April 22, 2012 in Blog, Conversions, Keywords, ROI, SEO by Chris von Nieda

5 Common Mistakes of a Search Engine Marketing Campaign

Search engine marketing is a highly cost effective way of marketing your business. As more consumers turn to the internet to find the products and services they need, it’s imperative that every business undergo some sort of search engine marketing campaign to capture the attention of these consumers and drive them their way.

However, if a company is not careful, they could end up wasting time and money and not get the results they had hoped for. Here are five common mistakes to avoid in order to ensure a successful search engine marketing campaign.

1) Unrealistic Goals

One reason many companies struggle with search engine marketing is that they have unrealistic goals and become discouraged too quickly. In order to get the most out of  your campaign, you need to realize there is a learning curve at the beginning. If you are new to SEO or have never engaged in a search engine marketing campaign before, you’ll need to learn the basics and most importantly identify your goals.

Unfortunately, this can only be done through trial and error. Understanding that it will take a bit of time to know what works and does not work will prevent you from becoming discouraged and stick to your marketing plan.

2) Poor Keyword Research

Poor keyword research is one of the biggest mistakes companies make when trying to market their business via search engines. If you target a term that is too broad or competitive, it may take much longer than you realize to see results or you may not have the budget to compete with larger companies to gain a first page ranking in the search engines. Rather than throwing your marketing budget away by targeting these broad terms, you will want to focus on “long tail keywords” that can be much easier to rank for. Long tail keywords are typically phrases with at least 3 words.  ”Car insurance” will be hard to compete for, but “cheap car insurance companies” will be more attainable to rank your site for.

In addition to targeting long tail keywords with less competition, you will want to only target keywords that generate conversions. Setting up some type of tracking or analytics software like Google analytics will allow you to see which keywords are generating conversions on your landing pages and which ones are not. Be sure to consider “user intent” when selecting keywords.  A keyword like “SEO” may seem like a good keyword if you are a company that provides SEO services, but “SEO” will also bring people searching for information on the topic of SEO, or the definition of SEO.  ”SEO services” or “SEO Services in YOUR CITY” is a better keyword to bring people to your site who are looking for help with their SEO.  If certain keywords are bringing traffic to your site but no conversions, they may be costing you money and can be removed from your keyword list or it may be that your landing page needs work.

3) Poor Landing Page Design

Another common mistake companies make when it comes to search engine marketing is landing page design. The layout of your landing page plays a major role in the overall effectiveness of your online marketing campaign. A quality landing page will be optimized for conversions and will follow proven landing page best practices. If your landing page is receiving good traffic but not generating any conversions,  you should consider A/B testing or multivariat testing and try different versions of your landing page at the same time and see which version works better to increase the amount of conversions you receive. Then take that landing page and improve it and run both again. Using this approach you will fine tune the page and increase your ROI.

4) Do Not Overextend Yourself

A good search engine marketing campaign will include both search engine optimization and pay per click advertising (budget permitting). Using both techniques your website will get immediate attention and possible ROI from the PPC and it will build long term exposure and ROI from the search engines and the traffic they generate.  However, trying to manage both SEO and PPC marketing campaigns at the same time can be time consuming, especially when you are first starting out as a small business.

It’s best to focus your time and attention on one form of search engine marketing until you have successfully created a campaign that is bringing in new customers for your business. Then you can turn your attention to the other type of online marketing and give it the time and attention needed to be successful.

5) Budget Your Time

Running an effective search engine marketing campaign is nothing short of time consuming. In order to see the best results, you need to set aside a few hours per day to analyze all of the data and see if your online marketing campaign is providing the results you are looking for. If you are a business owner, it can be difficult to find the time in your busy schedule to manage it yourself.

We encourage you to consider outsourcing your search engine marketing work to professionals.  You’ll get faster results, save money and avoid search engine penalties.  You can focus your time on the day to day operations of your business and  simultaneously receive the benefits of a quality search engine marketing campaign.

