The Importance of Managing Your Online Reputation

We hope you can join us for the June webinar! Remember, use the hashtag #WMwebinar if you’re participating on Twitter.

June 22, 2011
2-3 p.m. EST
The Importance of Managing Your Online Reputation

Whether you know it or not, people are talking about your business online. Social Media has turned your clients and customers into a critical part of your brand as they shape your business’ reputation instantly with each online thumb-up….or thumb-down.  What kind of rep is your business getting?

Join Webbed Marketing’s Director of Online Communications, Yvonne Rayburn, and Yelp Columbus’ Christina Christian to talk about the what and how of online reputation management. We’ll dig into what makes up your online reputation, what you can do to shape it and how to keep track of it all. Don’t miss out – you’ve got a rep to protect.

During this webinar we’ll discuss:
• What makes up your online reputation
• What your online reputation says about your business
• Top review sites and how to manage your reviews
• The importance of ongoing online reputation management

Tags: online marketing, online reputation, social media

Web Conversions – New Google Analytics Tracking

Event Tracking as a Goal in the New Version of Google Analytics

Previously, there were three options for goals in Google Analytics: a pageview, the time a visitor spent on the site, and the number of pages a visitor viewed.  With the new version of Google Analytics, you can now track events as web conversions or “Goals”.  This opens up your goal tracking to many more possibilities.  Here are a few:

• Watch a video
• Listen to a recording
• Share content via social media
• Download a PDF
• Comment on a blog post
• Rate a product
• Track links to another website
• Fill out a form
• Interact with an application

What is the benefit of this?

For PPC campaigns in Adwords, these new event goals can be imported as conversions in AdWords.  Now you can see which campaigns and keywords are engaging your audience and refine it down to the ad group level for your search engine marketing campaigns.  Previously, to track a form submission as a goal, the form would need a unique “thank you” page. Now, we can track the click of the submit button as an event goal even if there is not a unique thank you page URL.

For search engine optimization clients, this goal tracking provides even more insight into how users are interacting with your site and increasing the view into engagement for the site variables (downloads, video views, etc). For example, you can track when a visitor views a video, and you can specify the amount of time that a person needs to watch the video in order for it to count as a goal completion.

On the social media side, you will be able to determine how users are interacting with your via social media networks. Learn how often they are sharing your content and which pages are most relevant to social media users.

Setting up the Goal

There are four event components that can be set up as a goal condition: a category, action, label, and value.  At least one of these components must be defined but you have the option of defining all four.  Think about all of the event goals you would like to set up before starting.  It’ll make it easier to organize your goals into categories, actions, and/or labels that make sense and are consistent across your site.  Then, choose a goal value, either the value you assigned to the event when you set it up or set a constant value.

Keep in mind that setting up events as goals requires you to add code to the website element you want to track.  So, either you or an IT person will need access to edit the website code in order to benefit from the new event goal tracking.



Tags: conversion tracking, google, google analytics, internet marketing, metrics, online marketing, ppc, search engine optimization, SEO, social media

Why Keywords Still Matter

There are a number of blogs and industry experts who provide tips on improving the SEO of your site.  And many of them provide solid ideas for building your online presence through search engine optimization.  That presence will increase your online credibility within the search engines and increase the quality of the traffic that you’ll see from the search bucket.

But if you boil everything down, the basic foundation for a solid SEO plan is still keywords.  Every on-page and off-page SEO tactic revolves around keywords and keyword themes that you define throughout your site.  Here are some SEO tips for creating a cohesive SEO plan focused on keywords.

1. Research your keywords.  Look for keywords that best describe your products/services. Using a keyword research tool will help you expand the keywords that you find because not all searchers are the same.  There are many different ways to describe your products/services.
2. Refine your keywords.  Sort your keywords in order of volume from highest to lowest. If you used the Google keyword tool, use the competitor factor combined with the volume to find the sweet spot of keywords.  If your average volume is 4,000 searches/month, find the keywords that have a competitive factor of less than 50%.
3. Redefine your site meta data (page title, description, and keywords) by page,  incorporating your keywords.
4. Rewrite your page content. Using 200-250 words to each page, incorporate the keywords from the meta data in your page content.
5. Redirect text from other pages within your site as a hyperlink to your page using the keyword as anchor text.
6. Request links to that each individual page using keywords that were used to optimize that individual page.
7. Review your analytics by keyword. Follow the traffic that you receive from each keyword and identify the keywords that result in the best traffic (i.e. engagement, conversions, volume). Then you can create additional site content that focuses on those winning keywords.

