Turn Existing Relationships into Link Building Connections
If you’re a small business owner, you’re going to have to lean on existing relationships – personal, professional, etc. – to help get your business off the ground.
This rings true for launching your own website and trying to get it to rank on search engines. Links from other websites are going to be crucial to helping you achieve the rankings you desire, no matter how great of a writer you might be.
Have you thought about using your existing relationships to land coveted links from other sites? With closer relationships, it could be as easy as asking and receiving.
In other instances, you may have to nurture your relationship with that contact. You might even offer them something – such as a positive online review – ahead of asking for a link from their site.
No matter what, don’t overlook any relationships you already have when it comes to link building for your small biz website.
''Link building is all about establishing relationships, and if you already have a relationship with someone, then the first step is done.'' - Chris Weatherall, President of Eminent SEO @eminentseo #linkbuilding
President and SEO Strategist Chris has over a decade and a half of website development, SEO and organic link building experience. He manages the strategy for each client and drives the search engine rankings and traffic Eminent SEO is known for. When you hire Eminent you hire Chris, which means you have a veteran organic search expert on your team. Oh, and he’s funny too!
With all of the changes to the organic search results over the last couple of years, pay per click (PPC) advertising is as important as ever in the digital marketing world. An effective PPC campaign will both support and enhance your overall marketing efforts while helping you achieve a solid, measurable ROI.
Here are some quick tips to help with your PPC marketing:
Tip 1: Don’t underestimate the value of keyword research. Keyword research is the core structure of the overall PPC campaign.
Tip 2: Write compelling ad copy. Explain what makes your company different. You have two description lines to explain your offer and the advantage you offer over the competition.
Tip 3: Test landing pages. Perform A/B or multivariate testing on your landing pages to find out which content converts the best.
Tip 4: Pay attention to analytics and keep testing. Review CTR and other metrics regularly to be sure you’re not throwing money away on ads that aren’t working.
Tip 5: Use PPC data to aid your organic SEO strategies. PPC and organic SEO don’t have to, and shouldn’t, exist in isolation. The lessons you learn in one campaign might help you with another.
Get More Details on These Tips and See Additional Ones:
More Advice on Effective PPC Campaigns from Our CEO
@eminentseo
@eminentseo
''Most platforms have become pay to play in one form or another, even Google. Do a search for a product or service and look at the types of results you get. More than likely, you will see multiple paid ads first in the results.'' - @dayofjen #PPC.
In addition to following the 5 steps listed above and in our free eBook, the following reads will help boost your understanding and execution of PPC campaigns even further.
The ‘Pay to Play’ Era of Digital Marketing Strategies
President and SEO Strategist Chris has over a decade and a half of website development, SEO and organic link building experience. He manages the strategy for each client and drives the search engine rankings and traffic Eminent SEO is known for. When you hire Eminent you hire Chris, which means you have a veteran organic search expert on your team. Oh, and he’s funny too!
Marketing has been transforming businesses for ages, since way back in the 1960s when advertising strategies stemmed from one simple creative idea that transformed small businesses into huge, recognizable brands today. Back then, creative advertising teams focused less on the research and more on creativity.
1960s Tide Ad: vs. 2018:
Needless to say…things have changed. Not that marketing is no longer creative, but it’s just way more complex. And we have to educate kids on not eating Tide pods rather than selling the products. Enough said.
The Evolution of SEO and Social Media Digital Marketing Strategies
We’ve been doing search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing for over 12 years. Our team has been in it since Google and AOL Instant Messenger was all there was. Did I mention dial-up internet too? Yeah that used to be a thing.
Digital Marketing Platforms
When we first began doing SEO strategies, it was a hell of a lot easier than it is now. Back then, you didn’t have to worry about hundreds of different ranking factors or platforms for a website to be visible online.
Now, you have to think about Google Organic, Google Local, Google AdWords, Facebook Organic, Facebook Paid, Instagram Organic, Instagram Paid, LinkedIn Organic, LinkedIn Paid, Twitter Organic, Twitter Paid, and all their different algorithms. Each platform has a paid and organic option which requires its own strategy, since each audience is unique.
Within each platform, there are also different campaign types. With Facebook, you have a variety of options, including
Video views
Sign up for phone call
Messages
Website traffic
Devices
Platforms are just scratching the surface when it comes to how things have evolved online. When we first started, we only had to think about desktop computer users and their user behavior.
