Marketing in the online environment for a product that can only be purchased offline is always a challenge. This webinar will guide you through how to meet the challenge by engaging your customers in the online and digital environments they frequent.
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Optimization is the key to a successful PPC campaign, but unfortunately it’s often overlooked. The below list encapsulates the most common mistakes we see when PPC campaigns are presented to us for evaluation. By no means is this an exhaustive list, but it does illustrate how simple setup issues can be a barrier to your PPC’s campaign success.
Our Dallas office continues to grow with the addition of Minimally Invasive Spine Care Clinic, to our client roster. Founded by top spine surgeon, Dr. Douglas Won, MD, Minimally Invasive Spine Care Clinic (MISCC) sought agency expertise in building its brand awareness and increase patient acquisition.
Launching off successful processes developed for major brand clients of Sitelab, such as Sharp Healthcare, Wolfgang Puck and the US Navy; we were set with the task of formulating a custom marketing plan for Dr. Won’s practice. Aiming MISCC squarely in the center of the heavily saturated and competitive market of the Dallas Fort Worth area was the goal. Dr. Won was already a pioneer with highly specialized training in his industry and the procedures he performs. Sitelab just had to bring the strategy to give notice to the stellar reputation.
Along with the near instant results that Pay Per Click marketing, analytics optimization and content development can bring to a project, these processes lend to the desired outcome. Improving website usability and building upon search engine optimization of MISCC, which are the roots of the campaign that we believe converts website visitors into loyal patients.
We welcome Dr. Won and Minimally Invasive Spine Care Clinic to the Sitelab family.
Want to learn more about these services, or need help developing an online marketing strategy to reach your 2012 (and beyond) business goals? Contact lori@sitelab.com or call 214-906-6633.
The list of the Top 100 Best SEO Companies, compiled by topseos.com, has been released for June 2012. Sitelab Interactive has found a spot on the list, being identified as a top service provider, noting that the “evaluation process for both agencies and software tools is meticulous. We review strengths, weaknesses, and competitive advantages.” topseos.com is an independent authority on search vendors.
Their list of top search engine optimization companies in the online marketing industry is released monthly and features companies nationwide. Read the full SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle article and check out the list.
Many of us don’t have the resources to dive into every new technology and trend in marketing, let alone be first. With the ever changing landscape of social media and search marketing, it’s hard to know which ones are worthwhile. Google+ may have been one of those that you’ve taken a “wait and see” approach with, but now it’s critical for your business to not only be present, but active there.
But Why Should I Be on Google+ now?
There are lots of smart people there, and it’s growing. Google+ now has 90 million users, and is adding 625,000 new users a day*. While this number is dwarfed in comparison to Facebook’s 750 million users, it’s quickly catching up to the number of Twitter’s active users. Who were the first people to start using Google+? The early adopters – bloggers who recognized Google+ as uncharted territory where they didn’t have to be confined by the 140 character limit of Twitter. Now these intelligent people are waiting to “hang out” with you.
They’re making it personal. With the roll out of the new Google Search Plus Your World, when you’re signed into your Google+ account, and you Google search a keyword, in addition to your regular search results, you’ll see results from “your world” including web pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know (in your circles), and content that’s only visible to you (like private photos from Google+). So for example, if someone searches for “best blue widget manufacturer in San Diego”, and you are said blue widget manufacturer, you’ll show up at in their search results if someone in their Google+ circles has interacted with your brand on Google+.
Your competition is there. The “best red widget manufacturer in San Diego” (a.k.a. your competition) may already be on Google+ since 61% of the top 100 brands are (Source: SocialTimes.com) And better yet, if they’re not…you’ll beat them there. The benefit of building valuable connections outweighs the virtually no risk of participation.
It’s Google. Google remains the undisputed champ in search engines. And Google products like Gmail, Google Places, Google News, Google Images, and YouTube are at the top of their respective heaps too. They’ll be integrated as part of Search plus Your World to improve the search experience. So a user can watch a video on you YouTube channel, see if their friends watched it, find new videos on Google+, and email it to some other friends. At this point, Search Plus Your World doesn’t cover content on any other social network with a more limited audience, including Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr. More information about the convergence of Personal, Private, & Public Search Results with Google+ is available on SearchEngineLand.com.
To help you get started with Search Plus Your World, SiteLab created a 3-month plan for you to be fully integrated in 90 days.
