The lack of investment in branding, advertising, public relations and web technology in a strategic fashion costs more in lost opportunity.

Chad Root, President of Spearhead Sales & Marketing, a collaborating company with Effect Web Agency, has designed this paper to provide fresh vision, know-how and resources to help sales hungry companies efficiently leverage both sales and marketing investments together as a unified force.

Download “#1 Biggest Mistake in B2B Sales”

Want to get updated on the scale, progress, and usefulness of Social Media? Watch this short video:

Wondering how you should approach Social Media effectively? Setup a meeting with Alzay Calhoun, Effect’s Social Media Director, to size it up.

“Universal Search” Results

Back in 2007, Google first introduced what is now generally termed their “Universal Search” results.  This meant that, instead of including only organic and Adwords listings, the search results pages format changed to include options for Images, Videos, News, Shopping, Books, Places, Blogs, and more.  However, in the past, if you wanted to see Videos and Shopping results, you had to click on those links in the navigation bar on the left side of results pages.

In 2010, Google began including blended results, meaning that Video and Shopping links are included in the default organic listings.

Why is this so important?

Let’s say that, prior to 2010, your website was ranking #3 for one of your target keyword phrases, and your listing was clearly visible approximately ½ way down (without scrolling) the search engine results pages (SERPS).  Studies from 2007 showed that the #3 listing received approximately 8-10% of the click-through traffic.  Now, with blended results, YouTube Videos and Shopping results are usually listed somewhere within the first 3 or 4 organic results.  Even though your business has that #3 organic ranking, it may now be “below the fold”, meaning users have to scroll down to find it, depending on their browser and screen size.  This has huge implications for click-through rates and traffic, making the investment in organic SEO campaigns and Video optimization even more important.

Local results for everyone

A related change in search results over the past year is the integration of localized content into the main organic results for ALL users, including those not signed into a Google account.  This is extremely significant, especially for businesses with a small local target market. Prior to 2010, if you had a Google account and were signed in, you may have received personalized results based on your location.  For example, if you were in Chicago and searched for “Italian restaurant”, Google would produce listings for Italian restaurants in Chicago.  Now, Google will produce local results for just about any keyword search that it deems appropriate.  Based on the IP address of your internet connection, the number of local results varies, but in some cases, the entire page of results could be filled with local listings.  Again, this pushes regular organic listings further down the page, lowering their click-through rates and traffic.

We hear about social media all the time now. Objective marketers and executives are asking:

• “What good is Social Media for me?”
• “How should I leverage it?
  

Like anything else “new”, many people are doing it just because others are. Some don’t yet have goals.  But you’re different. You want to size up social media before you invest money and your valuable time. To help put social media into perspective today, we’ve boiled down Social Media into 3 scenarios. Which scenario fits you?

Scenario A: No-Brainer

If you’re selling a product or providing a service that’s pleasure-centric or inspires passion and it changes over time, you’re probably in the “No-Brainer” scenario. Business that easily fit into this scenario include restaurants, theme parks, women’s boutique clothing stores, museums, theaters, etc. The amount of “work” you will need to do to stoke things up depends on the loyalty of your audience. Providing the venue (like Facebook), updating news, and telling your audience about it regularly typically brings good results such as increased visits, increased sales, increased loyalty, and more referrals. My recommendation is to research, plan your strategy, and implement soon.

Scenario B: Experimental

Are you a B2B company? Or selling a utility product or providing a service that gets something done and isn’t really something people generally find exciting by itself? You’re probably in the Experimental scenario. Many companies are testing and measuring their investment into social media and getting mixed results. Generally, having a strategy and goals brings better results, but sometimes people just aren’t interested enough to participate in being social with an accountant, or a manufacturer of windows. However, the same was probably assumed about supply chain solution providers. Then Kinaxis found a way to make a connection with their audiences with the use of humor and gained incredible results. (Read  “The Definitive Case for B2B Social Media Marketing“).

The lesson here is: There are many industries with the assumption that it’s not relevant. First, understand what you want out of a social media investment. Learn from Kinaxis and others while being creative in how you plan on reaching your audience through social media over the long-term. Count the cost of money, time, payroll, and etc over a few years to determine when is a good time to start. Test and measure. You will most likely evolve your strategy over time. Some will win, some won’t. Are you an innovator or late-adopter?

Scenario C: Unjustified

Just like busywork, there’s always something you can be doing, but that doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Don’t worry about social media right now if your organization:

• Doesn’t have goals that social media can help meet now or the near future
• Doesn’t have time or resources to do a whole-hearted social media effort
• The cost outweighs the expected benefits

If you believe that this is your scenario, I encourage you to revisit whether social media is relevant again next year.