If you use these basic tips when optimizing your site, you’ll provide the search engine crawlers with the content they need to properly index your pages, and you’ll reinforce the on-page keyword themes with internal site linking and external link building.

As the leading SEO agency in Columbus, Webbed Marketing has been testing these theories out with our great base of clients. Running keyword focused campaigns for our clients has produced some great results that align with our client goals. If you’d like to learn more about using SEO strategies on your site, sign up for our upcoming ‘webucation’ series from Webbed Marketing University.

Tags: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords in search, search engine optimization, SEO

No-Cost Marketing with Yelp

Yelp is a website with local business listings where users have the ability to search for businesses and review and recommend them. The site boasts over 50 million unique monthly visitors, so it provides a huge opportunity for business owners. Ensuring that your business’ page on the site is updated and complete will take little time and can provide you with no-cost marketing benefits.

Claiming your business’ location on Yelp is simple! Search for your business, and claim it by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking “Claim This Business.” By claiming your business, you can monitor how people view your page, update the information on the page and privately message customers.

Yelp will need to confirm you are the business owner, so you will receive an automated phone call to your business’ number, which will give you a code to enter on your computer screen. This will ensure that you have the authority to claim the business.

Once you have claimed your business, offering deals or specials is a great way to get potential customers in to your business. It will also help you measure the effectiveness of your listing on Yelp. You can offer potential customers a percentage off if they tell you they found you on Yelp. You can also offer frequent customers deals and incentives for checking in to your business.

Tags: online business, Yelp

Guest Post: Integrated Marketing Campaign Drives Blog Success

I’ll admit I was hesitant to launch a blog for Logicalis.  Not because I necessarily thought having a blog was a bad idea.  I just didn’t want to build something just for the sake of building it and after a few months have it go dark.  After many conversations about strategy, goals and purpose with Communication Strategy Group and Webbed Marketing, I was convinced that, as a team, we could create a blog that would be worthwhile and would stand the test of time.  And the key for keeping it promoted and up-to-date was an integrated campaign.

We knew we wanted to keep the posts short and interactive, while showcasing Logicalis experts’ thought leadership in the market.  We needed to keep our audiences across the board involved in the promotion of this blog, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, mobile devices, and via strategic SEO and PPC campaigns.

Finally, the new blog, HypeOrRipe.com, was created, with an integrated marketing campaign, to provide a place for business and IT leaders to share their opinions on technology topics.

Logicalis had already developed our voice in the marketplace with tools like public relations, the company newsletter and an active social media presence, so all our current tactics were used to promote the new blog and engage readers.

In addition to those tools, we launched a mobile campaign, so blog posts could be easily available on mobile devices – accessible for busy IT leaders on the go, looking for quick, relevant bits of industry information from their peers.

Logicalis also implemented an SEO and PPC campaign to go along with the blog launch.  The success of these campaigns working together greatly contributed to the successful blog launch.

In the first three days of launching, the blog had 168 visits, with 520 pageviews and 3.10 pages viewed per visit.  The bounce rate was 48% and the time on site was 1:53.  Most of the referring traffic was coming from the Logicalis website, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

The integration of social media, mobile marketing, SEO and PPC resulted in a very successful blog launch.  By identifying Logicalis’s goals, we were able to implement an integrated marketing plan that addressed the audience across all platforms, allowing us to hit the ground running with the Hype or Ripe blog.

Lisa Dreher is VP of marketing and business development for Logicalis, a Communication Strategy Group client. Logicalis is a technology solution provider specializing in helping customers with a wide range of technologies, including communications and collaboration, data centers, and professional and managed services.

Tags: integrated marketing campaigns, mobile marketing, ppc, SEO, social media

Integrating Offline Marketing Efforts with Online Marketing

Be sure to join us for our April webinar on integrating your offline marketing efforts with your online marketing.  If you’re participating in the webinar via Twitter, use the hashtag #WMwebinar.

