The lack of investment in branding, advertising, public relations and web technology in a strategic fashion costs more in lost opportunity.

Chad Root, President of Spearhead Sales & Marketing, a collaborating company with Effect Web Agency, has designed this paper to provide fresh vision, know-how and resources to help sales hungry companies efficiently leverage both sales and marketing investments together as a unified force.

Download “#1 Biggest Mistake in B2B Sales”

Want to get updated on the scale, progress, and usefulness of Social Media? Watch this short video:

Wondering how you should approach Social Media effectively? Setup a meeting with Alzay Calhoun, Effect’s Social Media Director, to size it up.

“Universal Search” Results

Back in 2007, Google first introduced what is now generally termed their “Universal Search” results.  This meant that, instead of including only organic and Adwords listings, the search results pages format changed to include options for Images, Videos, News, Shopping, Books, Places, Blogs, and more.  However, in the past, if you wanted to see Videos and Shopping results, you had to click on those links in the navigation bar on the left side of results pages.

In 2010, Google began including blended results, meaning that Video and Shopping links are included in the default organic listings.

Why is this so important?

Let’s say that, prior to 2010, your website was ranking #3 for one of your target keyword phrases, and your listing was clearly visible approximately ½ way down (without scrolling) the search engine results pages (SERPS).  Studies from 2007 showed that the #3 listing received approximately 8-10% of the click-through traffic.  Now, with blended results, YouTube Videos and Shopping results are usually listed somewhere within the first 3 or 4 organic results.  Even though your business has that #3 organic ranking, it may now be “below the fold”, meaning users have to scroll down to find it, depending on their browser and screen size.  This has huge implications for click-through rates and traffic, making the investment in organic SEO campaigns and Video optimization even more important.

Local results for everyone

A related change in search results over the past year is the integration of localized content into the main organic results for ALL users, including those not signed into a Google account.  This is extremely significant, especially for businesses with a small local target market. Prior to 2010, if you had a Google account and were signed in, you may have received personalized results based on your location.  For example, if you were in Chicago and searched for “Italian restaurant”, Google would produce listings for Italian restaurants in Chicago.  Now, Google will produce local results for just about any keyword search that it deems appropriate.  Based on the IP address of your internet connection, the number of local results varies, but in some cases, the entire page of results could be filled with local listings.  Again, this pushes regular organic listings further down the page, lowering their click-through rates and traffic.

We hear about social media all the time now. Objective marketers and executives are asking:

• “What good is Social Media for me?”
• “How should I leverage it?
  

Like anything else “new”, many people are doing it just because others are. Some don’t yet have goals.  But you’re different. You want to size up social media before you invest money and your valuable time. To help put social media into perspective today, we’ve boiled down Social Media into 3 scenarios. Which scenario fits you?

Scenario A: No-Brainer

If you’re selling a product or providing a service that’s pleasure-centric or inspires passion and it changes over time, you’re probably in the “No-Brainer” scenario. Business that easily fit into this scenario include restaurants, theme parks, women’s boutique clothing stores, museums, theaters, etc. The amount of “work” you will need to do to stoke things up depends on the loyalty of your audience. Providing the venue (like Facebook), updating news, and telling your audience about it regularly typically brings good results such as increased visits, increased sales, increased loyalty, and more referrals. My recommendation is to research, plan your strategy, and implement soon.

Scenario B: Experimental

Are you a B2B company? Or selling a utility product or providing a service that gets something done and isn’t really something people generally find exciting by itself? You’re probably in the Experimental scenario. Many companies are testing and measuring their investment into social media and getting mixed results. Generally, having a strategy and goals brings better results, but sometimes people just aren’t interested enough to participate in being social with an accountant, or a manufacturer of windows. However, the same was probably assumed about supply chain solution providers. Then Kinaxis found a way to make a connection with their audiences with the use of humor and gained incredible results. (Read  “The Definitive Case for B2B Social Media Marketing“).