In the long run

In 10 to 15 years, a company who does not having an active social channel with customers may be like a company who doesn’t have a website today.  It makes good sense for companies to be socially available and engaged with customers. The questions to be answered are:

• What will our company gain, by being social this year, 5 years, and 10 years down the road?
• When does it make sense for our company to become social and with which audiences?
• How can we make it enjoyable for our audiences and us?

Social Media is much more than Facebook and Twitter. There are many industry-centric venues and new innovative channels created each month. Companies are also creating their own venues. As always, keep yourself updated and know what’s going on:

“Any enterprise built by wise planning becomes strong through common sense and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts.” -Proverbs 24: 3&4

Is it important to your company’s success to know:

• How much it costs to get a lead or close a sale?
• How the investments and results of tradeshows compare to direct mail to search engine marketing?
• If Search Engine Optimization is really worth it?

How do you track the investments (money, time, efforts, resources) and results across your various marketing channels?

Step into the New Year by conquering one this major marketing challenge. Download this free “Web + Marketing Results Dashboard” Excel file and start tracking your results better.

Effect Web Agency has been using our “Web + Marketing Results Dashboards” for our own clients since 2007. The dashboard brings together the most important information across all marketing channels in one place. By using this simple dashboard, you’ll be able to easily track, report, and improve your online & offline marketing strategies based on real numbers that are really easy to understand.

This Dashboard helps you track results for:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Adwords
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Direct Mail
• Tradeshows
• and it’s simple enough to customize and add more.

It also calculates insightful metrics for you such as:

• Cost per Lead / Sale for each marketing channel
• Total cost of doing each type of marketing channel
• Percentage of Leads that results in a closed sale
• Average cost per closed sale

Download the Excel file of “Web + Marketing Results Dashboard” now.
You’ll lead your company to being more focused on what matters, being in-the-know, and making your job easier.

Is the objective or your online marketing to get leads? Do you run or are thinking about running a Google Adwords campaign? Then read on. Many companies are spending bookoo bucks with Google Adwords. There’s a way to spend less and get better responses at the same time.

More Leads

First, let’s compare the steps for a user to take action on a traditional Pay-Per-Click ad. When a customer sees your ad: they click it to load the webpage, probably load a couple more pages and then contact you. Even with a great ad message that sends people to an well-written and optimized landing page, the customer must take at least two steps.

If it makes sense for your customers to call you, put a phone number on your Adwords ads using Google’s new “Call Metrics” service. This phone number will show in search results for those using mobile devices. Instead of clicking through to your landing page, they can simply call you. Don’t worry, it doesn’t count against your ad’s character count. Google will generate a phone number for you and it will show below your ad. Some people would just rather call in. They will see the number on the ad and call.  Customers that would have clicked if you didn’t have a phone number, now don’t click and just call.  Calls are cheaper than clicks.

According to Effect Web Agency’s Pay-Per-Click Director, :

“Overall, the cost is much less… With mobile search increasing you want to have phone calls rather than clicks. We are seeing a higher percentage of calls than clicks. It’s a no-brainer to at least have a number added to your ad. You want to have the most visibility and ways for your potential customers to interact with you.”

Is putting phone numbers in Adwords Ads new?

Putting a phone number in the ad is not new. However, what is new is attaching a phone number to your ad which does not use up your ad message length and integrates tracking right into Adwords Call Metrics.

So how do you track calls?

Google’s “Adwords Call Metrics” tracks how many calls you receive and other information about each call such as who called and the length of the call.

Is Adwords Call Metrics avilable yet?

It’s available to a limited number of advertisers currently. Effect Web Agency is one of them. Effect’s Pay-Per-Click Director manages over $14 million in online marketing budgets continually. If you’d like to talk to us about reviewing and/or managing your Adwords campaigns, please contact us.

Free Leads

Many advertisers have not yet taken advantage of Adwords “Location” and phone extensions. By filling in these extensions, your location and phone number will show on your listing. Those who call this phone number will not generate a cost for you. Overall, this will lower your spending per lead.

Can I just put a phone number in my ad?

Yes, but our Pay-Per-Click Director does not recommend this. Putting a phone number in your ad uses up your valuable ad text space. This text should be reserved for positioning your offering and attracting best-fit customers.

Ever wished there was a simple checklist to get real SEO results? Now there is.

Effect Web Agency has published the “SEO Success Checklist” in PDF format. This checklist outlines the critical components for the long-term and lasting success of your natural search engine optimization efforts. See SEO from the eyes of the SEO Consultant. The list was created by Effect’s Web Strategist, Steve Schmidt and natural SEO Director with 11 years of SEO experience – Shawn Nafziger.

