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Changes Coming to Instagram – Feeds to be Organized Like Twitter & Facebook

Posted on: March 16th, 2016 by admin

Instagram has just announced that it’s planning to organize its feeds rather than displaying posts as they go live. The reordering of the feed, if implemented on the site, will bump up popular posts and those from good friends and families all the way to the top. Eventually the site hopes to eliminate irrelevant and unpopular posts from user feeds.

“Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People miss about 70 percent of their Instagram feed. Instagram plans on ensuring that the 30 percent users do get to see is relevant to what they like. Instagram wants that 30 percent to be the best of the best for its users.

Instagram has jumped on the wagon of different social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, in which they organize posts based on particular interests and bump those posts up to the top, even if the posts are a little old. The results of this change have been a little rocky for Facebook and Twitter, as tens of thousands of protesters went against it. But considering that Facebook introduced this change in October of 2009 (check out this cool Facebook algorithm change timeline), the change did not seem to hurt them at all.

Instagram is testing the waters right now and is taking a more cautious approach with this new change. They have only introduced the change on a single-digit percentage of users before they plan on introducing it sitewide. However, Instagram is not going to make this change optional like Twitter did on their site, which could create a backlash if users don’t like it.

Instagram is known for making small changes, which keeps users happy. The changes that are going to take place aren’t major, so people will not wake up tomorrow wondering if they have a different Instagram.

Since the new algorithm to be used by Instagram will be implemented based on interactions with photos, it is unclear how Instagram plans on keeping the celebrities, brands, and advertisements out of user feeds. The change might make it harder to find those gems you sometimes stumble upon. On the other hand, not many people like missing important events from their friends and family, which is why Instagram is choosing to go this route. Instagram wants to make everyone happy and hopes their new algorithm will do just that. Instagram wants you to see your friend’s engagement right as it takes place.


A Recipe for Success in Business: Calculating Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Posted on: March 10th, 2016 by admin

 

Believe it or not, one of the most valuable marketing and easy-to-use metrics in business is also the most overlooked formula. It simply amazes me how many people are not using this formula. In a day and age where quantifying your data is crucial to a business’s success, it’s no wonder half of all startups are out of business within the first year. What is it you ask?

 

It’s called Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)— and it’s a game-changer for your business.

 

As an ecommerce retailer, service business, or any business which has recurring clients, knowing the CLV (also can be referred to as CLTV, LTV, and LCV) of your customers is one of the most crucial tools for your success. It helps to develop a healthy business model and profitable strategy as you intentionally invest in reaching the clients will grow your brand the best.

Customer Lifetime Value - CLV

 

Calculating the lifetime value of a customer also helps to:

 

Develop a more efficient customer acquisition

When you only focus your marketing channels based on the gross profit of an initial purchase, you limit the return on investments (ROI) of customer acquisition. Instead, you should be optimizing the channels that reach your most profitable customers in terms of their lifetime value. Understanding and implementing  the CLV into marketing strategies will enhance customer acquisition by giving you insight into the demographic that should be targeting. The trick is to maximize your customer lifetime value in relation to the investment or cost of customer acquisition to develop a recipe for success.

 

Create better and more personalized targeting and messaging

Relevance is key when it comes to reaching your targeted audience. Using CLV to segment your brand’s customer base is important because it gives you a more dynamic view of your ideal client. You can use it to create more personalized messages that speak to the clients who will directly benefit your brand in the long run.
 

Foster stronger relationships with your most valuable customers

Calculating CLV can help you choose where to direct your customer service resources by identifying your most profitable clients. After all, the Pareto Principle applies well when it comes to consumers: 80% of your revenue is generated by only 20% of your customers. So, giving particular attention and better service to the best customers will give you more support from them, which helps push up margins and make your business more profitable.
 

Identify and utilize behavioral triggers

You can use CLV to identify the behavioral triggers of your ideal clients. To figure out the most influential incentives that get your most valuable customers to make their first purchases, you can organize data into natural clusters and make comparisons. Try to better understand why certain triggers lead to purchases, and then replicate the triggers with prospective customers.

 

 

How to Calculate CLV of Customers

While there are multiple ways to calculate CLV, using the most basic formula focuses on the variables that you’re most able to control. Thankfully, it’s pretty simple to calculate with the breakdown of this awesome infographic from KISSmetrics:

 

(Average Order Value) x (Number of Repeat Sales) x (Average Retention Time)

KISSmetrics breaks down each step of the calculation of CLV using Starbucks as an example. The first step indicates how to find the average sale, which is the first variable. Then, the next step is to find the number of repeat sales, which is the number of visits per week in this case of the infographic (shown below). Then, the averages are plugged into the formula above to find the lifetime value of customer for that particular given time.