April 20th, 2011
2 – 3 p.m. EST
Marketing Integration: Getting Online and Offline to Work Together

Despite the rumors, broadcast advertising, direct mail and print media aren’t dead. In fact, smart organizations are finding that integrating traditional and online marketing efforts is the most effective way to make the greatest impact on the bottom line.
Join us for this webinar where we’ll look at marketing integration: how to reach your target audience on all mediums and how online and offline can lend each other a hand.
During this webinar we’ll discuss:

• Marketing mediums: past and present
• Online and offline marketing trends
• How online and offline can work together
• Case studies: failures and successes
• Where to learn more about marketing integration

How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

So you design a beautiful site, and you’re getting a lot of traffic, but you still aren’t generating the sales or leads that it takes to justify the cost of the site. If you’re wondering why your conversion rate isn’t what it needs to be it’s probably for one of two reasons: 1) Your website doesn’t have clear calls to action that make it easy for your visitors to convert or 2) You’re driving the wrong type of visitor to your website. There’s a simple test to determine which issue is probably holding your conversion rate down:

1. If you’re talking to your website design shop, it is probably that your SEO/online marketing firm is sending you lousy traffic.
2. If you’re talking to your SEO/online marketing agency, it’s because of your crappy website design.

Okay, still now satisfied? Take a look at Google Analytics and let’s dig in.

1. First, stop thinking about site wide conversions. It’s not that your site converts at 1%. It’s that search converts at 4% and direct traffic at .4% and referring sites at 1.2%. Then dig in deeper. Maybe search converts at 4% but some keywords convert at a whopping 20% and some have not driven a single conversion. And, you’ll be surprised which ones convert best. Now imagine if you put all your efforts into the 20% converting keywords and keywords closely related to those terms. Then look at that referring site traffic. Does Twitter convert at 9%? Do Tweets sent on Tuesdays convert even better, say 11%? Now what about Tweets sent on Tuesdays that are about diabetes treatment? Do those convert at 14%? Start thinking about conversion at the micro level. And if your PPC traffic as a whole is only converting at .02%, don’t give up. Just trim the fat on non- converting keywords and shift budget and attention to those that do convert. You may end up with 200 keywords in your campaigns. or 2000, or 20.
2. Next start using Google Analytics to track conversion paths.  You can set up goal funnels  and examine what pages are most likely to lead someone to convert. You may find that visitors who view your “About” page are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Or that visitors who view your testimonial page never convert. You may find that certain page combinations raise conversions. You may find that you can convert visitors with one slick page and very little copy, or that you may need five pages with a lot of copy to convert a visitor.
3. Now look at the relationships between one and two above. Maybe people who visit your site from a keyword search on your brand name just need that flashy, simple page to convert. Maybe your Facebook fans convert without ever looking at your “About” page. But visitors from PPC may need to look at five pages and educate themselves before converting.

All this should guide your marketing activity. You may decide to target Twitter visitors at 11 am on Tuesdays and drive them to the ‘Patient Information” page. Your PPC visitors may require a very different message, at a different time and a very different landing page. Stop thinking about a single conversion rate for your site and start thinking about improving a hundred very targeted conversion paths.

Trends to Watch for 2011: Online Video Marketing

When looking to set up an online marketing presence, Facebook and Twitter have become the go-to networks for reaching out to consumers and shaping branding, with LinkedIn close on their heels. But YouTube? Oh how soon we forget about this video marketing platform-and sites like it. Yahoo Video, Vimeo, Google Video, Daily Motion and other online video platforms should not be under estimated as viable marketing tools. Yet, many are overlooking the power of online video.

Recently, Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR, asserted that most Americans watch YouTube videos more than they search Google, and a video is “50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page”. Such information makes video ESSENTIAL to any online marketing plan.

The value of online video as opposed to TV spots is enormous. Unlike TV, online media can be tracked- showing how many people watched, how long they watched and what brought them to the video in the first place. Such metrics provide valuable information on consumer demographic. In addition, consumers can comment on videos directly, providing instant feedback.

Your video should be focused for your consumer demographic, right down to color choices and song. Although it costs far less to make an online video than a TV commercial, don’t make it look like it costs less. Use a high definition camera and multiple takes. You want viewers to remember your video and share it, so make it high quality, interesting and transparent.

