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FEATURE: Quality Content Delivers Stellar Performance

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Quality content is the foundation of all other Internet marketing.  It is a fundamental component of advertising, public relations, branding, social media and website content.  If it is done right, it can cause engagement at a high level.  It can also be the difference between conversion and bounce.

For Internet marketers, quality content is the first priority.  A recent poll shows that most internet marketing teams are well aware of this fact; 10 percent of all teams dedicate at least one full-time member of staff to quality content creation.  For marketers, quality content is the top priority.

What Is Quality Content?

Quality content focuses on the user, not the webmaster or the writer.  Quality content should have the following characteristics:

  • Well-written—free of errors in spelling, grammar and formatting.
  • Direct—captures the user’s attention within 10 seconds.
  • Clear—not overly wordy or written at a high reading level.
  • Focused—shows the user the benefit of reading and learning more about a product or service.

What Counts as Content?

Content is anything you release on the web.  It includes:

  • Web Pages—should be at least 250 words and explain its purpose clearly with the brand voice.
  • Press Releases—300 to 400 words and optimized for keywords.
  • Tweets—140 characters of straightforward message, links, hashtags and pictures.
  • Social media—conversational tone and creative posts that drive user engagement.
  • Photos and videos—today’s customers like to watch, so YouTube videos with searchable text, photos with embedded links and other visual materials make great content.

Where Should You Start?

Blogging gives website owners the opportunity to write many pages of content.  A blog provides opportunities to target keywords, especially those of the long-tail variety.  Users get a chance to read useful information and informative articles.  Blogging is a win-win situation for everyone.

Those who blog should keep the following tips in mind:

  • Keep brand voice in mind.  Although you can be more opinionated or creative in a blog, do not forget you represent your brand.
  • Include a call to action.  Readers love to post on blogs with experiences, questions or suggestions.  Give them the opportunity to participate to build user loyalty.
  • Use blogging strategy.  Blogging is not just randomly posting stories.  You should use headers, keywords and other strategies to extend your marketing reach.
  • Make it lengthy.  Many marketers forget that blogging is not Twitter.  Use at least 400 words for each blog to gain recognition with the search engines.
  • Include pictures.  Pictures drive higher user engagement with a blog.
  • Use social media to promote blogs.  Do not forget to promote blog posts with social media and cross-promote it within other platforms.

The best advertising strategy in the world will not save poor content.  However, advertising is critical to promote good content.  No matter how well-written your content is, it does not matter if no one ever sees it!  Be sure to promote your content in all possible ways including social media platforms, keyword campaigns and other forms of advertising.

Studies Reveal SEO Analysts are in High Demand

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2013 may be known as the “Year of the SEO Analyst.”  Studies have confirmed a 112 percent increase in demand for SEO professionals over the past few years and starting salaries as high as $94,000.

In another survey, 93 percent of all business respondents expected their SEO businesses to grow by the end of 2013.  Of these, 82 percent reported plans to hire more SEO staff by year’s end.

A career as an SEO analyst can very rewarding.  Unlike many technology jobs, stress levels are relatively low and employment opportunities are at an all-time high.  Mid-level employees can expect salaries around $60,000, and senior analysts may earn as much as $100,000.

What Do I Need To Become an SEO Analyst?

In order to become a successful SEO analyst, you should have certain qualities that lend themselves to the performance of SEO analytic tasks.  These qualities include:

  • Excellent communication skills.  SEOs must communicate with both marketing and IT co-workers and must be able to translate what each type of expert says.  SEO analysts must also be able to communicate with clients and review content for appeal to average readers, so they must be fluent in many forms of communication.
  • Thorough understanding of programming languages.  HTML, CSS and other web programming languages are important to SEO analysts even if they do not program.  The must understand these codes in order to be able to manage SEO projects and review work by others for consistency or errors.
  • Knowledge of Google Analytics.  Google Analytics changes consistently, so SEO analysts must stay abreast of the latest updates and changes.

It is helpful if an SEO analyst has at least three years of SEO experience before taking an analyst position.  Experiences should include testing optimization, interacting with search features, studying Google rules and guidelines and interacting with clients.

Where Can I Find SEO Training?

Although most SEO analysts have some type of background in computers, very few have a specific SEO degree.  SEO is still one of those job fields in which experience is far more important than initial training.  However, workshops and seminars are available that can build on general SEO experience to help an individual pursue a higher-level job in SEO analytics.

What Is The Job Outlook for SEO Analysts?

SEO analysts will find jobs everywhere, but certain cities are much more likely to have jobs than others.  According to recent surveys, the top ten cities for SEO analyst jobs are:

1)    New York

2)    San Francisco

3)    Los Angeles

4)    Chicago

5)    Boston

6)    Washington

7)    San Jose

8)    Seattle

9)    Atlanta

10) Dallas

Salaries range from around $44,000 for entry-level positions to $96,000 for executives.

