How To Make Search Marketing Work For You

In the world of marketing, it’s easy to separate out the different ways of reaching your target audience, says Adthena regional director Steve Anderton.

This is especially true when it comes to digital marketing, where breakneck developments in the industry have forced people to become specialists in order to master their own particular area. There are two main areas where brands have typically focused their efforts.

The first, search engine optimisation (SEO), goes back to the earliest days of search engines like Google, when companies developed smart tactics and ways to game the system, to make sure their own pages came up top of the search listings.

As the web, and they way people use it, has changed, search engines have become ever harder to manipulate, forcing SEO techniques to evolve as well, into a complex discipline focused on improving the quality of results, with high-value content and reputation-boosting links.

The other key area is pay-per-click advertising (PPC), the method whereby companies pay in a blind auction for their adverts to appear at the top of search results. This is done by preparing ads, and choosing which search terms they want these ads to appear for, bidding on these terms against competitors, with a complex system of spend and ad quality affecting where the ad ultimately appears.

Over the years, ads have grown increasingly complex with extensions such as images, reviews and contact details, while many marketers rely on competitive intelligence to search out the most successful keywords and monitor rival’s infringement on their own brand.

While these two digital marketing disciplines have diverged, research has shown that brands can derive huge benefits from working to combine the two areas, whether it be achieving higher traffic, greater activation, or improving return on investment.

Communication is Key

It’s fairly common practice, especially in larger businesses, for marketing departments to split up their digital teams along SEO and PPC lines. In fact, in some companies, these teams can be based in different offices, or even outsourced to entirely separate agencies, making for some pretty big gaps to try and overcome.

The first step for any firm looking to bridge these gaps is to open the lines of communications, with a coordinated set of goals as the main objective. While the individual outcomes each side may be chasing can be specific, the overall targets, ultimately the aims of the business, are one, and SEO and PPC teams can work collectively to deliver them.

Big Up the Brand

Research into the shared impact of PPC and SEO shows that many brands have a lopsided approach to their search engine marketing (SEM), with one side becoming dominant, while the other languishes behind.

It’s a symptom of a lack of communication, but there is typically one area where the keywords possess a strong share of voice in both PPC and SEO – a business’ own brand terms.
While it may seem straightforward that you perform well on your own brand terms, this isn’t necessarily a given, and in the cut-throat world of SEM, there’s no room for complacency. In PPC, marketers need to ensure they’ve covered their terms comprehensively and regularly check the cost they’re paying for each click (their CPCs).

A higher rate could show they’re battling someone else in the blind bidding process. Investing in competitive intelligence can also help show who may be competing on your brand terms.
In SEO, it’s key to make sure all metadata around the content is in place, including all descriptions, images, tags; each has a place in ensuring the site is visible and ranked appropriately. A brand is intangible, but it’s also one of the most valuable things a business owns.

Think ahead, but not too far

When the lines of communication have opened between PPC and SEO, and they have common objectives in mind, the two sides can begin to collaborate.

In the PPC market, the constantly-moving list of competitors, the scope of the ad copy being used, and the blind auction system as a whole, means that in order to stay ahead, marketers have to act fast and move quickly. Being able to react to changes and seize the initiative when the opportunity comes is key to achieving any success.

SEO teams, often working with legacy sites, have traditionally been playing the long game – carefully curating their content, monitoring links, tailoring their quality and adapting to the incremental updates of the major search engines. Both sides can learn a lot from the other, taking on another point of view that can inform and benefit their own side – PPC can learn the value of sustained campaigns and continuity, while SEO can pick up the art of adaptability.

Marketing is a broad church and there are many niches which brands can explore to find their own successes. However, when it comes to search engine marketing, specialisation can help you know more, but it is collaboration that can help you achieve more.

An important digital marketing tactic

For owners of businesses, brands, companies and blogs who sell goods and services to customers, it's normal to hear the phrase "put your best foot forward".

For owners of businesses, brands, companies and blogs who sell goods and services to customers, it's normal to hear the phrase "put your best foot forward". It means giving the best of what you have in order for target customers to find your goods or services easily.

