In the wake of Google’s Penguin update, we figured we would share with you some SEO Best Practices. Following these tips will help ensure your website not only ranks well, but that it also isn’t anywhere near as affected (if at all) when Google updates its algorithm.
Using a wide variety of keywords, peppered throughout your content
Using natural language in your on-page content
Linking to a variety of relevant websites
Linking to a variety of relevant pages within your website
Sharing content and links via social networks
Not paying for links from sites that have no other relationship except for links
Building relationships with webmasters of websites that are relevant to your content and product/service offerings, as well as sharing links
ICYMI: On April 24, Google made the latest update to its algortihm, and named it Penguin. SEOs can only assume they did so after the Batman character, rather than the penguins Morgan Freeman told us all about. Why? Well, let’s just say some webmasters have seen some less than desired results thanks to Google’s latest algo update.
So how do you know if you have Penguinitis?
Has your traffic dropped since April 24?
Has your revenue dropped since April 24?
Has your percentage of traffic from Google dropped as an overall percentage?
Do most of your backlinks go to your homepage?
Have you been doing SEO since 2005? The same way?
Is your website overoptimized?
If you answered yes to a majority of these questions, there’s a good chance you might have Penguinitis. Our clients, overall, have been incredibly lucky and haven’t seen any negative effects thanks to Google’s latest algorithm, but we’ve heard stories from webmasters and other agencies who’s clients HAVE been hit–and hard. If you find that your website is suffering from any of these maladies, feel free to contact us–we would love to help you cure your Penguinitis so that you can get back on the road and generating revenue.
Lately there’s been a lot of speculation around whether or not social media networks are replacing email marketing as a channel for nurturing customers. Both are excellent ways to keep your customers interested in you and coming back for more services. However, several email-marketers are convinced that social is superior because users are now spending more and more time on social media and less time on their email accounts. It’s true—according to a Nielsen survey by BBC News, one in every 11 minutes of a web user’s time is spent on social networking sites and blogs. Does that mean social is replacing email? Absolutely not.
It simply means that as a digital marketer, you must work even harder to deliver email messages that are effective and engaging.
Yes, perhaps consumers are spending more time on their social accounts than their email accounts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean social is more effective at driving conversions, leads, and ROI…especially in the B2B sector. Email is still the dominating form of communication for businesses. Many companies in the B2B sector find that email is far more effective and generates more traffic than social media does. In fact, an email marketing census by Econsultancy reported that 70% of responding companies found that email was excellent for ROI.
The problem with email marketing is not social media—it’s poor execution. Users are constantly bombarded with messages from marketers, and most get deleted before they are even opened. Why? Because the volume of messages being received is simply overwhelming. You must make your emails stand out from the sea of offers in our inboxes.
Here are some tips to make sure your emails get opened:
1. Send Your Messages in the Afternoon
What’s the first thing you do when you get to work? My assumption is that after you’ve settled into your office desk with coffee and maybe breakfast, you turn on your computer and check your email. Every marketer is anticipating this, and therefore most emails are sent out in the morning. As a result, users are greeted with a massive list of emails that they must sort through. This is the time when users are most selective—they keep what they need and delete what they don’t. Send your emails after lunch. By now, their inboxes are sorted and your message is more likely to be opened.
2. Offer Exclusive Benefits for Opening your Message
Give your customers a reason to continue to open your emails. Offer exclusive benefits that can’t be found on social sites. Whether it’s a coupon, discount code, or pass to your next event, make sure you reward your customers for being loyal to your email campaign.
3. Quality Over Quantity
Sending an email every day is a sure way to encourage unsubscibes. Instead of sending out as many email messages as you can, try condensing your emails into one high-quality, informative newsletter that will provide much more worth to your customers. Remember, consumers are receiving emails from businesses every day. Focus your efforts on creating a solid engaging newsletter that your customers will look forward to every week. Keep your emails fresh with new offers, quick tips, and helpful articles that your customers will find useful.
4. Don’t Send Messages on Monday
In HubSpot’s The Science of Email Marketing, researchers found that people are most likely to unsubscribe from email lists on Monday and Tuesday…it would make sense then, that the click through rate of an email is high on Wednesday and on the weekends. Why might that be? One can only speculate, but I’m willing to bet that most people unsubscribe on Mondays for the same reason they delete messages in the morning. Countless marketers are expecting consumers to open their inboxes on Monday morning when they get to work, and they want their email to be the first one opened. Instead, consumers are met with piles of emails…and they decide that it’s time to clean up their subscriptions.
5. Be on the Offense
Unsubscribes are a part of life. Consumers might be loyal readers one minute and the next they’ve found a newer, hotter newsletter to subscribe to. My advice is not to waste energy trying to get them back (unless of course you have the energy and money). Instead, take an offensive approach. Always focus efforts on drawing in new subscribers. Promote your email newsletters through an integrated campaign. Encourage subscriptions through your Facebook and Twitter, be sure to have a subscription button on your website, and ask for emails from attendees at company events.