Searching for an SEO analyst job may be challenging, and you may find yourself taking a variety of positions as you work your way up the ladder.  However, the more you refine and hone your SEO skills the more productive you will be and the more opportunities that will open themselves to you.

Ready, Aim, Fire… Then Retarget #12D #Liveblog

Ready, Aim, Fire… Then Retarget #12D #Liveblog

Every PPC marketer wants to be known as a great retargeter, and unfortunately many of them are claiming expertise in the field simply by understanding some very basic concepts.

Retargeting, at its heart, is not a difficult thing to understand.  It is the recapture of a customer who has left your site without converting and is snagged back in by an ad on another site.

However, retargeting means more than simply funneling people back to your website.  It also means strategic marketing based on a careful analysis of the feedback available to you.

 

Product retargeting should follow the buyer rather than forcing the buyer to follow the ad.  If it is done right, retargeting gently pushes users into the right stage of the sales funnel so discreetly that they do not realize they are being pushed.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that you are taking advantage of retargeting opportunities is to take inventory of your existing ads and amplify them.  Use impression caps to avoid creepiness.

Another important point is to monitor where your retarget ads send users.  The ideal situation is to send users to exactly where they want to go, never to a home page or unrelated content page.  Send them directly to the category page or product page and streamline the buying process.  Add a call to action to drive purchases.

 

5 Keys to Remarketing

  1. Build your audience first.  To successfully retarget, you must first create segments to classify your target market.  You should have a solid number of unique visitors before you attempt remarketing; most experts recommend at least 100,000 per month.
  2. Define your strategy.  Identify consumer behaviors and use this information to build your pool of cookies.  Identify segments and go after email signups, product reviews, and shopping for accessories in addition to conversions.
  3. Deliver relevant messages.  You should segment your banners and create dynamic interactions based on user profiles.  Relevance can life your sales by as much as 28 percent.
  4. Prevent fatigue.  There is a level at which ROI levels off and begins to decline.  Experiment to find the optimum frequency for your customers.
  5. Measure benefits.  You can measure the incremental lift on your conversion rate and site traffic.  This helps you understand how retargeting is affecting your bottom line.

Google now offers a new product for remarketing known as RLSA or remarketing lists for search audiences.  Google must turn this beta program on for you but it works from your regular remarketing pixel and applies audiences at the ad group level.  Negative audiences can also be applied.

Google’s new tool allows you to understand your converters, abandoners and others more completely.  You can segment the new versus the existing converters and introduce new products to re-engage those who have not converted.

New tools also allow you to introduce new products, promotions, and special messages with widely-used keywords.   All the new Google tools are designed to give SEO professionals the power to drive conversions.

Measuring Social Media

You may find it easy to measure PPC and SEO results, but measuring social media impact is more complex.  Clients may be reluctant to invest in social media campaigns, however, until they see the “hard numbers.”  How can you measure social media impact in a way that your clients will understand?

One impact of social media is straightforward and easy to explain:  your competitors are using it.  Even if you never quantify the results of social media use, knowing that competitors are using it should be enough to engage most businesses.

The hype cycle shows the process that is seen when social media or any other technology is first “discovered” by a user.  Most business owners have initial inflated expectations followed by a “trough of disillusionment.”  This is followed by enlightenment as to reasonable expectations from the technology and, finally, a plateau of productivity.

Public Relations

PR used to be about crafting your message and placing it properly.  To a certain extent, this is still true.  Marketers send messages through social media to a receptive audience.  What has changed is that the audience can immediately decide what to do with the message, and this can take control of the message out of the “owner’s” hands.  However, building strong social media relationships can give business owners a measure of control over how their messages are perceived.

Can We Really Measure PR & Social Media Performance?

It is very difficult to measure the value of a relationship.  It is also difficult to identify a direct, causal relationship between your social media use and the willingness of someone to buy your product.

However, if you discard the idea that you are going to get cut-and-dried numbers from social media use, you can craft a reasonable measurement of the impact social media has on your business.

While there is no industry standard for measuring social media value, tying measurement to company goals must always be your own standard.  Look at your objectives and see if you have met them better since introducing social media.  From there, you can derive whatever formulas you like for measuring on a per-post or per-like basis.

You may also want to measure your impact on significant demographic groups.  Of the people who became followers or friends in the past month, how many were 20-to-30-year-old females?  This can help you determine if your social media use is reaching the groups you want to target.

Finally, review the overall cost of social media use.  Most of it is very low-cost if you are willing to put some sweat equity into it, but paid advertisements do represent part of your overall advertising budget.

Set a benchmark so you know if anything has changed over the past month, three months, year or whatever time period you choose.  Social media is dynamic, so a shorter time period is usually a better indicator of your actual performance.  Measure your return on investment for that time period and see if your investment in social media has caused changes to your bottom line.