Download “SEO Success Checklist”

This comprehensive list of SEO No-No’s comes from the Effect Web Agency team – which includes a 10-year experienced SEO Director of natural search engine optimization. Apply this list to the execution of your current SEO strategy and tell us how it compares in the comments. If you notice any SEO No-No’s we’ve missed – please tell us! We will continue to update this list for everyone to use as a reference.

1. Never conduct SEO without a good plan.
   Research keywords and competitors to define a specific plan that outlines keywords and matching target pages, what you will do to execute your web strategy.
2. Never copy content onto your site that is already on another website.
   Google will think you are copying content and your rankings will disappear.
3. Do not attempt to hide keywords or content on your page.
   Search engines can penalize you for being misleading.
4. Do not use the same title on multiple pages.
   These pages would compete against each other for ranking for keywords in the title.
5. Do not assume SEO is contributing to your bottom line.
   Track your ranking, the traffic it brings and the results that come from SEO. Continually measure and evolve your SEO strategy.
6. Do not settle for second page results.
   The last position (#10) on the first page only gets 2.97% of the clicks. The second page is almost as valueable as not being ranked. See “How Many Clicks Does Being #1 on Google Get You?“.
7. Do not target multiple pages with the same keyword.
   These pages would compete against each other for ranking for this keyword. The content each page should be specific to its target keyword(s).
8. Do not cram your pages with keywords.
   This appears artificial to search engines when they look at “keyword density” and it’s cumbersome for human beings to read through. Instead, write naturally and then go back and make sure your target keywords are included in the page content.
9. Do not exchange links on a large scale.
   If Google sees a large number of reciprocal links as unnatural, your rankings may suffer.
10. Do not let your SEO optimizing over shadow the presentation and usability of your website.
    If your presentation is cumbersome or unappealing with tons of SEO text and unnecessary links, so what if you get a lot of SEO traffic – they may just leave.
11. Do not create link to a page with some links using “www” and some without.
    Google sees “www.mysite.com” and “mysite.com” as two separate pages and possibly as duplicate content. Canonize your URLs.
12. Don’t use “dirty” URLs.
    A dirty URL doesn’t provide any descriptive value to humans or search engines. An example of a dirty url is http://mywebsite.com/alc.aspx?pid=34&tin=*proddesc.   An example of a clean url is http://mywebsite.com/cell-phones/apple/iphone4.
13. Do not exchange links with non-relevant sites.
    This dilutes the relevancy of your own site.
14. Do not place large amounts of SEO links at the bottom of your pages.
    It looks like you participate in link farms.
15. Never build incoming links from sites that you are unsure about their reputation.
    Low reputation sites don’t help you much, or at all, and sometimes they can even hinder your site’s rankings.
16. Do not have a page title over 65 characters.
    Google doesn’t read anything more.
17. Don’t forget about internal linking.
    Internal linking the easiest area of linking because you the control on your site. Internal linking does not replace the need for incoming links from other websites, but it is a part of the overall rank factoring process. Use your keywords in the links to your target pages. For example, if the page you are linking to is all about “custom web design”, then make your link read custom web design. Remember, Google only cares about the first link in a page to another specific page. Having 5 links to the same page won’t help. Only the first one counts. This includes your menu.
18. Do not give up on your SEO plan without going the distance.
    SEO results takes times, even a couple years or so. If you’ve done your plan properly and ROI looks good and the keywords are strong, continue on.
19. Don’t let your site get stagnant.
    Expand it frequently with new information. Search engines are programmed to like growing sites more.
20. Do not assume your SEO company is doing it right.
    Run through this checklist on/with them. We’ve seen SEO tactics used by other companies that can actually hurt your results.
21. Never hide links on your site.
    A good rule of thumb is: If your visitor can’t see/read/use it, it’s not search engine friendly and may not be good for your reputation.
22. Don’t use redirects people unless pages have actually moved.
    Some sites have pages that are SEO-optimized to the extreme. These are often called “doorway” pages. When a visit comes in, they redirect the visitor to a user-friendly page, rather than showing them the SEO optimized page. Google tries to detect deceptive redirects. If Google finds them, the offending website can loose some or all reputation.
23. Don’t show search engines and humans different content
    This is a major “black hat” tactic to show search engines more optimized content that would be to robotic for humans to read. Your content should have value for humans and search engines.
24. Never have two URLs that go to the same page.
    From the search engines perspective, it looks like two different pages, and this looks like duplicate content. Depending on the situation, search engines can react to duplicate content in a variety of ways – from ignoring one of the pages, to lowering the “score” of both pages, to punishing the site.
25. Don’t replace SEO experience with technical knowledge or a checklist.
    If your market is competitive, enlist the help of an experienced SEO Consultant.