Month 1: Optimize your Google+ profile:
Month 2: Create Compelling Content
We get you started on writing content for your new Google+ audience, which includes:
Month 3: Training
Now that you’re established on Google +, we train you to post on your own and engage your followers, which includes:
Price: Contact your Sitelab account manager or fill out our form for pricing.
Be the first in your industry to lead the way.
Source: *https://plus.google.com/117388252776312694644/posts/ZcPA5ztMZaj#117388252776312694644/posts/ZcPA5ztMZaj
The search marketing landscape on January 1, 2012 will look far different than it did at the start of 2011. 2011 marked a stark shift in search marketing away from a monolithic experience towards a personalized experience for all searchers. More than ever, searchers on Google will have distinctly personalized and unique search experiences even when using identical keyword searches. This means search marketers will no longer be able to focus solely on keywords, but rather on how their content resonates with various audiences based on demographic and psychographic profiling.
With the rise of mobile technology has come the availability of vast data resources for better aligning users with their desired content. Mobile phones contain data on everything from a user’s current location to who their friends are and what kinds of apps they purchase; all of which can be used to better focus marketing on the individual user. Even searchers on desktop computers are experiencing a vastly more personalized search experience with Google’s personalized results and their continued push toward offering incentives for users to utilize Google products such as Google+ and the +1 button.
Simultaneously, this will offer new opportunities for savvy search marketers to capture these newly personalized search result rankings by taking advantage of emerging standards for semantic web information in concert with existing best practices. As monolithic search rankings erode, websites taking advantage of emerging standards will rise to fill these gaps for users, in a highly relevant way.
- Matt Parisi, Search Marketing Manager
It has been about three months now since SiteLab first wrote about Google encrypting search results for users logged in to a Google account. Many search marketers were troubled by the news and wondered how this would impact the overall measurement of organic search traffic to websites.
Before this change you were able to see not only what keyword/query was used to reach your site but also data showing how traffic from each term performed; a very valuable insight when determining strategy, optimizations and overall success. Read the official “Making search more secure” blogpost from Google.
Google software engineer Matt Cutts stated that only single digit search volume would be impacted by this switch, meaning no more than 9.9% of searches would essentially be “hidden”. We’ve been monitoring this closely and have some stats that show the percentage of searches being impacted and what steps can be taken to minimize the loss of data.
Client Case Studies – % of Organic Traffic Identified as Keyword Source, “Not Provided”
Top 10 Keywords for Client #1 with 14.35% "Not Provided" Shown in Blue
You can see the trend is almost at the 15% mark in each instance. These clients were simply chosen at random, but it’s also important to note that during our research we observed cases where up to 29% of incoming organic traffic was all grouped under the new (not provided) keyword source.
The trend sure seems to indicate that this figure won’t be getting smaller in the foreseeable future, so what are some ways you can gain back the insight lost from this missing data?
First of all, you’re not going to get this information back, at least not through Google Analytics. There are a number of ways for you to break down the value and importance of this new (not provided) group, but there’s no way you can get the invaluable information back that has been taken away. That said, what you’re losing is only currently a small portion of data, 10-15% off the top. For now, the impact is relatively low but the takeaway should be that now is the time to diversify your analytics sources and end reliance on a single source of data. Here are a few other venues to get analytics data and ideas for how to track these types of metrics to help with strategizing, optimizing or measuring success of an organic campaign.
Other Analytics Sources
In summary, it’s really a sad state of affairs that this data has been taken away from marketers by Google. Especially when considering this information is available for paid advertisers of Google’s AdWords product and this information essentially helps Google’s search results be better by allowing marketers insights into what users want. The best way to combat this loss of data is through a multi-faceted approach to diversify your data sources. Also, don’t forget to continue analyzing the stats for your (not provided) traffic in order to gain insights into how you may be able to better serve that increasingly large segment of traffic.
While performing an SEO audit for one of our numerous recipe sites, we came across an interesting conundrum: Should we use Microformatting or Microdata (schema.org) for tagging our recipe web pages with structured data? (Structured data is data that is identifiable by type, for example data referring to a recipe (see schema.org for further explanation)) Back in 2010, we immediately implemented the new Microformatting standard adopted by Google using “hrecipe” (microformatting) as it heralded an additional tag (among many others) that could be used to communicate to search engines directly to help them understand the contents of a web page. For example we tagged recipe ingredients with a special ingredient. There are only so many ways to do this, so this new technique was exciting.
However, many competing standards have also been released, which spurred an investigation into which format is superior for ranking purposes. Does using Microformatting (hrecipe) or Microdata (itemprop, itemscope, itemtype) provide any advantages over one another for ranking?