It is the dream of every business to be among the initial consideration set of target customers, and this can only happen when your products are findable and accessible.

Since the Internet has become a market place where millions of people do a billion and one things every day, it is sensible to make sure your products are found easily online if your goal is to make profit while gaining more customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one sure way business owners, companies, organizations and blogs can make whatever they sell findable online to their target customers who are digital literates. The medium through which these searches happen are called search engines.

These search engines use closely guarded formula or procedures to determine which result will be displayed. The practice of search engine optimization is simply as a result of determining the factors these procedures consider before a result can be displayed.

What is SEO?

According to Quirk "It is the practice of optimizing a website to achieve the highest possible ranking on a search engine results page (SERPs)." An SEO professional is called an SEO (search engine optimizer).

Although many search engines do not disclose the elements they use when ranking pages, many SEO practitioners spend their time analyzing different applications in order to try determining what these are.

According to popular SEO consultant Nonoy Avellanosa, Google uses more than 200 different factors in its procedures simply known as algorithms to show pages in terms of relevance and ranking ( Avellanosa, 2012).

SEO can be divided into two different parts:

• White hat SEO
• Black hat SEO

Black hat SEO means when practitioners try to play games with search engines by using questionable methods to achieve high rankings on these search engines. Websites caught practicing this kind of SEO are usually blacklisted by search engines.

White hat SEO is a complete opposite of black hat SEO. This is when practitioners adhere to the rules set by these search engines in order to optimize a website for a better user experience (UX). While sticking to search engine rules, optimizers should ensure users can find what they are looking for so in turn search engines will send users to websites with best results that matches their needs and wants.

As users try to find what they are looking for, search engines make sure users get best results by looking for signals of:

• Relevance
• Importance
• Trust
• Popularity
• Authority

SEO in itself is a natural or organic optimization of a website to get ranked high on search engines when selected key phrases are imputed by users online. It can be split into two strategies:

• Off-page optimization: This covers activities like social media and PR. It is focused on building links to the website.
• On-page optimization: It is all about making changes to the HTML code, structure and content of websites whereby it is made more accessible for search engines to pick up which in turn makes find ability online easier for users. (HTML - hypertext markup language tags are used in the structuring of information and features within a webpage).

For business owners, brands and companies, SEO is a very effective way to generate new business to your site. It is a continuous process which involves constant thinking of how search engines view your website and how users can use these search engines to find your website.

At RDM, we aid our clients in putting their best foot forward using genuine SEO tactics to grow their businesses.

My Cheat Sheet: An SEO Manager's Go-To Digital Marketing Tools

There are many all-inclusive lists out there of every SEO tool imaginable, and I fully recommend checking those lists out.
However, the role of an SEO manager is quickly expanding and adapting as they are asked to take on a bigger role in digital marketing.
Throughout my years of experience I’ve honed down my go-to list of tools for each area of my job to improve my efficiency and effectiveness.
While this list certainly doesn’t represent every tool out there, these are the tools I’ve found to be most beneficial.

Keyword Research

Keyword research has gotten more complicated, but it remains a foundational tool not just for SEO, but content marketing and lead generation as well.

• Keyword.Io (Free): Keyword.IO is a free tool that provides a much more comprehensive list of keyword ideas (especially long-tail) than Google Adwords’ keyword planner. Once the full list is compiled, Keyword.io allows you filter results by certain combinations, and download a .txt file of the keywords you decide to select.
• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer (Free and Premium Options): After pulling a list from Keyword.IO, I’ll hop over to Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer to pull additional keyword ideas. This keyword planner provides a traffic estimate for each keyword, but I’ve found Google Adwords Keyword Planner is still the best resource for pulling traffic estimates.
• Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool (Premium): Once I’ve pulled a full list of keywords and gotten traffic estimates from Google Adwords, I pull a keyword difficulty score. This assigns a numerical value to how competitive a keyword is and provides an analysis of the top 10 search results for that term.