The lesson here is: There are many industries with the assumption that it’s not relevant. First, understand what you want out of a social media investment. Learn from Kinaxis and others while being creative in how you plan on reaching your audience through social media over the long-term. Count the cost of money, time, payroll, and etc over a few years to determine when is a good time to start. Test and measure. You will most likely evolve your strategy over time. Some will win, some won’t. Are you an innovator or late-adopter?

Scenario C: Unjustified

Just like busywork, there’s always something you can be doing, but that doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Don’t worry about social media right now if your organization:

• Doesn’t have goals that social media can help meet now or the near future
• Doesn’t have time or resources to do a whole-hearted social media effort
• The cost outweighs the expected benefits

If you believe that this is your scenario, I encourage you to revisit whether social media is relevant again next year.

In the long run

In 10 to 15 years, a company who does not having an active social channel with customers may be like a company who doesn’t have a website today.  It makes good sense for companies to be socially available and engaged with customers. The questions to be answered are:

• What will our company gain, by being social this year, 5 years, and 10 years down the road?
• When does it make sense for our company to become social and with which audiences?
• How can we make it enjoyable for our audiences and us?

Social Media is much more than Facebook and Twitter. There are many industry-centric venues and new innovative channels created each month. Companies are also creating their own venues. As always, keep yourself updated and know what’s going on:

“Any enterprise built by wise planning becomes strong through common sense and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts.” -Proverbs 24: 3&4

Is it important to your company’s success to know:

• How much it costs to get a lead or close a sale?
• How the investments and results of tradeshows compare to direct mail to search engine marketing?
• If Search Engine Optimization is really worth it?

How do you track the investments (money, time, efforts, resources) and results across your various marketing channels?

Step into the New Year by conquering one this major marketing challenge. Download this free “Web + Marketing Results Dashboard” Excel file and start tracking your results better.

Effect Web Agency has been using our “Web + Marketing Results Dashboards” for our own clients since 2007. The dashboard brings together the most important information across all marketing channels in one place. By using this simple dashboard, you’ll be able to easily track, report, and improve your online & offline marketing strategies based on real numbers that are really easy to understand.

This Dashboard helps you track results for:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Adwords
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Direct Mail
• Tradeshows
• and it’s simple enough to customize and add more.

It also calculates insightful metrics for you such as:

• Cost per Lead / Sale for each marketing channel
• Total cost of doing each type of marketing channel
• Percentage of Leads that results in a closed sale
• Average cost per closed sale

Download the Excel file of “Web + Marketing Results Dashboard” now.
You’ll lead your company to being more focused on what matters, being in-the-know, and making your job easier.

Is the objective or your online marketing to get leads? Do you run or are thinking about running a Google Adwords campaign? Then read on. Many companies are spending bookoo bucks with Google Adwords. There’s a way to spend less and get better responses at the same time.

More Leads

First, let’s compare the steps for a user to take action on a traditional Pay-Per-Click ad. When a customer sees your ad: they click it to load the webpage, probably load a couple more pages and then contact you. Even with a great ad message that sends people to an well-written and optimized landing page, the customer must take at least two steps.

If it makes sense for your customers to call you, put a phone number on your Adwords ads using Google’s new “Call Metrics” service. This phone number will show in search results for those using mobile devices. Instead of clicking through to your landing page, they can simply call you. Don’t worry, it doesn’t count against your ad’s character count. Google will generate a phone number for you and it will show below your ad. Some people would just rather call in. They will see the number on the ad and call.  Customers that would have clicked if you didn’t have a phone number, now don’t click and just call.  Calls are cheaper than clicks.

According to Effect Web Agency’s Pay-Per-Click Director, :

“Overall, the cost is much less… With mobile search increasing you want to have phone calls rather than clicks. We are seeing a higher percentage of calls than clicks. It’s a no-brainer to at least have a number added to your ad. You want to have the most visibility and ways for your potential customers to interact with you.”

