Tag Archive for: SEO

The iPad Creates 98 Percent of Mobile Web Traffic

, ,

The tablet market looks like it is getting crowded from a distance, but the data from a new study from mobile publishing platform Onswipe suggests there really is no contest as to what tablet is driving meaningful amounts of web traffic.

According to Onswipe’s study, the iPad is the source of a whopping 98 percent of all tablet based traffic. Now, before the Android lovers begin sharpening their pitchforks, this data is supported by other recent studies as well.

The data also shows that iPad owners spend more time online per session compared to their iPhones, and are more active. Also interesting is the iPad creates more traffic than iPhone and Android devices combined, despite there being hugely more iPhones and Androids out in consumers’ hands.

Slowly, we are beginning to see a trend in mobile browsing, and what is resulting is a very complex picture, despite these seemingly clear-cut findings. Onswipe also found that Kindle Fire users spend more time with their devices than iPad users, however they do not spend as much time online for obvious reasons.

Marketing Land has some graphs to help you visualize the Onswipe’s findings.

 

/0 Comments

Opera Users Have the Highest CTR Rates According to Data

,

New data from ad network Chitika compares click through rates (CTRs) and query lengths on the different desktop and mobile browsers among the millions of impressions on their network. The results show Opera browser users as the highest demographic of click-through’s compared to other browser users.

Generally, Opera users are considered to be more tech savvy, so it is interesting that they would have the highest CTR rate. The second highest demographic are mobile Safari users.

Greg Sterling from Marketing Land has all the data from the report for more information.

 

/0 Comments

The Basics of Good Local SEO

, ,

Every topic I cover can be as complicated as you let them be. With the focus on minute data and snippets of code, SEO could easily be intimidating for anyone trying to get started learning.

This is a problem for local SEO because most business owners aren’t experts. If they think of local SEO as a daunting field, rather than seeing the opportunities it could open up for them, they are likely to shy away.

With this in mind, I’d like to take us back to the basics. We haven’t covered local SEO here in depth, so this will serve as a great place to begin exploring the topic. But, the tips offered here are valuable for broader SEO as well.

For good local SEO, there are really three major rules.

  • Get your website up to standards
  • Spread your business details everywhere
  • Use social media to get your customers to do promotion for you

Getting your website up to standard

Google is beginning to combine regular and local search results, and your website quality helps decide where you will land in the local search results, as well as more broad searches. Making a quality site relies on you doing a few specific things. For one, your site should have a clear and functional structure with a set heirarchy of pages. This will help Google’s crawlers go where you want them too, and know what is most important.

Another, more basic step in making a good page is just filling your site to the brim with quality content. Your content makes your first impression to customers as well as search engines. Putting out continuous good content keeps bringing search crawlers back to your page, and generate backlinks to your site from other pages.

Spread your business details

This one is quick and easy, so I’m going to let Myles Anderson from Search Engine Land sum it up. “Having your correct business details widely available is positive for local SEO and sets you up nicely to take advantage of the mobile-boom. Many of the same data sources which feed the desktop internet also feed mobile sites and applications so even if your website isn’t mobile enabled your business will appear on popular mobile applications.”

This is especially true for local SEO because people are searching to be able to contact YOU. Make it easy for them. Google will reward you for it. But don’t get lazy once your information is out there. Remember where you have put it by keeping a record. If you ever move, or change phone numbers, you will need to go change it everywhere the old information is.

Be social!

Just like everywhere else online, Google is becoming more and more intertwined with social media. If you don’t have a social media account for your business, it is time to get one. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are all very influential in your SEO status. From there, make it easy to share your content from your site with social media buttons prominently connected with content. Once you have a following, you will notice they share content for you. You still have to be proactive by sharing your content with them on social media in the first place, but if you connect with your followers, you will be shocked to see what they do for you.

Conclusion

Of course, there are a ton more things you can do to help give yourself a boost. It is high time you have a mobile optimized page for your site, and it is important to make sure you are listed on Google and Apple Maps. But, these first three rules will help you easily expand, and see what investing in local SEO can do for you.

 

/0 Comments

Don’t Be Afraid of the EMD Update

, ,

Another week, another Google update. This time around it is an EMD, or “Exact Match Domain” update.

So how does it effect you? What did the update do? What does it all mean?

Mainly, this update means bad news for spam. Many in the SEO community were frightened the EMD update would go through and destroy every exact match search result on the web, but that is far from the truth.

This update doesn’t ruin exact matches, but looks for signs of spammy abuse of the system. Alex Becker over at Search Engine Journal has a full explanation of the update and how it effects all of those spammers out there, but the important message is clear. No, the EMD update should not hurt you, if you are following all of the suggested guidelines.

