SEO 101: The Correlation Between Traffic and Rankings

2019 Adwords Updates You Should be Taking Advantage of

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 20:05:14 Z

2019 is here, and guess what? Google’s still changing. More and more updates continue to roll in and there’s more and more to look to if you're searching for ways to improve your results via AdWords. But what to focus on? Taking a look at the list of announcements and updates can be daunting. Never fear, Bonsai is here to break down the most advantageous Adwords updates you should be taking advantage of in 2019.

Make Sure You Understand those Four New Search Ad Position Metrics

Anyone who’s been working in Adwords for some time won’t be surprised to hear about the new metrics and analytics they’re rolling out. AdWords and Google, in general, are constantly providing new data points to help advertisers better understand the efficacy of their efforts.

It goes without saying that in the realm of Adwords, where you live and die by SERPs, it’s crucial to understand where your ads appear on the page and how the position correlates to overall campaign performance. Now you can - thanks to these four new metrics:

Impr. (Absolute Top) % - the percent of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.
Impr. (Top) % - the percent of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results.
Search (Absolute Top) IS - the impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above the organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.
Search (Top) IS - the impressions you’ve received in the top location (anywhere above the organic search results) compared to the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.

Up until now, most folks have been relying on the average position metric which, while useful, only shows your position within the ad auction, not on the actual page - hence the value of these new data points.

Pay Per Conversion in Display Campaigns

Starting just last month, you can now choose to pay for conversions, as opposed to clicks, in display campaigns. When we say pay per conversion, we mean what we say - you only pay when a user converts on your app or site.

Other digital ad platforms, namely Facebook, offer bidding strategies and optimization tools built around specific business goals, like clicks, conversions, registrations, etc. BUT, as you likely already know, all Facebook ad campaigns are built on a cost-per-impression model. This means you always pay based on the numbers of views your ad gets; if you choose to bid or optimize ads for conversions, your cost per conversion is actually just the amount you spend per impression x the number of impressions it took to achieve a conversion - not the clearest way of explaining ad spend.

This new AdWords feature for display campaigns is the real deal, however, promising that you’ll never pay more than your target cost per action. So, if you’re CPA is $5, and you drive 10 conversions, you’ll pay $50. Doesn’t get any clearer than that!

Target Impression Share Bidding

If you’re already familiar with Adwords and you use it in a professional setting, you know about Google’s rash of “smart bidding” strategies - the automated bidding tactics that always aim for conversion or conversion value. Impression share is the latest such strategy that has been getting a lot of attention; as it’s a valuable metric for assessing one’s overall strategy - everything from bids, quality scores, approval status, and targeting.

As a quick refresher - Impression share is the number of impressions you garnered divided by the estimated number of impressions you could have gotten, which is a direct indication of your ads competitiveness with respect to those bidding on your query. For example, if your ad has 100% impression share, it means your winning the auction every time.

Target impression share bidding automatically adjusts your bid to hit the percentage you aim for either on the absolute top of the page, the top of the page, or anywhere on the page, which when used provides another way of measuring the competitiveness of a particular query! More and more way of slicing and dicing the data to get the absolute best bang for your buck.

Responsive Search Ads

Is it 2016? Because I’m getting major deja vu vibes taking me back to expanded search ads and the wave of hullabaloo they caused when they were rolled out around 2.5 years ago. When it comes to new ad formats, us digital marketers are always keen to exaggerate. Why? Because it’s an opportunity, and in the world where data is king, anything you can do tip the numbers must be taken seriously and yes HYPED up.

In all seriousness, responsive search ads have the makings of a serious game changer - they’re Google’s newest, biggest, most flexible search ad format ever - giving you the option of writing up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions and letting AdWords test all the possible combinations, which amounts to over 40,000.

If you’re a smaller business with just a few products or offerings and you don’t have a massive budget to work with, it might take you a long time to gain any valuable insights from a responsive ad, especially if you have already identified the FaBs (features and benefits) that are working for you. On the other hand, enterprise-level organizations that are advertising many different offerings across audiences definitely stand to benefit from this robust new format.

AdWords is constantly shifting, offering new and better means of optimizing your campaigns and understanding your results. These four new updates represent the push towards smart bidding strategies, which rely on machine learning and further automation to help advertisers work smarter not harder.

Are you taking advantage of these 2019 Adwords updates? If you’re running your own business, you probably don’t have time to keep track of all the latest and greatest digital marketing tactics, which is where Bonsai comes in. Bonsai lives and breathes digital marketing and we’re constantly steeped in the latest trends and strategies.

If you're looking for dedicated AdWords expertise, contact Bonsai Media Group today.

The Most Noteworthy Facebook Ad Updates for 2019

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:15:00 Z

It’s officially 2019, which means it’s time to finally start talking about new capabilities, tactics, and strategies. One of the digital channels that saw the most growth and success this last year has been paid social advertising, which is why we’ve decided to start with the most noteworthy Facebook ad updates for 2019 - the ones you should already be using, and the ones that demonstrate the sheer power of the platform, even if they’re not likely to become your go-to tool quite yet.

Dynamic Ads

Facebook continues to become more and more user-friendly and efficient for E-commerce businesses. Dynamic Ads are nothing new, but if you have a robust product catalog, you’re struggling to gain traction on Facebook, and you haven’t been using a product feeds to generate Dynamic Ads, then you’re officially behind the times.

Facebook, through numerous platform integrations and API capabilities, is able to house catalogs consisting of thousands of products. With Dynamic Ads, you’re able to serve ads featuring specific products to specific users based on interests or based on previous behaviors.

At Bonsai, we had an E-commerce client with whom we set up dynamic product ads for retargeting. Users would hit a specific product page on the site, and if they didn’t buy, they’d get hit with an ad featuring that product and price. The ROAS (return on ad spend) for that particular ad set was around 3.5x.

Instagram and Facebook Story Ads

Another ad format that isn’t new but is certain to continue gaining traction in 2019 is story based ads. Ephemeral content saw a huge leap in 2018, with more and more people posting stories to both Instagram and Facebook. Traffic via these placements is certainly ramping up.

Not only are users more willing to engage with ads that appear in their stories as opposed to their feeds, but stories ads are adding additional functionality that enables product tagging - including additional product information, pricing, and direct links to buy products.

At Bonsai, we’ve seen huge success with story-based ads for the purpose of lead generation. It’s both a great way to drive qualified traffic to landing pages and stories have proven to be massively effective for generating engagement via messenger. In fact, there is almost a direct correlation between our use of stories ads and the number of inbound messages we receive via Instagram in particular. It’s a bit of a longer funnel, but if you can get users to message on Facebook or Instagram, you have a direct opportunity to nurture that prospect in any way you see fit - even if that’s encouraging them towards the same landing page as the ad.

Creative Compass

A new creative planning tool for Facebook Marketing Parners, Creative Compass, is making a buzz around the blogosphere for the hottest new Facebook advertising tool forthcoming this year.

Measuring the effectiveness of an ad beyond the most common data points (CTRs, conversions, etc.) has always been a challenge. While relevance score has been the go-to for measuring the potential of a creative piece on the platform, the new Facebook Creative Compass is a robust diagnostic tool that will help Facebook Marketing Partners understand how well an ad is likely to perform to an unprecedented degree.

Currently, the tool is only available to certified Facebook Marketing Partner, and our team at Bonsai has been working on getting our certification in both the technology and creative platforms. So, as you can imagine, we can’t wait to get our hands on this new tool.

Playable Ads

It might sound like science fiction, but it’s true. Facebook added playable ads for game apps not too long ago. These ads essentially allow users to try a game before they buy and install it. Playable Ads can also help PPC providers uncover new insights from people who have experimented with the game and are thus more likely to play after installation.

Playable ads are now available for everyone using the app install objective for ads in Facebook news feed. And there’s a ton of certified Facebook developers who can assist in the implementation of playable ads, if that’s your interest.

It might be a bit outside the realm of our current clients, but nevertheless, it’s an impressive display of Facebook’s advertising capabilities.

Augmented Reality Ads

AR seems to be on everyone’s minds this year across every channel. Facebook is now dipping their toes into the Augmented Reality ad game, enabling brands to build deeper, more engaging on-screen experiences that potential customers can interact with.

The ads allow users to quickly test out products and experiences with a ‘tap to try’ CTA that accesses the users camera and provides an onscreen filter that serves as an ad. It sounds impressive, but the reality is that these ads are just riding Snapchat’s coattails. The AR ads that Facebook is rolling out definitely resemble filter-based ads that have helped Snapchat differentiate itself from the Facebook/Instagram paradigm.

Nevertheless, much like playable ads, while AR ads may not be top of the list for your ad arsenal right now, it’s a 2019 Facebook ad update worth noting because it illustrates the ever evolving capabilities of Facebook as an advertising platform.

These 2019 Facebook ad updates are just the start - if 2018 is any indication, there are sure to be plenty more changes, both good and bad, to the platform in the coming months. Whether it’s targeting, creative capabilities, or placements - at Bonsai, we understand the true power of Facebook advertising for delivering valuable high-intent traffic to your site.

If you’re interested in harnessing the power of the world’s most widely utilized social media platform, get in touch with Bonsai today.

Bonsai Named a Top Web Designer on Clutch.co!

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 18:17:26 Z

The bonsai tree is the pinnacle of human design. By controlling nature, people have managed to shape the growth of a plant to make it appropriate in any setting. This is the type of experience that we seek to design when we create - perfect for anyone, anywhere.

Here at Bonsai Media, we pride ourselves on the ability to grow your business online through our vast array of web services, such as digital marketing and web design. Our design expertise is displayed on visual portfolio platforms like Visual Objects as an example of best practices and creative, eye-catching designs. Because we’ve provided such excellent results for our clients in the past it’s only natural that they would leave us some great reviews.

Fortunately, Clutch was there to collect them so we could stick to helping you grow. Clutch is a ratings and reviews platform for business-to-business firms like us, ranging from digital marketing agencies and PR firms to web designers and app developers. Their business analysts conduct in-depth, verified reviews with clients to ensure that they only rank the best firms on their site.

We are happy to say that we were recently announced as a top web designer in Seattle by the Clutch team! We help maintain the efficacy of the industry by getting to know each client we work with, and as a result, we were also named one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Seattle by Clutch’s sister site, The Manifest. Every time we get news like this a little cheer goes through the office, except for our Chief Morale officer, who wags his tail!

We absolutely love our reviews because they do such a great job getting the word out about what we do, so we figured we’d leave a couple for you to see:

“We achieved all our goals. The firm is in the top one to three of different areas that we’ve optimized our rankings around.”

CIO, National Environmental Services Firm

“Not only did they help us develop our brand and our messaging, but their SEO work has also helped us become more visible on a national scale.”

CIO, Primeline Utility Services

These amazing reviews help us take stock of what we have accomplished in the industry. Currently, the US is projected to reach 120 billion dollars in digital marketing spending by 2021, according to Forbes. We want to make sure that that money does not go to waste. Your website is your business and the pride we take in our work shows when our clients grow. If we’ve helped you achieve something let us know on our Clutch profile.

The Power of Persona Advertising Via Facebook

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 19:44:16 Z

Who is your target customer? Do you even know? Are you taking steps to find out? Say you’ve found your key age demographic, where do you go from there?

Marketing has traditionally been thought of in terms of a business’ target demographic and the best ways to saturate that demographic. After all, in a world of limited resources, you can’t market to everyone. Similarly, resources for finding insights into your customer base have traditionally been limited to larger, nationwide organizations that have the money to put into focus groups and market testing.

But, relatively recent advents in digital advertising, namely Social Media advertising, with Facebook leading the way, have changed all of that.

What is Persona Advertising?

Nowadays, anyone with a credit card can run ads on Facebook and access the wide array of Facebook’s detailed targeting. What that means is that advertisers at all levels now have the ability to test and hone their target market at a level that was previously unheard of. Here’s why -

A Quick Breakdown of FB targeting -

There are four dimensions with which you can target the general Facebook population:

Location -

Reach people based on where they live, where they’re traveling, or where they are currently, as specific as an address, or as general as a country.

Demographics -

Target folks based on typical demographic indicators like age, gender, relationship status, education, workplace, job title, etc.

Interests-

Think of the myriad of ways users tell Facebook what they’re interested in. Everything that user’s list in their profile, everything they follow, click on, respond to, are all indicators of interest categories, all of which are up for grabs to advertisers.

Behavior-

Target users based on device usage, purchase behavior, shopping categories and more.

[Remember - there are restrictions and particular uses for these targeting parameters, most of which follow conventional guidelines around advertising in general e.g. you can’t target those under 21 with ads promoting alcohol, or promote housing specific ads to a certain demographic or income level]

While there are some restrictions on your use of Facebook’s targeting parameters, you’re still able to paint an incredibly vivid picture of who your target customer is. This allows advertisers to segment target markets in ways that are much more granular than have been in the past. The only caveat to building a core audience this way is that you’ve got to know a little bit about how your target audience operates and what they’re interested in unless you start with audience insights.

Audience Insights

A Facebook feature that allows you to aggregate and anonymous information including interests, demographics, page likes, location, usage, and certain behaviors of Facebook users, Audience Insights is always where we start when we’re persona advertising via FB at Bonsai.

Audience insights allow you to pull key interest and demographic data for the general Facebook audience, people connected to your page or event, or people you’ve already identified as customers via a list or Facebook pixel data.

Say you’d like to see the top interest categories of folks connected to your page - audience insights allows you to do so.

Or perhaps you’ve identified a key interest among your target audience, and you’d like to find additional parameters to find similar people, just plug in the first parameter into audience insights and you’ll get a list of the ten most relevant categories that overlap with users from the first parameter.

There are a few drawbacks, however. For one, if the parameters you’re using to pull data are too narrow, you won’t be able to see any corresponding data. For the most part, I’ve seen most data start to tick through once you’ve entered a parameter that generates around 5,000 users. So if you’re looking for the interest categories of people connected to your page, and you only have 1,000 likes, it’s going to be tough to glean anything more than age and gender.

How We Do It

At Bonsai, we employ persona testing to help a number of our clients better assess their target personas so they can understand where their advertising dollars are most effective.

First, we start with audience insights, to determine any relevant interests, behavior, or targeting parameters from our initial insights from the client,

We use those to build a general understanding of the users of Facebook and how their interests correspond to the offerings of the client.

Then we understand what the client wants to test. We need to make sure that the information they’re trying to glean corresponds with available targeting parameters on Facebook.

For example, we have an apartment client located in Louisville who feels as though their initial understanding of their target demographic missed the mark. To get a better understanding of the folks that are actually renting apartments, we recommended testing general interest among personas - those who work in the manufacturing industry, those who work in Tech, and those who work in healthcare.

Here’s what the audiences for each look like -

Manufacturing industry -

Healthcare -

Tech -

As you can see, we’re able to target and segment users based career industry parameters, location, and overall interest/likelihood of living in an apartment, crossed with locations that the client has identified as important.

As our control, each of these personas will be served identical ads with identical offerings [our control for this experiment]. The only thing that differs ad to ad is specific utm parameters that allow us to see which ad is driving what traffic.

Then we assess the overall traffic, the overall onsite activity, the goal completions and the contacts to the client from each persona.

All along the way we test different imagery and adjust targeting parameters to ensure that the ads are as well optimized for each persona while also presenting an even test.

From there, recommendations are made, personas are prioritized, and we’re able to conduct all sorts of advertising efforts, not just on facebook but everywhere, that target the right group of people by precise groupings and pinpoint messaging. Therein lies the power of persona advertising via Facebook.

View Our Facebook Advertising Case Studies Here.

The Self-Serve Model

The self-serve model that all major digital advertising platforms are built upon may go down in history as one of the most revolutionary shifts in modern advertising. The power of persona advertising via Facebook is based on the ability of advertisers big and small to gain valuable, fact-based insights on their target market, and then immediately act upon those insights without the need for a middleman. What this means for the future of advertising is more granular audiences, and advertisers bidding and vying for attention within ever-shrinking audience niches.