Search engine marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to advertise any business. However, if not run properly, it can drain your advertising dollars very quickly. Avoiding unrealistic goals, perform good keyword research, designing a quality landing page, focusing your efforts on one type of search engine marketing at a time, and making sure you have the time to effectively manage your campaign will help you see the best results and ROI on your SEO and Internet Marketing.

Author Bio:

Camryn G. is a freelance writer and web marketing consultant who enjoys helping small businesses be prosperous on the web. She employs her services for a website car insurance rate comparison chart

April 3, 2012 in Blog, Google, SEO by Chris von Nieda

Think of SEO as Part Science and Part Art

SEO is the Rodney Dangerfield of online marketing —it just can’t get no respect.  (Did ya hear his voice in your head when you read that) Developers view SEOs with suspicious eyes at best, business owners think SEO is all about ranking and link building, and many SEOs don’t even know the basics.  Case in point:  all those offshore pitches detailing tactics that may have worked 2 years ago.  And that’s being generous.

When I talk to lay –and even more experienced- people about SEO I usually begin by saying its part science and part art.  Feel free to substitute left and right brain.  Now, this thought process is certainly not a stretch:  SEO is a merging of disciplines to ensure one’s Web site is optimally designed for users (there’s a reason I’m putting this first, as it has greater importance) and the search engines.

SEO as Part Science

Like any building or structure requires a strong foundation to ensure a long and steady life, any Web site needs to have the SEO fundamentals built in to ensure the highest level of optimization.  Accordingly, with any new project the first step should be an audit of the Web site itself, from content architecture to canonical tags & content, 301 redirects to 404 page not found’s.

Not to be overly cute, but there are literally a ton of other considerations, depending on the nature of the site and its goals, that need to be addressed to ensure the site it is waterproof.  The good news is that these considerations all follow a science based script of well-known best practices.  Good points of reference include Google’s Official Blog and many other credible SEO blogs that are up to date on all search engine related happenings.

SEO as Part Art

If your refrigerator had every square inch covered by your grade school artwork chances are this is where you’ll thrive.

With all the fundamentals down the process shifts to the art side where creativity is key.  Of course, inbound links to a Web site are an integral component to any SEOs work.  The challenge lies in thinking outside the box to develop link baiting campaigns, liaise with bloggers, and drive quality traffic to your Web site.  There are a number of angels to consider, but do remember people love free stuff, people love local, and people love sharing interesting things.

Social media.  Love it or hate it it’s a huge signal that will continue to have more importance and tie in with the major search engines.  Plus it’s a great way to develop more personal relationships with your audiences/customers.  As the SEO professional it’s your job to embrace it!  While it’s one thing to have a following of, say, 1,244 fans on Facebook and 598 Google +1’s it’s how your interact with and build a relationship with your followers that truly counts.  Again, creativity is key especially if your Web site sells unsexy products.  Plastic cups anybody?

Finally, content for content’s sake is great but it’ll provide little value.  Rather, all site content should have an inherent value to your target visitor.  Of course, research relevant keywords and use throughout including in the meta tags, title, etc.

We could go on and on with basic -and essential- SEO tactics, but that’s been done a million times before.  That said, the next time someone asks you what SEO is, or if they need a bit of a lesson as to why it’s so important, try the part science and part art angle on for size.

Guest Post Author Bio:

Eric B. is the director of marketing and sales direction of Jersey City, NJ based Magnets.com and Customized Stickers.  If you’re looking for strong ROI custom promotional magnets and stickers are the easiest, least expensive, and most fun way to grow your business and bottom line.

What do you think?

What do you think about Eric’s post? Agree? Disagree? Tell us below in the comments.  I for one agree and that is why I like this post.  As I grow the team here at ROI4my.com and I am investing in training people to do SEO I find it challenging at times to effectively communicate what I want to convey.  The reason is because of the “art” aspect of SEO. No two situations are the same. No two pages are the same. No two sites are the same.  So, if I say “for this site find keywords with search volume > 500 searches per month and < 8000″ that may work fine for this client. This is a smaller site. But, if I was giving the same advice for Norwegian cruise lines I might say > 10,000 and < 50,000. You have to understand that part of the business to be effective and although it can be taught, I consider that the art part. Another example is Title and Meta Description writing. This my friends is pure art!

