Have you ever optimized a site for a keyword phrase, received some good traffic, but there was no conversion, your phone still didn’t ring, regardless of the numerous changes you made to your landing page?
Maybe it was your offer, or the traffic. Or it could be that the keyword phrases didn’t have a commercial intent. How do you know if your keyword phrases have commercial intent? Simple, PPC! (pay per click)
This is a common mistake that most SEO professional make beginning of an SEO campaign. That is you must test your keyword research! There are many tools that perform keyword research, so the issue is not being able to find the keywords to target. The issue is not knowing what to do with them once they’ve been discovered.
Marketers find an endless “road of keywords.” Finding relevance and lots of traffic, marketers think this is the “holy grail” They now have a list of keywords that could potentially get them millions of visitor to their site.
Yet, 85% keywords that were identified and marketed failed to convert a single customer. So what is the best way to measure the effectiveness of a keyword phrase? Test!
Until the keywords have been tested to see if someone will buy your poultry seasoning, or blackberry parts. You don’t have anything concrete that proves whether a keyword will actually bring sales to your site. That means, testing your landing page’s effectiveness in converting the traffic into customers.
The best way to test a keyword is to run a PPC campaign pointed to your landing page and measure the effectiveness of the entire process.
- the keyword
- your landing page
- sales funnel
So, after running the PPC campaign, yo know which keywords made you the most money, and you simple SEO the keywords which haven’t been SEO’d and you should be able to nail down Top Ten rankings in 30 days or less. This way, you only SEO the keywords that you know makes you money.
What about the other way around? SEO to PPC
So how does that work? Use any decent keyword research tool and look at your log files of your website. Its not a complete list of keywords but you have the data from your log files. Look at your conversions organically and target those keywords which may only get a handful of searches but convert well. Inject those into your PPC campaigns and capture additional customers.
Different people are attracted to different offers. That’s what makes us human. So if a site is successful with a handful of keyword phrases, don’t assume that you will gain conversions by using them – even if you are in the same industry. Your offers will be different and your sites will have different styles – all of which come into play with the prospect. All of which directly affects conversion.
Remember you don’t want to just drive traffic to your site, you wanttraffic that converts to customers. A brief PPC campaign will help you quickly verify whether the traffic converts or not.
Bottom line if you help customers with restaurant start ups or sell steak seasoning. Back it up with PPC campaign.
Using meta description correctly can help you get more leads and sales for your products. Getting ranked for a keyword phrase is not hard to do. Usually, what happens is you get the traffic but you don’t get any phone calls or email asking about your service or to buy from you.
Last article we covered why writing a compelling title in your title tag is important. This article we will talk about your meta description that supports your title tag.
Just to review quickly what a title tag and the meta description. Title tag is what you see in the blue of your web browser. Meta description you will only see this on a SERP (search engine result page). So for example you go to Google and was looking for steak seasoning, here is what you see:
In the pics you see the title (in blue) and meta description (in black) is what Google indexes and sees in your html code. Many webmasters don’t bother to write a meta description thinking Google will just pull content from the body, true. But, you are the one that controls the on page factors.
Getting back to the pics, as you can see two web pages indexed. By just looking at it as a consumer looking for steak seasoning, which one would you click on to look at? Chances are you would pick the first listing due to the meta description explaining the seasoning vs the second listing stating a recipe link.
So how do you know if you have a profitable keyword phrase and description? You find this out from your PPC campaign. (pay per click, google adwords) In future articles I will cover PPC, but for now lets assume that you have discovered the keyword phrases that is getting you traffic.
Our point is to view meta title and description as an advertising message. If you want more targeted traffic and more people buying or calling your business. The title and description needs to be compelling, in short it needs to be a mini sales ad. It is possible for your site to have more conversions than another site that outranks you.
Here are some other examples to consider depending on the market if its for a product, sometimes its just stating the specific model name and number, like this blackberry curve parts:
This example just shows the specific part name, and this may all that is needed. This company probably has supported this thru their PPC campaign, in other words they know this makes them money. (title & description)
If its a service that you provide like in the restaurant consulting, you will have to write more of what you do in the description:
The pic shows the top 3 organic listing for restaurant consultant. Without knowing what the click through rate is for VSAG, I am willing to bet they will have the most compared to #2, and #3 listing.
Here is one more example in the replacement window industry that is very competitive:
The keyword phrase is “replacement window olympia”, this is a local listing for window contractor in the city of Olympia, WA. This is the results of the top 3 on Google. As a homeowner looking to upgrade your windows which listing will compel you to pick up the phone? The answer is not the number 1 listing.
Hope these examples help your business grows, it is all about providing a compelling message. With that weapon you can possibly have a better click through rate than your competitor that outranks your site. If you need help or have questions, please leave a comment!
In our previous article about SEO for On Page, we talked about the importances of having a title that matches the content of your page. What I want to cover is be sure to title your page for your prospect, not for Search Engines. Take the following examples for “job search” and “search engine”.