Another example could be applied to a monthly subscription service, like Spotify Premium. The membership costs $10 a month, giving their customers access to thousands of songs to listen to whenever and wherever they are without any ads interrupting. So, we could apply the formula in this way:


($10) x (12) x (3 years) = $360

So each subscriber has a value of $120 a year, or $360 if the if membership lifetime average is 3 years. For college students, they offer it at half price. So for those who flash their student IDs, their annual CLV is $60, or $180 for 3 years.

And with all the interrupting advertisements that play on the free Spotify accounts (not to mention being limited to shuffle play on mobile devices), the monthly subscription is a tempting offer. Then more questions arise: How does a free trial month of Spotify convince more people to subscribe? How many of those potential customers keep on subscribing? Is losing $10 for a potential customer worth it? Is losing $5 a month worth it on certain customers?

Calculating the CLV is made to answer those questions, helping you understand how to reach and keep the most valuable customers coming back for business. It can help you find innovative ways to increase the lifetime value of a customer by creating offers and building better service catered to you best clients.

Take the time to work through the numbers through this simple equation. Doing so when you’re early on in the business can give you a head start on building your brand towards your ideal client. Don’t forget to use variation to find out which strategies provide the best results. Ultimately, it’s what determines the strategy and success of your company.

In the coming week, I’m going to write a blog post about how to use your CLV in order to calculate how much you should spent to acquire a client (CAC = client acquisition cost).


It’s Finally Here: SERPS with Four Ads on Top

Posted on: February 22nd, 2016 by admin

It’s Finally Here: SERPS with Four Ads on Top

There’s been a lot of speculation in the PPC community over the last couple of months, as Google tested SERPS with four ads on the top of the page, which previously only had one to three ads. This replaces the usual mix of top, bottom, and sidebar-heavy AdWords ads, depending on the specific search result.

Although it is difficult to tell if things have increased or not, now, ads will have additional features, such as sitelinks.

In the last two weeks, things have been gradually changing, but as of the morning of February 18, the percentage of top ad blocks displaying four ads jumped from 18.9% to 19.3%.

If you take notice to the 5,986 page-1 SERPs in the tracking data that displayed top ads, here is how the ad count currently breaks down:

adwords ad block graph

In the image above, you’ll notice that 4-ad blocks have overtaken 2-ad blocks for almost one-fifth of all top ad blocks. Now, although this situation is complex, it will continually change as time goes on. Right now, being at 19%, it’s fair to say that it’s no longer in testing.

Sample Keywords & SERPs

serp new

As you can tell, the 4-ad will carry the same information, such as sitelinks, location, and other features. Other examples of high-volume searches that provided us with 4 top ads since Google implemented this change includes:

  • “royal Caribbean”
  • “car insurance”
  • “smartphone”
  • “netbook”
  • “medicare”
  • “job search”
  • “crm”
  • “global warming”
  • “cruises”
  • “bridesmaid dresses”

Please note that our data is mainly geared towards commercial queries, so there is a possibility that our percentages of occurrences are just a little bit higher than the total population of searches.

Shift in Right-column Ads

panels are also integrating niche advertising and verticals, such as hotels, music, movies, and even some consumer electronics.

This situation is liable to change and the numbers could change in coming days and weeks. Stay tuned for the latest, I’ll try to update you shortly.

The 4-ad block looks the same as all other ad blocks, the only exception being that it’s in the fourth category. Here we’ll provide you an example for “used cars,” localized to the Chicago area.

imageedit_2_4877250667

 

Here is another example from another very competitive search, “laptops.”

We have also noticed another change, which is that right-hand column ads seem to be moving in a different direction now. Take a look at this 30-day graph for the occurrence of right-hand ads and bottom ads below.

ADWORDS ADS

The same day Google implemented the 4-ad block, there was a substantial drop in right-column ad blocks, and with that, there was an increase in bottom ad blocks. Rumor has it that AdWords reps are confirming that this change has taken place only for some clients, but the confirmation for everyone else is still pending.

Where Is Google Going with This?

We won’t know for sure, but what’s for certain is that Google is definitely making changes, which they have been doing for a while. First, Google made a public and measureable move geared towards mobile-first design. Since mobile does not support right-hand column ads, Google might be trying to make everything standard in terms of advertising.

