Month: October 2013

Our current ‘blog series’ has been about online advertising and marketing. So far we’ve done a brief survey of different forms of online advertising, and then we narrowed the field to look at pay per click (PPC) advertising generally, and Google AdWords specifically. These are only a few of the approaches a business can take to online marketing, and today we’ll take a look at another widely used and very effective form of online advertising – Email Marketing.

Email Marketing has been around for a long time, and it is a proven and efficient way to market products and services to potential consumers online. With the web moving toward a more personal, semantic experience, companies are also looking for ways to advertise more personally to individual consumers. Email marketing is personal because it arrives in someone’s private email inbox, addressed to them and containing information which is (hopefully) relevant to their life.

High Return on Investment (ROI)

From a practical business perspective, Email Marketing also has incredible return on investment (ROI), averaging more than double the amount actually spent. Of a group surveyed by Marketing Sherpa, the overall reported ROI from Email Marketing was an astonishing 119%. Organizations which sent fewer than 100,000 emails a month reported even higher ROI, 139%.

For a little better idea of the value and influence of Email Marketing, in this article from Marketing Land, they do a little bit of marketing comparison – only organic search accounts for more customers than Email Marketing; customer acquisitions from Email Marketing are dramatically higher than Facebook and Twitter combined (6.84% vs <1% combined); email is also more likely to be shared with friends, accounting for 50.8% of new visitors referred to companies by their friends.

Key to Successful Email Marketing

The key things to remember in Email Marketing is 1) keep your content valuable to your potential clients, and 2) don’t overwhelm your consumer base. Provide people with valuable content in your emails, content that helps establish you as their expert, or their “go to” place – this kind of content helps cement the relationship between your brand and your client. Just be sure not to go overboard, constantly filling up people’s inboxes with meaningless emails. Let this proven form of Marketing work for you and your company, and you’ll be happy that you did.

In upcoming posts, look for overviews of additional forms of online marketing. Diversifying your marketing approach by incorporating some of these various forms of advertising will pay big dividends in the end, if done correctly.

In the world of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, there’s no doubt that Google AdWords is king. Nearly 70% of all search traffic goes through Google, giving them the ideal opportunity to sell ad space on their site and become the leader in PPC. AdWords works on a bidding system, matching up user search terms with advertisers who are bidding to have their ads displayed for those particular relevant keywords. Because of the bid system, advertisers are able to get their ads to display for the lowest possible bid prices, making AdWords a very appealing method of reaching the consumer.

Putting Together AdWords

On the surface level, putting together copy for AdWords is very simple – you are allowed three lines of text to “make your pitch” to your potential audience. Coming up with those short lines of text, however, is quite involved. First, advertisers must spend time doing keyword research, to figure out which keywords are relevant for their ads, and to decide which keywords they want to focus on. Google provides some good tools, like the Keyword Planner tool, to help with this research.

Once keywords are chosen, the AdWords copy must be written to match these keywords. At the next level, a vital but easily overlooked step, is that then the content on the landing pages must also be matched to the keywords. The greater the relevance and similarity between keywords, ad text, and landing page text, the higher quality score Google will award your ads. Ads with higher quality scores make better ads, and therefore have the higher chance of being displayed in better locations on your search results page. The high quality score also saves the advertiser money, because those high scores mean that lower bids will still land the ads in prime locations on the results page.

The results of Google’s AdWords system are several: people are shown ads which are highly relevant to what they are searching for, advertisers are able to connect with potential customers at the lowest expense for them, and Google is making billions in profit.

A Little More Technical

When you get into AdWords, there are a few other things that are good to know. Ads are organized into campaigns, ad groups, and then the ads themselves. There are two main types of ad campaigns: Search and Display. A Search campaign will display ads next to Google search results. A Display ad campaign will show ads on other websites that have space set aside for displaying Google ads. Google recommends that you split up your budget, with about 70% going for Search, and 30% for Display. Each ad group can then have multiple ads in it, and it’s good to have 3-4 different ads in each group so that Google can analyze each one and see which has the highest quality score.

AdWords is a huge player in online advertising today, and its potential is truly only beginning to be tapped. Getting in on the action early will mean that you can learn the technology and methodology from the beginning, learning and growing and changing with AdWords. This will also leave you positioned to take greatest advantage as each new phase of advertising potential is uncovered and unleashed.