Now, online users aren’t even using their desktop. They’re on their mobile devices.
More users are searching for local services on their mobile devices than ever before. If your brand isn’t mobile-facing, then you’re falling short with your SEO.
Website User Experience
Back in the day, we didn’t take into consideration the website user experience. The entire website was focused on the keywords and getting as many of them on the site as possible to achieve top Google rankings.
Needless to say, that technique is way outdated, but we still see a lot of SEO companies doing this. A word of advice: These short-term strategies will only hurt your site in the long term.
Today’s digital marketing strategies focus heavily on website user experience and attracting user engagement. When your website content is high quality, personalized and easy to navigate, users will stay engaged with the site.
You Must Be Visible on All Platforms or Your Sales and Leads Will Suffer
In order to really grow your online leads, you need to consider all of these changes as well as all of the platforms your potential audiences live on.
“What if my audience isn’t on social media?”
We hear this so often from business owners. It’s completely inaccurate and makes me giggle every time I hear it.
Yes, your audience lives on social media. Yes, your audience is searching on Google. Why? Because EVERYONE is using social media and Google.
The Problem with Only Focusing on Organic Results
We are organic marketers, so we believe businesses should focus their marketing dollars on organic marketing first. However, with today’s algorithm shifts on Google and Facebook, you have to consider some paid ad budget.
Organic marketing alone takes time to see results. You can expect anywhere from 12 months to several years to see full results from organic marketing.
It’s not that it doesn’t work; it does work. Again, you’re only visible on the organic platforms though. Your business will not be visible in Google’s top paid ads or in Facebook’s newsfeed as often since those platforms allow paid ads to be at the top.
The Hybrid Approach: Organic Marketing Plus Paid Ads
The benefits of utilizing the hybrid paid and organic marketing approach include:
Your brand will receive visibility a lot faster.
Organic keyword rankings will increase much quicker.
Your website content will get much more visibility.
Social platforms will attract many followers within your targeted demographic.
Your content will be targeted to a specific audience and geographic area.
You’ll have the ability to test different landing pages for conversions.
You’ll increase your qualified leads much faster, since organic alone will take at least a year.
Why You Need Digital Assets for Marketing to Be Effective
Paid and organic marketing are essential to growing your brand. However, you still need to consider all of the different campaign types required in order to attract these qualified leads. That’s where quality content and digital assets come into play.
Digital assets are considered:
Videos
eBooks
Brochures
Media kits
Blog posts
Landing pages
Quizzes
Podcasts
Case studies
Email series
Your marketing won’t be as effective if you do not have engaging content to promote. Buyers today do not want to be sold. That’s why you develop assets for your ideal buyers and promote those assets through the various digital marketing channels.
Business Owners Are Focused on the Bottom Line: More Sales
If you’re a business owner, you know this is true. You don’t care what the marketing does, but you care how it impacts your business. The end goal isn’t to get more followers on Facebook; it is to achieve more sales to grow your business.
That’s a great goal to have, but where a lot of businesses fall short is considering this hybrid approach to their marketing. They don’t think they need paid ads, or they don’t think they need a high-quality website. Hate to break the news to you all, but that couldn’t be more untrue.
Think quality over quantity. You need to have a quality website with quality content to attract each buyer type within the various stages of the buyer’s journey. Otherwise, your marketing strategy is flawed and you won’t get the results you want.
Final Thoughts on the ‘Pay to Play’ Era
Your business has a huge opportunity to succeed with today’s digital marketing strategies. The tools are literally at your fingertips.
The landscape has changed dramatically throughout the years, and it requires a team of professionals to accomplish this task. It isn’t something to push aside or consider as a small tool for your business; it is the primary driving source of leads today.
Get on board with the changes, or risk not growing your business. It’s up to you, but it’s really that simple.
Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.
Search is an ever-changing landscape of different variables that quantify what makes a website strong enough to rank. As we approach the end of 2015, some of us may be wondering what to expect in 2016 for SEO. My team had the opportunity to attend the Pubcon event in Vegas recently, and I’m happy to share what we learned in terms of the future of SEO.
A lot of businesses owners are still behind the times and are really going to feel it this coming year. If your business has yet to implement a responsive design, semantic markup, and a website that speaks to users, now is the time to implement those things. Otherwise, wait and fail because the future of search isn’t about the older demographic, but millennials and how they’re buying.