Another thing is that in the last couple of years, we’ve seen new right-hand elements pop up, including knowledge panels and some paid blocks. These elements push right-hand column ads down. At the same time, knowledge


How to Rank Higher with Better Content and the TL*IDF Algorithm Explained

Posted on: January 21st, 2016 by admin

**UPDATE 4/1 – See bottom of page for some testing results.

Welp, 2016 is upon us and it’s that time of year to do some personal inventory. How is your site ranking? Not good enough? Not at all? There’s probably a reason this is so. With constant changes to Google’s algorithm, it’s a full time job just keeping up. I know, Google is always messing with yo stuff…right? Let me show you a quick and easy way to make your website content better.

Have you heard of the TL*IDF algorithm (not to be mistaken with tl;dr)? I know, it sounds sexy..let me explain. The TL*IDF algorithm has been around for quite a while now. It’s complicated, but it’s the way Google looks at words and the frequency at which they are used. Think frequency, not keyword stuffing (got it BHW?). Basically put, it’s the way that Google measures quality and understands content. If your the type that likes to geek out, here’s more information about TL*IDF. Mad props to the guys over at goralewicz.com for the original article.

Now that I got that out of the way, let me show you a simple way to rank your pages better in the search engines (mostly Google..wink wink).

First, go to Onpage.org and get yourself an account.

 

onpage.org main page

 

It’s free for one account, but has limited capabilities. If you are a small business and only need one website, choose the €99.90 option (it’s around $108). If you are an agency or small SEO company, it’s another $20 (roughly) per additional account, or you can upgrade to their bigger plans.

1) Once you have created an account, add a project.

Add New Campaign Onpage.org

 

2) Next, enter your domain.

enter account information

 

3) Choose the amount of pages you want to crawl. If you have a big website, obviously you want to crawl more pages.

Page Crawl

 

4) Start the crawl. Give it a few minutes. You’ll be notified via email once the crawl is finished.

start crawl

 

5) Click on TL*IDF

click tl IDF

 

6) Enter your keyword

*Pro tip – I like to optimize my pages for 4-5 main keywords, so you can rinse and repeat this process with the same page multiple times.

enter keyword

 

7) After a few seconds you will be sent to the results page.  You will want to click “Two-word combinations”. This will filter results and give you better keyword phrases for your page or article.

results page

You have two other functions here. The Zoom Tool and the Proof Keyword Filter. The Zoom Tool allows you to zoom into the current keywords, and the Proof Keyword Filter allows you to filter only the top keywords. Try to stick with 10-20 keywords as a general rule of thumb.

 

8) After you click the Two-Word Combinations, it will look as so:

results

 

10) Next, you will want to click the “Compare with URL”. This will be the URL from your want to compare with the competition.

Comare with compare 2

 

 

11) Next Click on “Detailed Results” in the left sidebar.

Detailed

 

**Below you will see, the tool gives levels and TL*IDF scores. What I suggest it to try to stay right in the middle of the light blue areas.

Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 1.19.08 PM

 

12) Notice below, I have marked all of the keywords not within the content.

results with marks

 

From here what I like to do is spread out the results a bit and make a list of the most relevant keywords I am missing within my content/article. I give that list to my writers, and have them incorporate them within the content. I’ll also try to incorporate them within the title tag, description tag, and alt tags as well.

Once the content is finished, I like to throw it into “Text Assistant”, to see if there are any additional keywords or phrases I may have missed.

test assistant

 

Rinse and repeat until you feel your content matches that of the competition. If you follow these steps your page or article will be well on it’s way to ranking better. Remember, every little thing helps with SEO.

 

**UPDATE!!

Here is just one example of a page I fixed using this method. This is with zero link building and happen over a 30 day period:

Ranking example

Here is that same page 60 days later:

TL*IDF Example

**These are highly competitive keywords in a specific SEO niche.

Here is another project I started 30 days ago. The only links I built to this site were local citations 6 months ago. I will update in 30 days.

Example 2 of TL*IDF

 

Looking for a content audit? Contact us today to find out more.

 


Are You Using Schema Markup to Boost SEO?

Posted on: June 10th, 2015 by admin

Schema

As a business owner, you know how crucial it is for your website to rank successfully in search engine results.

But believe it or not, the vast majority of websites aren’t aware of this one advantage that’s been around for years.

In fact, most people don’t know what it’s for or even what it is. And that is exactly why we want to tell you about why you need Schema.

What is Schema?