So, if you’re looking for ways to stand out among the vast array of competitors if you’re looking for the best possible niche of users related to your business, or you’d just like to find out where to best spend your precious ad budget, persona advertising via Facebook with Bonsai can certainly help!

Bonsai’s Best Practices for PPC to Landing Page Strategy

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:06:28 Z

If you’ve been advertising online in the last 10 years, or you’re just starting, you’ve likely heard the phrase landing page optimization being used by your SEM experts. Having a great landing page experience will [notice we didn’t say can or might] make or break your Pay Per Click campaigns. It’s the foundation for most PPC advertising and industry leaders tend to focus on it heavily. But when considering advertising on Google Ads, landing page optimization needs to provide more than just a beautifully designed website.

In order to succeed in the digital marketplace, your landing page needs to reflect your PPC campaign and vice versa, it needs synergy.How do you get synergy between your website and your online advertising? Well, there are multiple options one can pursue for their website or PPC campaign in order to get the best performance but before we get into that let’s review how Google evaluates a successful keyword to landing page experience.

Quality Score

The metric Google uses to evaluate whether or not a keyword and landing page has synergy is Quality Score. There are several factors that are used to determine quality score such as:

Expected Clickthrough rate(CTR) - Google’s prediction on how likely a keyword will lead to a click on your ads. It factors in the historical performance of the keyword based on your ad’s position when someone’s search triggers one of your ads.
Ad Relevance - How closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search. This metric determines whether or not the keyword you’re paying for is relevant to the ad copy it’s associated with. Having an average or above average status means your keyword matches the ad copy. Below average, then your keyword needs new ad copy or you need a different keyword.

Landing Page Experience - This is how Google estimates how relevant and useful your website’s landing page will be to the users. Higher ranking landing pages are well organized and have text related to the person's search terms.

Now how does this relate to PPC landing page optimization? It’s a combination of these elements that we can influence in different ways to get the same result: synergy between our Google Ads advertising and website. We will break down some simple optimization strategies to make this synergy happen.

Aligning Landing Page To Ad Copy

One of the biggest mistakes advertiser’s make is creating a competitive advantage or promotion in their ad copy and failing to deliver that same language on the landing page.

For example, An ad displays a specific “buy one, get one free” promotion for your product. When the user sees (and clicks) your ad they are expecting that promotion to be on the landing page. Updating ad copy on the PPC side is easy and when advertisers want to change the brand language or make special offers it’s the first place they make the change.

But not updating your landing page content to match your ad copy is one of the factors that create a poor landing page experience. If a user comes to your site and the ad that brought them there doesn’t match the intentions set by the ad copy, then the user leaves. Giving the advertiser no conversions and a wasted click.

Use PPC Keywords As Fuel For Landing Page Content

Similar to aligning the landing page to ad copy, the keywords advertisers are paying for and users are searching need to be found on the landing page. Say you are a user in need of an emergency plumber at 2:00 a.m., the first ad you click on has the keyword in the ad copy and the landing page takes you to a plumber’s website but 'emergency plumber' is nowhere to be found. In most cases, the user will simply bounce back to the results and click on a different ad.

Why waste time contacting the business in an emergency if there is some uncertainty? We have multiple ads to click on and one of those landing page experience will have what we are looking for. This is why it’s important to either have your PPC keywords providing content for your landing pages or vice versa. Simply put, don’t advertise what you’re not selling.

This is a big factor Google considers when determining Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience. If both of these are “below average” than the keyword will trigger less frequently in searches and have a higher cost, reducing your return on ad spend for your campaign. Want to advertise with a new keyword relevant to your business? Make sure you have the landing page and content made for it.

Determining Landing Page Goals

What is the goal of your website? Is it to generate subscriptions, sale your product, or highlight your services? Determining what your landing page goals are, what you want the user to do, is one of the most critical factors for PPC to landing page strategy. If form fill applications are what you consider a successful conversion, then the form fill needs to be on the landing page.

Users have already made their intent by the search they entered and the ad they clicked. The final step is simply converting. The option to convert should be constantly available to the user. Having the user’s convert on other pages creates less engagement and interest in what the advertiser is providing. Whether that is a form fill on the front page or a buy now option, user’s are more likely to convert compared to a multi-page journey.

Building Landing Page Trust

This is is more of a no-brainer for most advertisers but something it does get missed occasionally. If you have followed the advice provided above, your landing page should have an experience that builds a lot of trust with the user. That being said, there’s always more you can do. Things that should be prevalent (at least included) on a landing page are reviews, social links, contact information, etc.

This also has the added benefit of creating content for your landing page, improving the experience for the user. In some cases, these additions can contrast the theme or style of an advertiser’s website but it’s still recommended to have some form of social links and contact information.

Your PPC to Landing Page strategy should follow a connected path that reflects a user’s search intention. Essentially the keywords should be found in the ad copy and the ad copy should be found on the website. Once the user gets to the landing page the goals should be transparent and relevant. All these factors together create a linear path from a user’s intent to their final conversion actions, converting visitors into leads.

SEO Strategy | The Importance of Blogging

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 19:39:50 Z

Time and time again clients will ask about the overall importance of blogging? Writing consistent content for your business is actually a pretty tall order, and if it’s not your main focus it can easily fall to the back burner. But one thing that we seem to reiterate to client’s time and time again is that regular blogging is perhaps one of the most impactful on-page SEO tactics available. Why? The answer comes in two parts, each of which represents one of the most important ranking factors for SEO current - 1) Traffic 2) Internal Links

Traffic

Remember the game of SEO - you’re working to convince a search engine algorithm that your site is most relevant to a given search. It’s long been known that one of the biggest indicators of relevancy to search engines like Google and Bing is traffic. How many people are going to your site, how long are they spending there, and do they seem to find what they’re looking for - the answers to these questions represent data points that can literally make or break your SERP’s. Just think of Craigslist and what it can teach us about SEO. Aesthetically and functionally speaking, Craigslist is the real ugly duckling of online classifieds. Yet, when you search for something for sale or housing in a particular area, why is that CL is always among the top results? At the risk of sounding overly obvious, it’s because people are constantly flooding Craigslist, searching for something, and quite often finding it. These factors are recognized by search engines, and despite the fact that CL looks and feels to be about a decade behind, they still kill it when it comes to SEO.

The Power of Internal Links

Internal links are the other piece of the puzzle and one of the most crucial aspects of your on-page strategy. An internal link is exactly what it sounds like - a link on a page that links to another page on your site. Internal links do two things - establish a readable, SEO-friendly site architecture that is easily intelligible by search bots, and aid in the spreading of link equity from page to page. Internal links are essential indicators of relevance between pages on your site.

As rankings lift for one page, the rankings for pages connected via internal links will also start to buoy, as you’ve now passed authority (link equity) to them. Importantly, the anchor text that the link is built within is also important - it’s an indicator to the search engine that this particular term is relevant to the link’s destination. So, the idea is to have the anchor text of your internal links be similar to the kw’s of the pages to which they’re driving traffic - this is the true power of internal links: driving traffic while also building link equity and keyword relevance across your domain.

So, why blogging?

As you may have already guessed, blogging is so hugely impactful for SEO because it provides the perfect opportunity to generate traffic and build more internal links within your website. Additionally, blogs provide additional opportunities to rank for terms related to your business that are difficult to place within the foundational architecture of your site (homepage, services, about us, etc.)

For instance -

If you’re a manufacturer of ski boots, and through your knowledge and research into your industry, you’ve found that many people are searching using the query “choosing ski boots.” That particular keyword may difficult to rank for considering your current site set up, but it’s the perfect keyword to nest within a blog covering the topic.

A step by step would look like -

Write a blog centered on a kw that is relevant to your business, but difficult to fit within your existing site architecture
Outfit the blog with internal links containing the proper anchor text for the link destination
Promote that blog via the relevant channels and generate as much traffic as possible.
Repeat with
Pay attention to overall rankings lift across your domain. If you’ve done your homework, you’ll have prioritized topics and KW’s that are relevant to your site and business.

Real Examples from Our Work

Now, you may be thinking that we just gave away one of the main ingredients in the secret sauce of content marketing, but the truth is this tactic of generating traffic and building internal links is really just SEO 101 - the trick is how you select keywords and where you place your links.

Remember, SEO, in general, is a long game. If you expect to write one blog with this strategy and immediately notice a lift, we’re sorry to say that it’s going to take a bit more dedication than that. With that in mind, let’s look at three specific accounts for which we’ve employed this strategy in order to illustrate the results one expect if this strategy is employed properly over time.

Cascade Drilling

The nation’s largest provider of environmental drilling and remediation services, Cascade relies on Bonsai Media Group for content marketing and SEO. Cascade has a particular editorial calendar wherein they’re required to discuss certain topics at a given time, so the challenge is to find the right anchor text and kw/landing page combination that fits within the given topic while also supporting their underlying SEO strategy.

The above graph shows the amount of KW’s ranked in the #1 spot on Google (Orange Line), and the amount of KW’s the client is tracking that are not ranked (the grey line). As you can see, when we started with Cascade, they had no focus kw’s ranked in the #1 spot, and 24 keywords not ranked at all. Since our work began, they now have 6 kw’s in the #1 spot, and their down to 12 kw’s not ranked.

As a result of their increased visibility online, Cascade’s overall conversion rate went up 44% and their overall goal completions went up almost 48% in the last 18 months that we’ve been providing service.

Tom Flick

Leadership Keynote speaker, and former NFL quarterback, Tom Flick relies on Bonsai for SEO work as well. When he came to Bonsai, Tom had a very specific goal - to increase organic traffic to his site as much as possible. Before working with Bonsai, the majority of his traffic and business came from referral sites - directories, or speaker related platforms.

Over the last year or so, we’ve taken Tom to not ranked for 6 of his focus kw’s, to ranked #1 for six of them. As a result, the majority of his business now comes from organic search and direct traffic, which comprises just under 87% of all traffic on his site.

Thank this increase in traffic, his overall goal completions, including those from referral-based traffic, have shot up over 300%!

Wipliance provides home automation and home theater installation in Bellevue as well as in Scottsdale, AZ. Wipliance primarily enlisted Bonsai for our SEO services, and as such our internal linking tactics were a crucial aspect of our strategy.

In just 8 months of dedicated content marketing efforts, we’ve taken cascade from having 0 Keywords in the number 1 spot to 19! Additionally, their unranked kw’s dropped from 148, down to 25.

As a result, goal completions and conversion rates have shot up across their site, conversion rate and goals via organic search have gone up 47% and 63% respectively.

As you can see, regular blogging, if done correctly in support of the underlying SEO goals, can have a MASSIVE impact on traffic, rankings, and overall business. You’ll notice that we didn’t mention specific keywords, blog topics, internal links, or pages involved in these client’s strategies. Why? This gets to the beauty of Bonsai Media Group’s SEO services - effective demonstrable strategies that are repeatable and customizable depending on the business in question. The process is always the same, the strategy is tailor-made for the business.

If you’re interested in any of the ways that Bonsai can give your rankings a boost, or work with you to improve the overall efficacy of your content marketing campaigns, make sure to contact us today!

It’s 2018 - Time to Abandon Organic-Only Social Campaigns

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 23:00:12 Z

It’s no secret that in 2018, social media is booming with business for all kinds of companies and full of endless options for consumers. Infusionsoft’s data shows that in 2018, 74.4% of businesses planned to use social media. But what does actually ‘using’ social media for your business even mean anymore? With thousands of businesses fighting to capture consumers’ attention, it can be tricky to figure out which social media marketing methods work, and increasingly difficult to understand which Social Media marketing methods are actually moving the needle for your business. Allow us to reveal one major insight that you need to take to heart immediately - Organic-only Social Media Campaigns are a plain waste of time.

What do we mean by organic-only?

No, we don’t mean Social Media Marketing campaigns for Tom’s Deodorant. What we mean by organic-only is relying on all but paid methods of promoting your brand via social - i.e. anything that doesn’t involve paid promotion. It’s now estimated that roughly 5% of your followers will see what you post organically. Between ever-changing news feed algorithms, differing user habits, and again increased competition for visibility, it’s just harder to reach your audience by posting alone. Essentially, with social media marketing in 2018, businesses have to pay-to-play.

Q: How can your business stand out among the masses on Social?

A: Start Advertising

The truth is that there is no shortage of tactics for advertising on Social. What’s more, each of the major platforms have developed their own ad platforms that provide a variety of uses both within and outside of the platform - let’s dig in shall we?

Facebook

There’s a reason that Facebook occupies the largest market share within Social Advertising. It is important to note that, no matter what your objective, Facebook charges you based on impressions, in order to equate many ads with different formats within the same auction. In the most basic sense, there are three types of Facebook advertising campaigns, broken down by objective: consideration, conversion, and awareness.

Awareness: Ads that are aimed at generating interest in your product or service on Facebook.
Consideration: Ads that aim to get people to start considering your business and look for more information about it, on or off Facebook
Conversions: Ads that are designed to get people interested in your business to purchase or use your product or service

Ad format

The ad format options on Facebook are pretty dynamic and robust, providing plenty of opportunities for all sorts of business to showcase their business and services. Here are the many ad formats you can choose from:

Placements

One of the most powerful things about Facebook advertising are the variety of placements for ads both on and off of the platform - here are the placement options for Facebook Advertising -

Facebook

Supported ad formats:

Video
Photo
Carousel
Slideshow
Canvas (mobile only)

Instagram

Supported ad formats:

Video
Photo
Carousel
Stories

Audience Network - beyond FB and Instagram

Video
Photo
Carousel

Messenger

Supported ad formats:
Photo
Carousel

Looking for specific help with Instagram or Facebook advertising? Bonsai Media Group is a BluePrint Certified Facebook Advertiser, and we have experience running the myriad of Facebook Ad campaigns for all sorts of businesses. Contact us today!

Instagram

Good news! Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, each platform’s advertising options are one in this same. Because of this, it’s probably better to think of Instagram as a placement within Facebook Ads. Yes, the platform comes with it’s own restrictions and best practices, but you’ll be operating within Ads manager, so the best place to start is on Facebook.

Pro tip - Use Instagram stories to advertise limited-time products/services. The most successful stories tend to be ads that show a product being used.

Twitter

Twitter, while it doesn't occupy quite the same market share as FB or Instagram, it still provides fairly robust advertising options. Plus, in contrast to Facebook, Twitter allows you to pay per engagement or conversion, meaning your ad spend is more closely linked to your overall business goal.

Types of Twitter Ads

There are three types of promotions you’re able to run on twitter -

Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets are just ordinary Tweets you can display to people who are not already following you.

Promoted Accounts

Get your Twitter account in front of targeted users to build a relevant audience.

Promoted Trends

Promote a hashtag at the top of the promoted trends list on Twitter’s Discover tabs.

Types of Twitter ad campaigns

Tweet engagements

Promote Tweets and start conversations while only paying for the initial engagement with each user.

Followers

Promote your Twitter account and pay per follower.

Awareness

Promote your Tweets to a broad audience and pay for impressions, like Facebook. This is the only option on Twitter where you pay per impression

Video views

Increase the number of users who view your videos.

Website clicks or conversions

Promote Tweets to people you want to drive and take action on your website.

App installs or re-engagements

Promote Tweets to users you want to download your app, or to users who have already downloaded your app but have not used it for a while, and pay per app install or for both app installs and app opens.

Lead generation

Promote Tweets that incorporate Lead Generation Cards to collect leads and pay per lead collected.

Snapchat

Snapchat provides a unique advertising opportunity wherein you’re able to serve dynamic, ephemeral content to user’s with specific targeting that’s more closely based on timing and geography.

Types of Snapchat ads

Snap Ads

A Snap Ad is a 10-second video ad that includes the option to provide more information to users who swipe up from the ad.

Additionally, Snapchat offers “sequenced messaging,” a bundle of 10-second Snapchat ad video segments that run within the Discover section to produce a longer video.