Goal Tracking

• Industry Stats (Free): While data-driven marketing is generally acknowledged as important to a marketing team’s success, setting marketing goals is easier said than done without a previous benchmark to go off of. HubSpot provides a full list of Industry Stats, from average click through rates to the types of leads that make the largest purchases, that gives marketers a jumping off point as they hone goals to their individual industry.
• Google Analytics Event Tracking Code Builder by Raven (Free): Whether you’re an agency without access to a client's’ CRM or are working within a heavily siloed organization, Google analytics event tracking provides a method for to you to see if the hard-earned traffic you’ve been building to the site is actually behaving in a way that’s beneficial to the business. Raven’s tool helps you to easily create the code snippet based on the type of event you’d like to track. Also note, you can select whether the event should count as a second interaction on the site thus reducing the bounce rate on the page.
• Bit.ly (Free): Most marketers have probably heard of and used Bit.ly at some point, but it is good for much more than tracking clicks on social media posts. If event tracking isn’t an option, use a bit.ly link on your CTAs in blog posts, SlideShares and infographics to measure the content’s impact beyond traffic and social shares.

Content Creation

• People per Hour (Free Account): While mass-order content sites like Textbroker can work great for certain industries, I’ve found the article quality to be much too low for the high-tech sector. People per Hour, on the other hand, allows you to vet individual writers (such as making sure they’re a native English speaker or have a college education.) The prices are still reasonable, but the quality has been consistently higher.
• Typeform (Free and Premium): If you don’t have your own design team at the ready to create quizzes, contest forms and landing pages, Typeform can help you to quickly create nice-looking content. The free version allows you to create unlimited content and either design your own theme or use one of the pre-existing templates. The paid version allows for more sophisticated features, such as calculating a score or using a logic jump.
• Title Generator (Free): Whether you’re needing a massive list of content ideas or are simply looking to hone in on the perfect title for that keyword-optimized, destined to drive large traffic numbers piece of content, the Title Generator from tweak your Biz will give you hundreds of ideas to build off of divided into article-type categories.
• Makerbook (Free): Makerbook is an image directory that provides free icons, graphics, fonts and even video.
• ShareLink Generator (Free): ShareLink Generator allows you to quickly create code for “Tweet This” buttons within the body copy of blog posts and landing pages.

Web Optimization

• Ayima Redirect Path Chrome Extension (Free): Whether you’re completing a site audit, or monitoring a site’s health, this extension is wonderful for quickly following redirect chains and identifying incorrect redirects.
• Screaming Frog (Free and Premium): For the more extensive site audit, Screaming Frog is the best crawler I’ve found. It was recently updated to connect with Google Analytics, so it can provide even more insights on how on-page changes are impacting traffic numbers. Use Screaming Frog to quickly identify duplicate content, missing title tags and meta descriptions, internal links and more.
• Usabilityhub.com (Free and Premium): Usabilityhub is a web design and functionality testing platform. It operates as an exchange, so for every small test a user completes, he or she receives a credit that can be used to purchase testing. There is also an option to purchase credits. This is useful for testing a new site design or seeing if the right messaging is coming across. You are also able to reject any responses that are poor quality or spam.
• HRefLang Sitemap Tool (Free): This is another simple tool for quickly generating a sitemap with international targeting.
• webpagetest.org and PageSpeed Insights (Free): Site speed is continually growing in importance both for SEO and the overall user experience. Use these two tools together to get a breakdown of what is causing your site to lag.

Personal Efficiency

• Send and Archive (Free): Keeping the email inbox clear is quite possibly one of the biggest challenges of the modern era. Send and Archive is an add-on within Gmail that allows you to reply to an email and archive it at the same time. To access, go to Gmail’s settings and scroll down under the “General” tab and select to show the “Send and Archive” button.
• Streak (Free): Streak is an extension that allows you to schedule messages for later (similar to Boomerang only without the limit of 10 messages/month.) It also allows you to create templates for those repetitive weekly emails.