Schema is a type of code/microdata that gives users more relevant results on SERPs and makes it easier for search engines to effectively interpret data on your website. The Schema project was started as a collaboration between the worlds largest search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex) to help create a common set of structured data markup on web pages.

 

We all know that website content gets indexed and returned in search results. But when you add the Schema markup to the picture, things get structured a little differently.

 

You see, Schema allows for search engines to interpret what your content actually means.

 

 

This is how Schema.org explains it:

 

“Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. Usually, HTML tags tell the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example, <h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string “Avatar” in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn’t give any information about what that text string means—”Avatar” could refer to the hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user.”

 

Take a look at the samples from Schema.com:

 

Let’s start with a concrete example. Imagine you have a page about the movie Avatar—a page with a link to a movie trailer, information about the director, and so on. Your HTML code might look something like this:

<div>
<h1>Avatar</h1>
<span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)</span>
<span>Science fiction</span>
<a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>
</div>

To begin, identify the section of the page that is “about” the movie Avatar. To do this, add the itemscope element to the HTML tag that encloses information about the item, like this:

<div itemscope>
 <h1>Avatar</h1>
 <span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954) </span>
 <span>Science fiction</span>
 <a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>
</div>

By adding itemscope, you are specifying that the HTML contained in the <div>…</div> block is about a particular item.

But it’s not all that helpful to specify that there is an item being discussed without specifying what kind of an item it is. You can specify the type of item using the itemtype attribute immediately after the itemscope.

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Movie”>
 <h1>Avatar</h1>
 <span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)</span>
 <span>Science fiction</span>
 <a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>
</div>

This specifies that the item contained in the div is in fact a Movie, as defined in the schema.org type hierarchy. Item types are provided as URLs, in this casehttp://schema.org/Movie.

 

 

Basically, Schema was invented for the users.

It helps them gain the information they need. That way, when they see your website show up on SERPs, they’ll be looking at your “digital business card.” The data will display everything they need to know about your website: what you do, where you are, what your services/products costs, what you’re all about, and so on.

 

Why is Schema important?

Schema improves the ranking of just about every kind of content. No matter what kind of data you have on your site, there’s bound to be an itemscope and itemtype you can use. Implementing the markup to your website will give you dramatically positive results. One study found that websites that implemented Schema ranked 4 times better than those that didn’t. Yet even with that data, still only 0.3 percent of websites use Schema markups. But that’s exactly why using it will be to your advantage.

 

How do I Use Schema on my Website?

Before you get scared off by the idea of coding, we’ve got some good news. Using Schema is relatively easy, though it does require a little extra time to set up. To make things simple for you, Schema.com has this guide that will walk you though the process as you get started. You can also use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Once your markup is complete, you should use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to double check that everything is set up and working properly.

And remember: The more content you mark up, the better.


So have you tried using Schema markups or or other types of microdata? Let us know how you use it, and leave questions and comments below!


5 Reasons Why You NEED to Use Facebook Ads

Posted on: April 5th, 2015 by admin
FB
image by Sean MacEntee. edited.

To get your brand out to your targeted audience, you need the most effective and efficient tools to reach them.

Though there’s a variety of marketing campaigns out there, we know that the

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re’s one that every successful business absolutely needs: Facebook Ads. Here are 5 reasons why you need to implement them into your marketing plan:

 

1. Get Ahead of Your Competitors

Believe or not, there are a lot of businesses that aren’t using Facebook advertising properly, if at all. You can easily gain an edge over your competitors by implementing Facebook into your social marketing campaign. By using the advertising tools offered for businesses on Facebook, you can reach and win over new customers that would’ve otherwise never found you.

 

2. Choose From the Most Cost Effective Options

With Facebook Ads, you don’t need a large budget to reach a wide audience. Even with the lowest price at $1 a day, Facebook ads can reach thousands of people. And really, your ads won’t just reach anybody — they’ll reach your targeted audience, creating higher conversion rates. Here’s a chart from Facebook explaining their 4 ad options: Cost per mille (CPM), Cost Per Clicks (CPC), Optimized CPM (OCPM), and Cost Per Action (CPA).

Facebook-Ads-Bidding-Types

 

3. Target Your Specific Audience with Ease

Facebook has a huge advantage over Google Ads: specific targeted audiences. With Adwords, you’re limited to what users are searching for. Facebook, however, uses targeted ads that to reach people of specific interests, genders, and demographics of your ideal client. They have impressive tools to refine your targeted audience. For example, your ads can impressively precise, ranging from targeting artists in your local community, to college-age men interested in fitness, or to small business owners under the age of 40. Because you’ll have this wide variety of targeting options, you’ll be able to spread the word about your business in a way that is real and relevant to your clients.