-CareerBuilder.com Jobs – The Largest Job Search, Employment …
-Find Jobs. Build a Better Career. Find Your Calling. | Monster.com
Notice Career Builder has the search term in the title tag while Monster.com does not. However, which is more compelling? Read both out loud. Hands-down, Monster.com is more compelling. “Find jobs, Build a Better Career, Find your Calling.” That’s powerful!
In our examples what we’re getting at is that anyone can get ranked for a keyword phrase in their title tag. However, if your title tag is more compelling, you will get more click throughs than your competitor, even if they outrank you. This is the key: “click throughs” is where its at!
Here are some other title examples so you get the idea:
-”40% Discount on Blackberry Curve Parts“
-”Free Shipping Mesquite Steak Seasoning“
-”$1500 Tax Credit on Energy Efficient Windows“
Hope this helps!
On page factor is a factor in SEO that you can’t ignore if you want your webpage to get ranked on the major search engines. What is great about on page factor is that the webmaster has total control over their page.
Here are some internal factors for on page (site) factors to consider:
- Title tags
- Words on your page
- Domain name
- HTML Design
Title tags – this is an important tag to have if you want your web page to rank. Use keyword phrases that describe what the content is about, do not put the name of your company. i.e. don’t put Synergy Restaurant Consultants, but “Restaurant Start Ups Consultant”. Another is “steak seasoning rub” not Dean & Danny’s Food Seasoning.
Word on page -Include your keywords early and often – search engines place more importance on keywords found early in the content of the page. Don’t stuff keywords, your site will get penalized. i.e. West Coast Vinyl energy efficient windows can cut down on your heating bills.
Make sure to have clean url’s – That means no ?’s and &’s in your URL. Most search engines stop at the ?’s and &’s and ignore everything that follows. – i.e. www.fonlogix.us/BlackBerry-Curve-Parts_c_243.html
Other factors for On site optimization -
Build larger sites, rather than small individual sites - Evidence shows that sites that have over 100 pages of content do well in the search engines than smaller sites.
Add new content on your site daily – Search engines likes frequently updated sites, and new content generates more and more food for the search engine spiders to consume and index.
As the days goes by mobile application trends are getting bigger. These mobile apps are making it easier for you to find local businesses without getting on the internet and searching.
Actually it is thru the internet combine with either geo targeting or GPS enabled on your mobile device. This is how your mobile device can pick up the nearest restaurant that you’re looking for that does fast food ordering.
More apps are coming out for the iPhone, Blackberry, and PalmPre just to name a few. These mobile apps may be one of the new ways of search. These mobile apps are specifically designed to find that particular start up restaurant that specializes in “grilling”.
Now the mobile apps are not just for local businesses but can be for Mobile commerce as well. For example you may need to replace your Blackberry curve parts on the 8300, or to order some vintage coins.
What I am getting at here in this article is to give you some options about online marketing and mobile marketing.
- One of them is to have your website optimized for desktop user, but leave the big fancy flash out. Keep you website laser focus on content thats relevant to what the traffic is coming in for. (targeted traffic) By optimizing your site with less features, will make your site load quickly. Especially when mobile users are trying to access your site.
- Get your local businesses expose to mobile. Such as Yelp, there are many mobile apps that uses Yelp to access local businesses.
- Finally, but not the last, you may consider developing your own mobile application so that consumer will know your brand of what you do or sell, and it shows some reviews from customers. Reviews are very big in the mobile world!
Google has upgraded browser based local search on mobile handsets. It has tied Maps on the PC to mobile in a very effective way. Recognizing the limitations of keying in queries into a search box on a mobile handset, Google has taken a page from its Places Directory Android app and incorporated search/browse by category with location awareness. These changes don’t appear to be major at first sight, but they potentially make Google’s browser-based local search on mobile devices much more formidable than it was yesterday.
This is Google acting on its dominant position that most activity in mobile will ultimately happen through the browser and not from apps. Accordingly these changes enable Google to provide a uniform, cross-platform experience on a wide range of mobile devices.
In terms of PC Maps-mobile linkage, Google enables users to “star” (highlight) businesses (essentially creating a favorites list). Those starred businesses then appear (if you’re signed in) on a new local page in mobile. For example, you select several “energy efficient window contractor, West Coast Vinyl or a restaurant consultant” on the PC.
I then go to the mobile handset and bring up Google. I click the “Local” link at the top.
If I select “star places,” I’m then taken to my list:
You will now be able to see the energy efficient window contractor “starred” on the PC. This single change is very powerful and will reinforce Google usage in mobile, tying it to Google’s dominant mapping site on the PC. Now you can create lists online and access them in mobile.
The category lookup functionality illustrated in the screen above (leveraging location in the mobile browser) is another big change that adds vastly to the utility of Google on mobile devices as well. Rather than typing in queries users can simply “search” for a type of business by category and find ones that are nearby. Ads also appear in these category “search results,” creating more inventory and more potential clicks. The belief is that people will use this lookup functionality very heavily because it’s easier than conventional search via the query box (cumbersome on mobile device).
These upgrades are potentially a big deal that will likely drive more engagement and usage of Google’s browser-based site.
What is the state of mobile search and mobile apps? At this time Google search on mobile has the biggest stake, but mobile apps, Apple owns 70% of the market.