At the top of new and emerging forms of online advertising lies Pay Per Click (PPC). Most people have probably had some exposure, at minimum, to this topic, which is such a new form of advertising that some industry experts say we’ve barely even scratched the surface of what can be done with PPC. But there are some things we know now, even early on, to help craft and maintain PPC ad campaigns.

PPC is basically when certain sites, particularly search engines like Google and social sites like Facebook, allow people to buy listing space which appears next to certain non-paid results. The sites are simply selling real estate on their pages for advertising.

PPC Advertising Basics: Bids, Quality Scores and Landing Pages

PPC advertising is a fairly simple concept at a high level. Basically, companies pay for ads on a 3rd party site, but only when those ads are clicked. The amount paid per ad is set up on an auction system; so basically you set bid prices you’re willing to spend per ad click, and if you’re the highest bidder, your ad gets displayed.

There’s a little more to PPC than bids. The other main component is what’s called a quality score. Basically, a quality score is determined based on the relationship between keywords, ad text, and landing page text. If your keywords match the ad text, which in turn strongly relates to the text on your landing page, then your ad will have a high quality score.

A landing page is simply the page that your ad links to. Landing pages should be highly relevant to your ads, and the keywords in each ad should appear on the landing page. It’s important to be a bit technical here with the number of keywords, and the number of total words on these landing pages. More on this later.

Proceed with Caution: Don’t Overspend on PPC Campaigns

As great as PPC campaigns can be, businesses should proceed with caution. This caution is needed because PPC can become very expensive, and bring in little to no new business if done improperly. Setting up an effective PPC campaign takes time, effort, and knowledge.

In order to avoid overspending on PPC campaigns, do keyword research. Keyword research will tell you how much traffic a given keyword will likely generate. Here’s where you’ll need to get a bit technical. Take your top 3-4 keywords (those most directly related to your product or service, and with the highest potential search traffic) and write ads based on each keyword. Make sure that each keyword appears 3-4 times in the body of your landing page.

For search engines to consider your content of good quality, your landing pages should be between 500-800 words in length. Your keywords should appear 1 time per 100 words. This ratio is important because you need good keyword density, but it’s also very important not to overstuff your content with them. Using the above information should give you high quality landing pages, that will perform well.

Negative keywords are also important. Negative keywords are basically those keywords you don’t want your ads displaying for. These are very important when cutting down on wasted ad spend. Some examples are educational materials, job seekers or free/low cost, etc. Obviously if your products/services are related to these topics these aren’t going to work for you.

Stay tuned to this pay per click advertising series. Our next topic will be on Google AdWords!

As the internet marketplace has exploded in popularity and revenue, businesses are gradually moving more and more of their marketing and advertising budgets into online marketing. To effectively use that money, business owners need to understand advertising on the internet – what it is, what it isn’t, what it can and can’t do, and especially what forms of advertising are most effective for reaching their target audience.

We can subdivide online advertising into many particular categories – search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, local online marketing, banner ads, social media optimization (SMO), online video marketing, pay per clicks ads (PPC) like Google Adwords, and others. So here is a brief touch on many of the different marketing types available for your business to attract customers online:

Online Marketing Categories

– we’ve already looked at the basics of SEO in two articles here on our blog (here and here)

– email marketing is a great online marketing method, with tons of research showing effectiveness, and many resources showing how to best use email marketing in your industry. We plan to do an article on this in the near future, but until then, a good resource to get started with is this Search Engine Watch article.

– local online advertising is more important than ever before because of people using their mobile devices for search, and the up and coming semantic web. A good article on this can be found at Search Engine Land here.

– banner ads, though considered by many to be fading in effectiveness, can still be used successfully by many businesses. A good resource to get started thinking about them is this Resource Nation article.

– SMO, social media optimization, is a great way to advertise online, and falls outside of the ‘norms’ that most companies focus on, so it has even more potential as a largely untapped resource. SMO will help get traffic to your website, but you have to be sure you have good landing pages ready to make the conversion, turning your ads into dollars. We’ll be looking at this more in depth in another article, but here’s a good place to begin getting your head around SMO in this Social Media Today article.

– Online Video Marketing is a great way to boost traffic for one simple reason: people love videos! Figure out a way to use video in your marketing campaigns, and you’ll immediately have the upper hand on many of your competitors. This Social Media Examiner article gives great advice for using online video marketing.