 

4. Use Simple Performance Tracking

When you invest into a marketing campaign it’s important to analyze what you’re getting out of it. The fantastic thing about Facebook is that they allow you to clearly see the results of your small investment in advertising with them. Facebook Performance tools include:

 

  • Page Insights is an extremely helpful tool that allows you to see a daily breakdown of responses to your posts and pages, allowing for a better understanding of what your targeted ads need to drive conversions. This tool shows:
  • How many people saw your posts and page
  • How many people liked your page and the amount of new likes each posts receives
  • How many people commented on, liked, shared, and saw your page and posts

 

  • Ads Reporting is incredibly useful for seeing how your ads perform so you can refine them to drive even more conversions. With it, you’ll see:
  • The scheduling times and the amount spent on your running ads
  • An overview of the amount of people who viewed and engaged in your ad
  • The ability to quickly edit content and photos on your ads to improve performance.

 

 

5. Get Consumers Engaged with Your Brand

Facebook ads allow you to make others aware of your brand in a place where they can quickly and simply share it with others. The social media environment is a place where people are generally at ease, making them willing to engage personally with your brand. For example, if someone sees that a frien
d likes your business, it becomes much easier for them to trust your brand. Thereby building loyal customers and followers to a page where they know they can easily find you.
Plus, Facebook has an enormous audience. And the only way to make meeting business goals possible is by reaching the right people, which Facebook ads do efficiently.


WWW or non-WWW Domains? Clarity on this Canonical Conundrum

Posted on: March 27th, 2015 by admin

WWW

There are a lot of questions asked when people must choose the domain for their website, such as:

 

What’s the difference between www and non-www for your canonical domains?

Which one is better for SEO?

Which one is better for my business?

Why does it matter? Does it even matter?

 

It’s a common canonical conundrum.

 

To help you understand the differences and similarities between a WWW and a non-WWW domain, we’ve laid out some useful information to give you a better understanding of how each one works and why your choice is actually not that important.

 

First, let’s address some misconceptions about choosing your specific URL:

 

You have to pick one or the other.

False. Actually, you can have both. It may be good since you never know what people may type in the search bar. However, there are some problems associated with it, which we’ll talk more about when we get to “Canonicalization.”

One is better at SEO than the other.

Nope. You’ll find people who swear by either one, but the reality is that you just need to pick the one you want and just stick with it.

 

Again, whichever one you choose won’t make a huge impact. But to add a little clarity to what each one means, here’s the lowdown:

 

Benefits of a WWW Domain:

More DNS Flexibility. Providers hosting your site need to be able to update DNS records to redirect traffic from a failing server to a healthy server. This can only be done through DNS CNAME records, which aren’t available for non-WWW domains. For small websites, that’s not usually an issue. But if you have a large website or you know that it will grow into a large one someday, it’s best to use a WWW domain for DNS flexibility.

Ability to restrict cookies. If you need to use multiple subdomains for a site, you can differentiate subpages on your site by using a www prefix on your main website. This works since cookies of a main domain are sent to all subdomains.

It names the web service domain. WWW is technically accurate. It works as a hostname that names a specific service that’s used in a network.

 

 

Benefits of non-WWW domain:

Sometimes shorter is better. Simplicity is key in today’s market. When developing a website, it’s obvious that you want your brand and message to be clear, straightforward, and simple enough for any user to find what they need. You can apply the same thing to a URL domain. When there’s less to type, it’s easier to remember and it just makes things a tad simpler for your user.

Few organizations publish their site using a WWW url. Just take a look at big websites like facebook.com or twitter.com. Even if they are using a WWW domain, most websites tend not to publish their URL with the prefix because everyone understands that they are legitimate websites.

 

 

Truth is: It doesn’t matter.

At all, really. Both are equally good with SEO. It comes down to personal preference and branding. But here’s something more important to concern yourself with: setting up your website to define its canonical URL to ensure consistency in search engines.

 

What is a Canonical URL?

SEObook defines it as this:

The canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines. Search engines typically use PageRank or a similar measure to determine which version of a URL is the canonical URL.”

Basically, it’s a process that modifies URLs to make them standardized and consistent in search engines.

 

What is Canonicalization?

