SearchEngineLand in an effort to understand the process. For most people, the first searches are ‘what is it’, ‘how does it work’, and ‘do I need it’. While these searches can generate a lot of traffic, very few of them generate any sales.
Next comes the decision making process. The searcher knows what they want and they know what it does, so they start looking for something to buy. This is where the long-tail keyword comes in. The search for ‘SEO’ turns into “SEO company’s in Seattle’ or ‘Seattle Marketing’, which turns into a sale for one of the results.
Applying Long-Tail Keywords to Your Marketing Campaign
Unfortunately you have to know what your long-tails are before you can use them. If you only service a small area, then your long-tail keywords are obviously your location, but you also have to consider other specifics such as your exact products. A local bakery could utilize area and food specific long-tail keywords like, “Kirkland Wedding Catering” or “Where to Get Chocolate Cupcakes on 12th Street.”
Any long-tail keyword runs the risk of being too specific, but this is where keyword research comes in. A keyword with an average of 30 searches per month offers less traffic, but also the potential for 30 sales each month, as those 30 people find exactly what they are looking for. Broader searches offer more competition, and less chance of a sale, but can still be useful as well.
Why Content Marketing is Set to Dominate Your Seattle SEO
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on November 26, 2013
SEO has grown a lot in the pat few years, with most notable changes including that ‘search’ marketing is now more ‘integrated’ marketing than simple ‘SEO’. Anyone who does their own optimization can easily see that tactics, techniques, and algorithms are quickly changing and in big ways. But while content is no longer the only star of your search optimization, new data shows that content marketing should be. If you want to keep your localized Seattle SEO campaign up to date with Google, then content marketing is definitely for you.
Image-Centric Content is On the Rise
Do you like pictures? Studies show that your fan-base most likely loves pictures. Image-centric content is on the rise and popular across every form of advertising including your localized SEO. The most successful blog posts and websites now all have the same thing in common, which is that they use beautiful imagery throughout the post. You want to make sure your photos look professional, that they are shareable, and relevant to your topic. For restaurants and anyone selling a product, this means you can showcase your business for nothing more than the cost of a photographer and then use sites like your blog, Pinterest, Instagram, and even Facebook to share with the world. Because images, and content with more shares and links both come up in search, you can’t loose.
Off-Site Content is On the Rise Again
Off-Sit content marketing has had it’s ups and downs for the past few years but right now it’s back on the rise, providing you follow a few specific rules. Every post that you put out must be high quality, and every blog or site that you post on must be highly relevant to your site. Just a link doesn’t benefit your pages very much, but a targeted link, especially one that appeals to readers without directly ‘selling’ your content, will do a lot for you. Plus, new research shows that Google’s Hummingbird is actually picking the first four posts by the number of inbound links, so off-site content marketing is definitely something to keep in mind.
One Ring to Rule Them All
While content marketing has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings (unless you happen to be in the movie business) it does offer a one size fits all way to dominate your integrated marketing. Content is popular in SEO, SMM, and PPC (Search, Social, & Advertisement), essentially giving you a catch-all form of marketing that you can invest in to turn out really great results. Of course, you might be able to just throw up a random image or boring article and hope it succeeds, but ‘real content marketing’ involves creating a strategy that targets your Seattle audience, and then hitting them with planned, imagery and writing.
Content marketing is hugely important no matter where you happen to be marketing. With Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm, it is becoming more important than ever for a number of different reasons. If you haven’t integrated content marketing into your Seattle SEO campaign, consider starting right away.
Five New Seattle Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out For
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on November 9, 2013
The world of marketing is always changing and unless you stay on top of the trends, you’re going to see a quick drop in your campaign success. No matter what it is you happen to be marketing, trends can make or break your campaign so you have to watch out for them. The following include a few local, and international, marketing trends that could affect your Seattle social media marketing campaign.
Twitter is Back
That’s right! Twitter is back and bigger than ever, especially if you’re in the right sectors. New data shows that Twitter is now doing just as well or better than Facebook for active users, and more importantly, it’s becoming harder to promote yourself on Facebook. While it’s important not to ignore either channel, Twitter gives you an opportunity to directly connect with your fans by answering questions, recommending your software, and creating an online buzz about your products, all without the huge amount of thought that goes into every Facebook post. While less people will click through on your links via Twitter, you do have the opportunity to get more exposure for your brand.