 

/0 Comments

What Is So Important About Tags?

, ,

Most bloggers know how important tagging is. Tags allow you to retain a similar structure across almost all blogging platforms, unlike categories. What may be surprising however, is the amount of freedom tags give bloggers also leads to them being badly used.

With that in mind, let’s start at the top and explore what tags really are and what benefits they offer. Then we can cover how to use them properly.

What are Tags?

As one blogger describes them, “tags are your index words.” That is to say, tags allow users to easily find articles based on keywords. If a reader finds a post on your website about content marketing, they can easily find more about the topic on your site. This helps readers become more informed and spend more time on your site.

How to Use Tags Effectively

The most common issue with tags are over or under usage. You want to use enough tags to cover the relevant points people may be looking for, but you don’t want to overdo it. Sufyan bin Uzayr uses the example of tagging an article about the recent conflict in Syria to illustrate this idea. If you just tag the article “Syria” and “Middle East” you are missing out on a few important opportunities. However, if you use redundant tags such as “War in Middle East”, “Arab Revolt” and “Arab Spring” all on the same article, you are overdoing it. The key is to try not to repeat yourself.

SEO and Tags

Lately some bloggers have been suggesting that using tags in certain ways will increase your ranking somehow. This is clearly too good to be true, but that doesn’t mean you should write tags off immediately. If you index your tags efficiently, they hold their merit, but they aren’t ever going to be the magic potion some are suggesting.

Most importantly, tags are for your visitors to help with navigation, but using them improperly isn’t going to help anyone. Trying to keep navigation organized reflects in your SEO performance.

 

/0 Comments

The 5 Most Common Mistakes on Landing Pages

, ,

You can do a lot of different things with landing pages, be it selling something, encouraging visitors to subscribe to a newsletter, or trying to get people to sign a petition. No matter which of these goals you have, you are ultimately trying to get visitors to perform an action.

Making a great landing page seems like it should be easy, but it is more complex than you may think. This leads to poor sales because a landing page is only working if it is getting people to convert.

With that in mind, let’s examine the most common problems with landing pages.

  1. Mismatching Text Ad Copy and Landing Page Headline – There are numerous reasons you should make sure your Google AdWords text ads match your landing page headline. For users, the text ad creates an expectation, and you don’t want to confuse your visitors or make them feel mislead. The quality of your landing page also decides cost-per-click in AdWords, so if you raise your quality score, you will lower your cost-per-click.
  2. Poor Grammar and Misspelled Words – Throwing up a quick landing page is always a terrible idea because it leads to a ton of smaller problems. One of those is bad spelling and grammar. This is one of those mistakes that just shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Your visitors will take any reason you give them to not convert, and this one is a big reason to leave.
  3. No Trust Signals – To get visitors to convert, you have to establish trust. You can build this into your landing page in just a few ways. If you establish your brand’s popularity, people will view it as credible. You can also present your 3rd party certifications with organizations like Verisign or the Better Business Bureau. You can also establish trust by making positive mentions of your brand in the press easily available on the landing page.
  4. Lack of Good Call-to-Actions – You’re call to actions are important to help make people convert. They should also be compelling, with practical language, and solid, consistent design. You should also keep it short, between 90 and 150 characters. You need to make it clear what you want the visitor to do, but short enough to keep their attention.
  5. Poor Quality Videos or Images – Videos on your landing page can help boost conversion rates by about 80%. Images don’t raise conversions that much, but they still have their own positive effect on visitor activity. This doesn’t mean you can just toss up any image or video you want however. Poor quality images or videos will actually lower conversion rates rather than improve them.

Eric Siu from Unbounce has even more common mistakes, but these will help get you started with making sure users are converting. Remember, if users aren’t converting, your landing page has problems.

 

/0 Comments

The Could, Would, and Should Budgets for Search Marketing

, ,

 

How much should you budget for paid search? You have a lot of options, but you obviously want the one that will get you the most bang for your buck. Bill Hunt, columnist for Search Engine Land, offers three options for how to think about your budget.

How Much Could We Spend?

This budget is your “pie in the sky” option. It gives you an idea how much it would cost to have the absolute best search performance possible, and you likely can’t afford it, unless you have a magical unlimited amount of money. While most don’t want to think about the high cost options they can’t afford, this option helps understand the importance of aligning keywords to buy cycles, as well as the value of organic traffic.

How Much Would We Spend?

This budget is the amount you are already hoping to spend when you decide to invest in SEO. When you first begin improving your search performance, you come in with a preset idea of what would be optimal for your budget. Of course, this is likely not optimal for your search engine performance. This is helpful for establishing what you could get for your budget, and letting you see what you would be missing out on.

How Much Should We Spend?