It means having content available on both a WWW and a non-WWW domain. The tricky thing about it is sometimes search engines can mistake the same site pages (like bestseofirm.com and www.bestseofirm.com) as unique websites, though they’re obviously the same. And often times, it results in duplicate content or indexing problems. Plus, it actually splits up the amount of likes and shares that your web pages get between the two URLs.

 

Consistency is Important
You can avoid the problems with canonicalization by simple choosing only one specific domain for your website. If you already have your domain setup, there’s no need to change it from one to the other.  Just be consistent with whatever URL you used to start your website.

Simply Choose Your Canonical URL
If you haven’t setup your domain yet, just take your pick between WWW and non-WWW in site domains. You need all your site pages to reflect your preferred domain when they are indexed by search engines.

 

Also, you want there to be redirection from non-WWW to WWW domains and vice versa when people type in or link the wrong version of your website. That way, the user is automatically directed to your canonical URL. Here are a few ways to set that up (don’t worry — it’s actually really simple):

 

How To Redirect Your Domain:

With Google Webmaster Tools

If you have a Google Webmaster Tools verified site, here’s how to set your preferred domain:

Go to Site Configuration > Settings, and selecting either “Display URLs as www.example.com” or “Display URLs as example.com”

Doing this will ensure that Google only indexes your preferred canonical URL.

 

With cPanel

If your website is hosted with a provider uses cPanel, you can don’t have to get your hands dirty with with coding as you set up your redirects. Simply login to cPanel, and then go to Redirects. Once there, check the box of your URL preference.

 

With .htaccess

To redirect your site from the WWW to the non-WWW (or vice versa) on Apache, you can do so with a few lines in your .htaccess file.

Redirecting from non-WWW to WWW:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirecting from WWW to non-WWW:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(example\.com)?$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

 

If you want to find more info about canonical domains, here are a few helpful resources:

Google Webmaster Toolsmore details on how to setup the preferred URL domain

WP Beginner -more info about WordPress and setting up a preferred URL domain.


Win New Clients with a Killer SEO Proposal

Posted on: March 11th, 2015 by admin

6424464061_de9d36f647_b

Why is an SEO proposal so important for landing new clients?

Well, for starters:

  • It’s the last bid you have to offer your clients.
  • It closes the deal.
  • And it makes or breaks your business.


To make potential clients go onboard with your company, you need an SEO proposal that organizes the details of your project in a way that seals the deal. Clients will use it to review and make a final decision about whether or not they need your company’s services. So, to create a proposal that wins clients, here are tips and an outline to walk you through the process:

 

OUTLINE FOR YOUR SEO PROPOSAL

All proposals will vary from project to project. But generally, an SEO Proposal will have these key qualities:

 

Summary
Start your proposal with a roadmap of words that leads your clients through a summarized version of your proposal. In it, you should outline your key points, main ideas, and anything else your clients need to know about what you have to offer. And don’t just talk about SEO strategy. Grab their attention with an opening statement that focuses on their needs.

Address the Problems
Talking about your company doesn’t interest your potential clients — they want to hear about themselves. Their problems. Their needs. You want them to understand why they need a better content solution. That’s what gets them listening and invested in what you have to offer.

Identify and Prioritize Keywords and SEO solutions
Clients are interested in a quantitative approach that will land them results, conversions, and returns from the implementation of SEO strategy. Without being too wordy and technical, explain the process and how it works to drive conversions. Make it clear that you have the solution to the problems you listed.

On-site, Off-site, and Social Media Content Review
Your proposal must go beyond SEO keyword solutions. Give them a quality content review of their webpages, both on-site and off-site. The on-site review should include an analysis of effectiveness of content on landing pages, blogs/articles, product pages, and other web pages. A review of the off-site content should discuss how the client’s website is being backlinked, used, and incorporated by other websites.

Direction, Strategy, and Timeline
Following the problems you’ve identified, you’ll then be in a position to explain the details of your proposed solutions. It should include:

  • Implementing content strategy
  • Blog development
  • Running a/b tests
  • Link building
  • Overview of business goals and objectives

Timelines help keep both parties on track for meeting the necessary deadlines and set clearer expectations for your clients.

Forecast Performance and Reports
Once your client agrees on the strategy and timeline you’ve offered, you can provide an idea of how they can forecast the performance based on weekly and/or monthly reports. Discuss the analytics, tools, SEO KPIs, metrics, as well as the process behind the plans and reports.

