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

January 13, 2012 in Blog, ROI by Chris von Nieda

Free SEO ROI Calculator

How much are you paying for SEO and what is the return you are getting? Do you know the value in dollars of a new visit to your website or of a conversion? (sale, download, sign up, new subscriber, etc.) If not, our calculator can help! Our calculator can help!

I’m pleased to announce we just completed development of our FREE SEO ROI Calculator!

Who is it for:

• Business owners or executives who want to measure the cost and success of their SEO/SEM campaign
• SEO and SEM service providers who want a quick and easy way to make sure they are providing ROI to their clients
• Anyone who owns a website and wants help finding out what they need to do to make it profitable

What will it tell you: (everything is based on the most recent 30 day period)

• Your conversion rate
• Your income
• How many conversions are needed to pay for your SEO/SEM campaign
• How many visitors does it take for a conversion to happen
• How many more visitors you will need to pay for your SEO/SEM campaign
• The total number of visitors needed to pay for your SEO/SEM campaign

So, why not give my SEO ROI Calculator a try and let us know what you think in the comments below:

October 29, 2011 in Blog, ROI, SEO by Chris von Nieda

What is SEO? – A 3 Minute Video Explanation

Don’t know what search engine optimization is or why you may need it for your website or business? Know someone who needs an easy to understand overview of SEO and why it’s necessary? That’s what this video provides, in three minutes thanks to Search Engine Land and Common Craft.

September 2, 2010 in Blog, ROI, SEO by Chris von Nieda

The Cost of SEO

As a business owner you realize you need SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the value it provides. So how do you determine the cost both in the short term and long term and make sure you are getting SEO ROI? The cost of SEO depends on your goals and expectations. The cost is also dictated by the size of the site and the number of keywords you are trying to get ranked for as well as the competitiveness of those keywords. Also, another factor is the aggressiveness of the campaign.

Let me break that down a bit:

If you are a large e-commerce site and you have thousands of keywords you want to rank for (your products), each keyword will require a blend of SEO techniques like on page optimization and link building to compete with those sites already ranking for those words. The on page can be done reasonably inexpensive at a one time fixed cost. Link building and marketing will take time, in most cases months or possibly a year or more and the number of links required to compete is determined by the competitiveness of the keywords and the strength of the competitors.

What do I mean by “on-site” SEO? On site SEO refers to the structure of the web page, use of keywords/keyphrases, internal linking (links from one page of your site to another), media optimization (images,video,flash), page and URL naming convention, heading tag optimization (h1-h6), footer links and a few other factors. In most cases, there will be a fixed cost associated with performing the on-site SEO as it requires someone with the proper SEO knowledge to analyze and edit (or create) the properly optimized pages.

Cost of On-Site Optimization: # of pages times cost of optimizing a page

One way to determine the cost of SEO before “SEOing” is to perform an in depth competitive analysis. Choose the keywords you want to rank for, see who is ranking for them and then perform an analysis that would include things like their back link profile (how many other sites link to theirs and the quality of those sites) and anchor text distribution, top pages on their site, social media profile and on page optimization.

That being said, lets say your competitor has 6000 back links for an important keyword you want to rank for. You currently have 2800 for that same keyword. You know that in order to compete for that keyword you will need several thousand more links. Once you have that data you will have a better understanding of “what it will take” to compete for your niche and therefore have a blue print of what an effective SEO campaign will look like before you start.

If you are that large e-commerce site you may chose to include 10 keywords in your monthly SEO campaign or 100. Each one will have a cost tied to it therefore the budget required (or expense in this case) will be dictated by the number of keywords and the aggressiveness of the campaign. Keep in mind though, links have to occur (or appear to occur) naturally or you may be penalized by the search engines for buying links. It’s not as easy as going to XYZ link building company and saying, I want to buy 4000 links for X keyword this month. If your site suddenly has 4000 new links without some type of amazing viral or link worthy content Google wont like that and your plan may backfire.

Cost of Off-site Optimization: # of links required times the cost of obtaining each link or citation

Of course there are a number of different ways to promote your website like using Social Media, garner links from other sites and generate traffic. When starting any SEO campaign it’s important to have the right attitude and correct expectations. You are not going to get on “page one” of Google for a competitive keyword overnight.

What I recommend for my clients is that we start with a combination of short terms goals and long term goals and work towards both. An example of a short term plan would be to identify low competition keywords (aka low hanging fruit) that have some search volume, build out some pages for those and do some promotion. That will bring some immediate results and conversions ($$). In addition, identify the highly competitive keywords you ultimately want to rank for and do the same with managed expectations that it may be a while before those pages do well in the search engine results pages.

So lets wrap this up…The cost of SEO really depends on you and your business. Start out by gathering some competitive intelligence, identify what it will take to compete and then try to put a cost to each component. From there you can plan and prioritize accordingly based on time and budget available.

Got any tips or ideas on how you put a cost to SEO? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!