Earlier this week, Google finally unveiled the long talked about Google Drive, which aims to compete with Dropbox. It’s easy to argue that it’s a smart move on Google’s part–the future of the internet and file sharing certainly points to cloud hosting. And with an increasingly mobile society, it’s easy to see how we’ll need better access to the documents we need when we need them.
The issue, though, is that Google’s Terms of Service are a bit, well, vague. According to a CNet article, Google’s generic, one-size-fits-all TOS state:
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).
Sounds a little worrisome, right? This issue was actually brought to my attention this morning by a writer friend of mine, who sounded the alarm to our grad school alumni group on Facebook (ah, the power of social media). As writers, copyright is obviously important to us–we guard our ideas and our words, and any time those are infringed upon all hell breaks loose. As a marketer, copyright is also important. I write a lot of content, and while I may not be writing about brand new ideas or concepts, my ideas and my words are my own, and I want those to be recognized as such. The vague language in Google TOS are worrisome for others too, though, such as real estate agents who often have documents with a lot of personal data on them (such as contracts) that doesn’t need to be shared.
Google’s response to CNet, when asked about this vague language, was the following:
As our Terms of Service make clear, ‘what belongs to you stays yours.’ You own your files and control their sharing, plain and simple. Our Terms of Service enable us to give you the services you want — so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.
The portion of the TOS referenced above appears in the very first portion of the privacy agreement:
Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
So why the vague language later?
Google insists that they won’t share your documents or information unless you grant permission–even in the case of law enforcement asking for access to your data. The legalese, however, obviously leaves a loophole, and is a good reason for many to worry. Would Google ever actually share your data and give access to your private documents? I don’t know why they would. But the fact that their legal wording doesn’t explicitly state “We will never share your data” and instead resorts to vague language so as to include every single one of their products is worrisome. I, for one, won’t use Google Drive until they clear that language up, and will stick with Dropbox, who’s Terms of Service ARE crystal clear.
- How are people searching for the products and services you offer?
- What is the competition like for sellers in your industry?
- Are they even searching for your product or service?
In order to know how to reach your target audience, you will need to get your hands dirty and do a little digging around.
Keyword Research and the Health of Your SEO Campaign
Keyword research is the investigation of various keywords and phrases that businesses and consumers use to search the internet. Search Engine Optimizers use this information to help decide the best keyterms to target, which will then enable them to gain higher rankings in search results, leading to higher conversion rates across the board.
I like to think of keyword research as being the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. When researching different keyterms that you may choose to include in your campaign, it is important to look at numerous metrics to help decide which keyterms will help you reach your goal(s). If you aren’t aware of the way that people are searching for the products and services you are offering, how are you ever going to reach that target audience? Good, solid keyword research is a must in the development of a successful SEO campaign.
A few things to look at (including but definitely not limited to):
- Keywords: Which keywords are people using to search for your product?
- Global and Local Search Volume: How many people are searching for what you’re offering?
- Cost-Per-Click Data: How much are people willing to pay to advertise for specific keywords?
- Level of Competition: How hard is it going to be for you to obtain top rankings in SERPs?
A couple of tools available to help with your keyword research:
Whether you’re a company just getting off the ground or an established company having a hard time getting your customers to convert, keyword research is a vital step in the development of an SEO campaign. Make sure that you have your audience targeted and that you know how to reach them. You will not gain their business if you are not visible to your target audience.
For more information on how Apogee can help you and your business succeed, please contact one of our sales representatives today!
Miss SXSW? Or maybe you were there but had to make tough decisions regarding which panels to go to? Never fear! Recordings from ALL SXSW Interactive sessions are now available on the SXSW website (just go to the schedule section and check out the sessions you want to listen to), including Apogee’s two sessions. So, if you missed them back in March, now’s your chance to hear them now!
By now, almost everyone has heard of Pinterest; if you haven’t, there’s a good chance you’ve been living under a rock. While some have taken to Pinterest like a duck to water, others have been hesitant to adopt the new platform. For marketers, Pinterest poses an interesting social media issue: the application in our daily lives is obvious, but what about in our professional lives? How can marketers leverage Pinterest, and should they even consider using Pinterest as a part of their social media efforts?
So now that we have our Pinterest account up and running, we thought we would start a new feature for Friday mornings–nothing too taxing, and in celebration of the end of a work week: Favorite Pins of the Week. Obviously, some of those pins will be marketing-related, but if they simply strike us as funny, inspiring, visually appealing or as a really good idea, we’ll probably share. Without any further ado, our favorite pins of the week:
DIY Wedding Centerpieces Using Temporary Tattoos
Facebook vs Google+ Infographic
Luckily, my dog doesn't do this. He actually likes the vet. Still, though, most doggy parents can relate.
SEO for the little guy infographic
Temporary Tattoos as Prom Accessories - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been allowed into my prom with even a temporary tattoo.
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