Bio and Credentials
Introduce your business to your clients by including a section about your history and background. In it, fight the urge to praise and oversell your firm. Briefly outlining the core of your business and presenting your company as a personable and trustworthy business is key. Show testimonials and include your case studies to give your client something to relate to. Explain why you’re the perfect fit for your client, and let your credentials speak for themselves.

Price
Often, the price is the first thing that a company will look for and consider in your proposal. To be as clear and concise as possible, make a list of all the items you will be charging for. This helps your clients to get a better picture of the work that goes into the project and why the price you charge is completely worth it.

Terms and Conditions
Stating all of your terms and conditions will give your client specific deadlines, payment terms, deliveries, and responsibilities required for the project. It helps to enforce your agreement when your terms are breached. Putting detailed T&Cs will put you and your client on the same page, and it will help avoid mismatched expectations.

 

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS BEFORE THEY EVEN ASK

As you write the proposal, you’ll have to include the information they need to answer these questions:

  • What results do you plan on delivering? Give them the details and scope of how you will do it.
  • What does your work entail? Reinforce the importance of the SEO process, what that process requires from their company, and remind them of what your work entails and why they need you.
  • What’s your price? State it clearly so they know you’re not being sleezy about your services or hiding fees.
  • What are your terms and conditions? You let them know what they should expect from you, and you lay out your own terms and conditions for the project.

 

TIPS AND TRICKS TO WIN YOUR CLIENT

  • Create a Stunning Design. Win them with the first impression. Create a presentation that looks sophisticated yet creative. Create a clear, concise, and aesthetically pleasing presentation to land your clients.
  • Evoke You and Your Company’s Personality. Your client wants to work with real people who really care about their needs. Show them the human side of you and your company to that they can relate to you on a personal level.
  • Use Vivid Graphs and Images. If your client can have a visual of your ideas and proposals, they will gain a stronger impression of your offer.
  • List Pricing Points. If you choose to offer multiple pricing options, that will give your main price a point of reference and allow your client to understand the value of your work.
  • Keep it Simple. Fight the urge to create a long proposal.  Fluff, jargon, and fillers aren’t going to win over new clients. Write your proposal in a straightforward manner with only the necessary information.

 

As clients review your SEO proposal, they will decide on whether or not to agree to the claims and offers you made during your initial meetings with them. As long as you follow these steps and tips, you’ll have a winning SEO proposal to land to clients you need.

Photo by Adam Grabek via Flickr

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Do You Have Google Friendly Title Tags?

Posted on: February 20th, 2015 by admin

Are your title tags good enough?

Do you know how to keep up with Google’s changes to the SERPs?

How does it affect your business?

One of the more impacting changes Google has made in the last year was altering the font for title tags: 16 pixels to 18 pixels and removing the underline. The purpose is to make SERPS easier to read and create a cleaner display.

For titles that were already at or under the recommended rate of 50-59 characters for a title, it didn’t change much. However, many are asking the question: how many title tags were affected by the font changed?

Authority Labs conducted a study to find out how many of the titles were actually affected by Google’s changes. Here’s a little summary of their study, data, and results:

    • MINING RESULTS AND TITLE TAGS
      By compiling a list of random keywords and pulling the top results for each, they created a data set with over 111,000 results to work with.
    • COMPARING TITLE LENGTHS
      The team analyzed the data first by comparing the length of the title showing in the search results to the full length title found on the actual site page. That’s where things became apparent that the sweet spot for title tag length is about 55 characters.
    • CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
      How many were changed?

      • 36% Partially changed (40,164 results)
      • 24.5% Completely Changed (28,336 results)
      • 38.6% Unchanged (42,983 results)

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 10.23.44 PM

 

  • BREAKDOWN
    Even after breaking down the results even further and analyzing trends, the preference Google has for 50-59 character title tags is quite obvious.
  • RANK POSITION
    Though SERPs were affected and title tag displays were changed, there didn’t appear to be a trend between the ranking of a page and how much a title tag was changed. Basically, changes were distributed evenly across the board, all the way from the top results and buried web pages.

TIPS AND TRICKS
So if you’ve been good about keeping your title tag length under 60 characters, just keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not sure how to write an engaging title in that sweet spot, here are some tips to help:

  1. Not too long, not too short. Long title tags that are cut off on the SERPS aren’t going to attract readers, but neither will short, bland titles. Keep the character count around 55 by adding the attractive words you need and by cutting out redundant keywords at the same time.
  2. Keywords in the front, Brand in the back. If you want to include your brand in the title tag, place it at the end of the title.
  3. Clear and Candid. Title tags that are unique, coherent, and straightforward tend to get the most clicks.
  4. Title Tag Preview. Moz has a helpful tool that allows you to create and preview a Google-friendly title tag.