3 Ways Local Search Will Explode in 2016

Local search is going to be huge in 2016.
We saw last year how Google decreased its Local Pack (the group of featured business pages that show up in the SERPS). The switch from 7 local results to the new Google 3 Pack made serious waves in the SEO industry and small businesses everywhere. And that’s just the beginning.
Things are heating up, and they’re all set to boil over this year. A number of rising factors suggests that local search in 2016 should deserve your complete attention. Because now more than ever before, you have to meet the increasing demands of mobile users.
Trust us—this is something you do not want to miss.

Why You Should Focus on Local Search in 2016

Mobile is moving up in the world. Users continue to spend the majority of their total online time on mobile—51% compared to 42% on desktop as of last year. Why the steady increase? It’s easy to assume that it’s just because more people are using mobile devices like smartphones. But that doesn’t explain why you should focus so much on mobile this year. You need some real reasons.
Of course, you don’t really need an excuse to make your site the best it can be. But if that’s not enough, here are the 3 major reasons to focus on local search in 2016 based on recent news and trends:

#3: Wearable devices. As if we needed another reason to distance ourselves from desktop search. Wearable devices like the Apple Watch are becoming more than just conveniences; they’re becoming fashion accessories. Customers are asking Siri, Cortana, and whomever else to help them find the closest burger joint, nearest gas station, etc. A haptic feedback feature tells the wearer exactly where and when to turn to locate their destination. With that kind of power at the customer’s disposal, your business info MUST be kept up to date if you want to be found.

#2: No more Google Location tool. By December last year, pretty much every SEO company noticed that Google removed its Location search tool. The implications for this are huge: Google is now only—or mostly—showing local results to search queries. This shift away from global search results means many of your key terms may suddenly have a lot less reach. For example, “SEO company” is a pretty general term, while “San Diego SEO company” is more location-focused. This poses a potential problem for businesses that serve on a global scale (like ours), as it means users who search for “SEO company” may only get results based on what’s close-by.
If your business doesn’t have an actual brick-and-mortar location, the removal of this tool may cause some serious issues for your bottom line. And with only a 3 Pack to work with, you’ve got to vie for the top ad spots to make sure you stay on top of competitors.

#1: Google’s continuing focus on User Experience. No surprise here—Google is continuing its focus on better UX into 2016. And considering how many users are now on mobile, that experience had better be pretty dang good. We saved it for last on this list because, despite Google’s efforts, user experience is still something many websites aren’t prioritizing. It seems almost too simplistic, too vague—but that’s exactly why it’s still being overlooked. Your mobile site must first and foremost serve the user and make it as easy as possible to find what he or she needs. That means your site has got to be fast and informative.

How You Can Improve Your Local Presence

So how do you get into the Google 3 Pack? How do you get users to find and choose your company over the others out there? You have to take advantage of the changes we’ve already seen. And you have to get started now.Luckily for you, there are 3 simple steps you can take. Implement them right away, and your business will benefit. Here’s what you can do:

3. Verify your business on Google My Business. Yes—you need to have a Google My Business account, even if you already have a website. Just like submitting your robots.txt file is a step you need to take to get indexed, putting your info in Google My Business is essential for your business info to show up on Google’s Web results, Maps, and Google+.
Be sure to also tie in your Google+ account to Search Console. This way all your platforms will be tied together, ensuring all the latest info is up to date.

2. Get more Google reviews. Five-star reviews and accompanying short blurbs that show up on the local search results can be great for increasing your website’s clickthrough. But you shouldn’t just write them yourself. You could, sure, but it’s a heck of a lot less work (and far more gratifying) to simply ask your clients. If they’re happy with the work you’ve been doing—and why wouldn’t they be?—more often than not they’ll be happy to write you a glowing review. Whatever they have to say will be a thousand times more honest than if you had written the review yourself.
1. Add location schema. Location schema and the Place type allows Google to easily add your business’s info to the search results. You can include your address, business hours, and even your geographical coordinates to make it easy for anyone to find you. Schema is a great idea in general because it helps Google understand what kind of site it is. Great when a repeat customer is trying to remember your business but can’t remember the name!

BONUS: Maintain your Facebook business page. Facebook recently launched its Professional Services page. Like Yelp or Angie’s List, this directory can help users search for a service by acting as international or local business listings. Will it replace Google as a primary search function? Maybe not, but it could prove a popular replacement, especially if it gets its own app. Enjoy it while it’s in beta; we’ll see how it develops.