This is the amount you should spend to maximize keywords and provide maximum yield of business goals. This amount is what is best for your business, though it is likely not the best for your wallet immediately. It will return the investment quickly, however. It takes into account organic performance for important and expensive keywords, making you rank highly and reducing the cost overall.

Conclusion

The importance of seeing these three options laid out in front of you is to see the full range of possibilities. Most companies don’t know what they have available to them in the search marketing arena, and you can see how you would perform in each scenario.

 

/0 Comments

The Secret of Personal Branding

, ,

I’ve written a lot about branding for your clients, but do you know that personal branding is just as important to your success as a designer?

You hopefully do, because personal branding is far from a new idea, but social media has made personal branding as available as ever before. It is also a much more competitive field now.

To make yourself a valued brand, follow this collection of tips. They will help you climb above the competition.

  1. Set Goals and Plan Ahead – Before you ever begin to define your brand, you have to think ahead and see where you want to be a few months or even a year or two from now. Are you trying to get a new job, or do you want to stay a freelancer? How do you want to grow your business? Once you know where you want to be, you can layout a plan to help get you there.
  2. Know and Understand Your Brand – The look and feel of your brand is a lot more than just a brand or a couple of social media accounts. You have to keep a consistent image in all mediums at all times. As Jacob Cass from Just Creative puts it, “The fundamental idea and core concept behind having this ‘corporate image’ is that everything you do, everything you own and everything you produce, should reflect the values and aims of your personal brand as a whole.”
  3. Create and Maintain Your Brand – One of the best ways to set yourself apart from the crowd is to have a unique visual identity that is consistent and reflective of your goals. You should also maintain social media accounts in ways that reflect your brand positively. Are you of any value to your followers and friends? Or are you wasting the biggest platforms to promote your brand?

Above all, the secret to personal branding is the same for many things in life. Plan ahead, and follow through. If you put forth a solid, planned image to the public, and follow through with valuable content, people will come to respect your personal brand.

 

/0 Comments

Matt Cutts Says Google Now Reports 100 Percent of Manual Actions

, ,

Have you ever wondered if your site was penalized by Google through automated algorithms or a real human person? Now, you will almost always know because Google reports almost 100 percent of manual penalties.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, described this new policy at Pubcon this year, saying, “We’ve actually started to send messages for pretty much every manual action that we do that will directly impact the ranking of your site.”

“If there’s some manual action taken by the manual web spam team that means your web site is going to rank directly lower in the search results, we’re telling webmasters about pretty much all of those situations.”

Cutts did clarify that there may be rare instances where this doesn’t occur, but their aim to get to 100-percent.

In June, at SMX Advanced, Cutts gave a figure of 99 percent reporting, but Cutt believes they are currently reporting every instance of manual actions.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has more information about the distinction between manual and algorithmic actions.

 

/0 Comments

3 Easy Email Remarketing Tips You Can Try

, , ,

It is easy to underestimate the power of emails to create conversions. However, sending the right email at the right time can actually increase sales dramatically. If done well, a single automated email can increase sales by 10%.

Here are three email remarketing tactics that can help you start driving conversions you may be missing out on.

1) Educational Email Course – While some customers that come to your site are already aware of how your product will solve their problems, many will not come equipped with a good understanding of the problem or why the solution you offer is important.

An educational email course helps walk your uninformed potential customers from understanding their problem to the checkout. It also helps build your reputation and credibility.

By showing customers why they should trust you as an expert, as well as sharing information, you help consumers progress along the The Buyer’s Journey. Once they get to the point where they are ready to purchase, they will choose to go with the company that was with them from the beginning.

Just don’t overwhelm them with emails. Six to eight emails a month will be able to drive conversion rates up, but an email a day will send potential customers running.

2) A/B Test Your Most Profitable Campaigns – We all know why you should be A/B testing your webpages, but have you thought about testing transactional and remarketing campaigns? Most don’t, but Chris Hexton from Unbounce suggests it is just as important, if not more so.

Choose your most effective email, and begin A/B testing. Change the copy, or maybe the subject line. Maybe even try different addresses to send the email from.

3) Prompt Users to Pay More When the Time is Right – If you have multiple payment tiers or annual pricing, you should really already be doing this. Take a look at your current metrics and see which segment of users are already upgrading, and create an automated email to prompt all who would be included in this group. Now, once you have begun to understand the behavior driving upgrades, find an email that will pre-empt this type of action.

By pre-empting users with a call-to-action, they are likely to respond, especially if you can circle in on users that have been paying monthly for a few months. They will likely want to upgrade to annual payments.

While these suggestions are far from a comprehensive list of solid email remarketing tactics, they are easy and can help rejuvinate your email marketing.

 

/0 Comments