You Can No Longer Ignore Google +
If you don’t have a Google + then you need to run not walk to the computer and set up a page for your business. As we discussed in one of our previous posts, Google + is hugely influential across most fields of organic marketing including social and SEO. Google may be playing favorites, but with Google + offering all the benefits of Twitter and Facebook, and 540 million active users, you really can’t afford to ignore it any longer. Plus (pun intended) you can use Google’s Hangout function to directly engage with your fan base, answer questions, and earn loyal customers. Google’s ‘local’ functions are also invaluable to your marketing efforts so make sure you check them out.
Cross Marketing
Cross marketing, or working together with your competitors and other related businesses is quickly becoming the next big thing. By collaborating and offers cross marketing deals (such as a hotel stay and restaurant meal in one package) you gain more exposure to a wider fan-base. While not every business can benefit from this sort of cross marketing, most can. You can benefit by offering online coupons, giveaways or deals that encourage you to like/share your cross marketing companions, or even bundles and deals that benefit everyone involved.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is going, well, viral. It’s expected to be the biggest form of marketing in 2014, and is already making a huge splash in 2013. So what’s the big deal? Videos, pictures, blogs, and even infographics have all been going viral all year and when done right, will gain a massive amount of exposure and interest in your business.
Image Centric Social
One trend that has probably the largest impact is that image centric social sites like Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are now more important than ever. These sites allow businesses to connect directly with customers via hashtags, image shares, and direct mentions, building brand image, product awareness, and interest. While a services site most likely cannot use these types of media marketing most types of businesses can.
Seattle’s social media marketing trends are rapidly changing and if you need help, there’s plenty of professional marketing managers out there to help. Want to know more? Contact our social media marketing team today to find out what we can do for you.
Seattle Social Media Tips – Integrating Earned Media To Increase Revenue
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing on October 15, 2013
Social media is already recognized as a driving force behind ecommerce and brick and mortar sales, but some areas are more efficient than others. While advertised media has been the driving force behind social for some time, experts are now pointing to the growing field of earned media, which earns more revenue and offers more social interaction than any amount of paid media. So what is earned media and how can you get it to work for you?
Earned Media
Earned media is quite simply media that is earned through promotional effort rather than advertising. The concept is nothing more than idea that earned traffic is earned rather than paid for, and is usually gotten through promotions such as giveaways and incentives. For example, a restaurant offering a discount coupon code to Facebook fans is more likely to get actual sales from their Facebook, and an ecommerce store offering a free $50 coupon to a random fan who attends their tweet party gains exposure, and fans.
As an example, eBay frequently promotes their ‘Green’ section on Twitter by holding a Twitter party to talk about green products. Fans have to tag the eBay Green Team and hashtag them and follow them, and then each person who tweets at them is automatically entered into an hourly drawing for a gift certificate for as long as the event lasts. The result is usually around ten thousand generated tweets that all mention and tag the Twitter, and many of which link specific products. While it doesn’t always generate direct sales, it does generate a great deal of new content, interaction, and more exposure.
In another example, the popular fashion brand White House Black Market holds competitions on Instagram for posting photos of women wearing their clothes, tagging them, and sharing on Facebook and Twitter. The result is a huge library of women wearing their clothes, which ups promotion, increases interaction, and helps make sales because consumer photos are similar to consumer recommendations in that they drive sales, and all for the cost of a $2,500 gift certificate to the store. While a little too much of an investment for smaller businesses, it generated thousands in revenue for White House Black Market as well as numerous followers on Instragam and Facebook.
Integrating Earned Media Into Your Social Strategies
Integrating earned media into your strategy can be intimidating at first, especially if you don’t have a huge fan base. Offering smaller giveaways, deals, or incentives to customers such as $5 credit on your fifth visit, coupons, or discounts, can help to build your customer base by increasing awareness. Offering free samples and even gift certificates to influential bloggers such as through Klout Perks can help you to increase awareness and get good reviews and more buzz about your business.