On-Demand Geofilters

On-Demand Geofilters are the entry-level Snapchat ads option. You can get started with Snapchat advertising for as little as $5.

Snap to Unlock

Snapcodes on physical media such as billboards, receipts, and even coffee cups, then users interact with ads by taking a picture of the Snapcode or scanning it with the Snapchat app, unlocking a Sponsored Geofilter or Lens.

Pro tip - Snapchat is the place to go if you’re looking to reach a younger audience of mostly 18-24-year-olds.

Less is more. In your Story Ads, use just one call-to-action.

Whether you’re aiming to serve ads to executives, influencers, or job seekers, there are various ways to advertise on LinkedIn through different ad, each of which type of come with their own benefits and best practices.

LinkedIn self-serve ads

Linkedin’s Campaign manager is where all the magic happens. Schedule campaigns in advance, target the right people, industries, job functions, and more.

Text Ads

A quick and easy desktop-only option, Text Ads feature a compelling headline, a description, and an eye-catching image in a variety of ad formats to drive traffic to your profile or your website.

LinkedIn Display Ads

LinkedIn’s programmatic advertising solution, which means you can purchase ads through your preferred advertising platform.

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads

Highly personalized, custom ads that are dynamically generated based on your audience's activity. Target users at the right time with the right message.

YouTube

Last, but certainly not least, is YouTube, the video advertising giant. In order to start advertising on YouTube, you’ll have to create a Google AdWords account. For that reason, similar to Instagram, it’s better to think of Youtube as an aspect of your PPC campaign, and while it will receive an honorable mention, we’re not going to dig into specifics here.

Despite the different objectives and audiences that these different social media platforms offer, they all provide the potential for you to increase awareness of your brand and traffic to your website. If it wasn’t obvious by now, using a combination of these platforms will yield the greatest results for your business. These quick platform outlines and tips can give you a good starting point, but to really see what these platforms can do, you need to dig in and start learning specifics.

That’s Not to Say You Shouldn’t Still Use Supplementary Organic Strategies

So why still do organic social posting? Brand Validation is a big reason why. This one is a no-brainer. If one sees on ad on social, heads to the profile and sees that the there hasn’t been any content posted recently, it doesn’t necessarily instill trust on the part of the user. Make sure to keep posting and keeping the attention of your audience, but organic simply cannot be the only thing you’re doing.

With all of this information, it can be tricky to figure out where to get started. That’s why Bonsai Media Group is here to help. Contact us today for Social Media Marketing Management!

Interested in interning at Bonsai?

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 20:45:25 Z

We’re looking for a talented Digital Marketing Intern who’s ready to dive right into the agency world, gain valuable experience, and produce real-results. Do you have what it takes?

ROLE OVERVIEW

As Bonsai’s Digital Marketing Intern, you will work alongside our kick-ass team in supporting our various clients’ online marketing strategies. In addition, you will have direct project involvement with Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) - Seattle Chapter. EO Seattle is a part of a global business owner network and represents over 200 of Seattle’s greatest entrepreneurs. As a key contact, you will have a unique opportunity to connect with local business leaders and build your professional network.

This position will be involved in regular content creation and copywriting, graphic design, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO/SEM tactics, website management, project management, and administrative tasks.

Sill honing your skills? Not an SEO/SEM expert? Don’t worry - we’ve got you covered with one-on-one training!

WHAT TO EXPECT

Hours: at least 20 hours per week
Office: at least 2x a week
Length: at least 90 days
Compensation: Unpaid (It’s worth the agency experience, trust us!)

RESPONSIBILITIES

Content Marketing

Help create and maintain client editorial calendars.
Utilize Hootsuite to schedule client social postings.
Craft compelling emails to promote client events and announcements.
Write and edit client blog posts, ensuring tone, voice, and style match.
Promote content via targeted social ads, display ads, and PPC.

Graphic Design

Create graphics for client social and blog postings.
Create and optimize graphics for client website pages.
Support our Design Team with various projects, including online ads, photo editing, motion graphics, presentations, reports and more.

Website Development

Work directly on EO Seattle’s website refresh, including mapping site architecture, CMS implementation, content development, creating website graphics, and optimizing pages for success.

QUALIFICATIONS

Actively pursuing a Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, journalism, or related field.
Basic understanding of digital marketing and content marketing.
Strong written and verbal communications.
Very organized and excellent attention to detail.
Self-starter who wants to dive in and own their projects while also collaborating with team members.
Know their stuff when working in Google Apps (docs, sheets, powerpoint).
Experience with Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver).
Knowledge of HTML and email softwares (Mailchimp) is a plus.
Familiar with SEO & SEM tactics is a plus.
Knowledge of the digital marketing landscape and web development is a plus.

WANT TO JOIN US?

Please sent your resume, Linkedin profile, relevant work examples, and answers to the questions below to info@bonsaimediagroup.com.

Desired length of internship?
Currently in school? Graduation year?
Days and hours per week available at our Seattle office?
What do you want to learn at Bonsai?
Do you have experience with social media, SEO, PPC, video, or other digital marketing skills?
How would you rate your writing skills on a scale or 1 - 10 (high)?
How would you rate your graphic design skills on a scale or 1 - 10 (high)?
Will this be for school credit?

Working at Bonsai Media Group!

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 20:59:03 Z

What’s it like to work at one of the foremost digital marketing agencies in Seattle? Allow us to give you a first-hand glimpse. Check out this video that the Bonsai team put together covering everything about working at Bonsai Media Group!

We believe that by emphasizing teamwork and creativity we make Bonsai the ideal workplace, and that really comes down to three things:

Passion

Nobody wants to come into work dreading the day. That’s why we believe in fostering passion among our team. The old adage goes, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” At Bonsai, we aim to craft work experiences that our team can be passionate about.

Creativity

Creativity permeates everything we do here at Bonsai Media Group, and no matter what your role may be, to be successful here requires the ability to think creatively on one's toes at all times.

Collaboration

Teamwork is a must at Bonsai! We are a relatively small company, so that means every voice has the capacity to make an impact in a major way. Everyone at the company has a different specialty and we all work best when we feed off of each others knowledge and expertise.

At Bonsai Media Group, we operate with five core values which embody our work across all our various disciplines:

# Do Dope Shit

Whatever it is we’re working on at Bonsai, we try and inject a bit of flair to make it the best possible product.

# Better Together

Every member of the team here at Bonsai brings something unique to the table, and that diversity of talent is what sets Bonsa apart from other digital advertising agencies.

# We Take Pride

From launching a massive website to updating on-page elements, to managing your social media presence, we take pride in each and everything we work on,

# We Deliver

We deliver results and we always meet or exceed the expectations. At Bonsai, we do what we say we’re going to do, plain and simple.

# Grow or Die

We encourage a culture of growth and opportunity here at Bonsai. At all levels, we’re constantly learning and improving upon existing process to continually improve.

So, what do you say? Interested in joining the team at Bonsai Media Group? We've always got our eyes peeled for talented folks across a wide range of skillsets.

If you think you'd make a welcome addition to Bonsai Media Group get in touch with us today!

Determining the Optimal Marketing Budget, the Bonsai way

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 20:15:50 Z

Here’s the deal - Marketing is crucial in both accessing and assessing, your consumer base. You may be offering the world the most revolutionary product or service, but no one will ever know about it if you don’t tell them. On the flip side, you could be going full steam with your marketing efforts, shouting from the mountaintops to anyone who will listen, and wasting tons of money with little return. In the modern digital space, marketing is just as much about reaching your audience as it is constantly learning how to reach them better. The optimal marketing budget for any brand product or service involves not just how much to spend, but when, and where to spend.

So, if you’re struggling to provide a proper forecast of your budget for the upcoming fiscal year, remember these tips for determining the optimal marketing budget.

Goals

Your marketing goals are highly dependent on your particular organization and industry. When digital marketing agencies, like Bonsai Media Group, sit down with clients the work we do is to quantify goals. Ultimately, the goal of MOST marketing efforts is to get the attention of the public and have them take the desired action. When determining goals with our clients, the desired action breaks down into a dollar value and ultimately the value of the average customer or purchase. Once you know that number, it becomes easier to determine how much your willing to pay to acquire the customer, which brings us to the 1st Commandment of budget determination - Cost Per Acquisition [CPA] - i.e. the average marketing cost to acquire one purchase or customer.

Broad unmeasurable goals might be the jumping off place, but in determining marketing budgets, we want goals to be quantifiable. The first step in quantifying those goals is to calculate your average CPA and determine ways, if any, to bring that number down, thus increasing the spread of your budget. After that, comes revenue calculation.

Revenue Calculation

This sounds obvious, but the amount to spend on marketing can only be determined if you know how much you already have. If you are so fortunate as to have a CFO, financial department, or accountant, then you’re already well acquainted with the content in this section, but if you’re a smaller shop, a good rule of thumb for most organizations is to stick to the 10% rule. Allocating at least 10% of your revenue towards marketing efforts is a healthy balance, but remember, this is just a guideline.

In 2017, the average for most organizations’ was around 12%, and that’s spread out wildly across different industries -

Education: 18.5%
Consumer services: 17.4%
Transportation: 11.2%
Consumer Packaged Goods: 11%
Service Consulting: 9.4%
Tech/Software/Biotech: 8.5%
Communications/Media: 6.6%
Healthcare: 6.2%
Banking/Finance/Insurance: 3.9%
Retail/Wholesale: 3.8%
Energy: 2.2%
Mining/Construction: 2%

*taken from the CMO Survey August 2017

Perhaps those sectors that dip below the 5 number should be thinking differently, but that’s a topic for another post.

Furthermore, the U.S. Small Business Administration offers recommended marketing budgets of 7%-8% for small businesses with revenues of less than $5-million and profit margins of 10%-12%.

Budgeting by percentage is incredibly effective, however, is a tough fit for brand new businesses that may not yet be able to accurately or confidently estimate revenue, so obviously, the amount of your revenue you put towards marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

Budget vs Spend

Another important aspect of revenue allocation is the understanding of budget vs. spend. Your budget is the total costs to execute your marketing goals, Spend is the amount it takes to acquire certain marketing placements. The budget may encompass the cost of employees, services, or software, whereas spend is an amount allocated to actually reaching the public with your messaging. Spend is an aspect of the budget and not the other way around.

As we mentioned above, the average revenue allocation for most business in 2017 was around 12%. By contrast, the average marketing spend as a percentage of revenue was just under 7%.

Understanding that gap between budget and spend is an ongoing calculation that’s crucial to your overall revenue allocation, and of course where that money goes affects the spend in a number of ways. And just like revenue calculation, the breakdown of budget vs spend really depends on your goals and your organization, but understanding these two numbers is crucial.

Side Note - Fixed budgets

Rather than forecasting for the future, many new businesses can only account for cash on hand. In such circumstances, a fixed dollar amount can often be safer way to create a budget.

The SBA divides marketing costs into two categories: brand development costs and the costs of promoting your business.

Because a fixed budget is exactly that–fixed–it’s important to be thorough in planning how it will be utilized. Return to your goals and make sure they’re quantifiable and specific. What is the best campaign to reach those goals: SEO marketing; promotional event; print ad? Fixed marketing budgets are best reverse engineered.

Got the Budget, But Not a Place to Put it?

Though the results of any marketing campaign and budget will vary from business to business, you don’t have to shoot totally blind.

A recent survey of 2,510 email marketers showed that email, social media, and SEO marketing campaigns all yield the highest ROI. So, if you’ve secured that marketing budget and you're tasked with stretching those dollars as far as they can go in the digital space, you’d better start crafting some ironclad SEO, email, and SMM strategies, which we can help with of course.

Risks

Any investment carries risks, but when budgeting for and planning marketing, those risks increase. With most investments, the risk assumed is that the investment won’t generate increased revenue. At worst an investment will fail to cover its own costs.

With marketing, however, a business takes on an added risk of damaging the brand image and decreasing revenue.

What do we mean?

The clearest example of how a bad marketing campaign can cost a brand beyond the budget investment comes from beverage giant Pepsi. Remember their very quickly pulled ad featuring Kendall Jenner diffusing a tense protest by proffering a can of Pepsi to police officers? If you do, it’s probably for the broad and harsh criticism it suffered.

The wrong marketing or ad campaign can do more damage even than failing to generate revenue, remember that.

Measurement

A given marketing campaign might a one-off, but any successful business should constantly be budgeting for marketing. For that reason, it’s essential you develop a way to measure your investment and its results.

Measuring the input and output of your marketing plans and budget will allow you to hone in on what works and what doesn’t. Over time you can put that data to into practice, refining the efficacy of your marketing budgets and campaigns.

Again it all comes back to CPA. How much does it cost for you to acquire customers? How are you going to get that number down?

How are you going to even begin to answer these questions without a solid way to measure results? Luckily, almost all digital channels these days have built-in analytics, and if you're not using GA, you’d better close this blog post immediately and install it on your site, pronto.

Optimization and Continued Performance

If you’re just starting out, though, what is the most effective way to maximize your marketing budget? If you look purely at the numbers, SEO provides one of the most worthwhile long-term investments. Unlike one-time promotions, ad-runs, or email campaigns, SEO, if done right, is the gift that keeps on giving.

Trends show that most companies have increased digital marketing spend by double-digit percentages each year since 2011 and that trend shows no sign now of slowing down. But, remember, there is no standard marketing budget, there’s only what’s right for you and your organization. No - this post isn’t a magic calculator that’ll spit out a nice shiny number, but these tips are more than useful when starting to think about pitching a monthly or annual marketing budget.

If you’re hoping to edge up your marketing game, 2018 is definitely the year to get in touch with a digital marketing agency like Bonsai Media. Contact us today!

SEO in 2018 - Bonsai’s Tips

Tue, 29 May 2018 20:42:14 Z

SEO is always changing, and 2018 is no different. SEO in 2018 has brought emergent technologies like voice search and mobile search into conversation, and with it new complexities to the field. But, site speed, quality content, and the right keywords remain the pillars of good SEO. If there’s one thing we at Bonsai Media group love it’s good SEO, so let’s dig into all the changes and updates that have happened or are set to happen in 2018.

RankBrain

In 2017, Google let the world know that RankBrain was their third most important ranking factor. RankBrain might sound scary, but it’s essentially just another algorithm Google uses to rank search results. RankBrain focuses on two metrics: 1) Dwell time, which measures how long a user spends on your page; and 2) click through rate, which refers to what percentage of people click on your page. Let’s break those down.

Dwell Time

SearchMetrics recently found that the average dwell time for a top-10 ranking page was 3 minutes and 10 seconds. If you’ve spent time analyzing your own metrics, you can appreciate just how long 3 minutes of dwell time is. So, why should dwell time matter? Well, if someone is spending a significant amount of time on a page, it probably means what’ they’re finding there is relevant to what they searched for!

How, you must be wondering, can you increase dwell time?

The answer to that question can be fairly complicated, but the absolute, most essential way to increase dwell time is with quality content. The better your content addresses the topic users are searching, the more time they’re going to spend with it. Not just quality content, but readable content.

What does that mean?

Well, not just breaking copy up with images and videos, but possibly reconsidering the way you present your copy entirely. No one wants to slog through a wall of text. That’s why bucket brigades like the “What does that mean?” above, and the image below are so important! They help break up the visual monotony of endless text.

Pro Tip - Think about a newspaper - the mixture of headlines, text blocks, images...that’s one easy way of making your content more engaging.

As essential as quality content it is, it’s not the whole story. The right keywords are essential to getting the right users looking at all that quality content. For example, if your brand name is Apple Pie, people looking for apple pie recipes might end up on your landing page for only seconds before they click away. Those misdirections will bring down your overall dwell time, and with it, your rankings.

Forget ‘Shallow’ Content Marketing

SEO used to mean very little more than seeding your pages, title tags, image ALT texts, and description tags with your targeted keywords. Google was looking solely at content as such. These days, however, Google is examining content in context.