3 Linkbuilding Tactics that Can Wreck Your SEO

When it comes to SEO basics, Links are the lifeblood of your campaign. The right number and type of links can skyrocket you up the SERPs and earn you hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
Building the wrong kind of links, however, can earn you a Google penalty and flush all your hard work down the drain.
To help you avoid this catastrophe, here are 3 link building mistakes that can wreck your SEO and destroy your internet marketing strategy.

1. Paying money for links, or indulging in link exchanges

This is a big no-no straight from Google itself: buying or selling links that pass PageRank (i.e. do-follow links) violates Google’s quality guidelines.
It used to be that you could get away with paid links, but as Google’s algorithm has become smarter, it has also developed methods to detect paid links. In fact, if you try to buy your way to the top of the SERPs now, Google will even show you a warning in Webmaster Tools about ‘unnatural links’.
The same applies for link exchanges. If you didn’t earn the link through quality content, you’re violating Google’s guidelines. There
It’s easy to fall for this paid links trap. Try to avoid the following:

• “Automated” software generated links.
• Paid links in low-quality directories.
• Text link ads that don’t use the ‘nofollow’ tag.
• Webmasters or bloggers offering to sell links on their sites.
• ‘Widget’ link exchanges where you get a backlink when you link to the widget provider.

Backlinks present on such websites will only hurt your rankings and can even get you penalized.

2. Choosing shortcuts over solid content

There is only one approved way of getting backlinks – to create solid content. If you don’t know where to start, you can always check out content marketing examples to plan and produce link worthy blogs. Everything else is frowned upon and eventually gets listed as a black or grat hat SEO technique. Tactics that were once popular, such as article marketing, press releases, etc. are now disregarded by Google and can even be bad for your site health.
Similarly, low-effort link building methods, such as leaving comments like “great article!” on a blog post isn’t going to work anymore. Nor will you get much success from writing 500-word “guest posts” on low-quality blogs.
The same applies to ‘spinning’ articles and publishing them on article directories and web 2.0 sites. Google simply sees this as what it really is – spam.
At the same time, you have to be careful of outdated SEO techniques such as overly optimized anchor text and keyword stuffing.
The easiest way to stay safe is to write for your readers, not Google, and consistently put out good content. Combined with white-hat SEO techniques, this will get you all the rankings you need.

3. Having no linkbuilding strategy at all

The biggest linkbuilding mistake you can make is to not have a linkbuilding strategy at all.
Unlike Ray’s Field of Dreams, SEO doesn’t work on the promise of “build it and they’ll come”. You might have great content, but unless it is supplemented with a dedicated link building strategy, it won’t earn you the ranking boost you need.
After creating your content, you should reach out to bloggers who’ve linked to similar content, influencers, and webmasters who might find your content useful. Ask them for backlinks, or failing that, at least some shares or tweets. The easier you make it for readers to discover your content, the more your chances of earning natural backlinks.

Conclusion
There’s much more to linkbuilding than simple outreach – a dedicated SEO agency might be able to help you with that – but if you want to see SEO success, you have to devote as much time to promotion as you do to content creation.

Another Google Update Gets Webmasters’ Attention

Last week, a big update to Google’s core search algorithm dominated the SEO headlines (along with the fact that Google said that Panda is now baked into the core algorithm). The update rolled out the weekend prior, and it looks as though history has repeated itself.

Now there are reports of another big core update from this past weekend with Google confirming it.
SEOs and the webmaster community have been anxiously awaiting Google’s forthcoming Penguin update (which the company has been teasing for what seems like an eternity). When the previous core update launched there was Penguin speculation among some of the community, but that was shot down. Once again, with this more recent update, the speculation once again occurred.

Google is still expected to push the new Penguin within the month. That may or may not happen, but last we heard about the timing, it was looking likely. It was even supposed to happen before the end of last year, but Google ultimately delayed it because of the holidays. Still, there’s likely more to it than that or it would probably have begun rolling out by now. Stay tuned.