Is putting phone numbers in Adwords Ads new?

Putting a phone number in the ad is not new. However, what is new is attaching a phone number to your ad which does not use up your ad message length and integrates tracking right into Adwords Call Metrics.

So how do you track calls?

Google’s “Adwords Call Metrics” tracks how many calls you receive and other information about each call such as who called and the length of the call.

Is Adwords Call Metrics avilable yet?

It’s available to a limited number of advertisers currently. Effect Web Agency is one of them. Effect’s Pay-Per-Click Director manages over $14 million in online marketing budgets continually. If you’d like to talk to us about reviewing and/or managing your Adwords campaigns, please contact us.

Free Leads

Many advertisers have not yet taken advantage of Adwords “Location” and phone extensions. By filling in these extensions, your location and phone number will show on your listing. Those who call this phone number will not generate a cost for you. Overall, this will lower your spending per lead.

Can I just put a phone number in my ad?

Yes, but our Pay-Per-Click Director, does not recommend this. Putting a phone number in your ad uses up your valuable ad text space. This text should be reserved for positioning your offering and attracting best-fit customers.

Ever wished there was a simple checklist to get real SEO results? Now there is.

Effect Web Agency has published the “SEO Success Checklist” in PDF format. This checklist outlines the critical components for the long-term and lasting success of your natural search engine optimization efforts. See SEO from the eyes of the SEO Consultant. The list was created by Effect’s Web Strategist, Steve Schmidt and natural SEO Director with 11 years of SEO experience – Shawn Nafziger.

Download “SEO Success Checklist”

This comprehensive list of SEO No-No’s comes from the Effect Web Agency team – which includes a 10-year experienced SEO Director of natural search engine optimization. Apply this list to the execution of your current SEO strategy and tell us how it compares in the comments. If you notice any SEO No-No’s we’ve missed – please tell us! We will continue to update this list for everyone to use as a reference.