Search engines care less about how stuffed with keywords your content is [kw density], rather, they care much more about how in-depth you go about a particular topic.

How can you be sure you’re providing in-depth content?

A simple rule is to keep your word count at a minimum of 2,000 words. Long-form blogging gives you all the space you need to cover every facet of a topic. Ultimate guides and long-form blogs usually outrank short articles.

Once you’ve rounded out a lengthy piece of quality content, spice it up by peppering it with well researched LSI.

What is LSI? It stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. That sounds pretty scary, but it just refers to keywords that are semantically related to your keywords. No, not synonyms or similar keywords.

For example, if your keyword is “propane grill,” your LSI may be “BBQ,” “recipes,” “summer,” or “outdoor cooking.”

When Google sees these LSI’s on your page, it signals that your page is covering its topic in full depth.

To get the LSI that will help you climb to the top of your SERP, you can use the handy free tool, LSI Graph. It’s as easy as entering your target keyword and hitting Enter. LSI Graph will show you a list of LSI keywords relevant to your target.

And, of course, Google knows best. Just enter search your target keyword and look over the “related searches” box.

Pro Tip - You can also crack Google Keyword Planner open by using their “Get Ideas” feature. Many of the results generated there are LSI keywords.

Mobile Index is Almost Here

You’ve been hearing about it for years already, but it’s actually coming! Seriously, Google even publicly announced the switch to mobile-first index. That means Google will consider your site’s mobile version even if it differs from the desktop version. The switch is no doubt encouraged by the fact that 60% of google searches are made from mobile devices.

Though the announcement came over a year ago and mobile-first still isn’t live, it’s liable to happen any day, which means you should be getting your ducks in a row right now.

Here’s how:

Consistency

Make sure you design and content is consistent across platforms. Buttons, menus, or slide bars that hide or truncate content are already annoying for users. What should matter more to you, is that whatever content is hidden will be completely ignored by Google. Give mobile users the same content your desktop users see.

Responsive Design

Google recommends responsive design over mobile “M.” site versions. If you’re trying to improve your SERP ranking, it’s best to take the advice of the largest search engine in the world.

Be the Best!

It might seem obvious, but your mobile site should rock! Responsive design and load speed are paramount.

Pro tip - Google has a mobile-friendly test you can use to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Video is the Next Big Thing

It may be hard to imagine video becoming even more important than it already is, but brace yourself. TechCrunch recently reported findings from Cisco that, by 2021, video will account for 80% of all web traffic.

YouTube is the best place and way to tap into video. It’s the second largest search engine behind Google and that’s something you can’t ignore. In fact, 55% of all Google searches include video results, and almost all of those videos are on YouTube.

Video is still largely untapped within certain industries, so publishing optimized videos on YouTube can edge you ahead of your competition and expand your SERPs.

Keeping in mind that Google owns YouTube, it’s safe to bet you’ll be seeing even more YouTube videos in regular Google searches. We’ve already seen indications of this in the way that Google has begun blending YouTube stills into image search results.

Like most things in SEO, video is ultimately another way to serve your site users. People want more video. Then embed, embed, embed! Embedded videos satisfy user desire for more video experiences, but it also helps to break up text-heavy blogging and create a more user-friendly experience.

Pay Attention to URL Structure and Crawlability

The eerily named Googlebot spiders are what crawl through URLs and page content to determine what pages might be relevant to given keywords. If your URL doesn’t reflect the content for a given page, you probably won’t rank for your target keywords.

Pro Tip - Googlebot spiders aren’t the only ones that notice URLs. A tidy, relevant URL can signal to users that your page is legitimate. Similarly, if your page gets linked, but all users see when they hover their cursor is a string of nonsense characters, they’re not as likely to follow that link to your content.

Do KW Research and Investigate Real SERPS

Don’t just rely on keyword tools! Resources like Keyword Explorer, Keyword Magic, and others are invaluable resources for SEO. However, in order to generate top rankings and CTRs, you’ll need to buckle down and do real research.

Searchers are using keywords and phrases to find the solutions and answers to real problems and questions. Your site, your company is working to provide those solutions and answers. How you optimize your content is a major determining factor in whether or not searchers access what you’re offering.

Pro Tip - the keywords (and ideally secondary keywords) that you target should be in line with the searcher’s intent, not just your own. Think about that!

Authoritative Content Creators

Content is key, but it depends on who it comes from. As we talked about a moment ago, searchers want real solutions to real problems. For your part, you want to do your best to make searchers feel confident in the solutions you’re providing. Calling on an authority is a great way to do that.

The benefits don’t stop at user experience. Bringing in a voice worthy of amplification reaches across platforms to increase social sharing and backlinking. As you already know by now, Google looks fondly on both of those things.

Returning to the first part of this section; authoritative voices are likelier to lead to satisfied users. Over time, Google will notice that people are spending more time with your page, returning to it, and sharing it.

Pro tip - this is where the influencer outreach component of content marketing can be particularly useful, especially at the outset. Get writers who have demonstrated authority online to vouch for you, write for you, and share your content.

Meta Tags Matter

Meta tags are becoming more and more important; more real people are reading them. As time goes on real people are becoming more and more literate in what once seemed like mostly online background language.

Pro Tip - The meta tag that is displayed on SERPs is sort of your first impression moment with searchers. Even that tiny snippet can be optimized for keywords and general click attraction.

Use Rich Snippets and Schema Tags

Snippets are the little descriptions that appear beneath titles and URLs on SERPs. Rich snippets include additional information that pertains to that page: an image; a user rating; calorie content for recipes; cost of a flight; etc., etc..

Rich snippets can make links more clickable by providing a touch more information.

Think of schema tags as the next level of rich snippets. Rather than just telling Google what your content says, schema tags tell Google what your content means. That helps the way your snippet is organized and can improve searchability and user experience.

Pro Tip - If you’re new to optimization and feel overwhelmed by this deeper niche, this article from Kissmetrics and Schema.org, a community founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex to promote structured online data, are great places to start.

Don’t Forget Site Speed

If your page takes too long to load, no one will ever see what’s on it. Optimized content can only take you so far. The first step in creating a positive user experience is site speed.

Pro tip - Research has shown that people won’t wait more than a few seconds for a site to load. Any more than that and you’re out of the game.

SEO in 2018 is bringing lots of exciting developments. It seems like the competition heats up more and more each passing year. If you’re interested in cleaning up your SEO game to make sure you’re up to speed, contact Bonsai Media Group today.

Facebook Blueprint: Everything You Need (And Don’t Need) To Know

Thu, 17 May 2018 17:13:59 Z

We’ve talked a lot about Facebook lately - the Cambridge Analytica scandal, up-and-coming digital ad platforms that serve as an alternative to FB ads...Facebook Advertising is on our minds at Bonsai Media Group, and thanks to recent news, it’s on the mind of lots of people who may have never considered the effectiveness of Facebook’s advertising platform. Now, it’s no secret that Facebook is just about the most effective means of digital advertising available. In fact, just about a year ago, it was reported that Facebook's Ad Revenue for q2 2017 amounted to 9.16 billion. Clearly, lots of people are using it, and that can be attributed to two things:

1) It really does work

Not only does it work, it works incredibly well. In 2017 it was reported that average CPC’s for Facebook, across all industries, was $1.72 and the average CPA was $18.68 - low compared to AdWords with an average CPA of $59.18.

2) The Self-Serve Style of the Platform is Appealing to those with low budgets

The self-serve nature of Facebook’s advertising platform was already recognized as a differentiator when they launched ads back in 2009. Yes, AdWords was the first to prove the viability of self-serve platforms, but it’s Facebook’s ‘easy to use’ interface that really kicked open the door for self-serve advertising.

The only problem

Yes, Facebook Advertising works and is quite cost-effective, and yes, just about anyone can create an account and start serving ads today. The problem is that, because of the accessibility, it’s WAY TOO EASY to waste a lot of ad spend if you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t necessarily need to hire a hire a marketing agency (though it will save you a lot of time and headaches ;] ) to ensure your ads are running properly, but you will need to study.

Enter Facebook Blueprint

Here’s Everything You Need to Know

If you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of considering Facebook Advertising, you’ve probably looked for a way to learn more yourself, or for a way to verify the skills of your marketing squad, with which you’re entrusting your precious ad budget. Here’s where the Facebook Blueprint Certification comes in.

Facebook’s Blueprint Certification is an online curriculum and certification program through which one can gain the advanced skills needed to be a successful Facebook Advertiser. It provides a rundown of Facebook’s entire advertising tool-kit, covering everything from managing pages, to running ads, to effectively utilizing Facebook’s extensive ad network, to measuring and optimizing campaigns, and maintianing data security for both you and your clients.

Bonsai’s Own Facebook Certified Buying Professional Weighs In

Is the Facebook Blueprint Certification worth it? Having just completed the Facebook Buying Professional certification program, all I can tell you is that....it depends. Without a doubt, there is a ton of incredible information, pertaining to Social Media marketing in general, available in the course material, which is free! The catch is that you need to pass two exams to achieve the certification, each of which cost $150, The Core Competencies Exam and either the Planning or Buying Professional certification. Here’s the kicker - if you fail, you have to to pay for another exam.

Facebook takes the test pretty seriously, offering it only at certified testing centers, or via a remote portal application. If you choose to test remotely, you need a microphone and webcam-enabled computer as proctors will monitor you throughout the test.

First, Start with Core Competencies Exam

The Core Competencies Exam tests one’s general knowledge of the Facebook platform, both Pages and Ad Accounts. Yes, it’s the first exam, but it’s no walk in the park; truth be told I didn’t pass it the first time I took it ($150 down the drain!) It’s much more technical in nature than the 2nd test, so lots of memorization is required. You’ve got to study - there’s just no getting around it.

The Core Competencies exam is important because it covers a lot of the crucial technical info that you should know if you're working with clients. Data-security on Facebook is a hot topic in general at the moment, and while I was studying numerous courses were updated to include details as to how exactly Facebook organizes and protects data. If you're interested in the subject, look up Facebook's data hashing procedures.

On top of that, there are two secondary exams, each of which are geared towards different specialties.

Buying Vs Planning….and why I chose Buying

The simplest difference between the two can be distilled to small vs large scale campaigns. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s be clear: there’s a lot of overlap between the buying and planning certifications. Take a look at the study course material for both, and you’ll notice that many of the same courses are featured in both learning paths. The one you choose really depends on what you need out of the platform. If you search online, a lot of people will claim that the planning certification is harder. While I can’t claim to know first hand, I can tell you that the buying certification was plenty difficult, and from what I’ve read and studied in during my test prep, I imagine planning to be right at the same level. The difference in perceived difficulty, though, really comes down to experience. See what I mean below:

The Planning Professional

According to Facebook, the Planning Professional certification is “awarded to digital advertising professionals who are proficient in planning successful Facebook advertising campaigns. You'll need to demonstrate advanced-level competency in the following areas:

Managing Facebook Pages
Selecting and using Facebook advertising objectives
Targeting audiences for maximum impact
Utilizing Audience Insights
Optimizing reach and frequency
Implementing planning strategy and best practices
Understanding Facebook’s measurement solutions
Thoroughly understanding how Facebook products can be used in advertising and communication strategies.”

Bonsai’s Take

This certification tests many of the same skills and concepts as the buying certification but on a much larger scale. If you’re more interested in generating brand awareness, utilizing Facebook Ads in conjunction or in sequence with other forms of advertising (like TV), or you manage many different campaigns with different start and end dates, this is the certification you should pursue

The Buying Professional

The Buying Professional Certification “is awarded to digital advertising professionals who are proficient in creating and buying Facebook advertising for maximum campaign impact. You'll need to demonstrate advanced-level competency in the following areas:

Managing Facebook Pages
Selecting and using Facebook advertising objectives
Managing, creating and purchasing Facebook ads
Targeting audiences for maximum impact
Improving performance and delivery via the ad auction
Meeting and reporting ad KPIs
Understanding and testing the Facebook Pixel and SDK
Leveraging consumer insights and the product catalog
Troubleshooting ad issues”

This certification is more aimed at testing the skills and knowledge that self-serve users or those of us in the digital agency world might need to successfully run, manage, and optimize campaigns. If you or your clients have VERY SPECIFIC goals with your Facebook Ads and you, or your clients, have less than 10k/month spend, this is the certification for you.

Bonsai’s Take

This certification tests many of the same skills and concepts as the buying certification but on a much larger scale. If you’re more interested in generating brand awareness, utilizing Facebook Ads in conjunction or in sequence with other forms of advertising (like TV), or you manage tons of campaigns with different start and end dates, this is the certification you should pursue.

Why Experience Matters

The reason that a lot of people think the Buying exam is easier is that the majority of experience that we digital advertisers have with Facebook Ads falls into this arena - Buying and managing ads at a particular level with a variety of goals. Then again, if you’re a national brand, and you’re used to TRP media buying across a variety of channels, the Planning Exam is likely to be in your wheelhouse.

Facebook Blueprint recommends that you study for six months with a recommended minimum of six months experience using Ads Manager. I’ve now been managing Facebook ads for two years, and I studied for four months and failed my first exam. Take it from me - you need experience in Ads Manager AND you need to study to pass this exam without shelling out a lot of cash.

Study Study Study

*image from Facebook Blueprint

Think you’re a Facebook Ad Guru? The ultimate test taker that never needs to study? I got sour news for ya, Jack. Unless you’re the ZUCK himself, there’s no way you’re going to pass without studying. The good news is that the course curriculum for the Facebook Blueprint certification is truly next-level impressive.

First, make a profile, at https://www.facebook.com/blueprint/

You can immediately start courses, each of which is broken down into an important category, so you can focus your learning.

*image taken from Facebook Blueprint

PLUS, they have dedicated learning paths for all three exams, the Core Competencies, the Buying, and Planning certifications.

Here’s What You Don’t Need

1): You don’t need to go through 100% of the E-learning courses to pass the exam.

I attempted to 100% all of the course material before taking my first test. Not only did I not get through all of it, I failed the first exam. Do yourself a favor and just follow the learning paths for each exam, focus your studies on just those e-learning courses and their respective resource materials, take the test, and move on to the next exam. Furthermore, a lot of the information contained within the Blueprint materials pertains to data-security o

2) Not all of the Skills or Concepts on the test are crucial to your Success

Is it really important for your day to day activities if you know exactly where to find a specific metric, or you memorize the ideal image dimensions for a specific ad format? The likely answer is NO. That’s not to say that you won’t need that knowledge to PASS the exam, because you will. But, if I’m being honest, a good 30-35% of the questions on each exam were typical multiple choice information memorization specifically designed to make the test more difficult and in the reality of day to day work, any of this information is a google search away, or easily found in Facebook’s resources, which brings me to my final point.

3) You Don’t Need to Get Certified to Kill it on Facebook

This pains me to write this but, depending on your goals and your job, you really don’t need the Certification to run successful Facebook ads. You do need experience and you do need to study or learn about the platform, but the Certification itself is fit for people like myself who are in the business of digital advertising, not for those that are looking to run their own campaigns. Plus, all of Facebook’s course material is built around typical digital advertising verbiage and goals, which makes it incredibly simple to connect the dots between Facebook’s capabilities and your business goals.

Like I mentioned earlier, all of Facebook’s E-learning Curriculum for the Blueprint exam is totally free - so, anytime you need to find out anything, just go there.

What if you want Pro-Level Facebook Ad Management without the Certification?

That’s where Bonsai comes in. If you’re looking for professional level Facebook Ad Management, involving everything from targeting, creative, measurement, and optimization, Bonsai is uniquely qualified to take the reigns. If you’re interested in stress-free Social Media marketing that works, contact us today!

Facebook Cambridge Analytica What Happened and How to Protect your Data

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 19:45:38 Z

By now you’ve probably heard or read something about a Facebook scandal that seems to have completely shaken not only the companies future but the future of privacy and security in technology as a whole. Lets take a look at what happened, What data Facebook has on you and what you can do to protect your data.