Consumers will be looking for videos that show what people really think about your product and give insight into the workings of your business. Just like other social media platforms have broken down barriers between consumer and provider, your videos should make potential customers feel like you’re willing to share everything.

As with all marketing tools, don’t rest your entire marketing strategy on online video. Video should be part of your overall strategy and integrated into it. The beauty of online media is how easy it is for consumers to share through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks, and you should be sharing it, too. Once you create a video, promote it on all your media platforms. Monitor the video the same way you’d monitor other social media accounts-reply to comments and delete offensive or spammy posts. Take suggestions and use them in your next video. You may even think about asking users to submit their own videos and post a few to share.
Don’t be left behind! Put on your director’s hat and let the “ACTION!” begin.

Tags: internet, online marketing, video

How To Tell When You’ve Completed Your SEO Project

Asking when your SEO is completed is a bit like asking when road construction in your city is finished. Roads need repaired and maintained, new shopping and housing developments pop up, more efficient traffic options need to be created. The construction is never done. Just like the Search Engine Optimization of your site. Here is why:

1. Search changes. If your site was perfectly optimized for Google last year at this time and you haven’t touched it since that means that your site was last SEO’d before Google rolled out social search, the Wonder Wheel, enhanced Places Pages. Oh and Google Instant which when paired with Google Suggest probably changed the keyword phrases your target market uses. Oh wait, and the combination of social, local, personal and universal search means that I may get results that include a video for the Indian restaurant in Columbus that my cousin who I’m connected to via LinkedIn Tweets about. But you will never see that video in your search results. And there was Google Caffeine. Oh, and Yahoo! and MSN went from “also rans” to a combined force that could be driving 20-30% of your search traffic. So yes, a few things have changed.
2. Your competitors change. Let’s say your SEO program went great and you increased sales 20%. Unless you are in an industry that is  growing a lot that means somebody lost sales to you. So what are they doing? Upping their SEO game with more links and more content to compete against you. When you dominate search, your competitors all come after you.
3. Your search terms change. This is probably the biggest mistake we see organizations make: Say a company offers roofing repair in Denver. The marketing guy says “we need to focus everything we have on the phrase ’roofing company Denver’.” After some research we find that there are 400 ways people search for roofing companies in Denver. Like “Denver’s best roofer”, “find cheap roofer Denver”  and “Denver roofer accepts xyz insurance”. We target some of these phrases and then we are done right? Wrong. The next day The Denver Post runs a story about energy efficiency. Suddenly search volume on the term “energy efficient roofs in Denver” jumps. Then there is a hail storm and search volume now jumps on “Denver roofer hail damage.” Then two weeks later Congress announces that the government will offer tax credits to people who invest in their homes this tax year. And now the fine citizens of Denver start searching on “roofing tax credit.” One of our clients used to optimize on terms related to “swine flu.” Overnight, it became “H1N1″.  Another client earned a spot on Oprah. Immediately after the show aired people started searching on his services plus the term “Oprah.” The meanings of words change too. “Short sale” used to be what Old Navy had when it offered discounts on pants that end above the knee. Then it meant buying a stock at 8 am and selling it at noon. Then it meant what you did to avoid foreclosure on your house. The people within your company may always call your products and services the same thing, but the rest of the world changes terminology more frequently than you would believe.
4. Your prospects change. Let’s say you have a revolutionary way to treat diabetes. You work for six months on your SEO program and reach a lot of new patients. Then you stop your efforts. On the first day of month seven someone is going to be diagnosed with diabetes and will be out searching for treatment options. Stopping your SEO efforts is like saying you’re going to have a sales team for six months and then fire them all.

Using Google Analytics Goal Tracking

So you want to get more traffic your website? You’ve come to the right place! Whether you’re looking for SEO , PPC , Social Media or a combination of these services we will bring more traffic to your website. Before we get started the most important thing to think about is, “What do I want these visitors to do once they come to my website?” For some organizations it is obvious. If you have an e-commerce website you’ll want visitors to purchase your products. If your website is for a medical office you probably want customers to learn more about your practice then schedule an appointment. But, what if your goal is less obvious? Maybe you work for an organization that wants to increase awareness of an issue. You still have plenty of options to measure your success! Here are a few sample goals:
• Request more information
• Sign up to receive a newsletter
• Join an e-mail list
• Read an article
• Watch a video
• Pledge to make a difference