1. Never conduct SEO without a good plan.
   Research keywords and competitors to define a specific plan that outlines keywords and matching target pages, what you will do to execute your web strategy.
2. Never copy content onto your site that is already on another website.
   Google will think you are copying content and your rankings will disappear.
3. Do not attempt to hide keywords or content on your page.
   Search engines can penalize you for being misleading.
4. Do not use the same title on multiple pages.
   These pages would compete against each other for ranking for keywords in the title.
5. Do not assume SEO is contributing to your bottom line.
   Track your ranking, the traffic it brings and the results that come from SEO. Continually measure and evolve your SEO strategy.
6. Do not settle for second page results.
   The last position (#10) on the first page only gets 2.97% of the clicks. The second page is almost as valueable as not being ranked. See “How Many Clicks Does Being #1 on Google Get You?“.
7. Do not target multiple pages with the same keyword.
   These pages would compete against each other for ranking for this keyword. The content each page should be specific to its target keyword(s).
8. Do not cram your pages with keywords.
   This appears artificial to search engines when they look at “keyword density” and it’s cumbersome for human beings to read through. Instead, write naturally and then go back and make sure your target keywords are included in the page content.
9. Do not exchange links on a large scale.
   If Google sees a large number of reciprocal links as unnatural, your rankings may suffer.
10. Do not let your SEO optimizing over shadow the presentation and usability of your website.
    If your presentation is cumbersome or unappealing with tons of SEO text and unnecessary links, so what if you get a lot of SEO traffic – they may just leave.
11. Do not create link to a page with some links using “www” and some without.
    Google sees “www.mysite.com” and “mysite.com” as two separate pages and possibly as duplicate content. Canonize your URLs.
12. Don’t use “dirty” URLs.
    A dirty URL doesn’t provide any descriptive value to humans or search engines. An example of a dirty url is http://mywebsite.com/alc.aspx?pid=34&tin=*proddesc.   An example of a clean url is http://mywebsite.com/cell-phones/apple/iphone4.
13. Do not exchange links with non-relevant sites.
    This dilutes the relevancy of your own site.
14. Do not place large amounts of SEO links at the bottom of your pages.
    It looks like you participate in link farms.
15. Never build incoming links from sites that you are unsure about their reputation.
    Low reputation sites don’t help you much, or at all, and sometimes they can even hinder your site’s rankings.
16. Do not have a page title over 65 characters.
    Google doesn’t read anything more.
17. Don’t forget about internal linking.
    Internal linking the easiest area of linking because you the control on your site. Internal linking does not replace the need for incoming links from other websites, but it is a part of the overall rank factoring process. Use your keywords in the links to your target pages. For example, if the page you are linking to is all about “custom web design”, then make your link read custom web design. Remember, Google only cares about the first link in a page to another specific page. Having 5 links to the same page won’t help. Only the first one counts. This includes your menu.
18. Do not give up on your SEO plan without going the distance.
    SEO results takes times, even a couple years or so. If you’ve done your plan properly and ROI looks good and the keywords are strong, continue on.
19. Don’t let your site get stagnant.
    Expand it frequently with new information. Search engines are programmed to like growing sites more.
20. Do not assume your SEO company is doing it right.
    Run through this checklist on/with them. We’ve seen SEO tactics used by other companies that can actually hurt your results.
21. Never hide links on your site.
    A good rule of thumb is: If your visitor can’t see/read/use it, it’s not search engine friendly and may not be good for your reputation.
22. Don’t use redirects people unless pages have actually moved.
    Some sites have pages that are SEO-optimized to the extreme. These are often called “doorway” pages. When a visit comes in, they redirect the visitor to a user-friendly page, rather than showing them the SEO optimized page. Google tries to detect deceptive redirects. If Google finds them, the offending website can loose some or all reputation.
23. Don’t show search engines and humans different content
    This is a major “black hat” tactic to show search engines more optimized content that would be to robotic for humans to read. Your content should have value for humans and search engines.
24. Never have two URLs that go to the same page.
    From the search engines perspective, it looks like two different pages, and this looks like duplicate content. Depending on the situation, search engines can react to duplicate content in a variety of ways – from ignoring one of the pages, to lowering the “score” of both pages, to punishing the site.
25. Don’t replace SEO experience with technical knowledge or a checklist.
    If your market is competitive, enlist the help of an experienced SEO Consultant.

When it comes down to it

You can discern if a SEO tactic is good or bad by asking yourself this question:

“Will this help a person find what they are looking for with search engines in a more helpful way ?”

Too much text is cumbersome for users and detracts from the graphic presentation. On-site text is one of many SEO factors.  Just like anything else: more doesn’t necessarily mean better. There’s usually plenty of room for improving the way you leverage other SEO factors to surpass competitors, improve rankings and increase website traffic as long as you have some on-page text. Having some text is important because it tells Google what your website is about.

Good rule of thumb for amount of text:
Have at least 200 words of relevant, unique content on your target pages.

Sure, you can rank well without it – if you are willing to do more work on the other factors. So if you have at least 200 words on your target pages, let’s look at the…

top 3 SEO factors you should consider before adding more text:

Page titles

You should make it clear to Google what each page is about. A page title should consist of the company name (shortened – if it’s too long) and up to three keyword phrases. A page title should be no more than 65 characters long, because Google doesn’t read anymore than that.

An example of a good title is: “Personal Computers, MP3 Players – Apple Inc.“.

Before setting titles, assign 1 to 3 keyword phrases to a page. (I am assuming you have already done your homework on which keywords have good potential.) Remember to only assign a keyword (or phrase) to one target page. Do not have the same keyword in the titles of multiple pages. That only dilutes the focus of each page.