What Happened

In 2014, a Cambridge University researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, created an App that was downloaded 270,000 times. Users gave their online facebook information to him and unbeknownst to the users, he sold their information to a political strategy/ data mining firm Cambridge Analytica. At the time, Facebook allowed Kogan to access Facebook profiles of his Users, but also all of their friend’s profiles as well. This is how he managed to collect such a high volume of profiles. Cambridge Analytica was then able to process the data, to see what users liked, what they were looking for, etc and better advertise to those users. This was then used by the Trump campaign to target these users.

What Data does Facebook Have?

When people hear that data has been stolen, it’s not exactly obvious what that means. Data is a really vague term, so what information does Facebook actually store about you?

These are the things that Facebook monitors.

Ads you clicked on
Apps you use
Your phones contact list
Events you went to
Friends you accepted, Friends you declined, Friend requests you sent, removed friends.
Everything posted on your wall
All your photos on facebook
All your videos on facebook
All your messages you’ve sent
Everyone you "poked"
Events you attended

But the question remains, do people care?

Does anyone really care?

It certainly doesn't seem like people are going to stop using Facebook, HOWEVER, this does seem to be a major step backwards for the tech industry. People will be wary of how and what they share online.

Leave comments and let us know what you think!

3 Up-and-Coming Social Media Marketing Platforms That Are Making a Push in 2018

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 19:55:45 Z

We just rounded out Q1 of 2018, and in light of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the expected changes to the Facebook ad platform, just about everyone is looking for an alternate leg up when it comes to marketing their business on social. 2018 might be the year that marks the beginning of Facebook’s eventual decline, but it could also be the year that newer social media marketing platforms start to really take hold.

First of all, it may not be fair to call each of these "up-and-coming."

It's not as though the platforms we mention are unheard of. Just the opposite in fact. But, in terms of the digital advertising standards that have been set by Facebook and Adwords, these three have a lot of ground to gain.

As with most with new digital spaces or advantages, the market typically rewards early adopters. So with that in mind, here are three alternative social media marketing platforms that are making a push in 2018.

1. Snapchat Advertising

It’s been talked about at length in recent years, yet Snapchat is still often overlooked as a viable marketing channel.

There are 2 reasons you’d want to take a second look at Snapchat. The first is that it’s widely utilized among millennials. 86% of U.S. Snapchat users fall into the 13-34-year-old age demographic, and the network reaches 41% of all members of that same demographic in the U.S. The reach that Snapchat can achieve for the US’ most valuable demographic is certainly evident.

The second reason you should reconsider Snapchat is their current advertising platform, which has been described as nascent but is actually robust, and it’s iterating quickly.

*image from TechCrunch

Just this week they released two new features, allowing advertisers to sell products via lenses, and a newer particularly interesting feature - a buy button within the camera app, providing users with an AR shopping experiencing, allowing them to make transactions right in the app.

One drawback is that it’s been estimated that over 70% of SC users don’t look at ads, but with these newer features coming out, that number is likely to drop.

2. Reddit

Reddit’s landing page boasts that it’s “the front page of the internet.” If you’re not already a Reddit user and you go to the site, you might not immediately buy into that tagline, or even understand what you’re looking at. But Reddit has over 300 million users, and it’s currently the 6th most visited website in the United States. Those numbers are likely to improve even more as the website continues to pursue its first redesign in a decade. The redesign aims to redefine Reddit to the uninitiated by mimicking the mobile app, which sees higher use and engagement than the web version.

Aside from the potential exposure, you should care about Reddit because its users are savvy, influential, and genuine when they endorse a brand or product. That, coupled with the fact that the site is in and of itself composed of countless communities each centered on a niche topic, means that you’re able to target a highly refined, highly qualified audience.

The sites ongoing redesign should be especially appealing to marketers who’ve had negative experiences in the past. The hope is that marketers can utilize safe spaces where their campaign will be well received. All the same, marketers should proceed with caution as Redditors will pull no punches when it comes to lambasting a post, whether it’s an advert or not.

In sum, it’s still early for Reddit advertising, but if you’re searching for the right customers in a high niche category, this platform is a good place to look.

3. Pinterest

Pinterest’s primary users are those trying to discover new items and decor for events and gatherings. It’s similar to Reddit in that it is made up of many niche categories, but really there aren’t many sites like it that allow users to enter and immediately dive down a visual rabbit hole. The jury is still out on the advertising redesign they rolled out at the end of 2016, as it’s yet to truly compete with the likes of Facebook and Adwords. Still, Pinterest is the 3rd most popular social media platform among US, adults, and while many have overlooked it, it’s quickly become a highly effective search engine and an important shopping platform.

*image from addthis.com

In fact it was recently just named the #1 shopping network among millennials.

55% of Pinterest users shop on the site, more than 4 times the rate of other digital platforms.

It’s obvious that ROI is high for businesses that can curate content to match with user’s needs via Pinterest. With most other platforms that level of specific curation is exactly the crucial barrier to developing a successful social media marketing campaign.

Pinterest’s advertising platform boasts access to over 5,000 “tastes” or user interests. Pinterest's tastes and associated Taste Graph track not just what users are interested in at the moment, but how their interests evolve over time. Such a unique data set gives marketers unparalleled opportunities to align advertising with users who have self-identified as belonging to that category. Of course, this type of content curation is nothing new, but in contrast to all the data-security issues surrounding Facebook currently, Pinterest’s form of targeting feels more transparent for both users and businesses, which is likely why it’s so effective.

Social media marketing is the most immediate and intimate way for advertisers to reach target demographics via highly specific targeting. However, it’s also the most rapidly growing and evolving advertising market. In the day and age of Cambridge Analytica and growing concern over user data security, staying abreast of the latest industry developments and platform changes, much less best practices is a challenge even for the most adept digital natives. But, it’s never been more important.

If you’d like to learn how Bonsai Media can help your social media marketing through consultation or management, contact us today.

Light Up the Unknown: Hone Dark Social Traffic

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 21:12:23 Z

It’s been a long while since the term “Dark Social” was first coined, but the significance of the term has only grown since then. In fact, many companies are still scratching their heads looking for a solution to the issue of dark social and accounting for what was traditionally thought of us unaccountable. Allow Bonsai Media Group to give you the details on how to hone and manage dark social in 2018

What is Dark Social? And how do you illuminate it?

Dark Social is simply, any unattributed traffic online, that is traffic that you can’t designate to a particular channel. Some simply think of it as direct traffic, but to think in these terms undercuts the value to be gained in monitoring and analyzing dark social. It’s better to think of dark social as a variety of peer-to-peer connections that drive traffic. It can be many things from a URL sent via a Facebook message to a WhatsApp chat about a dog wearing clout glasses. Dark Social even includes email threads and text messages. Really there is no shortage of use cases.

Conversely, traditional social is labeled just the opposite, as “Light Social.” The largest differentiator between Light and Dark Social is the means of customer tracking that is attributed to both methods. Think of Light Social as the traditional methods by which you track your online marketing channels. Any traffic you’re able to attribute to a channel in an analytics platform is Light Social.

How much traffic is Dark Social related?

Dark Social gets credited for a wide array of website visits, which is important to note when determining the number of visits it accounts for. A RadiumOne article from 2016 found the worldwide average of traffic driven by dark social media has risen from 69% to 84%. Many other tracking sites have this number above 70%.

Additionally, according to RadiumOne’s research, 46 percent of consumers age 55 and older share only via dark social. Differing from those in the 16 to 34 age group, where only 19 percent do so. The good news is that the older demographic seems to be the only generation largely attached to the peer-to-peer methods of sharing content that largely accounts for dark social. However, while they’re the only Dark Social reliant group, the rest of the demographics are increasingly spending more time with Dark Social as well (evident in the jump from 69% to 84%).

A Tip to Track Dark Social

The first tool is likely familiar to you; Google Analytics. You’ll just need to configure your settings properly to look into Dark Social happenings.

Let’s start by going to “Audience” Overview” in your Google Analytics website data view. After this click on the “Add Segment” option on the right. Next you’ll see a list of segment options, click on “Direct Traffic.” You’re also going to have to deselect any other segment options. After “Direct Traffic” is the only option highlighted click “Apply.”

From here, you can hone in which web pages are most frequently visited via Dark Social traffic. To do this go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Google will display a list of all of your web pages that visited via direct traffic. Next, break out that good old common sense and record all the web pages, or pieces of content, that could be easily memorized and reproduced, or shared via text, messenger, email, or another popular private online forum.

Now we’re going to create a filter to use those URLs. Under All Pages in Google Analytics, click Advanced to create a new filter, change ‘Include’ to ‘Exclude’ in the drop-down list. For the dimension pick ‘Page’. Then in the field at the end of the row, type in the directory of one of your simpler web pages (EX: “/services/”, “/team/”, or “/about/”). Add as many of the simple URLs from before as you can to this page. If you apply the filter now your results will consist of your website’s harder-to-remember URLs, which carry no refferal data with them. What these results represent are the potential Dark Social links to your site.

Putting the Data Together

Why is this important? Harder to remember URL’s, like those that lead to a particular product page, a particular piece of useful content for example, are those that are most often shared privately, and consequently are those that are further down the conversion funnel for the user. In other words, the pages with broader information on your site are more likely to be directly visited without the aid of a private share, but these pages also tend to lie further up the conversion funnel, which means that direct traffic to these pages is of slightly less consequence than direct traffic to a more specific page.

IN SHORT, understanding which of the more specific pages on your site are being visited directly is incredibly useful information for all of your marketing channels, but particularly PPC and SEO.

Need more Help?

Honing Dark Social is a tall task. Admittedly, no agency has the tools to gather all of the specific data blurred by Dark Social’s veil of anonymity. Monitoring Dark Social traffic to your site is not a guaranteed path to success, but it is a great place to look if you’re hoping to branch into new opportunities with PPC and SEO.

If you want to know more about harnessing the power of data analytics for dark social, contact Bonsai Media Group today!

Work Smarter Not Harder in 2018: Actionable SEO Tips to Keep Your Eyes On the Ball This Year

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:44:24 Z

It’s 2018, which means for the past month or two you’ve likely heard all sorts of tips, tricks, and advice for reorienting your SEO strategy in accordance with all the forthcoming changes. Well we wouldn’t be one of Top SEO companies in Seattle if we didn’t weigh in on the state of SEO in 2018. With that in mind, here are a few actionable tips to help you work smarter and not harder on your SEO in 2018.

Always Keep in Mind That Rankings Are Not the End-All-Be-All

Too many SEO’s, while incredibly insightful and technically savvy, often focus too closely on SERP’s and ranking factors, and not enough on the actual problem they’re trying to solve or the specific numbers they’re trying to hit. Part of working smarter not harder means focusing on real-world, measurable metrics; ROI on your SEO spend is a great place to start. Remember: rankings are not the ultimate goal, they are just a measurable vehicle by which you or your client can achieve your goals. It’s less important to rank #1 for a KW than it is to sufficiently achieve rankings that will impact you or your client’s bottom line. The unfortunate piece of this puzzle is that it can take a matter of months before one realizes the ROI from SEO efforts, but ultimately, it pays dividends. Additionally, these are expectations that should be built into your SEO strategies and proposals.

Clicks and ranking are hugely important and directly related to SEO ROI, but understanding user intent and how to convert clicks into dollars is what will help your and your client’s thrive.

Stop Trying to Rank for Overly Competitive KW’s

This is closely related to our previous point, but it’s worth reiterating. You should stop trying to rank for massively competitive keywords that require an inordinate amount of time and effort. That is, unless you have the time and budget to compete with big dogs in your vertical. Instead focus on ranking for higher performing, less competitive keywords. Of course, this is easier said than done, but the unfortunate truth is that a lot SEOs focus too closely on achieving home run rankings out of pride, rather than focusing on realistic goals and strategies that are much more likely to move the needle. It’s not always a race to the top of the steepest mountain; specificity and achievability are the pillars of a successful SEO campaign.With that in mind, try and focus on long-tail keywords that users rely on to find the exact offerings you provide. When putting together an SEO strategy, make sure the keywords your targeting are always specific, relevant, and achievable.

Build SEO Business Cases

Get in the habit of building detailed, yet transparent SEO business cases. This is no small task. A SEO business case is essentially what you’ll hand to your client or your company’s executives that explains how a particular SEO strategy will affect your bottom line. Your SEO business case should always include these five parts:

1- Well-defined, core keyword set

Your core keyword set is what’s already driving traffic to your site or page.

2- Assembled, Well-organized Data -

Not all keywords are the same. Compiling and sorting data will lead you to an understanding not only of which keywords are relevant, but whether or not they are currently ranked, as well as which keywords present new ranking or business opportunities.

3- Create detailed ranking scenarios based on ‘best’ and ‘worst’ results

Provide different scenarios for a rankings forecast. Different keywords have different base ranks, which you should already know. From there you can create a table that estimates rank position gains over time, provided that your tactics are successful.

4- Provide Estimated traffic by keyword

How much traffic is each keyword estimated to provide? Based on industry averages (which are quite well-known) you should have enough information to be able to provide a realistic estimate of average conversion rates based on the increased percentage of traffic

5- Track everything

This is one of the most important steps. Whether your business case follows your estimates or not, it’s crucial that you track each and every one of your efforts in order to track progress and make additional optimizations down the line.

Prioritize Ranking Factors

Your SEO business case isn’t only your campaign pitch, it’s also your blueprint for the campaign. A good business case will illuminate what ranking factors are important to drive traffic, and those factors should be prioritized accordingly. Some ranking factors, like most On-Page SEO elements, are well-within your control and should be highly prioritized. Off-page SEO and link building is less in your control and, while these tactics can have a massive impact, should only be attended to after the low-hanging fruit has been dealt with. You never know the impact simple on-page changes can have.

Get Buy-In From Company Stakeholders

Again, a good business case accomplishes many things. Buy-in is one of them. SEO is a complicated field with many moving parts. Which is why it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees when you talk about it. The reason SEO exists, and how you’ll get stakeholders to buy-in is by explaining that SEO drives revenue; increases brand awareness and visibility; creates more relevant metrics for marketers; drives content. Don’t get hung up on the deeply acronymic language of SEO. Many people don’t even know what SEO stands for; utilize language that speaks to the lexicon and interests of your audience.

In conclusion, SEO in 2018 is about staying actionable, focused, and continuing to work smarter not harder as SEO continues to evolve. If you’re looking to partner with SEO experts in Seattle, holler at us today.

Social Media in 2018: What to Look For and Where to Invest Your Time

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 22:26:34 Z

Social media presents one of the greatest opportunities for growing businesses to generate buzz around their brand, as well as drive traffic and generate revenue. However, every platform is constantly innovating, and social audiences are becoming increasingly more discerning around the content they’re viewing via social, which means the competition for their attention is always on the rise. As such, certain trends we’ve identified in 2017 are likely to have significant impact on Social Media Marketing strategies in 2018. Here’s what to look out for and where you should spend your money:

The Rise of Ephemeral Content

It may have a daunting name, but if you’re an avid social user, you’re likely already familar with ephemeral content in the form of Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook Stories. Ephemeral content is just content that doesn’t last forever. Most ephemeral content is available for just 24 hours before it disappears. Right now, more than 200 million people use Instagram Stories each month. That’s 50 million more than Snapchat can claim and Stories is only a year old. If your audience is using Instagram, having your brand name appear at the top of their feed is invaluable in raising brand awareness. This is huge, because it means a successful Instagram campaign will have to include Stories.

For a good example of what this might start to look like, take a look at the New York Times Insta; they’ve recently begun incorporating truly native, fully produced story suites. Another form of ephemeral content to be on the lookout for is livestreaming, which is also possible through Instagram Stories.