Pay Per Click

And finally, pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC is an outstanding way of bringing in clients and customers for your business. PPC is scalable, allowing you to spend just as much money as you can afford to spend. You simply set up your ads, set your budgets, and let the software handle the rest. Then, as revenue grows, you can increase both your budget and your business.

We’ll be discussing PPC more in depth in our next post, so stay tuned!

As we saw in our last blog post, the internet is moving quickly to personalize data for the end user with the shift toward semantic search. With any new feature, businesses want to position themselves to make good use of technology, and this is no different. Taking advantage of the semantic web for your business takes a lot of effort, but as our examples last time showed, that work pays off with big dividends at the end of the business day.

Businesses with little to no web presence can still show up in semantic search, but to really compete with other businesses in your industry, you need a strong web presence that is enhanced with optimization specifically geared toward semantic search. Things as simple as local listings and online reviews can boost your showing in semantic search – these things let Google know who you are, which helps them match you to an individual’s needs or wants.

 

Building Relationships

A company’s reputation, trust, and authority are all crucial to performing well in the semantic web. Companies can build these things using something like Google Authorship, which is designed specifically to connect a person with their content, thereby helping establish reputation, trust, and authority. Companies should also focus on producing quality content that is interesting, helpful, and sharable with others. This type of content is valuable, because it allows others to see the expertise and knowledge that your company brings to the proverbial table. Content like this will get people to naturally interact with it, which will drive online traffic to your business, which also helps build your authority and reputation as a business.

With the semantic web now in play, social signals have never been more important to your business being found online. Since the semantic web is personalized, the way that people interact with your social sites (shares, comments, likes, etc) will then go on to potentially influence the type of semantic search results that their other social friends might receive. If my friends are commenting on a particular restaurant and I then go to search for a place to eat, there’s a good chance this restaurant will show up in my search, since my friends have established it as a place they also enjoy going to eat.

 

Getting Personal Again

Because of various forms of communication – web, email, cell phones – much of human communication has been de-personalized over the last 10+ years. Semantic search is bringing personalization back. With this crashing return of the personal, businesses now need to be a trusted face in the mass of other faces so that people will recognize and choose them time after time. The local business owner has a distinct advantage already, since his relationship with his customers is personal by nature. He can then carry over this relationship and simply be himself online, bringing reality into the semantic web. Small businesses also have an advantage right now, since they are typically more adaptable and can change more easily to embrace this new focus in their online marketing.

Tying it all together

There are real ways that companies can now position themselves to take advantage of all that the semantic web is now offering them and the people they serve – but this also requires a bit of change in tactics for many companies. Areas are of increasing importance that perhaps have not had much focus for many businesses lately – online reviews, Google Authorship, and a strong social presence – these things are now not only nice additions to SEO, but vital to semantic search success. Helpful, valuable, and sharable content will also continue to be important – so if content writing isn’t something your business can do well on its own, there are many professional content writers available who can help you take better advantage of the semantic web.

 

Semantic Web and Semantic Search are both terms which are getting a lot of attention in the online world, and particularly in advertising. At their essence, both of these terms refer to the notion of an individual’s online experience being tailored, or personalized, particularly for them. The web is moving from being a place of generic information to a place of answers, where who you are plays a central role.

Semantic Search is Personalized Search

So, Semantic Search is a personalized form of search – semantic search tries to understand exactly the information you’re looking for so that the search can answer your question. This differs from the traditional search operations of the past, which primarily sought to match your keywords with keywords in web content, thereby giving you a list of sites that you might be interested in. Everyone who typed in the same keywords would see the same results in this older search model. Semantic Search is now providing us with meaningful, personalized results that have the goal of actually answering the questions we ask. The author of Google Semantic Search, David Amerland, says of the semantic web, “It marks the transition into a new phase of the Web, where we stop searching and start finding.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/07/23/semantic-web-big-data/)

What does this semantic search actually look like in practice? Let’s say a person searches: “What’s the best Sushi restaurant in New York?” A semantic result to this question would take into account information about what the searcher’s friends consider to be the best Sushi restaurant, what the best reviews are saying, and what the critics have said. The result would be tailored for the searcher. The results may not contain the keyword, “best Sushi restaurant in New York,” but given Google’s understanding of the intent behind the search, the answers given would better answer the question asked. Depending on other factors like the time of day and the searcher’s exact location, the results may change from information about Sushi restaurants to perhaps reservation numbers for places close by.