Focus on Mobile or Fail
We need to start looking at mobile optimization first since mobile search has finally reached a tipping point and has surpassed desktop search. Because of that, there are now mobile-specified algorithms that focus on mobile location and providing fewer results to the mobile user, but more qualified results than ever before.
As business owners and marketers, mobile optimization strategies need to speak to the mobile audience. This encompasses mobile voice search, mobile website design, mobile apps, and mobile website usability.
Optimizing for Mobile Voice Search
Traditionally, websites have been optimized for important key phrases because that’s how users would use a search engine. Now, with mobile voice search services such as Siri and Google Voice, users are approaching search in a different way. Google’s Hummingbird update directly speaks to voice search users, which allows the search engines to interpret full questions.
Instead of only optimizing websites with important keywords, start thinking about your audience and what questions they may be asking when your product or service will provide the solution. Simply adding a FAQs section to your website that answers these questions with well-researched answers would help optimize the site for voice search.
Optimizing Mobile App Traffic Sources
Since millennials are using their phones for more than just texting and searching Google, we need to be forward thinking when it comes to how they are searching within other apps. Social apps alone are a huge data source for search. Think about Pinterest. Have you searched for recipes on Pinterest? It has become its very own search engine. Therefore, businesses need to be optimized on social apps as well.
Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Users
When designing and optimizing a website, mobile design needs to be the first thought, since it’s where the majority of your traffic is going to come from. If it hasn’t happened already, it inevitably will happen soon. Optimizing the following website considerations will help provide a better mobile user experience:
Optimize website speed times.
Javascript, CSS, and image files should not be blocked from search engines.
Use Schema.org structured data to enhance the rich snippets for mobile.
Prevent the usage of pop-ups.
DO NOT use any Flash, since mobile devices cannot read Flash.
Make sure buttons and navigation are designed for big, fat fingers.
Localize your footer with the correct Name, Address, and Phone Number for local search.
Make sure the content reads well on mobile by optimizing headers and calls to action.
Use Responsive Design
Responsive design allows your website to scale to fit all devices seamlessly. There are still certain tweaks that need to be made to make sure the content is optimized correctly for mobile, but the website is pretty much the same on mobile as desktop, whereas mobile-specific sites may only show mobile users selected areas of your website, not the entirety of the site.
Include Schema Markup in Your On-Page SEO Strategy
Schema markup can enhance your presence in the search engine results by telling search engines exactly what your data means. When search engines understand what the data means, they can provide valuable rich snippets of your content right in the SERPs.
There are different schema markup types available for different content types, including: local, restaurants, products, reviews, recipes, ratings, events, articles, apps, and more. Implementing schema markup will help increase your website CTR, which can lead to higher rankings. We’ll talk more about that later. Take advantage of Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to determine what schema to use for your site.
Optimize Content for Long Clicks
A valuable metric which I’m sure is overlooked by many is the average time on site and whether a user is bouncing off a specific page right away. Long clicks influence rankings, which was once a speculation but now is reality, per Rand Fishkin at Pubcon.
Answering Your Users’ Direct Questions
This can be done by having an interactive website with user-engaging content that walks visitors through the funnel, page by page. This also goes back to optimizing for voice search. Having a solution to a problem will help keep visitors on your site and engaged with your content longer. Directly speaking to your audience with your content is CRUCIAL!
Social Platform Sharing and Headline Optimization
How else can long clicks be established besides from the search results? Social signals can also be a huge advocate for creating long clicks on your blog posts and website content offers. For so long, we’ve been focused on the amount of shares, when in reality, it’s the amount of long clicks your content receives from social that will be the breadwinner in achieving higher rankings for that article you spent so much time on.
To do this, your headlines must match your content and be straight to the point. That way, users aren’t surprised when they click on your article to find that it is completely irrelevant to the title, causing them to bounce off.
Storytelling with Your Content
Instead of writing some plain, boring product description, use storytelling to explain that specific product and how it can relate to your consumer. Ask yourself this, if your content was removed from the web, would anyone miss it?
Be Creative with Your Link Building Strategies
In a recent blog post, we spoke about how you can create valuable content that will increase backlinks. This is the future of link building and what every site needs to have in order for high quality sites to link back to you. Other ways to generate quality backlinks include:
Scraping competitor backlinks, sorting out low quality sites and going after high quality sites.