Influencer Marketing Still Hugely Important

Influencer marketing is an important way to engage with audiences. More than 90 percent of marketers who used influencers reported they believed it was successful. However, micro-influencers are the vanguard of successful influencer marketing campaigns. HelloSociety classifies micro-influencers as accounts with 30,000 or fewer followers. You may be thinking that’s not a great deal of exposure and, in a way, you’re right. However, take into consideration the finding from Technorati that 54% of consumers believe that, the smaller the following, the greater the influence.

That’s probably because 83% of consumers take product recommendations from friends over advertising. Authenticity is hugely important in successful influencer marketing. Often, a great deal of followers might cause a viewer to deem that account compromised in its ability to fairly recommend products. There’s been a broad and successful move toward using expertise over celebrity in influencer campaigns.

Start Focusing on a Younger Crowd

It isn’t news to say millennials have been driving retail trends, but would it surprise you to know that millennials are out, Gen Z is in? This emerging market, numbering 69 million, was born in 1998 and is just coming into adulthood. Unlike any generation before them, Gen Z’ers are true digital natives, born device-in-hand; nearly half are connected for 10 hours each day. In many ways, reaching your audience on social is going to mean targeting this new demographic as they are likely to outrank millenials in buying power very shortly.

Rethink Twitter

If you have limited marketing resources (who doesn’t?), consider diverting some of those away from Twitter. In their 2017 Q3 earnings call, Twitter was forced to report they had been miscalculating their monthly user user numbers since 2014. As a result, they’ve had to re-report lower user figures from that period. Twitter has only reported 5% of the growth in average monthly users as its behemoth competitor Facebook. For advertisers, it’s important to keep in mind that Twitter’s ad platform is far less robust than its competitors. Not to mention that twitter is far less compatible with leading industry trends like video and ephemeral content.

Stricter Guidelines and Scrutiny

Across all social platforms, the 2016 presidential election revealed ads, posts, and accounts linked to Russian meddling, violence, and inappropriate content. In response, Facebook has this year added 3,000 new employees worldwide to monitor content. While these changes in the industry shouldn’t affect most advertisers, it’s crucial to keep on eye on changing ad policies of any kinds.

That was just a brief overview of what Social Media Marketing Agencies are expecting in 2018. It may not seem like a lot, but the truth is that any one of these trends may actually upend those tried and true social media marketing strategies you’ve been relying on in 2017. If you’re looking for help managing all the new changes and updates happening on social, get in touch with Bonsai Media Group, one of the premier Social Media Marketing agencies in Seattle - we can help you make sense of the noise and hone a strategy to help you reach your audience and grow your business online.

So, if you’re thinking about ways to make 2018 a year for reinvigorated approach to social, give us a holler today.

SEO in 2018: Mobile-First is No Longer Strategy, It’s Survival

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 03:46:05 Z

With the mobile-first index due out on in early 2018, it’s no longer just competitive advantage to have a mobile friendly, responsive site. Without the proper precautions and set up, your rankings and your business are sure to suffer. Over 60% of search is now mobile, and nearly 20% of mobile queries are voice searches, which means that your site needs to be mobile friendly from both a search engine’s and a user’s perspective. We’ll cover everything you need to ensure your site is mobile friendly, including moving mobile sites to responsive URLs, 301 redirects, rel=”canonical”, page load time, geotagging, voice search, as well as the forthcoming HTTPS update - everything and anything you need to know to ensure your website is properly established for mobile from a technical perspective.

Mobile SEO Overview

What is “mobile-first,” anyway? Right now, Google indexes sites from the perspective of a desktop user. That is, desktop versions of websites are prioritized as primary. Google’s gradual shift to mobile-first indexing means websites will be indexed with primacy given to mobile versions. Unless the mobile and desktop versions of a website are significantly different, the shift to mobile-indexing should have no immediate effect on site ranking.

Best practices persist: signal when a page is mobile; keep a page crawlable by avoiding robots.txt; avoid frustrating interface features such as flash content that won’t cooperate with mobile devices by relying on responsive design.

Responsive Design

Responsive web design (RWD) sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS alters the page to the device accessing it. In terms of SEO, the primary reason to use responsive design is that it improves user experience. With one URL for desktop and mobile, users can link and share your pages much more easily. Similarly, it cuts down on load time. RWD means no redirection to access the appropriately formatted version of your page. It’s not just friendlier to users, it cuts down on the resources Googlebots use to crawl your site, which means more of your site can be indexed, which can indirectly improve ranking.

If the onset of Google’s Mobile Index is just bringing RWD into your considerations, you’re already wayyy behind the ball. Contact Bonsai, for any and all questions relating to Reponsive Design and how to get you site up to speed.

Dynamic Serving

Dynamic serving uses the Vary HTTP heading to serve different code from the same URL, depending on the user-agent. Like responsive web design, the goal dynamic serving is that user-agents see the appropriate version of a web page. Be careful, though. Dynamic serving depends on successfully detecting the correct user-agent, which is tricky and error-prone. You can learn more about user-agent detection in Google’s developer guides.

Separate URLs/rel=“canonical”

In this mobile design format, wholly separate URLs are used to differentiate between desktop and mobile versions. You’ve probably already seen websites that delineate between desktop and mobile using the common format “www.example.com” and “m.example.com.” These separate URLs will serve different code to different devices or user-agents.

Additionally, in order to help Google’s algorithms index your page your pages and to signal the relationship between two URLs, annotate them with rel=“alternate” and rel=“canonical”. On your primary desktop URL include the annotation rel=“alternate” pointing to the related mobile URL.

Likewise, on the mobile URL, include the annotation rel=”canonical”, pointing to the related desktop URL. Be careful in using separate URLs. Make sure your redirections are 1 to 1. To many references from mobile to desktop or vice versa can result in users being redirected away from the page they’re trying to access.

rel=”canonical” has the additional benefit of resolving duplicate content issues, which will improve link and ranking signals. Essentially, including rel=”canonical” in a code signals the preferred URL for a page. This is important when you’re trying to improve SERP ranking through links to your page. If all of those links are using slightly different URLs, then each of those URLs only gets one link, unless you use rel=”canonical”, in which case all are directed back to your primary URL.

301 Redirects

301 is yet another way to automatically redirect to the appropriate URL. It’s very similar to rel=”canonical”, but is more often used in cases where you may need to permanently move from one URL to another.

Page Load Time

You probably already know that page load time is one of the factors Google’s algorithms use to calculate search engine rankings. Beyond Google, it’s also a factor in how (or if) users interact with you site. Kissmetrics reports that 30% of users will only wait 6-10 seconds for a page to load before they abandon it and that 16% of users will wait only 1-5 seconds. That means that nearly half of all users are only giving you a maximum of 10 seconds for your content to load. Make sure your site loads quickly on all devices, or it will be firs ton the chopping block in Google’s eyes.

Geotagging

Geotagging is ubiquitous in photosharing. In fact, if you have an iPhone or iPad, geotagging is occurs automatically when you use the phone’s built-in camera. Geotagging is simply the association of geocoordinates with any sort of content. If you’re trying to boost clicks for a local service or business, geotagging can be a great tool, because search engines often use them as a way to rank relevance from locally specific searches.

Voice Search

Voice is quickly supplanting typing for online search requests. No wonder, since ease of use has never been greater as accuracy (continually improving) is currently at 95%. In fact, 1 in 5 adults use voice search rather than type. The core of SEO is great content and voice search won’t change that. It does, however, affect how we want to think about keyword use. People use type and voice search differently.

For example, if your client is a veterinary clinic, you would want to corner both the type search query “Seattle vet” and the voice search question, “Is chocolate toxic to dogs?”

HTTPS

HTTPS (also known as SSL) stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. It is simply the secure version of the more familiar HTTP; data exchanges between site and browser are all encrypted. A secure site is necessary wherever transactions are being made or personal information is being collected. Since 2014, Google has made it clear that HTTPS is a ranking factor and Chrome already displays in the URL bar whether or not a page is “secure.” That little padlock is becoming a standard that builds trust with users.

We know that was a lot to unpack, but if you sleep on the Mobile First index, which is due out in early 2018, your business is sure to suffer. Mobile-first indexing is just around the corner, which means that tailoring your SEO to mobile platforms and users is no longer just competitive advantage. If you’re ready to launch your mobile-ready SEO campaign, get in touch with us today.

The 2 Biggest Opportunities All SMBs Miss When it Comes to Social Media Marketing

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:57:42 Z

Social Media Marketing. Everybody’s talking about it, everybody’s trying their hand at it, but if you actually spend time online interacting with businesses and brands that you like, you’ll notice that very few seem to actually utilize this amazingly functional and completely free means of interacting directly with customers to it’s full potential.

It’s 2017 and we’re headed full tilt into 2018. As it stands, Social Media Marketing is among the most effective digital market tactics available to businesses. Yes, much of that is a result of the robust ad platforms that Facebook and it’s competitors have been rolling out in the last 2-3 years. Social Ad Spend reached around 31 billion in 2016, it’s expected to top out at 35 billion in 2017, with no signs of slowing in 2018. But, that’s only one piece of the pie; to look at Social Media as just another paid digital advertising channel is to miss the biggest and most important piece of the pie.

In this day and age, the power of the discount and the personal touch with regards to social media marketing can’t be ignored by small and midsize businesses. Social media accounts for 1 in every 3 minutes users spend online and like it or not, consumers use social media to learn about and interface brands that they care about.

If you want to take advantage of this, there are two pieces of extremely low hanging fruit that will enable you to do so. Meet your customers where they are and give them what they want:

#1. Customer Service

Nearly 60% of Americans with social media accounts say that it has made it easier to get answers to typical customer service inquiries, so why doesn’t every business reach out and actively interact with customers via social?

There’s no good answer to the question, especially when you consider that 71% of consumers

who have a good social media customer service experience are likely to recommend that brand.

And customer service is already one of the top five reasons that people follow businesses on social media. Meeting the needs and expectations of your customers is a great way to build loyalty and build your brand.

Here are some tips to simplify Customer Service via Social Media:

Customers expect a rapid response from a real person. If you have the resources, designate the responsibility of responding to customers via social to a team member.
Set up as many notification streams as you can muster. Email, mobile push notifications, If This Then That automated notifications….any feasible means of alerting yourself to activity on your page should be engaged. It’s better to receive a ton of notifications in order to address a customer’s concern than let one slip through.
Employ a social CMS/scheduling platform like Hootsuite. Not only can you monitor and interact with customers via multiple channels, platforms, and profiles all at once, you can also schedule posts, which frees up your time to be more agile with your response.
When you respond to a complaint, offer a real alternative for the customer (a refund, a replacement, a voucher, etc.) Within the realm of customer service via social media, apologies, however sincere, only go so far.
Don’t just respond to the bad comments or complaints. Make sure to respond to and thank those that post positively about your brand, thank those that leave a positive review, and ABOVE ALL ELSE, ANSWER QUESTIONS!

#2 Promotions/Discounts/Deals

The #1 reason most social media users follow big brands is learn about discounts and deals. In fact, 53% of consumers spend over two hours a week hunting down deals and savings across all sources. Take advantage of how much time is spent on social media and offer deals, discounts and promotions to your customers where they’re most likely to find them. Here are two illuminating stats the reveal the viability of offering discounts to your social media followers.

With these stats in mind, it’s easy to see how offering discounts via social presents a viable opportunity for generating business and increasing brand awareness; customers are likely to buy more overtime while remaining loyal.

A big concern for smaller businesses when it comes to SMM is overall value and visible ROI. The good news is that with the right analytics set up, or even relying on the built-in analytics that come with a Social CMS like Hootsuite or Buffer, all your time, effort, spends, and returns are easily trackable.

We know what you’re thinking, but the truth is you shouldn’t be at all worried about alienating your audience or customers by interacting with them or offering them discounts. The prevailing thought used to be that users really did not want to be serviced brand specific content in their social feeds. While this may have been true in during the adolescence of these major social platforms, when they were all still wrestling with the question of revenue, it’s simply not the case anymore. In fact, 1 in 3 millennials have said that social media is their preferred method of interacting with brands.

In short, it'll suffice to say that not only do social media users look to interact with your brand, they expect you to interact with them. Don’t let ‘em down, eh?

And don’t get left behind; social media marketing is increasingly the most effective way to reach consumers and and build brand loyalty.

If you’re looking for ways in which you can bolster your social presence, and realize serious ROI from it, get in touch with Bonsai today.

SEO 101: On-Page Optimizations and How They Affect Your Rankings

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:50:54 Z

Last month we started a simple blog series entitled SEO 101, to save us a bit of time explaining the technical ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization to both clients and colleagues. These blogs are for those folks who, at a high level, know what SEO is, but are missing the technical knowledge of implementing an SEO strategy. With that in mind let’s jump right in. In this blog, we’ll provide a brief overview of On-Page SEO, what it is, and how it impacts your search engine rankings.

When taking on a new SEO client, the first step is determining their focus keywords. But where do you go from there? With on-page SEO, it’s step one.

What Do We Mean When We Say On-Page SEO?

SEO can be broken down into two categories: On-page and Off-page. Both refer to specific optimization strategies you take online to increase a site’s ranking results, and thus the traffic the site receives. As you might expect, On-Page SEO refers to the specific optimizations you make to your site to help boost rankings.

Where to Begin

The first place to start when developing an SEO strategy is to determine focus keywords, or the searches you’re trying to capture, which is a process that’s worth 10 blogs in and of itself. Keyword selection is truly the lynchpin of any successful SEO effort - it will determine every move you make both on and off your website. For the sake of brevity, we won’t cover it all here.

Beyond keyword selection is keyword assignment, whereby you assign particular keywords to a given page on your website.

As a core component of Bonsai’s Online Marketing System, we tell all of our client’s that each page on their website represents an opportunity to rank for between one to three keywords.

Check back on our SEO 101 blog series - we’ll cover the ins and outs of keyword selection and assignment. Afterall, those decisions are specific to your business, your website, and our overall marketing strategy.

For now, we’ll cover the specific aspects of each page to optimize when implementing On-Page SEO.

The Most Crucial On-Page Ranking Factors

Site Map -

A sitemap is the quickest, most effective way to tell the search engine what pages are on your website. Your sitemap is built to match the architecture of your site, which should be hierarchically organized by information relevant to the user.

Proper Keyword Placement (Avoid Stuffing!)

There are certain places that search engines crawl to determine what the page is about and if it’s relevant to a user’s query. Writing your site’s copy to include focus keywords in the following areas is often the first step taken in On-page optimizations:

Meta Tags - Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Meta tags are the clearest indication of what a page is about that you can give to a search engine. Some argue that Meta Descriptions are becoming less relevant, though you should still optimize them. Tip - try and include your focus keyword at the beginning of your meta tags, sites that do have been proven to outrank those that don’t.

H1 - Page Heading

The heading of your page is another important piece of on-page real estate that is important to optimize. It’s a big indicator to both the user and a search engine as to what the particular page is about. Tip - stick to one H1 heading on each page, and make sure it’s unique page to page.

Keywords in Page Content

Until not too long ago, it was common practice to include your focus keyword in your page’s text content as many times as possible. Nowadays, it’s pretty much common knowledge that keyword stuffing is effectively spam in the eyes of search engines and will get you penalized. Still, many SEOs will still argue that keyword density is an important factor when it’s really not. Tip - focus on logical, intelligent use of keywords from a user’s perspective and you’ll rank.

Image Tags - Descriptions, Tags, Captions

Image Captions, descriptions and alt text are all areas that are crawled by search engines to assess the relevance of your pages. As such, they represent another opportunity to include a keyword in your on page efforts. Tip - Page load speed is another important user and ranking factor. Optimize your images files to be as small as possible without losing quality to help improve page load time.

URL - Slug

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the page’s actual URL, the slug, the actual address of the specific page on your website is another opportunity to include a keywords. Tip - include the keyword near the beginning of the slug if possible

Avoid Duplicate Content

This goes hand in hand with keyword stuffing. Search algorithms are getting smarter and more adept at spotting content and websites that are solely designed to rank. While duplicating content and sharing it on multiple URL’s within the same domain was a successful tactic for primitive SEOs, the algorithms are just too smart for that now. Avoid duplicate content, particularly when it pertains to keywords, or you’re likely to be penalized. Tip - Again, think like a user, that’s what search engines are trying to do. Duplicate content in’t useful to users, which is why it’s often penalized. Try to create valuable, useful content that engages users.

