Posts Tagged Seattle SEO
What Google’s Vanishing Keyword Data Means for Seattle SEO
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on September 24, 2013
Many business owners and SEOs have begun to notice a shift in Google’s analytics keyword reporting, but unfortunately, it’s only just beginning. Many keywords are beginning to show as ‘not available’ due to Google’s secure search blocking the bots that collect the data. Keyword data, or the exact keyword that shows how a visitor found your site, is used by many people for optimizing and finding keywords that work, and even for turning the best keywords into PPC campaigns. Unfortunately for marketers and business owners everywhere, that is about to change, because Google isn’t planning on integrating any other options. How does Google’s vanishing keyword data affect your Seattle SEO? Keep reading to find out.
Vanishing Data
Over the past year, most people who use Google Analytics have noticed that more and more keywords were vanishing. These keywords typically show up as ‘not available’ rather than listing the searched keyword, meaning that users cannot turn the data into campaigns or optimized pages. While Matt Cutts claimed that the new secure search would not affect more than ‘single digits’ of search results in 2011,studies now show that some niches are affected a great deal more. In fact, BrightEdge recently released a study on Search Engine Watch detailing that the highest affected industry (Technology) was affected 56%. Essentially, more than half of the keywords in that sector show up as not available.
One website we used to test this theory received 3,125 search hits during the test period. Of those hits, 1,900 of them were ‘keyword not provided’. Another website, in the SEO sector, literally did not have any keyword data, with every hit showing up as ‘not provided’. The last website tested received a modest 500, with 62% via search, but 199 of those keywords are ‘unavailable’ meaning that some 60% of searched keywords aren’t showing up.
What it Means for Seattle SEO
While not seeing your keyword data is going to have some impact on your campaigns, you can minimize the effect by paying attention to your URL hits and what keywords you utilized for those URL’s. The biggest impact that the vanishing keyword data has on small businesses is that Google is no longer a reliable tool for finding your star keywords. While there are ways around anonymous search data, you should probably start thinking around your keywords, not trying to dig them back up. SEO experts around the globe agree that keywords are becoming less and less important for most SEO, although it still holds a big placeholder in PPC and other marketing campaigns.
Adjusting your campaigns to focus on business impact including revenue, conversion, and traffic, is more likely to hold as a stable long term marketing campaign for Google’s future policies. While keywords aren’t dead, they are playing a much smaller part in future SEO.
While secure search is reducing the amount of keyword data available, it is also forcing more business owners to think in terms of long term results, rather than the short term of optimizing a page for keywords. All in all, it’s a big change, but it could be a good one for the future of Seattle SEO.
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.
Do You Really Need an SEO Specialist?
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on July 16, 2013
If you’re considering hiring an SEO specialist then you should think about it carefully before you do. An SEO Specialist can do a lot for your site including increasing page rank, getting your site higher on SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), and of course, getting you more traffic. All of this is of course a benefit, but you do have to carefully consider what you are paying for and whether or not you need it. After all, SEO is a marketing service, and you wouldn’t jump right into buying a billboard on the side of a road without thinking it through first.
The Pros
SEO is one of the most affordable means of marketing known to man. Unlike PPC and traditional advertising, it offers fast, flexible results that can continue to grow over time, even after you are no longer paying an SEO specialist or company. You can double, triple, or even quadruple your traffic with SEO, and traffic likely means customers. If you have something to sell then this could mean money in your pocket. Most importantly, SEO does not charge you for what you get. If you get 1 million hits then you pay the same as if you get 1,000 hits.
The Cons
Many of the cons of SEO are simply the reverse of the pros. An SEO company can get your website to the top of search engines, but they can’t sell your products for you. If you don’t have a great website that is going to sell, then traffic could be just traffic. You have to make sure that your website is ready before you hire an SEO specialist to help you get that traffic. What else? SEO isn’t magic, it takes time, and nothing happens overnight. SEO is a complicated process that involves a lot of different factors, so if you’re looking for overnight increases in traffic and sales, you might want to go another route, like PPC. Like that billboard mentioned above, SEO doesn’t really guarantee sales or traffic, it just guarantees exposure. Unless you make your ‘ad’ on the SERPS exactly what people are looking for, it won’t do anything.
Do You Need an SEO Specialist?
So, do you need an SEO specialist? Chances are that if you have a great website that can handle traffic, a good call to action, a product to sell that people want, and a budget high enough to accommodate an good SEO company, then yes you do. On the other hand if you are looking into getting instant traffic, instant sales, and a pay-as-you-go philosophy, traditional marketing and PPC may be the way to go.
SEO has its pros and cons but for anyone looking for long term results, it’s usually an important consideration. Why, because over time it can do more for your website than PPC will, but for less money. In addition, most people actually click on natural SERPS provided by SEO rather than by advertisements. Interested? Why not check out our Search Engine Optimization page to see what we do for the Seattle area.
A Case Study in SEO –How Consulting & Strategy Benefit Your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on June 6, 2013
Starting a business without a great idea of what you’re getting in to, who the competitors are, and who your market is could be a disaster right? The same thing could be said of your SEO, but somehow many businesses neglect to analyze and create strategies for their unique circumstances before diving in. Luckily for most business owners, that’s where an SEO consultant can step in, take over, and make sure you don’t waste your money on strategies that won’t work for you.
Start with In-Depth Analysis
The first step to creating a successful SEO strategy is to analyze, review, and evaluate the SEO on the site. You have to know your demographic, your sales, which keywords you have to focus on and which aren’t doing anything for you, as well as performance details such as individual page statistics and link structure. This helps you to see where your current traffic is coming from so that you can build and expand on it. It also helps you to decide if you have any problems with your current SEO such as broken links, technical errors, keyword-stuffing, keywords that generate the wrong types of (uninterested) traffic, and etc. Basically an in-depth analysis covers everything you are in SEO, even if you’re just starting out.
Creating a Strategy
The second step is to create a strategy based on the information learned during analysis. Star factors should include creating a list of new dynamic keywords that benefit the site. This should include both short and long tails because both are essential for a good SEO strategy based on site search trends as well as area and target demographic trends. Creating a backlink and directory submission strategy is usually quite simple so long as you keep the needs of your site in mind. Finally, much of your strategy should involve increasing the reputation of your site as a whole which means working on PR (Page Rank), as well as author reputation through use of services such as Google Authorship. This might also include ideas such as creating better optimized content, blogging, improving keyword density for fewer, more, or better keywords, or even optimizing inbound links. There are plenty of strategies and your site might need any, or all of them.
Implementing & Testing
Last but not least, the largest part of your SEO strategy is actually implementing it onto your site, analyzing results, and then changing and testing what works and what doesn’t work until you have a highly efficient strategy. Not everything is guaranteed to work for your site so testing and continued analysis is very important.
So what’s the bottom line? Creating a dynamic SEO strategy requires hard work, continued dedication, and constant changes and updates as strategies and search engines change. Usually the best tactics are to simply analyze, compare, research, and update while incorporating link building and reputation building strategies in with powerful keywords. Not everyone has the skills or know-how to pull it off, but a good SEO strategy can propel your site to the top of Google so that you get traffic and customers.
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
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