Having a beautiful, action-oriented website is useless if you don’t have high quality traffic to see it! Click above for a FREE ebook titled, 5 Basic Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

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Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click, or PPC is hands down the fastest way to get more website visitors. If you launch a PPC effort you can start getting website traffic as quickly as you can build an account and enter billing information. Awesome, right?

Yes…it can be awesome for sure. But it is still vital that you also focus on your overall business objectives. You still need conversions, leads, sales, etc. If you launch a campaign focused only on numbers, you’ll end up wasting your money because you will generated visitors, but they will leave before taking any action.

Look at it this way instead…

How to Generate QUALITY Website Traffic Fast

Your PPC campaigns must be targeted. With PPC the advertiser chooses exactly which keywords their ads get shown for, writes the ad copy, determines when and where the ads are shown, and where the visitor arrives on the website.

Keywords – To keep it short, you choose a set of keywords…as many or as few as you want. You will only pay when somebody clicks on your ad, not when it is shown. For each keyword you will determine how much you are willing to pay for one of those clicks. It might be $0.05, $0.23, $1.00…whatever it is worth to you. Choose your keywords wisely and consider what a click is worth for each one of those. What you’ll have to pay to be shown high in the rankings depends on several factors from competition level to how relevant the keyword is to where you send the visitor.  Because you want to generate website traffic quickly, you will have to bid on keywords that people actually search, but focus only on keywords that are relevant.

Ad Copy – This is the ad that is shown to a search engine user when they search for a term. On Google they are usually across the top and down the right side. Because you control the message, make it worthwhile. Write an ad that makes someone want to click yours vs. your competitor. It should be very relevant to the keywords that are triggering the ad.

Geographic Targeting and Other Settings – To keep your ads relevant you’ll be able to choose when and where ads are shown. For example, you could set up ads that show:

• 100 miles around a specific address, specific states, specific countries, cities, counties, etc.
• Only show at specific times of the day
• Only show specific days of the week
• Target mobile only
• Exclude mobile
• Many more options

Landing Page – This is where a visitor lands on your website when they click the ad. A landing page should be very relevant to the keyword and the ad copy. For example, if a searcher uses the term “blue shoes”, your ad might contain the word blue shoes, and your landing page should definitely have blue shoes available. Landing pages are super important!!!

What to Consider

Budget – How much are you willing to spend to get website visitors fast? If you can show a return quickly, this will be less of an issue because if you continue to maintain profitability, budget is not much of an issue. Also keep in mind that you budget will go much further if the strategy is implemented well. In the long run it may work out better to hire a firm to ensure that you are implementing this properly. Even with an agency fee you may find you are able to achieve a higher ROI that way.

Platforms – There are a variety of PPC platforms out there to help you generate fast traffic, here are the most popular:

• Google AdWords – Allows you to advertise on Google as well as on various other websites, mobile apps and more
• Facebook – These ads show up as sponsored stories, posts or even more traditional ads along the right side
• Bing Ads – Similar to AdWords, however these ads will show on Bing and Yahoo
• LinkedIn – These ads will show primarily on the right side, however there are some other advertising opportunities here as well
• Twitter – Sponsored tweets to help increase engagement

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HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We surely hope you’re wearing green, eating green, and drinking some holiday beverages!

Blogging = Content = SEO

Your website may have 15 or more pages, but a blog will allow you to have 100s and eventually 1000s of pages. These pages share content and information that should speak to your best buyers and GOOGLE! This will obviously improve your SEO.

The more relevant pages on your site, the more Google can learn about and rank in their search results. Sound like a good thing? It is!

If you want to attract your best buyers, you need an outlet to produce content that speaks to the earlier stages of your buyer personas journey. Your website tends to focus solely on the Decision stage, but you need to reach them in the Awareness and Consideration stages as well. That’s where your blog comes in.

Unlike traditional, interruption tactics like billboards, magazine ads, radio and TV commercials, and newspaper ads, Your blog posts will be effective forever, not just when you pay for them. That’s ongoing ROI that SEO can produce that traditional advertising cannot.

The bottom line is that if you want to improve your SEO, you should start by setting up and continually posting to a blog!

The post How Blogging Will Improve Your SEO – VIDEO appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

Every SEO strategy should include a solid keyword list of both long-tailed and head keywords.