Canonical Tags

As we said earlier, each page of your website represents an opportunity to rank for between one and three keywords, and for the sake of casting a wide net and bettering your chances, it’s best practice to spread those keywords over as many pages as you can. However, there are certain instances in which duplicate content is unavoidable - multiple ecommerce urls, mobile vs desktop urls, session id urls, etc etc. In this case the use of a Canonical tag enables you to tell the search engine which page to index and crawl as your preferred content, and which to avoid. Tip - this might sound like you’re getting into the technical weeds a little bit, and you are, but the good news is that most CMSs come with plugins are Canonical Tag functionality built in.

Other On-Page SEO Factors That Don’t Have to do With Keywords:

Internal and Outbound Links

Internal links are important for establishing optimized architecture that makes sites more legible to search engines, it helps to establish relevance as well as spread link juice across your domain.
Outbound links to other relevant sites represent a sign of trust. It indicates to the search engine that you’re sending users somewhere to get more information. Careful though - too many outbound links will diminish your page authority and hurt your rankings. Less is more.

Page load speed

The time it takes for a page to load is another important ranking factor. Perhaps it’s obvious, but the faster the page speed the better. Not only is pagespeed important to user experience (waiting for a page to load is a frustrating experience), but slow page speeds inhibit search engines from crawling more pages on your site, which can damage ranking. Some have indicated that search engines only consider the time to first byte, or the very first signal from the server rather than overall page load time, but either way faster is better.

Use of Schema.org structured data or other markup.

A collaborative project by search engines that provides consensus definitions for microdata tags, Schema is just one way to make your site more legible to search engines. Schema tags are just one example of HTML tags, and there are a few different kinds, but at Bonsai we use schema.

Mobile First

Is your site mobile friendly? Having a Mobile site is crucial to a positive user experience in a world where many users are accessing sites primarily on mobile devices. Plus, Google’s mobile first index is due out early next year, which means that if your site isn’t mobile friendly, your rankings are likely to suffer. But really, in today’s world of responsive design and mobile first design strategies, there’s no reason a serious business shouldn’t have a mobile friendly site.

How Does On-Page SEO Affect Rankings?

On-Page SEO is crucial, it cannot be avoided. The good news is that On-page factors are easy to control, and they’re well within reach of people with average technical ability thanks to modern day CMS systems. A good On-Page SEO strategy comes down to a strong understanding of the site’s architecture, user experience, and a site’s technical components. Knowing these components is just one aspect of it; writing great, relevant, useful content to fill these components is another.

Things Change Constantly

Google’s ranking algorithm is constantly updating, and 2018 will supposedly see the roll out of the mobile first index which will undoubtedly change things. It's important to stay on top of new or altered ranking factors as they develop, but it can be hard when there is just so much. As a Seattle based SEO firm, we’ve worked across multiple industries and helped countless companies achieve success in implementing results driven On-page strategies. Stay tune for the next blog in our series, which will cover Off-page SEO and tactics for driving traffic to your site from other well ranked sites across the web.

In the meantime, for any and all things related to SEO or Internet marketing, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

SEO 101: The Correlation Between Traffic and Rankings

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 21:07:51 Z

We spend a lot of time talking with our clients about search engine optimization (SEO), how it works, and why it’s so important. To help with that, and proactively answer questions you may have about SEO, we sometimes blog about it. One of the biggest questions we get concerns site traffic? Does the number of visitors affect my rankings. In short, yes...but the way in which traffic and rankings are correlated is not always completely clear. To break it down for you, we first need to take a step back.

What We Mean When We Talk About Website Rankings

Website or search engine ranking refers to a particular website’s position in the results of a search engine query. The nearer the top of a list of results, the higher a website’s ranking and the more useful or relevant it is to that query. Google, the most popular search engine, relies on a complex algorithm that uses more than 200 factors to determine a website rank. Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm and the factors it uses as inputs are all proprietary and undisclosed. Fortunately, however, good SEO consultants like Bonsai agree that keyword usage, site structure and speed, the quality and number of inbound links, and average time spent on sites are all among that top factors considered by Google’s ranking algorithms. With the right guidance from the right SEO company, and with the right attention paid to certain ranking factors, you can increase your rankings, and traffic, within a few weeks.

What We Mean When We Talk About Website Traffic

How many people visit a website, how many, and which, pages they view within it, and how many inbound and outbound links they follow are all tracked. The more people visiting a website, the more trafficked and popular it is, and website rankings, in their most basic sense, can be thought of as a popularity contest. The number of visitors isn’t the whole story with website traffic. How long they stay is also an important component of traffic and in understanding and unlocking the success of a website. Even if a site that gets thousands of hits in a day can’t be considered very successful if visitors are only staying for a second.

Traffic, Search Engine Rankings and How They’re Related

The correlation between search engine ratings and and website traffic is fairly intuitive: the more traffic a website has, the higher its search engine ranking; the higher a website’s search engine ranking, the more traffic it will receive. As i’m sure you can imagine, and as i’m sure we don’t need to explain, more traffic equals more business.

But how exactly does increased traffic affect ranking? There are a few specific ways:

Search visits: How many organic visits a site receives through search engine results.
Direct visits: Visits from users who open a website directly.
Total visits: The combined number of direct and search visits. No matter how users reach a site, the number of visits a site receives has been shown to have a high correlation with ranking well.
Global rank: A ranking system used by SimilarWeb and Alexa to determine
Time on site: How long users spend on a site is an important metrics for how engaging a site is and has a correlation to search engine rank.
Page views: Like time on site, more page views correspond to higher search engine rank.
Bounce rate: Bounce rates track how the rate of users who navigate away from a website after viewing just one page. Lower bounce rates indicate better user engagement and are correlated to higher search engine rank.

If you own a business that operates in the modern era, you know that web traffic is crucial. to Hopefully this blog has helped illuminate the relationship between website traffic and search engine ranking. One of the most effective ways to drive traffic is by attacking your website’s ranking, which is what SEO is all about.

For Seattle SEO, Bonsai is second to none. Give us a holler to find out how we can help your business with all its SEO needs.

2017: The Year of Death to Small Business Ecommerce Sites

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:39:53 Z

It’s a cutthroat online world out there, and it’s especially true for small E-commerce sites. Our Seattle internet marketing team sees it all the time. E-commerce giants continue to define the entire online shopping industry, making it extremely difficult for the smaller businesses trying to establish their own Ecommerce platform to keep their heads above water. The bad news for these smaller players – industry experts forecast that the market is not going to get any kinder to them. We’ve actually found that there is really no point in operating your own small-scale platform - that is, unless you can keep up with the features and functionality of large scale e-tailers. Here’s where most small business Ecommerce platforms fall short:

Poor Marketing

An effective marketing plan for an online store requires a multi-faceted approach. Of course, traditional online marketing methods aimed at generated traffic are always on the table, but in today’s online shopping arena, you need to pull out all the stops. Remarketing is one strategy that is becoming more and more essential if you plan to succeed in the online retail space. But, many small business E-commerce sites don’t have the know-how to implement a successful remarketing campaign Remarketing works to connect your brand and products to potential customers. How exactly does it work?

Remarketing lists with specific consumer criteria are created
A new visitor goes to your website
The visitor is cookied and their ID is attributed to a specific remarketing list
Websites that the visitor subsequently goes to will have targeted ads for your business

It’s a simple, cost-effective strategy, and one that e-tailer giants are wise to take advantage of.

Of course, there are other methods of marketing and generating traffic and interest in your ecommerce site, but ad retargeting is just one emblematic example of ways in which small business ecommerce platforms fail to take advantage of all the tools available.

Small Ecommerce Sites and the Reviews Problem

Consumers love to be heard. In fact, they’ve gotten to the point where they feel they deserve to be heard. Websites like Amazon and Overstock give customers the ability to express their opinions to large audiences. Without an arsenal of service and product reviews, an ecommerce site is not going to get the attention it needs. The proof is in the pudding:

90 percent of consumers depend on online reviews to vet a business
More than 30 percent of consumers will read up to six reviews on a product/company before purchasing
Over 70 percent of shoppers are motivated to take the plunge only after reading a good review

Small business Ecommerce sites often lack the functionality to leave and read through reviews on products, which evidently causes them to lose out on tons of business.

Poor Interface and User Experience

Let’s face it - the leading E-commerce sites are dominating the market because they have the resources and manpower to constantly develop their platforms, and sharpen their interfaces and user experiences to allow for quicker, easier checkout. User interface refers to the body of design elements that allow the user to interact with a site, while the experience is the feeling the user gets during the interaction. And, the two are not mutually exclusive - both aspects have to be spot-on and work in tandem.

Small ecommerce sites that have less-advanced platforms tend to have poorly designed, clunky interfaces that certainly leave customers wanting for a better experience. Obviously, this can create a problem for products and brands. A potential customer will leave a website and never return if they become frustrated by the inability to easily navigate and connect with it.

Inventory Management Difficulties

Small businesses rarely have the ability to integrate their ecommerce platform with an ERP system for inventory management. You can probably imagine why a company’s productivity would take a hit in this situation! Ecommerce platforms that don’t allow for proper ERP integration can make it extremely difficult for businesses to track inventory turnover, depletion and surplus.

If you’re not automating inventory management through an effective ERP/CMS integration, then there is truly no point in having an Ecommerce Site. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and to sell products online, your weakest link cannot be inventory management.

Tips for Moving Forward With an Ecommerce Site

Ok, enough of the grim details. If you’re struggling to get your own Small business Ecommerce site off the ground, then all of the drawbacks we just listed are probably not news to use.

So, if you’re deadset on establishing and running your own Ecommerce platform, here are some crucial tips to help you make the most of it:

Go all in or don’t bother

Choose a robust, cutting-edge ecommerce platform that includes the apps and software that will optimize your processes for you. Otherwise, you’re just going to make your life harder.

Provide optimal shipping options

The big guys often offer free, fast product delivery. You should do the same. Consider free or $2.99 shipping options at most. And, make sure it’s same day or next day shipping. Any longer than that, and you’re moving towards irrelevance when compared with large scale e-tailers.

Use a data feed

Your data feed is a file with details of your products. It synchronizes your product data with various systems, including inventory management, ad retargeting, and your CMS, to ensure that each user is always looking at accurate, relevant product information.

Get products in niche e-tailers

It’s hard to stand out if you’re selling products that everyone else is. If you target consumers with specific needs, you’re differentiating yourself. It’s a great way to build a loyal customer base, and it’s also great because you’re selling products on a different e-tailer site that you don’t have to manage.

Develop a plan for retaining customers

Don’t just focus on new customers. Try to develop an ongoing relationship with previous customers. Loyalty discounts are hugely important; offer users discount codes via newsletters and social media, and host sales and special events frequently.

At Bonsai Media, we understand how vital good ecommerce platforms can be to small businesses with great products. As a full-service Seattle internet marketing firm, we’ve helped many companies implement and manage online marketplaces, and we can help you too. And, of course, we handle a whole host of other design, development and marketing needs as well.

Let Bonsai help you grow your business online! Get in touch!

5 Simple Tips for Unifying Your Social Media Presence

Tue, 09 May 2017 16:27:34 Z

Social media has become a crucial piece of any solid Internet Marketing campaign. It’s not really how good your company looks on paper - it’s how you look online, and how you appear on social media. Because, like it or not, most people nowadays rely on social media to make purchase decisions - around 74% in fact! For many, it can be a frustrating experience. This is mainly because of the ever-changing landscape of not only platform types, but also the ways in which users are interacting with existing platforms. As a full-service Seattle internet marketing company, we’ve witnessed countless struggles with the social media juggernaut. The good news is that Social media management is pretty straight forward - and the potential gains are incredibly viable - as long as you’ve got a solid strategy and the right tools in place.

Hone In On A Cross-Platform Strategy

As you probably already know, just being on social media networks doesn’t result in automatic engagement. You’ll need to put a specific plan in place.

First Ask yourself:

Who is my core audience?
What channels are most conducive to that audience’s interests?
How do I want to appear to members of my audience (potential customers)?
What do I hope to gain? What is my specific goal with Social media?
Based on my goal, what specific Call to Action can I provide my users?

With this information, you should have an idea of which platforms might serve you best. Then, try to explore the individual communities within each through user interests, hashtags, or lists. Undoubtedly, there will be conversations surrounding your industry. What content gets a lot of shares? What influencers have the biggest following? What are they talking about? This will help you hone in on who your customer base is, what issues you should focus on in your social media marketing strategy, and how you should interact with your base.

2. Build Out a Content Calendar and Stick to It

Certainly, there are some similar functions behind social media channels; however, there is often little commonality between peak times and the type of engagement required for effective reach.

For example, Twitter’s peak user times are usually 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays.

It’s all about knowing what works for each platform -three tweets per day can work well for gaining Twitter Momentum, for example. Moreover, marketing the same content across multiple platforms is okay, but each accompanying update should be unique. With so many moving pieces, organization becomes really important here. Organize your posts by platform, and schedule them by day, week, and month.

Try using content calendar templates to plan and record what content you’re marketing, and when you’re marketing it.

3. Integrate Your Social Strategy With Your SEO Strategy, With Your PPC Strategy, and So On.

Bonsai has earned a reputation as one of the top Seattle internet marketing firms. Why? Because we do it all, and we’ve witnessed the different ways that the most viable internet marketing channels have become increasingly intertwined in recent years.

Did you know that Google will use your active presence on social media as an indicator of your relevance, affecting your ranking?

So, how do you devise an SEO strategy so that it takes into account social media marketing, PPC and everything else?

First and foremost, you should make sure you’re creating only quality, well-written content.
Overutilization of keywords or copying content can hurt you. Avoid this on your website, your social, your Paid ads, everywhere. User’s can spot keyword stuffing in an instant.
With any images that you use, complete the title, alternative title and metadata with keywords.
Use share buttons that can generate customized social media shares with your company website, name and applicable hashtags.

4. Utilize If This Then That (IFFT)

IFTTT is a free service that will allow you to initiate actions based on specific triggers. It’s remarkably easy to use, and incredibly effective. So much so that the top social platforms have started authoring Applets for their users. The way it works is you set up a trigger, and every time that trigger goes off, IFTTT will initiate an action based on your preferences.

For example, every time I post an image to instagram with specific hashtag, that image will then post on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever I told it to, with the same caption, just as if I had logged into that platform and posted it directly there.

These conditional chains are called “applets” and once you set them up, and give them permission to use your profile, they occur automatically. Obviously, this can be an immense help in your social media marketing strategy when you have several pieces of content that you need to post across multiple platforms throughout the day.

But the functions of IFTTT are much more extensive than cross posting. It can integrate with your android phone, or your Iphone’s IOS and track your location to turn your WIFI on and and off as you leave or return home, for example. With the right chain of Applets in hand, you could command an entire social media marketing campaign right from your phone. How well are you utilizing this free service, if at all?

5. Utilize a Social Media Management Tool

These days, when you’re managing multiple platforms, or multiple platforms for multiple different clients, the only way to to succeed is with a swiss army knife like CMS in hand. The good news is that there are a few tools out there which will most assuredly get the job done.

At Bonsai Media Group, we recommend:

Hootsuite

A great solutions for posting, monitoring, and interacting with users on any social platform. We use Hootsuite because it allows you to use the profile just as you would if you were logged into it. Plus there’s built analytics, bulk scheduling, built in RSS feeds for auto reposting, and a ton more. You can beat it

Buffer

We also have experience with Buffer, another of the most used Social CMS options. Buffer’s main benefit is that it allows you to see which posts are performing well at a glance, and judge those posts using various metrics. Unfortunately, it is somewhat limited in what it allows you to do within your social profile.