Understanding the Semantic Web

Because of factors like those we saw in the example above, it’s very important for business to understand the semantic web, how it functions, and what their place is in it. Any business can show up in these searches, regardless of whether they have a website, how old they are, or if they are ready to be seen by everyone. Even with very little or no online presence, the semantic web can drive new customers to any business. The data on every business is constantly growing, so one big thing businesses can all do to ensure best results in the semantic web is making sure the information about them online is current and accurate.

The web is becoming increasingly personalized every day – by understanding the semantic web, businesses will ensure they are positioned to make the most out of this development cycle. However, understanding is only half the battle. To really engage the semantic web, businesses need to know how they can take advantage of the semantic web.

Check out our next post! We outline exactly how businesses can take advantage of all that the semantic web has to offer.

Extending your SEO

Many websites use WordPress, and if your company is we recommend installing the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. This plugin does an outstanding job helping you remember all the key points of SEO by giving you detailed alerts and an overall page SEO rating for each page. For example another key component to successful SEO are links both outbound and internal. The Yoast plugin will remind you to add links to your content if you’ve forgotten. Links help improve the overall quality of your content by lending credibility, and helping readers know where to find further information on the subject at hand. Google is very open about its commitment to ranking high quality content, and when your company provides it your content will rank better.

Another reminder that the SEO plugin will give you is to include images in your content. Images provide visual breaks for your reader making your content more readable. There are also more opportunities for your keyword placement in the alt, title and description. Google also provides image search where your images will be indexed. Google image search provides another channel for search traffic to your site.

The Plugin will also remind you to fill out your meta description, and will provide a text entry box for you to do so. Here is yet another opportunity to use your keyword, and supportive keywords. Where possible place your keyword as early in the meta description as possible. If you’re considering meta keywords don’t. Given the amount of abuse this property saw early on search engines ignore them, and so should you.

Social and Google Authorship: The Basics Plus

Google uses over 200 factors when considering how to rank content, and 1 of them is social signals. We don’t know exactly what these social signals are, but there is evidence to suggest that comments, +1s and reshares of your content on Google+ are seen as positive social signals which will improve overall ranking. Also keep in mind that YouTube is social, and comments on your videos are seen as positive social signals as well. For local SEO reviews are very important, and highly weighted by Google.

Google has an Authorship program where authors are officially connected with the content they produce through a Google+ profile. There is a lot of debate over whether Google is actively ranking content produced by high authority authors, but Google has openly said that this is not the case. Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Authorship is not a ranking signal in this Webmaster Central video from late September 2013.

There are a lot of indications that Google would like to become better at understanding authority, and then begin to rank content accordingly. Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that Google is getting better at understanding authority, and will continue to do so. However there are current benefits to authorship. For one you are future proofing your search rankings, and building an Authorship history on which to stake your authority reputation. For another, and more immediate benefit, your search results will appear with your image next to them. Studies have proven that links with images next to them receive more clicks than those without.

In conclusion the best SEO advice given by the experts time and time again is to produce high quality content. We wrote a blog post, Content Marketing for Small Business, on using high quality consistent content to drive traffic, and increase search rankings. Google has made it clear in its Webmaster Tools Ranking article, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.” Put your users experience first, and your SEO will be on the right track.

Given the major changes we’ve recently seen Google take with it’s upgrade to Hummingbird (see this article for a more complete description of Hummingbird), we thought it wise not to forget the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). Many have said that because of Hummingbird and the semantic web, that SEO is dead. However, given the fact that Hummingbird has been in effect for well over a month, and we’re not seeing any major ranking changes occurring, traditional SEO is not dead.

Why should businesses care about SEO?

Search engines can drive a lot of valuable traffic to your website. If your company is monetizing with paid advertising, search engine traffic tends to be more likely to click ads. For companies monetizing by selling goods and services, search engine traffic is highly qualified. This means that the people who find your website through search engines are arriving already wanting to see what you’re offering.