- Chris

March 29, 2012 in Blog, Keywords, MAC, Tools by Chris von Nieda

In A Town Called Google The Keyword Is Real Estate

The great hotelier Conrad Hilton built a chain of hotels across the world. His philosophy was that if you build a hotel in the right place you would make money. For him, choosing a spot for a hotel was about three things: location, location, location. He saw no point in building hotels where there was no traffic.

The same philosophy applies to the Internet, but not quite in the same sense as it does in the physical world.

Online, it’s not about shopping malls or hotels, but there are certain places where people are more likely to stop along the information superhighway.

For purposes of illustration, imagine a little seaside town called Google. You have the luxury yachts along the seafront and around the Marina. There are the smart hotels, casinos and luxury apartments. Some of these buildings have storefronts housing shops like Tiffany and Gucci.

Beyond the upscale town homes are the middle-class houses and apartments. Farther and farther away, the homes become less expensive. On the outskirts of this town called Google are the trailer parks where the less well-off live.

Needless to say, it costs more money to run one of the shops on the seafront than to run a storefront near the trailer park. The upscale shops cater to both the wealthy people staying in town and the daytrippers. Shops near the trailer park will get less passing traffic but also less competition.

The mistake most webmasters make is to build their sites around keywords that are being used by the big multinational corporations for their seafront shops.

The “big boys” spend big bucks to get their websites at these ritzy locations. The chances of a small local shop competing with these for top search engine ranking are small.

A smarter plan is to build your site around the “trailer park” keywords — keywords that may get less traffic but also cost a lot less as well. That way, you’re not competing with the big multinational corporations.

There are a number of tools for the Mac with which to spy on the keywords your competitors are using.  One of them is Competition Strategy Studio (formerly called SEOLab). While it’s not specifically a keyword research tool, it does allow you to  perform base keyword lookups, competition research, and to find related semantic keywords. It also helps you to discover Top Ranked Web Page Titles and Top Advertisers and Compare Search Engine Ranks.

A useful Mac-compatible plug-in for Firefox is KeywordSpy. It helps you to see what keywords your competitors are using, uncover what they are spending on Adwords, and find profitable keyword and ad copy combinations. When the plug-in is installed, useful stats show right in the Google search results page under each search result.

You might get the impression that the Mac is the forgotten stepchild of the Internet marketing industry. But did you know that some of the top names in Internet Marketing use Macs? Visit http://internetmacmarketing.com/blog and get a  FREE 75-page ebook that covers everything you need to know about running your Internet business using a Mac, iPhone and iPad.

In addition to the great tools above I found this excellent article from the well known Joost de Valk which covers 13 Mac tools for web developers and SEO’s. I think you’ll find it useful as well.

How many of you use a MAC to perform SEO and Internet Marketing and what tools do you use? Let us know in the comments below!

March 26, 2012 in Blog, Social Media by Chris von Nieda

The Best Free Tools to Manage and Monitor Social Media Marketing

It’s official – social media marketing has arrived for good. Moreover it’s becoming a supplemental service offering among web developers, SEO specialists like us and ecommerce experts and advisers. It’s not easy to post unique and quality content on one profile let alone handling multiple accounts. Here is an overview of the best free tools to monitor and manage social media and digital marketing.

1. HootSuite - This tool comes in both Free and Pro versions. The free version gives an option to  monitor and update up to five profiles. It’s an open sheet real time news roll that can open up Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and two more social feeds at the same time. The Publisher tool helps to review, post and schedule messages with an option for choosing the relevant account for the information.  The Pro-version gives more flexibility to add accounts and use additional features such as analytics and bulk message scheduling.