These types of tools will allow you to manage almost if not all of your social networks via one dashboard. Tracking progress is absolutely essential to the health of your campaign, and it can be hard to quantify progress on your own without solid analytics in place, which these platforms come stocked with. These systems can accommodate multiple users and even help you delegate tasks to employees, giving you an unprecedented amount of control over your social media strategy..

While social media is surely vital to marketing, it’s just one channel. Bonsai Media Group is a full-service, award-winning Seattle internet marketing firm, and we understand that a truly successful campaign requires an an integrated, accountable system.

In addition to taking on social media, we also handle web development, SEO, PPC, and branding and design. We take a data driven approach in everything that we do and we know how to leverage various marketing channels to drive the results that matter.

Want to find out how we can help you with your social media marketing or other needs? Give us a holler!

Bonsai Media Group’s Quick Guide to Writing Effective Copy for Your Website

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 01:33:44 Z

Why hire a copywriter? You can write, can't you? Yes, of course you can - if you can read, you can write and you shouldn’t let the idea of writing webcopy intimidate you. But, there are some things that you should know, and a few guidelines that can help you draft effective copy for your website.

Just a couple things before we get started

This post is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to copywriting. For a thorough guide for writing copy for your website, we recommend Maria Veloso's book Web Copy that Sells
Both Keywords and SEO best practices are a big part of writing web copy in 2017. For the sake of brevity, this post will focus mainly on strategy, messaging, and tone. But don’t worry, we plan on writing a post full of helpful tips for optimizing web content for search engines in the next month.
Remember, for the most part people DON'T READ ONLINE. They scan for relevant information and move on. It’s true:
- 55% of pageviews get less than 15 seconds
- Visitors will only read about 20% of the text of a web page.

If people don't read online, how are you going to write your web copy in such a way that it conveys and connects with your prospective customers? Here’s how:

Step 1 - Understand Your Audience

This is a hugely important rule for writing anything. From e-mails, to postcards, to your personal memoirs, to writing the copy on your website. Whatever it is, you’ve got to know who you’re writing for, what they want to know, what you want them to know, and the most efficient way of communicating that information.

Start with your target audience - define these individuals as clearly as you can based on your services and your industry.

Who are they?
What do they want to know?
What are their goals with your business?

Technically speaking, I can cook a decent meal, but that doesn't make me a gourmet chef. Ultimately, that doesn’t matter, because when I cook it’s usually for myself and my loved ones, and not a restaurant full of hungry patrons. I know what my recipients, or my ‘target audience’, is looking for out of the meal, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel to please them.

The same principle is true for writing copy for your website. You’re not out to win the pulitzer prize with your website’s content, you’re trying to convert leads into sales.

Keep it simple by prioritizing the needs of your target audience and aligning their goals with yours.

If a person makes it to your site, they’re looking for the quickest, clearest way of understanding whether or not your services are right for them. Like it or not, this decision typically comes down to:

price point
value proposition
customer convenience, or how easy you make it for customers to get what they want from you (to sign-up, get started, get a quote, etc.)

Remember, the goal of your web copy - it’s not to flex your writing chops or to bog users down with loads of unnecessary info - it’s to generate interest or a sale. The best way to do that is to determine the goals of your target audience and then provide them with the relevant information along with a simple means of converting, which should come in the form of a timely and well-placed call to action.

Step 2 - Utilize Structure

When it comes to writing copy for your website, structure is your best friend. If and when you can, break your content into logical chunks with clear titles, bolded text, and bulleted lists. Not only will it help you tackle the the task of drafting copy, it also hugely benefits SEO, which we’ll cover more in our next post.

Utilize this hierarchy when structuring and organizing your website’s copy

Web Pages

Don’t be shy when it comes to deciding how many pages your website needs. A ‘Home’ page and a ‘Contact Us’ page are great, but you should also have a single page dedicated to each of your services, for starters. This will help you organize your content while also keeping each page succinct.

Headings and Subheadings

Headings and subheadings are also incredibly useful. Headings will help you organize the flow of content up and down each web page. Plus, in a medium where people are reading less and less, large, emboldened text is one of the only ways to grab a user’s attention.

Bulleted Lists

There’s a reason we’re currently living in the era of the listicle. Bulleted lists are a quick means of conveying all the necessary information; they save both you and your readers time.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are a necessary evil. You undoubtedly need them, but too many paragraphs on a webpage give users an excuse to tune out before they even start to read. Keep each paragraph 2-4 sentences max, and try and use no more than 5.

Remember, people don’t read much online, so it makes no sense to burden them with paragraphs after paragraphs of content. Leave the flowery language and the supplemental information for the sales pitch, but when it comes to your website, keep it short, sweet, and punchy.

Step 3 - Go for a Conversational Style

Tone

You should always opt for a casual, inviting tone in your webcopy. A formal tone is great for conveying professionalism, but doesn’t yield much in terms of building trust, which is key if you’re going to get them to buy. Stay conversational - convey your message in the same way that you would if you were speaking.

Contractions

Don’t shy away from contractions. In fact, you should ere on the side of using contractions wherever you can. It saves time and space, and it helps to maintain a casual tone. Consider the difference between, “we’ll help you out” versus “we will help you out.” Which sounds more inviting?

Use Colloquialisms with Care

Colloquialisms help you stay conversational while concisely conveying complex information. But beware, colloquialisms for the sake of colloquialisms are never the way to go. Overused idioms will actually muddle and detract from your messaging. Use them only when they aid you, and keep them few and far between.

Step 4 - Don’t Overlook the Obvious

Remember this: when it comes to webcopy nothing is too obvious. This last step touches on each of the previous steps. Part of understanding your audience includes knowing what they don’t know. It’s not as though you should condescend to your target audience, but the truth is that they’re coming to you because you know something that they don’t. The only way to convey the relevant information while still securing a conversion is to utilize structure and stay conversational.

CTAs

Call-to-Action’s are both the most obvious and the most effective aspect of your web copy. Remember, it’s important to provide user’s with a simple way to take the desired action, and there’s no better way than providing well-placed CTA.

FAQ page

Don't you hate it when a web page doesn't answer your question or you have to go digging to find the answer? Think about the questions your prospect has when landing on your web page... Where are they located? What are their hours? Do they provide X,Y or Z services? How has their service benefited others like me? Frequently asked questions are inherently obvious (they’re questions that people often ask), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include them. In fact, including an FAQ page is a huge help overall because it allows you to relegate all of that content to a specific page, allowing you to keep landing pages and service pages short, sweet, and optimized for conversions.

At Bonsai, Copywriting services are often the first line item to go within our web design & development proposals. Clients just don't see the value in something that we can all do to varying degrees. As a copywriter myself, i’m of the humble opinion that well-written copy - for any medium, whether it be a website, a brochure, or a product description - can truly make a difference. But, don’t worry, the purpose of this blog isn't to sell you on why you should have hired a writer. Instead, with this post we aim to equip you with the proven framework we use here at Bonsai. If used correctly, you’ll be well on your way towards crafting stellar webcopy without having to spend a ton of time or money.

Bonsai Media Group is a full-service internet marketing and web development firm based in Seattle, WA. If you’re interested in any of the ways Bonsai can help you bolster your online presence in order to drive more business, please get in touch today!

What’s the Correlation Between PPC advertising and SEO?

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 20:01:51 Z

So, your business wants to increase traffic, conversions, or both, and you’re wondering if you should opt for Search Engine Optimization services, or Pay-Per-Click advertising. SEO and PPC are fundamentally different, but that’s not to say they can’t work together. As a full service internet marketing agency, we’re always going to tell you that a holistic internet marketing strategy is best. Take a look at Bonsai’s Online Marketing System - it illustrates how we leverage numerous marketing channels in tandem to drive results in the most efficient way possible.

That being said, SEO and PPC, if conducted individually, will give you drastically different results. Here’s Why -

PPC Fundamentals

Here’s a PPC ad currently running for our Sister company, Leased Up:

PPC is exactly what it sounds like: a pay-to-play form of internet advertising that allows marketers to pay for ads by each click they generate. This means that popular search platforms like Google and others allow businesses to list results within the top of their organic results for a given keyword. This means that keyword research, as well as ad links (which direct users from the ad to a specific page on your site), are paramount to the success of your PPC campaign.

SEO Fundamentals

Here we are, ranked #1 for the coveted Internet Marketing Seattle Keyword:

In many ways, SEO is the opposite of PPC. Rather than pay a Search platform to list a result and corresponding link to your website, you instead optimize your website to make it very search-engine friendly for given keywords. That way, when a user enters a search query containing that keyword, your site will appear near the top of the results, if you’ve done your homework.

SEO Vs. PPC

Now that you know the basics of both, here are the main practical differences between SEO and PPC.

SEO	PPC
The Typical ROI from SEO services has no real cap, and it can continue to increase long after that of PPC has topped out. But, it takes a while for SEO to get up and running as your site needs time to build authority and get recognized. But, it’s worth it - 73% of in house marketers and 76% of US agencies have said that SEO provided excellent ROI.	PPC provides instant results and can generate visitors and user data as soon as you activate your ads. It’s much faster than SEO, but due to competitive bidding on certain choice keywords, there maybe a point at which PPC is no longer viable, but this also depends on your conversion rate for each KW. Because of these reasons the ROI is more easily quantifiable; on average businesses make $3 for every $1.60 they spend on adwords.
SEO may not be immediate, but it’s still hugely important. A bit of context: 92% of users begin their web experience with a search query, and 85% of the clicks within a search result go to the organic links, rather than the paid ads.	Because ensures clicks for a given keyword, the average user is more likely to convert from a paid ad than they are from organically ranked links. In fact, 50% of users are more likely to convert from a paid ad than from an organic link.

How PPC and SEO can help one another

This is where the specific benefits of a holistic internet marketing system come into play. If you have your strategies for PPC and for SEO locked down, there are a number of ways that you can use SEO to benefit your PPC, and vice versa. Here are just a few:

The Data from PPC can aid SEO

One spot where PPC definitely has SEO beat is in the measurability of all aspects of the campaign. You have your bids, your cost-per-click, your cost-per-conversion, and your cost-per-conversion for a given keyword. This means you’re able to quickly see which keywords have the highest conversion rate, and then optimize your site to organically rank for those terms. It’s not viable to have a high ranking organic result if you're not converting; PPC only helps you see which terms you should absolutely be optimizing for, the rest is up to you.

Believe it or not, PPC can help boost Link Popularity

Link popularity is pretty straight forward: the more popular your site appears (in terms of the number of inbound links) the higher it will rank. Let us be clear, your PPC listings on a results page will not directly affect your link popularity, even if it gets 10 billion clicks in an hour. Why? Because search engines don’t want to count links that were paid for - this is the opposite of what they’re aiming to do. Instead, search engines will count inbound links to your site that were gained out of editorial relevance i.e. another website finds yours valuable and relevant and links to it. But for another site to find value in yours, they have to find it first. If you’re starting off with just a trickle of organic traffic, paid search advertising is a fantastic way to generate real awareness quickly. While only a small percentage of these visitors will actually drop a link to your site, a focused, sustained PPC effort will generate enough traffic, awareness, and yes, links, to help boost your organic rankings.

Organic Traffic is hard to come by... Ad Retargeting can help make the most of it.

Any SEO specialist worth their salt can attest to the difficulty of generating worthwhile organic traffic. After tons of research and on-page and offpage optimizations, you find that only 2% of organic first-time visitors actually convert. This is why retargeting is massively beneficial for SEO-ers out there. As inbound traffic accumulates, you can track each of those users, and re-service them ads via an ad display network. 70% of website visitors who are retargeted are more likely to convert, meaning the data gleaned from your SEO traffic will greatly boost your PPC retargeting results.

Combine High Organic Rankings with Paid Search to Bolster your Click-Thru Rate

Most clicks come from familiarity. If a user is familiar with you and your brand, they are more likely to click through. A user might not click on the first PPC result, but they are much more likely to click on your organic link if they see a paid result along with it; it boosts your credibility and trustworthiness. In fact, it’s widely held that if you own the top organic and paid positions for a given keyword, you will easily outperform either positions on their own. In this way, combining both SEO and PPC strategies for your most competitive keywords will increase BOTH your click-thru rate as well as your conversion rate.

Conclusion

SEO and PPC are essentially two different approaches to the same thing: generating leads via search results. The difference comes in where you spend your time and for how long, and where you spend your money and how much you spend. The decision to choose either PPC or SEO as your main point of attack depends on a few different things, like your business, your budget, your goals, and your industry. In certain industries, there may be less competition, or a lower cost per click, meaning the top ppc ad spots are more affordable. But, depending on a lead’s value, and your ability to capture that lead via an organically ranked link, you might not want to get into keyword bidding and ad spends. Now, if you’re in an industry where cost per click is high, the same considerations have to be made, but from a different angle. If there’s a lot of competition, and your competitors have a lot of authority, it might be worth the extra PPC spend in order to get a top-ranked spot. But again, depending on a lead’s value for a given keyword, this may not be viable, and you might be better off putting that money towards a long term SEO strategy.

In general, it can be said that PPC is better for instantly generating a lot of traffic without having to maintain it for long, while SEO is best for generating more reliable traffic over a longer period without a ton of spending up front.

It can take a lot to know if you should opt for PPC or SEO; a lot of research, a lot of know-how and a lot of experience. As we said before, at Bonsai, we always try and opt for a holistic approach to Search Engine Marketing, utilizing both paid and organic methods to build credibility, boost rankings, boost click-thru rates, and boost conversions. If you have more horses in the race, you’re more likely to win.

If you’re interested in internet marketing that drives real results, whether it be PPC, SEO, Web Dev, Social Media, or anything else, Bonsai will create a customized marketing system to address your primary concerns and help you grow your business online.

SEO 101: The Correlation Between Traffic and Rankings

2019 Adwords Updates You Should be Taking Advantage of

Make Sure You Understand those Four New Search Ad Position Metrics

Pay Per Conversion in Display Campaigns

Target Impression Share Bidding

Responsive Search Ads

The Most Noteworthy Facebook Ad Updates for 2019

Dynamic Ads

Instagram and Facebook Story Ads

Creative Compass

Playable Ads

Augmented Reality Ads

Bonsai Named a Top Web Designer on Clutch.co!

The Power of Persona Advertising Via Facebook

What is Persona Advertising?

A Quick Breakdown of FB targeting -

Location -

Demographics -

Interests-

Behavior-

Audience Insights

How We Do It

Here’s what the audiences for each look like -

Manufacturing industry -

Healthcare -

View Our Facebook Advertising Case Studies Here.

The Self-Serve Model

Bonsai’s Best Practices for PPC to Landing Page Strategy

Quality Score

Aligning Landing Page To Ad Copy

Use PPC Keywords As Fuel For Landing Page Content

Determining Landing Page Goals

Building Landing Page Trust

SEO Strategy | The Importance of Blogging

Traffic

The Power of Internal Links

So, why blogging?

Real Examples from Our Work

Cascade Drilling

Tom Flick

It’s 2018 - Time to Abandon Organic-Only Social Campaigns

What do we mean by organic-only?

Q: How can your business stand out among the masses on Social?

Facebook

Placements

Instagram

Twitter

Types of Twitter Ads

Types of Twitter ad campaigns

Tweet engagements

Followers

Awareness

Video views

Website clicks or conversions

App installs or re-engagements

Lead generation

Snapchat

Types of Snapchat ads

Snap Ads

Sponsored Lenses

Sponsored Geofilters

On-Demand Geofilters

Snap to Unlock

LinkedIn

LinkedIn self-serve ads

Sponsored Content

Text Ads

Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn Display Ads

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads

YouTube

That’s Not to Say You Shouldn’t Still Use Supplementary Organic Strategies

Interested in interning at Bonsai?

Working at Bonsai Media Group!

Passion

Creativity

Collaboration

# Do Dope Shit

# Better Together

# We Take Pride