With Apple apps online store recently opened up beginning of 2009, they have had over a billion downloads for mobile apps. Yes, many are free downloads, but still the charged ones rolled in at $150 to $300 million dollars as I type this article. Not bad!
We’re not saying to abandon your website on the internet and get it optimized for organic search. However, for marketing of your business you need to know that there will be more people carrying a smartphone or mobile device than a laptop.
That means mobile apps for iPhone, Google Androids, Blackberry/Palm sales will climb due to the directness of the app. Bear in mind this is for mobile device/smartphones, and its the simplicity of getting information quickly versus typing into a query box. Here are some examples of iPhone apps:
- looking up a local business category (e.g. “energy efficient window”) in Google, I use the Yellow Pages app, which will even automatically calculate my location via GPS
- looking up a local taxi company when I’m traveling, I can use the Taxi Magic app on the iPhone (again, it will automatically get my location from GPS if I allow it)
- looking up local restaurants or a restaurant consultant in Google, I can use the Yelp iPhone app
- Instead of using news aggregators like Google News and Techmeme – which I tend to use on my PC – on the iPhone I usually go straight to news sites with strong iPhone apps or pages, such as AP News, Reuters, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and MoneyWatch (a CBS sister site to TechRepublic).
A final example points to one of the reasons why mobile apps trump mobile search. Mobile search you don’t always know whether the text you click on in the search results will be viewable or optimized on your smartphone. But if you have a mobile app or site that’s designed for that smartphone/mobile device then you can be confident that a search using that app will quickly return results (and links) that are optimized for a smartphone/mobile device.
Here’s another factor, the limited screen size and computing capacity of smartphones force developers to make their apps super-focused on a specific task. This automatically guards against feature-creep and makes most apps simpler and faster to use. As a matter of fact, there are some sites and services where I prefer their iPhone apps view because the smartphone version is much more focused, easier to navigate, and faster like West Coast Vinyl.
Mobile specialized apps (iPhone, Androids, Blackberry/Palm) are providing a much more tailored experience than mobile search portals like Google and Yahoo.
Here’s a comment from Jason Hiner Editor-in-Chief of Tech Republic – ” I fully expect smartphones to become the most widespread global computing platform in the next five years, driven heavily by the developing world, where the smartphone will be the primary PC for the majority of users. And as smartphones become more dominant, it is going to naturally migrate some power and influence away from search (and Google) and toward mobile computing applications”.
If you have a website make it mobile optimized for quick loading, and razor focused on topic!
Right now and into the future mobile apps search will get away from the traditional query search box. The benefits of mobile apps is the easy way of getting information at your fingertip. This may be the wave of the future in search for mobile users. We are getting away from typing into the query box, which makes sense when you’re dealing with the size of the mobile device.
Desktop users have space to work with and are not on the go. So they can use the key board, or to move the mouse around and click on the information. For mobile users, they need information quickly and efficiently. Doesn’t make sense to go to Google and type into the query for the nearest local window general contractor.
With a smartphone iPhone, Google Androids, Blackberries 3G all you have to do is tap open an app to find the nearest energy efficient window contractor. Opening the app shows West Coast Vinyl. Tap one more time to give them a call. Or if you need to see where West Coast Vinyl is located, the map working with geo location or GPS enabled will show you its location.
For mobile users its about easy cool ways (direct) with a tap of the finger or swipe to get your information on the go. For us local businesses be sure to have a mobi site or a regular site optimized to load quickly for desktop and mobile users. Also submit your business info to Google, Yahoo, USCities local.
The ease of visual search is here. Currently, Bing a new search engine has come out with Bing Visual search. Google have their own version as well with Face Flip.
Use of Visual Search
Imagine searching for something and not knowing the name so you are presented with some images. You type into the text to describe and will be presented with more pics to choose from.
Ease of Use Convenient Delivery
The ease of use and convenient delivery of providing the searchers with answers by a click of your mouse. Thus making this a useful experience for the users. It is speculated that Bing has optimized its search engine for mobile users. Mobile users are hampered with the size issue of the mobile device, so searching for information needs to be done quickly and easily.
For example, lets say that you don’t know the name of West Coast Vinyl a window company, but know the logo. You type into the query “energy efficient window” , you are now presented with a picture shown below.
You tap the picture or click on it. Easy convenient delivery of visual search is the goal that most websites are trying to attain to provide a great experience for users. This may be the reason why the iPhone apps have over a billion downloads.
When do you start a paid search campaign? Otherwise known as the Pay Per Click campaign. There has been many questions concerning when and why would you pursue this.
Here are some reasons why you might want to get your local business in front of eyeballs with a Pay Per Click campaign:
- Brand new websites, get traffic
- Research, take a poll, survey (find out what the customer wants)
- Capturing the long tail keywords
- Split testing landing page (foundation of PPC)
There may be more reasons to use a PPC campaign, but these are the most important reasons to use PPC. A more in-depth look for paid search is to have your landing page optimized correctly for the campaign. This will be covered at a later time, or you can read our past article on landing page that converts.
So if you are in the energy efficient window market like West Coast Vinyl or Jill’s SAT Tutoring Services you can use PPC to effectively meet your needs and purpose.