Twitter Engagement: Taking the Next Step

If you are interested in tapping the market share of Twitter, you are not alone.  These days, it seems like Twitter is the place to be for branding and creating customer loyalty.  If you have already bought in to the value of Twitter, you have been posting unique content, retweeting strategically, using good etiquette (known as “twtittiquette”) and monitoring your Twitter activity through TweetDeck.

Now that you have built the foundation for your brand voice and profile, it is time to ramp up engagement through Twitter.

User Engagement

Hashtags are what bring your brand in contact with users.  Using the hashtag or # symbol before a keyword or phrase, without any spaces, helps to categories tweets and causes them to show up more readily in Twitter searches.  When users click on a hashtag, they see all the other tweets marked with that word.

Although most people put hashtags at the end of their tweets, they can actually be used in the beginning or even in the middle.  Hashtags also help users and Twitter identify trending topics.

Hashtags are a great way to involve users who are not your followers.  Add them to the end of your tweets so that others with similar interests can find you.  The tweet “All dresses 10 percent off on May 31” will reach your followers, but “All dresses 10 percent off May 31 #summerdresses” will reach anyone who is looking for summer dresses as a category.

The more targeted your hashtags, the better you will be able to isolate those who want your products.  A specific hashtag is better than a general one because the general ones will have thousands of tweets associated with them.  It is easy for yours to get lost in the shuffle.  Think of your customers’ personal when you are formulating hashtags, and do not be afraid to use more than one in your tweet.

 

Say “I Do” to Twitter Chatting

Hashtags are also the cornerstones of Twitter chats.  Twitter chats are real-time conversations with customers as well as others in your interest group.

Twitter posts a chat master schedule on Google Docs.  There you can find categories under hashtags that may interest you.  In the above example, you might want to attend a chat labeled #SummerFashion2013 to connect with others who sell clothing and customers looking for great bargains.  Again, the more specific the hashtag the fewer users will be involved, but those who are will be very focused on that particular brand or category.

Twitter chats are a great way to garner followers.  You can share blog posts and articles that will help you connect with those around you who share interests.

By understanding just a few of the basic functions of Twitter, you can pair up with this powerful branding tool to get your message out to thousands of potential customers.  Use Twitter wisely and it will help you gain a following of loyal brand users that appreciate your product and your message!

Enhancing AdWords for a Constantly Connected World #enhancedcampaigns

Consumer behavior is evolving as customers become more comfortable with the Internet.  Smart SEO managers are adapting their content to meet these changing market dynamics.

Google’s AdWords is also changing and adapting to customer needs.  Hopefully, these changes will be useful in the long run for both users and marketers.  Known as Enhanced Campaigns, these changes mark Google’s efforts to bring more users into contact with websites that meet their needs.

The new Google Group, marked by hashtag #enhancedcampaigns, that carries a continuing conversation of Google’s changes in this regard.

The Realities of AdWords and Marketing

Every day, people use phones, tablets and other devices to connect with those they want to meet, including businesses.  This trend will not change; in fact, the user-friendliness and ubiquity of devices of all types will only continue to grow.  Users can now move between devices effortlessly, and these devices are becoming a necessary part of most people’s lives.

However, users do not simply morph magically into device users.  At least 90 percent of users research across multiple devices before making a purchase as they continue to familiarize themselves with the capabilities of their new technology.  As they engage in this research, they learn for themselves which devices are convenient and lend themselves to certain types of searches and uses.

The Intersection of Intent and Context

Where intent and context meet is where you find users searching for information.  Enhanced Campaigns uses a context-based approach to help websites reach customers across devices.  The development of new ads incorporates both the intent of the user and the context in which the user searches to specifically target users.

Google AdWords allows you to bid for contexts with adjustments.  The information available includes device, location and time to determine the bid adjustment.  For example:

Device: +10% on phone
Location: +20% in Palo Alto
Time: +5% 7:30 PM Friday
1.39x bid

You can also improve your results with location-based optimization on your bids.  When campaign performances differ by geography, location details can be used to vary bid distance.

Ads and extensions should also be selected for mobile context.  The extensions, both local and general, for a mobile device are available in the “Device Preferences” box so that you can see where someone is browsing from.

Group level extensions can be even more targeted than individual extensions.  Group extensions can be created for ads that allow you to schedule them for different times of the day.  This can come in very handy for timed sales or new product launches.

Offer extensions can be used to drive traffic to bricks-and-mortar stores and encourage offline purchases.  However, AdWords is not yet equipped to report in-store purchases as conversions, although Google has promised that it will happen eventually.

Google is also offering advanced reporting measures such as alls, digital downloads, and cross-device conversion in the future.

If you want to use Google AdWords optimally, consider the following tips:

1)    Embrace the multi-device phenomenon.

2)    Optimize bids for location and time.

3)    Take advantage of improvements in ads and extensions.

 

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