Crawling competitor sites to find broken links. Now look at the links pointing to that page and outreach to those sites with your page that’s not broken.
Discovering new sites by utilizing Twitter and other social platforms in your niche.
Creating infographics that speak to your audience and share them until they go viral. Once your infographic goes viral, you will see the backlinks increase.
Creating content on your site that speaks directly to a site you would like a link from.
Data, Data, Data: You Gotta Have It
The final important SEO factor for the future and now is accumulating as much data as you possibly can. At Pubcon, we learned that “data is the new oil.” It’s that important.
So, what kind of data should you be collecting? All of it.
Audience-Specific Data
Data-driven marketing starts with understanding the consumer and audience. Collecting this information up front is crucial to the content strategy, since you’ll want to know whether to tailor content to a specific gender, age group, geographic area, etc. Develop your ideal buyer persona based on current audience data, which can be collected from social platforms and Google Analytics.
Identify Patterns in Data Sets
Patterns tell a story with the data. There are different types of data that can provide different patterns. For example, when running a crawl report on your website, look for patterns in page types. Start by collecting the page data via crawl, identify footprints, and then sort/filter/pivot by page type. Page types can include: blog posts, archive pages, static pages, paginated comments, attachment pages, etc.
Once filtered, what do you see as the majority page type? If there’s a huge amount of a certain page type over all the other page types, chances are something is off technically with the site. You probably wouldn’t know that existed without identifying the pattern.
Other SEO patterns to be keep a lookout for may include:
On-page link to content ratios
Footer links with exact match keywords
Off-site anchor text exact match percentages
Duplicate pages and content
Use Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics
Understanding your audience can be two-fold: the buyer and the learner. In order to understand their separate ways of navigating through your site, you must use custom dimensions in Google Analytics. Once you’ve tagged a visitor as a buyer or learner, you will be able to identify patterns in how each user follows the funnel. This data is extremely important because you can better optimize for each audience, which will help increase your conversions.
Takeaways
In order to keep up with SEO, you must have these big factors in play. SEO is NOT dead, nor will it ever be dead. It’s just gotten a lot more complex. Basically if your website isn’t mobile friendly, has minimal content for users, and you’re not tracking your success, you will eventually fail. You can’t have a SEO plan without any of these factors in play. We’ll leave it with this closing quote from Pubcon:
“SEO success is adaptation. Data is critical to growth.” – Duane Forrester from Bing
If you’re overwhelmed by what goes into SEO today, don’t be. We are here to help. Give us a call.
Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.
OK, so you have a pay-per-click campaign running, but you think it could be better. You are probably right. Consider where you are sending your potential clients… what is on that landing page. Does it do your product/service justice? Or is it more “ho-hum, seen it before”?
The most effective campaigns will have a dedicated landing page properly optimized for a specific product or service with a clear call-to-action. Do you want them to buy right there? Do you want them to fill out a form? Or would you rather get them on the phone right now? These are some questions to ask yourself when designing your landing page.
In order to have a PPC campaign that produces a high amount of conversions, leads, and sales, you need to have dedicated PPC landing pages that are optimized.
Here are some PPC landing page tips to getting the best bang for your buck with your campaign:
1. Make Customer Testimonials Stand Out
Is this the right product/service for me? What do other people think of this? Am I making the right choice? A real customer testimonial can answer all of these questions and seal the deal. Make it prominent, give it a unique design element. You can even make it a video. This creates trust between you and your readers.
2. List the Benefits. How Is Your Product/Service Better?
They are there because of what you are selling – you need to convince them why yours is better. Make sure your key benefits are listed out clearly, in a bullet list. This helps your potential buyer quickly determine whether or not they landed where they need to be… and whether or not your product or service is worth the time to buy or call.
3. POW! Catch Them with a Knock-out Headline
Take time to come up with an amazing headline – you have 3 seconds to capture your readers attention, tell them why they are here, and that you have EXACTLY what they are looking for. Use headline tools to test the effectiveness of your headline. (Have more than one killer headline? See Step 8.)
4. Keep it Simple, Silly!
This is a landing page – not your whole website squished into a page. Focus on the key points – this is to turn this prospect into a qualified lead – not to tell them everything that you are or what you offer. Keep the layout and content simple:
Headline – strong and clear (remember, 3 seconds!)