Internal linking

Since you control your own website, setting your links up in an optimal way is one of the easiest parts of SEO. First: if appropriate, change wording in your menu to use keyword(s). It’s important to understand that Google only considers the first link in the page code in their algorithm.  So, if you have 3 different links on your homepage that link to your most important internal page, Google will only give you the benefit of the text of the first link.

Then, make of list of your pages that are most important to Google for your specific target keyword. (You can tell these by which of your pages Google puts in results of a “site:yoursite.com + keyword” command). On these pages, make sure you have some keywords in the content that you can link to corresponding target pages. For example, if the Contact Us page mentions one of your service keywords (or if you can work it into the paragraph in a natural sounding way), link this keyword to the appropriate target page. By doing this, you are making it more clear to Google what pages are about and how important they are.

External linking

It’s one thing to link to yourself and quite another for a reputable 3rd-party website to link to you. This is the most difficult, time-consuming, and rewarding factor in SEO. First, ask your dealers, distributors, vendors, associates, etc to link to you. If possible, have them link to you using your keywords and linking to the corresponding target pages. Next, we highly recommend writing unique articles (that contain a couple of your links) and syndicating them to Hubpages, Squido, and EzineArticles on a frequent basis.

need help?

If you’d like our team to take a look at your specific situation and provide guidance, please contact Effect Web Agency in Warsaw Indiana. Our SEO consultant and director, Shawn Nafziger has been working exclusively in the SEO world for over 10 years.

At this open Q&A webinar, Steve Schmidt answered the following participates’ questions (below). This webinar also available in MP3.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

1. “Can you show me provable value (ROI) of social media marketing in relation to B2B web initiatives?”

You’ll hear how a supply chain company got great Social Media results; finally hear confirmation that Facebook does not equal Social Media; and challenge yourself with a question Steve poses that will help you see how to successfully leverage what Social Media really is in your specific industry.

2. “What does the website mean for our business?”

The question that really needs to be answered is “What results do we want from the website that will provide value to our company?”. You’ll break through the fogginess that usually puts people into analysis paralysis and clarify the two types of value: Quantitative and Qualitative. Then, you’ll walk through a very simple and practical method of planning a web strategy focused on positive ROI that you can use.

3. “How can the opening page get the viewer, researcher, customer, etc. to be driven to seek additional info and explore more of the website -especially when you have a broad market segment that you are trying to reach.”

First, you’ll learn what the visitor is thinking when they first arrive at your website. Knowing this will allow you to see how to change your mindset and naturally, your website presentation, message, and results.”

4. “Regarding Search Engine Marketing: How does a company start out and then become more advanced while spending a small amount of money?”

You’ll know the fundamental steps in approaching natural search engine optimization on a tight budget.

5. “What are the current Facebook and Twitter trends?”

We’ll give you a quick update on trends and explain how we think people will need to change their approach to this portion of Social Media in order to facilitate results.

If you have a question for the next “Ask a Web Strategist”, please post it in the comments below. We WILL answer you.

If anyone would like to discuss their scenario one-on-one, please contact Effect Web Agency. We’ll identify implications and potential solutions.

Is leveraging the web important in order for your company to take a big step in growth? If you’ve got questions about how to approach your target audience, designing your website, measuring web ROI, or how you could do better with search engine optimization – we invite you to the “Ask a Web Strategist” open Q&A webinar.

Submit your question and we’ll answer you on Tuesday, August 31st at 11AM EST.

Is reputation monitoring important in my case? The question really isn’t “Is it important?”, but: “How important?”. Let’s look at some stats:

• 90% of business purchases start online – Forrester (and that was 2007!)
• 83% of businesses use the Internet to research and find potential vendors – Enquire: Business to Business Survey
• 84% of consumers surveyed said that browsing reviews influenced their decision on whether or not to purchase a product or service. – Opinion Research Corporation

If you are a capital management firm investing millions of dollars of clients’ resources, then reputation monitoring is probably very important. At the other end: if you’re a manufacturer of unseen widget components, your online reputation probably isn’t nearly as critical. You know your industry. Ask yourself: If someone posted a negative comment specifically about my company, product, or service – how might it impact us? Would it be worth a couple hours each month to know about it?