So, it’s as easy as this: Keep your title tags short, sweet, enticing, and within the recommended 50-59 character limit. And if you want to read more about the results found in this study conducted by Authority Labs, you can find the original article here.

 


Super Simple A/B Tests You Need for Your Website

Posted on: February 16th, 2015 by admin

“I don’t care for best practices, I care for conversions. That’s why I test.” 

-Michael Aagard, ContentVerve.com

 
If you’re not tech savvy or you’re new to the business world, implementing A/B tests on your website can be intimidating and sound like a lot of work. But the truth is, you don’t have to be an expert to get the results you’re looking for. Thankfully, there are companies who did the research for you so that testing your website will be a breeze:

 

CALL TO ACTION

Your website’s “Call to Action” is a key instrument in growing your business. Even testing the slightest changes can give you a higher conversion rate. First, try testing the color and placement of your CTA button. You can try doing something like Hubspot, who conducted an experiment that –surprisingly– resulted in the color red proving higher conversion rates than the color green on a CTA button.

Screen Shot 2015-02-15 at 11.15.00 PM

Or you can run an experiment like President Obama who raised $60 million by simply changing the CTA button wording from “Sign Up” to “Learn More.” Either way, you’re sure to get results as well as increase and impact user behavior when you test your CTA.

 
 

PAGE LENGTH

Should your landing pages have long or short forms? Interestingly, marketers seem to be divided into two groups — those who claim shorter is better and those who claim longer is better. To find the truth, ContentVerve.com ran case studies that tested long and short forms for different companies. As it turns out, both marketers are right: it all depends on what you want from your customers and what products you offer. Short pages are better for low commitment and low risk offers, whereas longer pages benefit from high commitment and high risk offers. Depending on your business, you may want to start by testing out page lengths on your site.

contentverve
 
 

COLUMNS

Why are columns a big deal? Maybe because finding the best page layout could increase conversion rate by 681%! MECLABS ran a test that proved switching from a multiple to a single column layout could significantly increase sales for a tech company. Results like that will definitely vary from site to site, but it’s obvious that having a multiple or single column layout makes an impact on any website. That’s worth testing, don’t you think?
 results-for-1-column-vs-2-column-test
 

NAVIGATION BAR

Utilizing your navigation bar enhances, and promotes more, user experience. Try figuring out the most influential layout that makes the biggest impact on customer’s behavior. You could switch the order of your tabs to direct traffic to the pages that are crucial for leads and sales. Even something as simple as testing different wording on each tab may tell you what gets you the most clicks. One test ran by Optimizely showed that changing a tab from “Why Use Us” to “How It Works” increased clicks by 47.7%.

formstack-nav-old-v-new
 
 

IMAGES

The biggest subliminal impact on your customers comes from optimizing your images. Depending on the type of industry you’re in, you will want to test out how featuring images of people or product can make conversion rates increase dramatically. And here’s something else to consider: bigger might be better. Econsultancy wrote about three case studies that demonstrated how enlarging the “hero shot” on a webpage page can also enlarge the conversion rate. But don’t just test size — consider other options such as using illustrations instead of photographs — or even creating an aesthetically pleasing negative space, like Apple.com’s monochromatic design.
 Screen Shot 2015-02-15 at 11.43.15 PM
 

SPECIAL OFFERS

It seems obvious that people generally prefer to have more options when it comes to making purchases. However, providing too many options can actually drive customers away. One company wanted to increase cart completions by simplifying the checkout process. They originally had three offers that a visitor had to select before checking out. Instead, the company integrated the options into the product details and focused on the checkout CTA. It resulted in 36.5% more cart completions. So it pays to test how simplifying CTA can influence the direction of your customer, even if that means simplifying your special offers and deals.

Shopping-Cart-Results
 
 

HEADLINES

Have you tested out the main text on your pages? You really should — it’s easy to generate more clicks and visitor engagement by simply modifying your header. WhichTestWon investigated how the layout and wording of different headers and sub-headers influenced the CTA to sign up. As it turns out, creating a more concise header with lesser details specified in the sub-header proved to increase sign up rates by 37%.

test1
 
 
Though the results of all these tests provide helpful guidelines for you, it’s important to remember that no industry has the same targeted demographic or product offerings. There can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution for improving your business website, which is why data should be the driving force behind the changes on your website.



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