Sub-headline – support your headline with a compelling thought
Pictures – these should show the benefits of why they are there
CTA Buttons – strong and compelling
Break up your content with Large Font Headlines
Bullet Points – get to the point right away, list the benefits of your service/product
Short Paragraphs – under 10 sentences, use simple words and thoughts that are easy to understand. Don’t use 10 dollar words where 2 dollar ones explain just as well.
Image Captions – don’t forget to explain the pictures (not just for Google, but for your readers, too)
5. Be Yourself
Write as if you are talking to your reader face to face. Sound human. Your readers don’t want a robot, even on ‘paper’. Add some humor, too.
6. Get Your Facts!
Be real. Nobody believes “Your conversions will increase greatly” – but “Our clients have seen increases in conversions up to 30%!” Write compelling facts that mean something to your clients. Hard facts are the real deal.
7. Don’t Be Bossy
No one likes to be told what to do. So ASK your readers to act. Use a 2 line method: 1 line to ask, 1 line to reassure it’s the right choice.
For Example:
We create beautiful websites and unique marketing strategies that drive targeted traffic and high conversions. Get Started Now!
Let us create a custom website and marketing campaign for you so you can get back to what you do best – running your business. Call us now.
8. A/B Test
Come on, you think you hit a homerun right off the bat? Possibly. But to be sure, you should test it. Compare your headlines (Remember step 3? This is how you choose!). Compare your sub-headlines, your CTA copy, or even change up your benefits – which ones really matter to your readers?
Did you catch all of that? It’s a lot to remember, and it’s not easy to come up with the right formula to get the results you are looking for. However, these are the key elements to look at if you are trying to beef up your PPC campaign.
Technical Project Manager. My day-to-day includes performing technical SEO tasks, managing multiple projects and supporting the website optimization process. I also communicate directly with customers to help them understand their options and implement their customized solutions.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The search engines are looking at a LOT of things, but one primary way to ensure your site gains authority and ranks for the keywords people are searching for to find your site – is to build links. So, we thought we would give you a few Link Building Tips:
*Tip: Use longer tailed and geo targeted keywords in your link building for better conversions!
It’s important to understand your client base and what they are searching for, but it’s more important to target keywords that will CONVERT than those with just the highest search volumes. Many times the long tail keyword phrases (think: “bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix Arizona”) are much better for conversions than the root term (ex: “bankruptcy lawyer”) even though they have lower search volumes. Also, long tail keywords are generally much less competitive and therefore much easier (and less costly) to rank for!
*Tip: Use variety in your keyword selection to avoid an artificial backlink portfolio! (Panda Update says so!)
It’s always been important to target multiple keyword phrases and pages within your website, but after the Panda update it’s become even more important. Google is sophisticated enough to detect a pattern in the keyword usage. So, if you want to rank for an important term, use it – but also use similar supporting terms in a variety of ways to ensure Google doesn’t flag your new links as potentially phony. Example: Want to rank for “Nike Shoes”? Build links using terms like: “Buy Nike Shoes”, “Buy Nike Shoes Online”, “Discount Nike Shoes”, “Mens Nike Shoes”, etc
*Tip: Your links should come from many different types of websites for a more natural looking portfolio!
Sure, there are high quality sites, strong in the key elements that make it an ideal site for hosting your link (think: higher Page Rank, Aged Domain, Strong in Relevancy, etc) but if every link pointing to your site uses the “perfect” criteria, it actually creates suspicion with Google. Not everyone that would naturally chose to link to you would come from high quality sites. Mix it up and make sure there is variety in your backlinks. The more diverse, the more natural the link building efforts appear.
Need links? Just call us! We are awesome at keyword discovery, research and link building: 800.871.4130
Eminent SEO provides strategic SEO campaigns with measurable results along with expert website design, development, pay per click, content and social media and organic website marketing. 800.871.4130.
This rings true for launching your own website and trying to get it to rank on search engines. Links from other websites are going to be crucial to helping you achieve the rankings you desire, no matter how great of a writer you might be.
vs. 2018:
We’ve been doing search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing for over 12 years. Our team has been in it since Google and AOL Instant Messenger was all there was. Did I mention dial-up internet too? Yeah that used to be a thing.