Your keyword list and research should take into account your buyer personas and their buyers journey to make sure you are ranking for the searching user’s intent.

Obviously, all of your content should take into consideration the keyword research and list you’ve developed, using your long-tail and head terms.

So, what is the difference between long-tailed keywords and head keywords?

• Head Keywords:
  • keyword phrases under 3 words
  • harder to rank for
  • yield more traffic, but it tends to be lower quality
  • less desirable for generating action
  • Example Keyword:  “elk”; the searchers intent could be many things here… like looking for a picture, researching the species, planning a hunting trip, or wanting to sight see.

• Long-tailed Keywords:
  • keywords with 3+ words
  • easier to rank for
  • less traffic usually, but higher in quality
  • produce more of the desired action
  • Example Keyword: “elk sight seeing” or “elk sight seeing in PA”

Ultimately, You Should Have A Strategy For Both

Now that you know the difference between long-tailed keywords and head keywords, you should have an effort to rank for both types. Remember that the head terms will be a long term goal and the long-tailed terms will yield shorter term, higher quality success.

The post The Difference Between Long-Tailed Keywords And Head Keywords appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

1. You get very little website traffic.

2. You get a decent amount of traffic, but it’s all junk.

Both of these are not great situations to be in and they must be addressed. Let’s approach them in the order listed.

You Have Bad Website Traffic Because the Volume is Low

This is a very common issue, so you aren’t alone. While we don’t want to focus on the volume of traffic alone, if you don’t have enough it makes it difficult to be profitable. Here are the most common things to look for if you have low traffic volumes.

• You have never implemented any SEO – A website is not a set it and forget it type of thing. Not every SEO strategy must be Fortune 500 level, but there should be at least some focus even for the smallest of businesses.
• You have an indexing issue – It is possible that your website is already SEO friendly, but there is something that is stopping the search engines from actually listing it in results. The best place to start to check on this is Google Webmaster Tools.
• You have crawlability issues – This is slightly different than indexing issues, but the same result. If Google and the other search engines isn’t able to “crawl” your website, they aren’t able to see all of your content and website pages. If they can’t see it, they can’t rank it! Again, a good place to check is Google Webmaster Tools.
• Your content is terrible or you have very little content – Search engines need content to rank your site. They cannot tell what you are all about from images alone. The more GOOD quality content pages you have, the more likelihood you’ll rank…the more you rank, the more traffic you will get, at least in theory.
• You’ve been penalized – It is possible that a search engine has removed you from search results because you have been penalized. This most commonly occurs when a website utilizes “black hat” SEO tactics, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the website owner themselves. If your website traffic suddenly drops off, you must look into it further.

You Get Website Visitors, But the Quality Is Poor

Believe it or not, this can be just as bad as the previous issue. Ultimately you need your website visitors to turn into leads and sales so you can make money, right? That’s not going to happen if they don’t even spend enough time on your website to find out what you are all about. Here are some common issues causing poor website visitor quality.

• Poor SEO implementation – Not all SEOs are created equal. Especially if you try to compare moonlighters and DIYers to the pros. A good SEO will not only focus on getting you more traffic, but better traffic. The best thing to do in this scenario is to have someone check it out.
• The focus of your SEO is wrong – Maybe you have all of the SEO “best practices” in line, but if you are generating the wrong type of visitor…that traffic is useless. You must revisit the strategy and refocus the efforts.
• You have issues with your website content – It is possible that a search engine indexes you for a keyword that exists in your content that really isn’t all that relevant. Using Google Webmaster Tools, check to see how Google sees your website and which keywords are generating impressions. If they are mostly off topic, you’ve got a problem.

Sure, there are numerous other things that can cause bad website traffic, but these are some of the most common. Don’t let it slide hoping it will fix itself, because chances are it won’t!

The post The Most Common Issues Causing Bad Website Traffic appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

You know you need to be focused on ranking better in search engines. The major engines still value quality inbound likes highly. Your first thought may be, “OK, how do we get links for SEO?”. Sure, you want a bunch of links to your site, but you don’t want just any links… They need to be HIGH QUALITY links.

What Are High Quality Links?

Isn’t a link a link? NO! If they were all made equally, there wouldn’t be so many website owners scrambling to get junk links to their site removed. Those junk links were often created by a linking company that they hired to get as many inbound links as possible. The missing element for most of the links built by these companies is relevancy.