At first glance, it appears that perhaps there is an advantage to using the Microformat method with hrecipe. It’s overwhelming to analyze search result pages where the top recipe results use hrecipe over and over again. The Top Recipe Sites; AllRecipes.com, SimplyRecipes.com, Food.com, etc, all use hrecipe. (more…)
In a recent startling move, Google has begun encrypting organic search query data from users signed in to a Google account. The encryption process will take place over the coming weeks as Google rolls out the update to all users. What this means is that Analytics programs will lose the ability to report on site usage statistics by keyword for visits initiated by a logged in user. Instead all visits from logged in users will be grouped under the keyword label “(not provided)”. This represents a major loss of important data used by SEO firms to optimize a client’s online presence.
It’s important to note that this currently only affects a small subset of Google searches as Google Software Engineer, Matt Cutts, has indicated this will affect “single digit percentages of all Google searchers“. This implies that up to 9.9% of organic search data will no longer be attributed to a particular keyword in analytics reporting and represents a major loss of insight to marketers who depend on this data to provide better experiences for users who arrive on websites with particular motivations in mind.
While Google attempted to justify the move in the name of User Privacy, there are two key points that trivialize that justification:
There has been much speculation that Google could not follow through on a move that would have such negative consequences for marketers or that Google will ultimately enable this information to be somehow passed to Google Analytics at some point in the future. However, despite vocal marketer objections, Google has continued to dictate significant changes over time based on their own interests. This further reinforces the fact that becoming over-reliant on Google comes with significant risks. This fact was highlighted earlier this year with Google “Panda” update. Secure searches will only increase over time as more and more users have Google accounts, which leads to the conclusion that it is time to start planning for life without organic keyword referral data.
This isn’t to say that we don’t expect Google to change. We expect constant innovation and changing norms as a prerequisite of doing business online. What we object to are the pretenses under which this update was made. If this change was truly about user privacy, please enact these changes across all products such that user data truly is private. Until then we have no choice but to suspect ulterior motives. SiteLab has joined the chorus of criticism following this update.
It’s no secret that search engines are constantly evolving, the big question is what do we need to do as search engine marketers to keep up. SEOmoz, a Seattle based search engine product provider publishes an annual report with insights based on testing & analysis as to what factors are more relevant to search engines today. Their 2011 report includes interesting takeaways and confirms what many already believe, social and search are becoming even more intertwined.
One of my favorite pieces is the future of search section of the report, as it completely cements notions that most have had for some time. How do websites (that really aren’t that good) rank above my site just because of the domain name? What does all this social media work we’re doing mean for people trying to find me online? How much does having a negative bounce rate hurt my search rankings? These are all questions that have had some light shed on them.
The chart below shows future signals of what will be important for marketers, not only to be aware of but to make sure it’s a focus of your ongoing optimization plans. You’ll see three different colors on the chart, if you have more orange from right to left, then this will be a higher factor for search rankings in the near future. The yellow indicates no change from now going forward and the grey/brown bar indicates that this will lessen in importance as time goes on.
Image –Future of Search Rankings — SEOmoz.com
One of the biggest takeaways I see is that it’s going to be easier for sites to naturally rank for relevant keywords. The days of text stuffing and direct match domain names are coming to an end. The more natural and organic the rankings, the better the experience will be for not only searchers but for us as search marketers.
The highest increase from now moving forward is the analysis of a pages perceived value to users. The second highest increase goes to social signals being much larger factors and the next being usage data from things like your analytics. Other major changing factors are things like the readability and design of your site and content, showing the common theme of making sure a site is worthy of each visit being sent. Taking these signals from how much people are sharing the content, how valuable a page is perceived to be for users, and how people respond to the site by review of analytic numbers.
What are the biggest changes for what will determine search engine ranking pages? – Much less emphasis will be on exact match domains and the effectiveness of paid links. It’s long been noted that if you could get the exact match domain you would be much better off on those specific ranking terms, and still it probably holds true to some degree for now. It does however make sense to do away with this ranking factor being so prominent, there could be many sites out there more relevant to what someone is searching for and this queue is too easily manipulated by outside individuals like search engine marketers.
No matter how you perceive the changes and insight here, it means good things to come for white hat organic traffic generators.
SEOmoz report on 2011 search engine ranking factors is based from correlation-based analysis – alongside the opinions of a 132-person panel assembled by SEOmoz.
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