Essentially earned media isn’t free, but it does net you more interested and engaged consumers who are more likely to make sales. The most common strategy is to offer an incentive in exchange for a like or follow, which you can then use to make a sale.
Social Media and SEO – Your Two Greatest Marketing Assets
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization on August 1, 2013
If you pay attention to marketing news then you can probably see that ‘SEO vs. Social Media’ is a pretty hot topic. A lot of people want to compare the two to see which offers more ROI, but the truth is that both are pretty much indispensable when used correctly. A social media professional can leverage your social to covert your fans into customers, and a quality SEO can convert thousands of visitors onto your website. Both offer results, but the best results are found when you combine the two.
Social Media
Social Media has a huge advantage when it comes to conversions. In fact, a study in 2012 showed that social has a 100% higher lead to close rate than outbound marketing conversion rate. Does that mean that every person on your social will become a customer? Far from it, but statistics show that you can increase your leads from social by more than 25% by offering a simple discount on your social. Social Media is popular because it is the easiest way to connect to fans, and is the fastest way to convert traffic. If you have people on your page, then you can talk to them instantly, which greatly increases your sale conversion rate. Facebook is used more often for researching brands via their pages, while Twitter is more popular for asking brand questions, or asking about brands. You can use both to get in touch with your client base and make new fans. If you ask any Seattle social media expert they will definitely be able to make sales from your social when given the time to create a fanbase.
SEO
SEO is quite possibly the most widely misunderstood marketing tactic ever, but mostly because it has changed so much since its start. The key to SEO is keeping up with changes and remembering that traffic is the most important goal. A good Seattle SEO strategy consists of technical website details that affect search, on-site content that draws traffic, and off-site SEO that sends traffic to the site. While there are other factors involved, these are usually the most important. Your Seattle SEO plan should cover your link building, technical specifications, and keyword optimization on your site so that you draw traffic.
SEO & SMM
One important thing to remember is that no matter how much traffic your website draws, it might not convert. Most people prefer to research a site as thoroughly as possible before making a purchase or investment, and your business is probably no different. Your landing pages can either attempt to convince visitors to make a purchase, or can be used to get visitors to stick around, become fans, and maybe make a purchase later. Whether you do this by offering a purchase incentive, or by simply directing them to your social page for more info, social plays a huge role in long term retention of traffic and therefore of increasing your ROI.
Both SEO and social media play a large part in your Seattle marketing, but usually you need both to see the best results. While there are some exceptions to the rule, the two are mostly inseparable.
How A/B Testing Can Help You Improve Your Online Sales
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on April 11, 2013
Most businesses can benefit from A/B testing. Whether for social, SEO, or even your web design, AB testing can help you to figure out what works and what doesn’t so that you can improve on what you have. Improving means making more sales, converting more traffic, and in some cases, even getting more traffic. So what is A/B testing and how does it work?
What is AB Testing?
A/B testing or split testing is the process of experimenting with web, social, and marketing content until you achieve the best results. Usually A/B testing uses direct comparisons so for example, two things would be launched at one time and their performance compared. A good example would be in marketing ads, you can launch one ad with a blue background and one with a red background, A/B testing is the process of seeing which gets more clicks. Most A/B testing introduces small changes to previous designs and then directly compares results. You can repeat this process with landing pages, social sites, shares, website color, ads, SEO tactics, and more.
As you can probably guess, A/B testing is an excellent way to improve things because you can make small changes and launch them together so that you can see which works better without hurting your sales by trying something drastically new. Ready to try it out?
Utilizing A/B Testing
The first thing you need is a marketing program, SEO program, or web page you would like to improve. Let’s say you would like to increase your social related purchases. In this case you would simply try different types of posts, measure them against each other, and see which get the most hits, click-through’s and impressions. So post 1. Could be “Check out our fan only sale, now through Saturday’ with a link. Post 2. Could be a photo with ‘Fan only Coupon, get your 25% discount’. While you would obviously have to post these on different days, and maybe even different weeks, you could easily see which option incited more sales.
A/B testing for SEO and website conversions is a little harder, but it does use the same basic idea. You change one small thing and see how it performs against something else. So for example, you could create two different landing pages, each with different text, different colors, and a different call to action, and see how they perform against each other. A smaller change would be to make only the call to action different to see how one tiny part compares.