It doesn’t take much more than a few seconds for someone to publish something negative about you, your company, or your products and services on the web.

What’s the best way to start monitoring?

If your company, product, service, or team members are not brand new, it’s a good idea to see what mentions are out there.

1. Make a list of keywords unique to your organization.
   This list should include your product & service names, key team members’ names, company name(s), and any other key events, publications, subjects your company is directly in charge of.
2. See if anything pops up on Google.
   Search for each these phrases. Note the type of information that’s returned. If results are too broad, refine keywords to be more specific. Putting quotation marks around a phrase will  return only exact matches: ( “Dr. Leonard McCoy” ) returns much more helpful results than ( Dr. Leonard McCoy ). You can also use the minus sign to only return results for Dr. Leonard McCoy that don’t have to do with Star Trek: ( “Dr. Leonard McCoy” – “star trek” ). Revise your list as you go by removing phrases than always seem to return irrelevant stuff and change the syntax to get better results using quotation marks, minus signs, and extra wording where necessary.
3. Setup alerts to be notified if and when you or your company is mentioned.
   Go to Google Alerts and setup an account (or tie it to your existing account). Create an alert for each of the phrases in your list. Choose the appropriate notification schedule. Expect to tweak these alerts over time. Some will simply “spam” you with email. Other phrases may never show up. If you don’t have time for this, delegate it.
4. Try advanced tools and services.
   If the scope of what you’d like to monitor is large, try using advanced tools and services. Mashable has a great list of  “Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For“. The biggest benefit these advanced tools provide over Google Alerts is having a Dashboard and increased convenience. Prices range from $20 / month on up.

Google knows about almost everything that is publicly accessible on the web. If it’s out there, there’s a good chance Google will find it for you.

I found negative comments – What do I do?

Depending on what you found and it’s context, there are different ways to respond to it. The worst thing you can do is do nothing because it will most likely sit out there on the Internet staining your name. Take action by getting involved, becoming an advocate, and proactively participating in the conversation. Here are some important guidelines on how to act online to maintain a positive reputation. These should be followed no matter what your company is “saying” on the web: whether you are responding to negative comments or just publishing opinions.

1. Only post positive comments, responses, and statements online.
   (Just like with any other form of communication, right?)
2. Always respond to neutral or negative opinions about you, your company, your products, or anything else in a genuinely helpful and professional “voice”.
3. If there is a negative perception published about your company, product, or services – work to make it right and satisfy online complaints publicly on the site where they are posted. People tend to respect companies that come out, take ownership, and rectify a problem or misunderstanding publicly.
4. Got something that just won’t go away? Natural search engine optimization can be used to “push up” other results. In doing so, it “pushes down or out” negative results.

How can I help prevent negative comments?

• Establish a corporate sponsored social group or forum to give people a place to find answers, get help, etc.
• Start a blog on topics that answer common questions and help solve common problems. It’s likely your blogs will show up in search engines and attract these visitors before they go to another site and vent.
• Be accessible on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media venues.
• Review your company vision, mission, culture regularly with your team to stay inline with it. If these statements don’t cover how your company acts online, it will prudent to spell it out.

Can I get help with this?

There are many reputation monitoring and management services. Depending on size, complexity, and importance, hiring an outside party may provide great value – saving your time, and avoid or correct embarrassing blemishes on your reputation.  Effect’s Radar service incorporates reputation monitoring as well as keeping you apprised of other important happenings with your competitors and other topics.

Share Your Thoughts

What is the value in monitoring your company’s reputation?

Before reading this blog: This blog assumes you know the basics of how Pay-Per-Click increases website traffic. If you are not sure what Pay-Per-Click is, please read
“The Difference Between SEO and Pay-Per-Click” first.