When it comes down to it

You can discern if a SEO tactic is good or bad by asking yourself this question:

“Will this help a person find what they are looking for with search engines in a more helpful way ?”

Too much text is cumbersome for users and detracts from the graphic presentation. On-site text is one of many SEO factors.  Just like anything else: more doesn’t necessarily mean better. There’s usually plenty of room for improving the way you leverage other SEO factors to surpass competitors, improve rankings and increase website traffic as long as you have some on-page text. Having some text is important because it tells Google what your website is about.

Good rule of thumb for amount of text:
Have at least 200 words of relevant, unique content on your target pages.

Sure, you can rank well without it – if you are willing to do more work on the other factors. So if you have at least 200 words on your target pages, let’s look at the…

top 3 SEO factors you should consider before adding more text:

Page titles

You should make it clear to Google what each page is about. A page title should consist of the company name (shortened – if it’s too long) and up to three keyword phrases. A page title should be no more than 65 characters long, because Google doesn’t read anymore than that.

An example of a good title is: “Personal Computers, MP3 Players – Apple Inc.“.

Before setting titles, assign 1 to 3 keyword phrases to a page. (I am assuming you have already done your homework on which keywords have good potential.) Remember to only assign a keyword (or phrase) to one target page. Do not have the same keyword in the titles of multiple pages. That only dilutes the focus of each page.

Internal linking

Since you control your own website, setting your links up in an optimal way is one of the easiest parts of SEO. First: if appropriate, change wording in your menu to use keyword(s). It’s important to understand that Google only considers the first link in the page code in their algorithm.  So, if you have 3 different links on your homepage that link to your most important internal page, Google will only give you the benefit of the text of the first link.

Then, make of list of your pages that are most important to Google for your specific target keyword. (You can tell these by which of your pages Google puts in results of a “site:yoursite.com + keyword” command). On these pages, make sure you have some keywords in the content that you can link to corresponding target pages. For example, if the Contact Us page mentions one of your service keywords (or if you can work it into the paragraph in a natural sounding way), link this keyword to the appropriate target page. By doing this, you are making it more clear to Google what pages are about and how important they are.

External linking

It’s one thing to link to yourself and quite another for a reputable 3rd-party website to link to you. This is the most difficult, time-consuming, and rewarding factor in SEO. First, ask your dealers, distributors, vendors, associates, etc to link to you. If possible, have them link to you using your keywords and linking to the corresponding target pages. Next, we highly recommend writing unique articles (that contain a couple of your links) and syndicating them to Hubpages, Squido, and EzineArticles on a frequent basis.

need help?

If you’d like our team to take a look at your specific situation and provide guidance, please contact Effect Web Agency in Warsaw Indiana. Our SEO consultant and director, Shawn Nafziger has been working exclusively in the SEO world for over 10 years.

At this open Q&A webinar, Steve Schmidt answered the following participates’ questions (below). This webinar also available in MP3.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

1. “Can you show me provable value (ROI) of social media marketing in relation to B2B web initiatives?”

You’ll hear how a supply chain company got great Social Media results; finally hear confirmation that Facebook does not equal Social Media; and challenge yourself with a question Steve poses that will help you see how to successfully leverage what Social Media really is in your specific industry.

2. “What does the website mean for our business?”

The question that really needs to be answered is “What results do we want from the website that will provide value to our company?”. You’ll break through the fogginess that usually puts people into analysis paralysis and clarify the two types of value: Quantitative and Qualitative. Then, you’ll walk through a very simple and practical method of planning a web strategy focused on positive ROI that you can use.

3. “How can the opening page get the viewer, researcher, customer, etc. to be driven to seek additional info and explore more of the website -especially when you have a broad market segment that you are trying to reach.”

First, you’ll learn what the visitor is thinking when they first arrive at your website. Knowing this will allow you to see how to change your mindset and naturally, your website presentation, message, and results.”

4. “Regarding Search Engine Marketing: How does a company start out and then become more advanced while spending a small amount of money?”

You’ll know the fundamental steps in approaching natural search engine optimization on a tight budget.

5. “What are the current Facebook and Twitter trends?”

We’ll give you a quick update on trends and explain how we think people will need to change their approach to this portion of Social Media in order to facilitate results.

If you have a question for the next “Ask a Web Strategist”, please post it in the comments below. We WILL answer you.

If anyone would like to discuss their scenario one-on-one, please contact Effect Web Agency. We’ll identify implications and potential solutions.