• Best Feature: Easy to navigate dashboard and built-in link shrinking.
• Key Service: Real time updates monitoring and scheduling.

2. Crowdbooster - With a free of charge account Crowdbooster monitors one Twitter and one Facebook Page or upgrade to 30 accounts with a Business Plan.  It doesn’t give real time tuning into corresponding profiles but instead evaluates the impressions by graphically showing how many people retweeted or answered a tweet as well as how many people were reached. It also indicates the Follower Growth, Influential Followers and Top Retweeters. These are extremely valuable analytics that can help to extend the outreach.

• Best Feature - Time recommendations on tweetting to get the best impressions.
• Key Service: Scheduling and Analytics.

3. Buffer - Besides scheduling posts for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook this tool is also a bookmark and as such can be installed into your browser. This helps to generate quality content right on the spot. Another goody includes an old-time retweeter that gives an option to add tweets to the Buffer right from inside Twitter.com. For $10/month the Pro account gives you the freedom to monitor up to 6 social accounts with free mobile apps and advanced scheduling.

• Best Feature:  Tweet suggestions like: “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude” – Zig Ziglar.
• Key Service: Bookmarking and scheduling.

4. PageLever - PageLever provides comprehensive Facebook Analytics that outline profiles of people that come and leave your fan base as well as determines what content attracts your audience and keeps them engaged. “Daily Overview” is also a pretty cool feature to help put together pieces to boost KPI. PageLever uses the EdgeRank algorithm to identify which posts perform best so the fan page can reach a bigger audience. This service is free for 14 days which is enough to understand whether this tool is right for your business. We would recommend it for bigger businesses or ones with multiple accounts.

• Best Feature: Instantaneous data transfer into ready for presentation reports.
• Key Service: Facebook Analytics and Insights.

5. Nutshell Mail - Is an emailing service that delivers digest-type updates so that marketers can organize, monitor and interact with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Ning accounts. By far it’s one of the best Facebook Page managing tools for keeping track of Likes, Posts, Comments and Insights.

• Best Feature: Tweet, Reply, Retweet and DM right from your inbox.
• Key Service: Social Media Monitoring right from your email box.

6. Honorable Mentions:

Besides social media monitoring and management tools there are quite a few very neat services that deserve mentioning:

1. socialmention.com - very much like Google Alert but for social media only.
2. tweetdeck.com - real time monitoring of Twitter.
3. socialbro.com - a tool to manage and analyze Twitter community.
4. catchfree.com - social media comparison overview all in one.

Each tool serves specific needs but all of them definitely speed up and simplify the process of managing different social media accounts. At the same time it’s fair to say that Social Media Monitoring services are growing just as fast as the  digital marketing industry itself making it challenging to stay attuned to new tools, features and apps. New challenges call for networking and we would love to hear what other professionals are using to monitor and manage their social media accounts. Please feel free to share your experience in comments and via Twitter and Facebook.

Author Bio

Yuliya Karnaukh is an Online Marketing Specialist at Astound Commerce. She has spent twelve years engagingly studying the fascinating art of marketing and is happy to share her thoughts with anyone who’s willing to spare their time and mind reading her articles.  Astound Commerce is a preferred Demandware ecommerce solutions provider for top-brand online retailers.

January 30, 2012 in Blog, Google by Chris von Nieda

61 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Google

This is a random list of 20 MORE things I found fascinating about Google plus links to 40 others and one bonus fact that you may not know.  It’s the 4th in a series I’m writing after I recently read the book; Steven Levy’s “In The Plex” – How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.  If you would like to read the first 20 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Google back up 6 words and click or the 2nd list of 20 MORE things you probably didn’t know about Google click the link.  The first post was called Don’t be Evil – Google Isn’t and I encourage you to read that before this one to tie it all together.