The relevancy of the inbound links to your site is REALLY important. For instance, a marketing blog that links to one of our posts is a highly relevant link. A link from a tampon company, not so much… A link from an Inbound Marketing software company would be very relevant to our blog. A link from an automobile parts website wouldn’t.

Building Links Naturally

If generating links in bulk through a link building service is a no-no, what are you supposed to do to get links for SEO? For starters, write link-generating content. This is content that people want to share and link to without being spammed into it.

Use social media to share good content that resonates with your buyer persona(s).  Social media is one of the primary ways people find and consume new content these days. Related websites and blogs will find your content in social media and link to it naturally.

Naturally Doesn’t Mean Passively

Just because you want to get links for SEO the right way, doesn’t mean you should sit on your duff and do nothing. You can always be  building relationships online to help establish some linking partners. You can also be active on other related sites and earn the respect of their people. This will get you noticed and likely lead to links to your content.

The post Get Links For SEO The Right Way appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

To start off you are presented with some obstacles. Lack of history and lack of inbound links.

When launching a new website you’ll be using a domain name that carries no authority whatsoever. While this rank factor isn’t as important as it was in the past, it is still a rank factor. The search engine, specifically Google, doesn’t know whether or not your domain name is trustworthy. This is referred to as Page Rank, which you’ll earn over time from a variety of factors.

One of the factors that increases Page Rank is the inbound links to your website. Because you’ll be launching a brand new site and domain name, you’ll have no inbound links. Your second hurdle.

Earlier in the week I spoke on How to Rank Better in Google. Everything in this post will apply to helping your new website rank better, but for your purposes I’ll add a few other focus points.

Create Good Content then Create More Good Content

Create Good Content, Create More Good Content

We covered this a little bit in the other post, but this will be incredibly important for your new website. The best way to accomplish this is by using the blog functionality of your website…hopefully you have it. If you don’t, you need it. You will want to create this content as much as your capabilities will allow…if you can blog once a day, do it! But understand this, the content must be good and it must be useful.

Before you start typing away, start brainstorming all of the problems, questions, concerns, or opportunities that your potential customer will have. These may not be directly associated with your products or services, but instead the problems that would eventually lead someone to your products or services.

I can’t stress enough how important this step is for your new website.

Get Some Inbound Links

Let me be clear in saying that link building is not sending out an email blast to 1000 strangers asking for a link. This effort cannot be spammy. In order for this to be effective it will rely on the quality of that content you plan on creating. The links that your website gets should be from websites that are related to your website in subject, industry, customer base, etc.

How To Get Those Links

This is the hard part. You need people to know you exist, but you can just start yelling out, “Look at me, look at me!”. People will ignore you. What you can do is increase your activity on social media and other blog sites. Engage with people in these locations, but don’t make it one sided. Make sure that you are on LinkedIn, connecting with people, and sharing your content and other related content. Think about joining LinkedIn Groups where there are people there that are in a related situation or industry. Do the same one the other social platforms as well. If you engage with others genuinely, eventually they will check you out. If your content is good enough, your links will grow. Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to happen overnight. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t move as quickly as you’d hoped.

SEO and Sponsored Advertising

These are the items covered in the post, “How to Rank Better in Google“. With a new website, consider starting off immediately with sponsored advertising. This will start getting your website noticed much faster than SEO. It will help generate traffic while you wait for your organic rank to improve. Hopefully your website is good enough that you’ll start generating leads and sales quickly!

I wish I could have told you that it only took a flick of a switch to help increase your search engine rank on your new website, but that is just not the case. It will take time and hard work, but it will pay off very well in the end!

The post How to Increase Search Engine Rank For a Brand New Website appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

I’m sure you’ve been told that you need SEO to be successful online. You may even intellectually know that it will help your business. Often though, that’s not enough. We still see major website redesigns by non-clients that have completely overlooked SEO. In this day an age of the web, that’s simply unnacceptable.

Here are some excellent SEO statistics to consider and hopefully motivate your business to act.

On Average, 12 BILLION Searches are conducted online per month in the U.S.. (Comscore)

There are approximately 318.9 million people living in the United States. That’s about 38 searches per month, per person. Since most babies, small children, and elderly folks don’t do a lot of searches, I’d guess that number is much higher per online person.