This form of testing is most commonly used in ads where it is very easy to utilize, but A/B can be used in almost anything. From social posts and tweets to web pages and SEO, you can utilize A/B testing to examine, test, and improve your online sales. In fact, even changing up your descriptions and the photos on any products or services you might have can be considered A/B testing
SEO vs PPC – Where Should You Be Spending Your Time and Money?
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing on April 2, 2013
Most websites require some form of marketing, and for most, the decision comes down to PPC (pay per click advertising) or SEO (search engine optimization). There are many benefits to both, but most webmasters should learn best policy for each tactic including how, when, and where to use them. Before going into detail, you can compare the two marketing options.
SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the easiest way to get natural and organic clicks. Studies show that between 40 and 60 percent of searches end with clicks on organic results, mostly because buyers are more likely to trust unpaid options. However, Google and other search engines have been inserting paid ads into search results so these numbers are going down.
SEO requires that a site have a quality social program, good usage of keywords related to their topic or niche, and plenty of quality backlinks. The basic points of SEO include:
- Relatively affordable
- Offers unlimited return on investment
- Is constantly changing
- Allows websites to rank for quality content
- Is reputation based
PPC
Pay per click advertisement is the most popular form of advertisement because you literally get what you pay for. You bid on the click and then you pay that much each time someone clicks on your ad and visits your site. What they do once they reach your site is entirely dependent upon how targeted your ads are and the content or products you have on the site. PPC can be cost effective for small campaigns but also very expensive for larger campaigns. The pros of PPC include that if you spend the money, you are guaranteed traffic in return.
- You only pay for traffic you receive
- Ads are posted in search, on websites, or on social
- Pay how much you want per click
- Run ads for as long as you want
PPC vs. SEO
SEO and PPC both have their benefits but for most websites, SEO definitely has an advantage over PPC in that it can offer more clicks and traffic for the same or less money. A good SEO campaign can direct thousands of visitors to a site for one small flat rate price while PPC costs more per extra visitor. For budget purposes, SEO definitely has an advantage.
Long term SEO programs that are intended to increase ranking and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking can also be more effective over time than PPC. However, SEO is a long term strategy and can take weeks or even months to show quality results. PPC usually shows results within a few hours of the campaign being launched.
Choosing Between PPC and SEO
Many webmasters think that they have to choose between SEO and PPC but for most websites, choosing one or the other can be a mistake. SEO is a great way to build long term results and should have the majority of focus for most websites, especially those on a budget. However, including PPC campaigns can be beneficial as well, especially for sales, special occasions, or any time when a little extra traffic, more interaction, or even more sales are needed. SEO is definitely the better choice for anyone on a strict budget, and for anyone looking for long term results, but PPC definitely has its advantages as well.
Author
This is a guest post.
Brandy Cross is a full time tech and SEO blogger for The High Tech Society. Catch her on Twitter @MissBCross or leave a comment here to talk about your SEO.
What Search Engine Marketing Can Do For Your Brand
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing on September 19, 2012
When was the last time that you invested in some search engine marketing for your business? If you think that all that was dealt with when you set up your website, then it might be time to gather up your colleagues and have a little chat.
Search engine marketing doesn’t stop once your website is set up, it’s an on-going process which everyone in your company can be a part of. In a world where link-building and social signals are a key part of boosting your company websites rankings, it seems strange that over half of most U.S companies actually block their employees access to social sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Why? Earlier this year we thought up seven solid tips for good SEO, one being to cultivate links with other sites. Well, what if the links were coming from inside the building?
As a part of a wider search engine marketing strategy, which includes link building outside of the company, it can be very beneficial to encourage employees in the building to talk about their work on social media sites, and even to blog about their work and research – with links back to the company site.
Of course you would want to keep a handle on the specifics, but developing a strategy like this – where potential customers feel as though they are getting to know (and coming to trust) more sides of the company than just the marketing arm – can do wonders for the visibility of your brand in search engine rankings. And with all the sites linking to each other, they’re only going to continue to become stronger.
Would you consider implementing a search engine marketing strategy like this at your workplace? How do you think it would benefit your brand?
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