As always, lets not waste any time and jump right in to the list:

1. The engineers are treated like Royalty at Google and work in the same building as the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The corporate hierarchy is “Engineers and everyone else”.
2. Google’s mission is to “Gather and organize all the worlds information”. Think about that a minute…
3. New employees at Google are called “Nooglers”. If you are not new you are called a “Googler”.  They wear beanies with propellers on top and get a round of applause when they sheepishly stand up to be identified.
4. For a few days in 2008 Google employees built and operated a zip line that let them over a ravine while hanging on to a tiny trapeze bar connected by pulleys to a cable bridging the gap as a shortcut for getting from one Google building to a group of others.  The city of Mountain View shut it down.
5. The first Chef hired by Google, (Charlie Ayers) to prepare food for employees formerly  prepared meals for the well known rock band “The Grateful Dead“.
6. By 2008 Google had 18 cafe’s in Mountain View spread over several miles of their campus as they continued to grow by snapping up nearby buildings abandoned by other Valley business’s.
7. Google spends over $80 million a year providing free food to employees
8.  Google provides employees a Concierge Service. Just send them an email and they will run any errand you want for $25 an hour.
9. When geek milestone movies debuted, such as new installments of the Star Wars series Google often bought out a theater and sprang employees early for the showing.
10. Google has tiny computer shops they call “tech stops” every few hundred feet throughout the campus’s that provide any type of computer equipment required should a mouse fail or there is a sudden need for a phone charger.
11. Google screens new employment candidates carefully. If one is rude to a receptionist that is a deal breaker.
12. Paul Buckheit was the first to propose what is still today Google’s famous slogan “Don’t be evil“. (which has recently been under attack due to some moves Google has made giving their own Social Networks Google+ priority in a search results over other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. )
13. During the early stages of Google’s IPO they were hypersensitive about leaks. They sent 20 banks slightly differently worded letters so hey could identify which banks could be trusted to keep their mouths shut.
14. Google’s founders “aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place”.  But, some investors had difficulty with the heresy that Google was willing to forgo some profits for it’s founders idealistic views of what made the world a better place.
15. The day of the IPO Google’s stock finished at $100 per share, a win for sure.  But, it would never be that low again. It climbed to $280 a year later, $383 a year after that and in just over 3 years after the IPO topped $700 per share.
16. The founders had a number of concerns relating to how the new found wealth of Google employees post IPO may affect the culture.  They noticed that increases in stock performance made people happier and more optimistic but that also led them to regard innovative ideas more warily, indicating that as Googlers became richer they became more conservative. That was exactly the downside of the IPO the owners had dreaded.
17. In 2001 Google already had over 400 employees and grew to over 20,000.
18. Around 2005 Google determined a simple formula to distribute it’s engineering talent: 70-20-10.  Seventy percent of it’s engineers would work in either search or ads, 20 percent would focus on key products such as applications and 10 percent on wild cards which would often emerge from the “20 percent” rule where Google employees are allowed to use 20% of their work time to work on anything they want.
19. In 1999 Google instituted a management system called OKR (Objectives and Key Results) which was originally devised by Andy Grove at Intel.  The idea is to identify not only what one wants to do (Objectives), but to break down the task in to measurable bytes (Key Results).
20. 4 times a year everything stops at Google for division-wide meetings to assess OKR progress

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Ok, here is one more bonus Google fact that I didn’t want to leave off while we are on the topic of OKR’s because I think this is critical for all you managers out there that are thinking, “hey this OKR thing sounds pretty interesting!”

21. The sweet spot was making about 70% to 80% of your OKR’s. Why is that not considered a failure? Because if you dramatically exceed your OKR’s it would appear you sand bagged it and played it safe in your projections. If you fell slightly short it meant that you thought big, with aggressive goals and Google has no place for audacity challenged people whose grasp exceeded their reach.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this latest installment of 61 Things You Probably Didn’t know about Google as much as I have enjoyed learning more about this amazing company. There will easily be 3 or 4 more posts like this one.

Do you know something interesting about Google you would like to share?  Please leave it in the comments below and please share this post with anyone you think may find it interesting.  Also, be sure to subscribe to our blog over there on the right and get our future posts.  Thanks for reading!