You have to ask yourself, what percentage of those searches are people looking for the solution you provide. Where are you in the rankings?

60% of all organic clicks go to the first 3 search results. (Business2Community)

Organic results are the non-ad listings that mos people click on. Can you see why page one is the goal and position 1-3 is dream? You can’t get there for search terms that produce business results without a continous effort to get there. It just won’t happen.

SEO Leads have a 14.6% close rate versus 1.7% for traditional marketing such as direct mail and print advertising. (Search Engine Journal)

This is so important to recognize. This is the difference between inbound marketing and outbound, interruption marketing. With inbound, you are serving education for people that are looking for and want it instead of interrupting your way in front them.

75% of Searchers never scroll past page 1.

The top 3 results get most of the love, but making it to page 1 is a definite success. If you want a flow of high quality visitors to your website, use inbound marketing to tune your SEO keyword strategy and work your way onto page 1. Take your own search habits into consideration here. How often do you go beyond page 1? Usually someone will adjust the keywords they using to search before clicking on page 2 results. Only after they have exhausted their keyword combinations do they go beyond page one.

Google gets 65.4% of searches. Bing gets 19.7%. Yahoo! gets 11.8% (Comscore).

Did you think Google’s was more like 90%? Most people do! While they are the clear 800lbs gorilla of search engines, Bing and Yahoo! combine for an additional 30% of searches that you should rank in as well. Because Bing powers the Yahoo! search, Microsoft more realistically has 30% of the search market share. In December of 2014, when these numbers are from, Yahoo! actually took 1.6% share from Google. Depending on your budget and goals, you should carefully consider leaving Yahoo! and Bing out of your SEO strategy.

Not having a mobile-optimized website costs you 68% of organic search traffic (BrightEdge Data).

Is your site responsive? If you don’t know what that means, it’s probably not. Responsive design is a technique that allows your website to adapt to the device it’s being viewed on to ensure that smartphone and tablet users have a nice user experience. We’ve all had to interact with a desktop website on a smartphone screen. It’s a terrible, unfriendly experience. Google now uses the mobile-friendliness of your website as one of the factors it uses when ranking your website for mobile visitors.

Over 50% of Google searches are from a mobile device.

At the Inbound 2014 conference, an SEO speaker cited a Google estimate that by the end of 2014, over half of all Google searches would originate from a mobile device. See the previous stat and make sure your website is mobile-optimized. Not having a responsive site may be killing your SEO efforts.

The Way We Find Products & Services Has Forever Changed

If we need something, we Google it. If we have a problem and need an answer, we Google it. If we forgot a company’s phone number, we Google it. If we need to buy a new __________, we Google it. The bottom line is that the buying process has forever changed. We are informed buyers and so are your clients. If you don’t rank well in search engines, you are not being found when your potential buyers are looking for you. If you don’t have an ongoing SEO strategy, you will not be as successful as your competitors that do, and it’s much harder to play catch up than to lead the way.

I hope you use these SEO Statistics as motivation to get your business headed in the right direction!

If you’re wondering how well your website stacks up from an SEO perspective, download the FREE checklist below. We’d also be happy to complete the checklist for you for FREE.

The post SEO Statistics That Should Motivate Your Business appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

Also if you are like most people you realize the importance of ranking higher (or better) in Google as you probably don’t go too far past the first page of results, if you do at all.

Before I get too far, there is one point that must be made. You must rank well, yes…but rank alone shouldn’t be a metric used to determine the success or failure. If you rank #1 for a term you thought you should rank for but it results in no leads, it’s worthless. You must rank to get traffic, but the focus of that traffic must be on generating leads, sales, or whatever conversion you are hoping to achieve. That’s not saying to ignore rank all together. By having a grasp on where you are ranking and for what terms you are ranking for, you can use that information to help steer your overall strategy.

Now that you understand the importance, let’s move on to actually improving your Google rank!

First let’s start with the organic rank. In the image below, organic results are in the pink box. When I say organic, that means that you cannot pay to be listed in those positions, you have to earn them. So the first step in ranking better on Google is understanding how to earn those positions. This isn’t a technical post, so I’m not going to get into the dirty stuff, but instead the big picture ideas.

When it boils down to it there are only 2 ways to rank better in Google.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) are tactics geared towards helping a website rank ORGANICALLY for related terms. SEO takes time and you will not rank with a flick of a switch. A good SEO strategy should focus on several areas:

How your website is built.