1. Google Adwords reaches the most people. Yahoo Search Marketing is #2. MSN Search Marketing is #3. Start with Google Adwords.
2. Look before you leap. Formulate your ROI equation to estimate investment and return. It may look something like this:

   I want ____ new customers per month from Pay-Per-Click.
   x historical sales conversion rate of __%
   = we need ____ leads each month
   x historical rate of __ % of visitors contacting us through website
   = we need ___ visitors / month

   Not sure how to do this? Ask us.

   Then you can find out: Which keywords may bring that amount of visitors? -and- How much will it cost to target those keywords?

3. Quite often the #1 ad spot is not the best bang for the buck. The fourth position has been known to bring more visitors per dollar. This is because it’s usually the first in the sponsored ads on the left hand side of the screen. This all depends on how much competition there is. The take-away here is to test positions #2 – #5. You tell Google which position you’d like to be at most of the time.
4. It’s possible to pay less per click than a competitor and rank higher. Google Adwords’ “Quality Score” is a rating of how well your keywords, ad, and landing page jive.  Higher relevancy = less ad spending + more conversions. Have your ads, and landing pages use your keywords for that ad.
5. The landing page is critical to converting visitors into buyers/leads, but landing pages are often overlooked and not optimized. For best results, have everything about the landing page be consistent with the ad, give clear benefits, adequate illustrations, and a clear call to action. A professional website design helps instill a little trust with visitors too.
6. Google Adword’s “Remarketing” can raise brand awareness and leads. It displays your ads to visitors who did not convert on your site after arriving their from Adwords. These ads show on other websites. The idea is if you’re target audience keeps seeing your ads, they may come back. It also makes it looks like your company is “everywhere”. Try it out.
7. Review estimated keyword data with a grain of salt. Google’s Keyword Tool and other tools can provide great insight into what people are searching for and how often. This data can really help you plan. But remember, this is “estimated” data. The only way to get actual numbers on impressions, cost per click, and other metrics is to run a campaign. Consider your first two months as “testing” months.
8. Bidding on broad keywords costs a lot and usually brings little ROI. If it looks like there’s plenty of people searching for your keywords, whittle your keyword lists down to be more specific. Use “exact search” and not broad search. Also use “negatives” to ignore phrases or variations of keywords that do not bring sales/leads. This has led to lower cost per clicks, and more clicks without increasing budgets for our clients.
9. Opt out of “content networks” that don’t bring in results. All the major Pay-Per-Click programs display your ads on “content networks”. Find out which ones are costing you without bringing in results and opt out of them. You can usually find these, by reviewing your web analytics and looking for referral sites with high bounce rates. You’ll be able to use that portion of the budget towards the venues that work.
10. Review your cost per click and calculate cost per sale/lead so you can improve web marketing ROI. We started working with one client – managing their search marketing and helped them see they were spending $400 to sell a $500 product. They didn’t realize the majority of their sales came from natural Google ranking. With this now evident, you can believe we rearranged the strategy.
11. Cast your net wide and then narrow it down based on your data.
12. Proactive testing and measuring optimizes the spending and return. The “Set and forget” approach wastes money, and misses opportunities. Constantly test and measure new variations of ads, landing pages, and text to find what sticks – but make sure you clearly detect the results of your changes. Too much change can make it difficult to tell what change really made the difference.
13. Hire a specialist to partner with you to achieve your objectives. You’ll gain from their experience, expertise, and constantly be in-the-know on how to get the most from your Pay-Per-Click budget. The investment usually pays for itself quickly.

What would you add to this list? Post your comment below.

First, let’s clarify what Local Search is and is not: Local Search is where your business is listed on a directory by location, or listed in “local” results on search engines – like when someone searches for “web design company in warsaw, indiana“. Local Search is not the same as natural search engine rankings or Pay-Per-Click advertising.

What are the benefits of being listed?