Foundations of SEO

Keywords and keyword research are one of the fundamental foundations of SEO. A keyword is the word or phrase entered into a search engine, and is where search begins. When writing content, determine which keywords you are intending to target. Start by doing some research into which keywords are actually being searched. Google offers a free tool called the Keyword Planner, which allows companies to perform very targeted keyword research. See this post for a short tutorial on using the Keyword Planner.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, and done your research, it’s time to incorporate them into your content naturally. Be careful not to overuse keywords. A good rule of thumb is to use 1 keyword for every 100 words of content you have. Also use synonyms and supportive, also called secondary, keywords. Here is a list of the key places you should include your keyword:

-Post Title
-Post Permalink
-Alt text for images
-In your post content (about 1 in 100 words of content)
-In Sub-headings

Choose a main focus keyword for your content. This focus keyword is generally different than the focus keyword of your homepage. A lot of search traffic will be coming directly to your content pages, and not to your homepage, so make sure to target each content page to a specific set of unique keywords. The title of your content is considered a very important element to SEO, and should contain your keyword as close to the beginning as possible.

Where to Go From Here

By following the above guidelines you will position your content well for high ranking in Google search. There is no magic to this process just simple, actionable steps. However simply following the above steps won’t get you to page 1 of the search results. That kind of ranking takes dedication, and a willingness to work very hard. Your content will have to be outstanding, and you will have to produce it consistently.

Stay tuned for the second installment of this two part basic SEO series in our next blog post!

Native Advertising

There are so many new buzzwords in business and advertising – content marketing, SMO, inbound marketing, B2C – and today we’ll take a look at another of the quickly rising stars in advertising : Native Advertising. This is a particular approach that we have used here at Think Webstore since the beginning, and now it is apparently catching on in the larger advertising world.

What Is Native Advertising

The principle behind Native Advertising is actually quite simple – write a story about your industry or product (or your client’s industry), and use this story not only to inform the public, but also to advertise your particular product or services. The term ‘Native Advertising’ signifies that these ads seem like part of the usual content of the publication, hence native, but they also work as subtle yet effective ads for business. These stories can certainly be used online, but often are most effective in actual publications, in magazines or newspapers. Native Advertising is catching on nationally, but we have found that it is particularly useful on a local level.

What Native Advertising is Not

There are a few distinctions to make when thinking of Native Advertising – it’s not exactly the same thing as Inbound Marketing, and it’s definitely not Advertorial. Inbound Marketing has the main purpose of driving the potential client to contact with the business, whether through website, phone calls, etc. While all advertising has that as a general goal, the finer point of Native Advertising is the attempt to connect with potential consumers by providing them with true and useful information in the context of a publication that they know and trust; to become an expert for your reader.

Any articles written for such publications not only have to be helpful, but they also have to pass editorial muster to make it into print – the articles have to be real. Native Advertising is also not Advertorial writing. Advertorials are thinly veiled ads that purport to be articles – these types of “articles” would never be published in the types of quality places that businesses would want Native Advertising to appear.

How It’s Done

The success of Native Advertising lies wholly in the article you write. There are some ‘rules’ that we follow here at Think Webstore to help ensure that our articles work for our clients:

1) The article must be true. Native Advertising ties into a company’s content marketing here – you must provide your audience with information that is both true and valuable. This gives people a reason to read your article, and to share it with others. An article that’s not true and valuable will fail every single time.

2) The article must tell a story. People need a story, something to give shape to the article. Popular storylines include things like ‘David vs Goliath,’ the little guy taking on the big guy and winning, or if you are operating locally, then the ‘local success’ story is always a twist that works.

3) The article must then subtly incorporate the company for which it is being written. This can typically take the form of an ‘expert quote;’ the company (or company rep) is quoted within the context of the article as an expert on the topic. Immediately this gives credibility, and as people read the article, they have an expert at hand to go to. This is one of the reasons that Native Advertising works particularly well on a local level.

Now It’s Your Turn

Not everyone is equipped to do their own Native Advertising, but it is an approach that works for just about any business in just about any industry. Perhaps you have someone in the office who can give article writing a shot? Let them do a bit of research, and see what they come up with. But be very careful – a bad article can do much more damage than good! There are also companies out there who specialize in exactly this type of advertising, and your best bet (for most companies) is to find someone to help you strategize and carry out some Native Advertising for your business.

Native Advertising is like getting an advertisement in front of a potential consumer, and having that consumer read all about you, and they don’t even realize that ‘advertising’ has just happened! You become their go-to expert in your field, and there’s no greater achievement than becoming the expert for your public. In our over-saturated media culture, there’s no better way to get yourself in front of potential customers.