The funky looking HTML code that lives behind your website matters. It is the foundation of your website. A poor foundation can only get you so far.

How your website performs.

Google wants their users to have a good experience, so you can understand why they would be hesitant to send people to a website with poor usability. This means it loads fast, renders well, works on mobile, doesn’t throw back errors, etc.

The content on your website.

With SEO, content is still king. It’s important however to understand it cannot be just a bunch of fluff. Your website must contain good content that is readable and helpful to HUMANS. An SEO consultant should look carefully at your existing content and recommend new content.

Google is getting really good at understanding relevancy and even user intent. Getting away with garbage content and still ranking well is ancient history.

You’ll need to create not only more content, but better content. The best outlet for this is a blog!

The “best practices”stuff.

If you’ve skimmed articles about SEO in the past, these are probably the things you’ve read about. Page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, headings, alt tags, etc.

The external stuff.

SEO is more than just things that you have direct control over. A good SEO should also look at inbound link quality, volume and opportunities. Keep in mind, this is not the same as shady link building. Your inbound links should grow naturally because you have great content, but that doesn’t mean that there are not link opportunities out there without spamming people begging for links.

SEO is also about the Google algorithms. Algorithms are the science behind how Google ranks things. This changes over time, so it is important to pay attention.

Sponsored Advertising

This is the second way of ranking better in Google and it focuses on the paid rankings. Through Google’s ad platform called AdWords, a website can be ranked in Google in the areas set aside for sponsored ads. The term that a website ranks for is chosen by the advertiser. They can rank for as many keywords as they want, choose the ads associated with those keywords, and even choose the page in which the searcher arrives when they click the ad.

Technically you don’t pay to rank, you pay for the click. AdWords runs on a cost-per-click basis, meaning you only accrue ad spend when your ad is clicked, not shown. It works on a bid basis so advertiser A says, “I am willing to pay this each time someone clicks”, advertiser B says, “I am willing to pay this”…it’s like an auction for ad space.

Unlike SEO, using AdWords advertising you can rank in Google almost instantly. You’ll be ranking as quickly as you can come up with keywords, write some ads, choose some pages, and enter billing information. That doesn’t mean you will be successful by just throwing a campaign together and launching it. Success will require a good strategy, extensive planning, quality implementation and ongoing monitoring and adjustments based on the data.

If you already have a website, those are the 2 main ways to rank better in Google. If you’re looking for a long term return-on-investment, go the SEO route. If you’re looking to generate quick leads, go the sponsored ad route. If you are looking to destroy your competition…do both!

The post How to Rank Better in Google appeared first on protocol 80, Inc. Blog.

Stage 1 in the Inbound Marketing methodology is Attracting best buyers to your website.

We don’t want to attract just anyone, we want to focus on attracting visitors to your site that will convert and close later on in the Inbound process. This requires knowing your best buyers (buyer persona) and how to reach them at each stage of the the buyer’s journey.

Knowing your buyer personas and how to reach them at each stage of the buyer’s journey means having a solid set of focus keywords that you are using in your content.

CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!!!

Yes, you need content to attract best buyers to your website. If you don’t have a blog yet, that’s priority #1. If you have a blog, but don’t consistently write blog posts, then that’s priority #1.

A blog will build the volume of content you have that speaks directly to your buyer persona(s). This helps with your SEO strategy, your social media strategy and much more!

Speaking of SEO!

I guarantee that your best buyers are looking for your solution in Google. If you aren’t there, you aren’t an option.
SEO will yield the highest ROI over time. If you want to see if your website is optimized for search, download the SEO Checklist: http://p80.us/965f9a

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Sponsored advertising may be the most effective way for you to attract best buyers to your website while your SEO strategy is taking effect. With PPC you can show up at the top of search results for the keywords that your best buyer uses. You also have the option to advertise on the major social media sites.

Social Media Distribution

Tons and tons of information is disseminated through social media today. That information is discussed, shared, and recommended. That’s why social media is a must for attracting best buyers to your website.

Need more convincing on social media? The major search engines have confirmed that they use social interaction with content as a signal that helps determine how content is ranked in search results.

FREE SEO Checklist

If you want to see if your website is optimized for search, download the SEO Checklist: http://p80.us/965f9a

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