• Being “everywhere” contributes to your website’s credibility in the eyes of Google and other regular search engines. Thus, it tends to improve your natural search engine rankings over the next 6 months (roughly). So even if you don’t want local customers or you’re a manufacturer, if your natural rankings are important for you, this is one of the easiest ways to contribute to that. (This is not an end-all SEO method – not even close, but it is one of the few “one-time” things that does help).
• You’ll get some level of traffic you wouldn’t of had otherwise. And because your listing is usually by someone searching for particular services/products, there’s a good chance you’ll get decent prospective customers to your site looking to buy.

Which Local Search websites should I list with?

There are dozens of Local Search websites and directories. The most popular are: Google Places (Maps), Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, and Best of the Web.

How much traffic can I expect to get my local listings?

The number of visitors you’ll receive depends a number of things:

• Population of your city and how far you are from the center of the city
• How well you titled and presented your business listing
• If you are B2B or B2C. B2C will generally get more traffic.
• The level of credibility your website has in Google’s eyes (helps ranking in Google Places)

Roughly speaking, you may get anywhere from 1 person a month to a couple thousand, depending on the factors above.  With all these factors, the only way to really know is to try it.

How much time does it take?

If you go to each of the five directories mentioned above, and reuse the text you submitted for each, it may take around 3  hours.

As an alternative, Effect offers a Local Search Listing Distribution service. (This is not natural search engine optimization. This is creating “local” listings and/or taking control of them). Effect distributes your business listing information to these five directories plus 135 others.  This option takes about 15 minutes to 45 minutes of your time to prepare your business listing information and send it to us.

How much does it cost?

Doing it yourself costs nothing to get regular, free listings. Many directories do have advertising options that may be worth investigating. If you’re interested in this, I recommend looking into advertising with Google Adwords, and niche directories.

Effect’s Local Search Listing Distribution service costs $125 / year. You can update your listing when things change and we’ll redistribute it for you anytime. Just contact us if you’d like us to help you with this.

To Sum It Up:

If natural rankings are important or you want more local customers, this is one of the most inexpensive ways to to do both. In most cases, Local Search should only be complementary to your other online marketing.

Customers decide if they’re open to working with you within a split second of seeing your homepage. Could you get more leads out of the traffic you’re already getting? Take 15 minutes today and ask 3 people outside your organization to go to your homepage and answer these 3 questions:

• What do we do?
• Who are we for?
• What does one do next?

If you pick people not familiar with your organization, you’ll be able to rate your site’s effectiveness by their answers. Like anything else, there are exceptions. Perhaps your target audience is so narrow that only your specific audience will “get it”. That’s fine, but for 99.9% of us, this exercise provides valuable insight. I guarantee you’ll get a good return on your 15 minute investment.

1. What do we do?

It’s really easy to be “in it” so much that we don’t see anything wrong with the way we communicate what we do. This sorta thing tends to happen in cycles. Every so often, we need to ask questions that challenge our thinking to improve results. Remember “Dead Poets’ Society”? Mr. Keating suggested that we continually look at things in different ways in order to grow.

2. Who are we for?

Is it really clear who your offering is for? Perhaps you have multiple audiences – is it clear to all of them that they are at the right place? For Stoett Industries, this meant changing the presentation drastically to jive with the middle to upper-class home owners.

3. What does one do next?

Is it totally clear what a visitor should do next? It’s it not obvious, you have room to increase leads. Often times, websites give visitors too many possible next steps. This creates the assumption that there’s “more work involved with this site than another”. The number of people who look further depends on their level of interest and availability of “competition”. In short: Make the next step absolutely clear.

walking the walk

We (Effect) recently asked ourselves these questions about our own website. We evolved our offering and wanted to make sure we communicate our approach clearly. The feedback we received was a little surprising. With the focus on the !nsight Lab service, people wondered if we still provided web development and online marketing services. We revised our homepage. (What do you think?)

If you’d like to know what we think of your presentation, just ask.