Saturday, October 4, 2014
Why Metal Roofing is The Best!
Factors to look out for when employing a contractor
Friday, October 3, 2014
Amateurs Help Guide To Vacation What You Should Know
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Use Social Media to increase your Sales
As a small business owner, there are many ways to promote your product or brand. One of these ways is free and can have a huge reach: social media. Unfortunately, a lot of the entrepreneurs I have spoken to recently feel that the effect isn’t worth the effort. We also see that in our reviews, by the way. It doesn’t matter if we review a photographer’s website or the site of an IT agency, most seem to invest little time in social media efforts or campaigns.
It’s hard to determine the ROI of a social media campaign. The tools that help in that determination are paid, most of the time. A small business owner that isn’t convinced about any ROI at all, won’t make that investment. Of course ROI is heavily depending on a number of factors. How do you convince the customer to buy in a tweet, for instance? Nigel’s comment on my previous post about social media got me thinking:
I also like social media but how do you target the “ready to buy” segment instead of people “Browsing”.
Nigel Abery, oaklaurel.com.au
You don’t buy a hammer to drive a nail in a piece of wood, but to build a bench. Growing an audience using social media, like I mentioned in my previous post, is a means to an end. The ultimate goal of all your social media efforts is of course to sell stuff and make money. It can even be the first step in a multistep process: get more newsletter subscriptions via Twitter to sell your ebook, for instance.
Now how will you be able to trigger that social audience to purchase your products or services? I did some digging on the interwebs. There is a lot to be found on the subject, but no user manual that works for everybody. Unfortunately, but not unexpected. It’s not an exact science, of course. But I’ve come up with some insights nevertheless
The obvious social media sales
Larger companies with a huge social media audience tweet or post their way to money. Now we have this new product, buy it. This will make your life easier, buy it. If you already have this product of us, you’ll want this product. Buy it.
It’s a direct trigger, that works due to the large audience. If you tell 1,000’s of people to buy something, you’ll get sales. That seems obvious. It will trigger at least someone for sure.
In most cases, social media efforts lead to long term wins, like someone that remembers that you are selling Lego t-shirts and finds you back on his Facebook timeline. But it should be possible to get direct buys without waiting for that Buy button to become globally available to everyone.
Obviously large brands with a huge following can become social entities of their own; small business almost never can. Just the other day I was talking to a local business owner about social media (Twitter). I asked him, if his personal profile had more visitors than his business profile. It did. In most small business cases, social media isn’t a business, but always the person behind it.
Small business
Where should you start, right? I think the social media efforts should be designed around your website, to be honest. If you consider social media a serious opportunity, you should make it work with your website, not next to it. If you come up with a nice idea to promote a product on social media, Twitter is limiting your message by 140 characters. Your optimized landing page on your website doesn’t have these limitations. If the landing page is for that Twitter campaign only, you could even measure the effect of the Twitter campaign without tagging your Twitter campaign in Google Analytics (or knowing what tagging an URL is in general).
Come to think of it, social media is a lead to a sale, not the sales effort itself in most small business cases. I have no scientific numbers to prove it, but it seems to make sense. Sure, you can set up a shop app on your Facebook page, but that would be the same as a great website. You are lowering barriers as visitors can become customers without leaving the social network site. And that is just Facebook. Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter don’t have these app possibilities. Yet.
The question remains how that small business owner can use social media for immediate or future profits.
Leading them to the sale
Social media is buzz for companies and people. Social media is people talking one to many. Social media is narrowing your business communication down to a niche. People just like to browse for things they might like. Unbounce did an article on cart abandonment a year ago, stating that “56% of shoppers aren’t ready to purchase but want to save their selection for later”, in their cart. I think it is safe to say that this behaviour has not changed. So what we should use social media for in this case, is to introduce that product to the customer.

Sales appear less ad hoc when it’s a new product to the customer. When there’s some kind of buzz around your product, people might start to want your product unconsciously. It will become more and more top-of-mind, and an eventual sale will be deliberate. Even though it might seem ad hoc to the buyer at that point. This might be a long term effect of your social media efforts.
At Yoast, our main focus is SEO / UX, analytics and WordPress. Most tweets of our team are about those subjects. Creating a niche like that will give you the social following that is already interested in (one of) your products. It did for us.
It is nice to just tweet about beautiful cars when you are selling bread, but those tweets won’t make you money. Tweeting about that new paleo bread you are selling online starting today could get you (immediate) sales, though.
Start early in the process of a new product or offer; “We are releasing a brand new plugin early next week!” or “Only on sale next week, get yours!” and create scarcity; “We’ll start with a test audience of 250 people.” All the basics of sales go for social media as well. You can easily create series, repeat your offer. I tend to use Hootsuite for that. I dislike the GUI of the browser version, but like the functionality. Buffer is another great tool you could try.
Create the need or wish for your product or services. And guide the potential buyer via your preferred social media outlets to your website to close the deal.
To sum things up
Direct selling via social media is coming, and could be an opportunity for small businesses. After reading a number of articles about it, my conclusions are that:
- I am looking forward to reading about new products on Twitter and hitting ‘Buy’.
- I hope Pinterest won’t implement such a Buy button soon, as that will cost me my allowance and more. Having to click a link to another website is a safe barrier.
- My gut feeling tells me too little small businesses are aware of shop apps for Facebook, like the Shopify app. Dig into that, especially when you have a local following on Facebook.
Current social media sales efforts should trigger a niche specific sale on your optimized landing page. We should write a post about optimizing that landing page. Bet you’ll be coming back for that!
This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!
Use Social Media to increase your Sales
SEO Is No One-Trick Pony
This past week, I was joined by Josh McCoy of Vizion Interactive in presenting an SEO workshop for attendees of the Integrated Marketing Summit in Kansas City. The workshop was four hours and the presentation totaled just more than 100 slides.
As you might imagine, there was a lot of stuff to talk about. By its nature, some of that content was a “bit” on the technical side, but we tried our best to speak “English” so that the attendees could walk away with fewer questions than they had coming in.
We wanted the workshop to be interactive, and welcomed questions. One question did strike me as something that I think too often is bantered in executive meetings throughout the world…
The comment (and question), as best as I can recall was something like, “You’ve covered a lot of technical stuff in this presentation, but can you just tell me what the one thing is that we can do to really improve our results for SEO?”
We didn’t dodge the question. I mean, if you had to pick one tactic, I would have to pick “create content.” But, that’s really too simplistic an answer.
I shared with this individual that sometimes content isn’t the answer. Each and every project is unique, the competitive set is unique, and every website (company) has its own set of unique challenges. I shared a few examples of instances where I had worked with large organizations that simply had an issue with getting content indexed. Once this “one thing” was fixed, it was a hockey stick. Traffic, in some cases, doubled. These companies already had authority built into their site (solid link profile/larger brands, etc.). And, in some cases, that “one thing” was the fact that their title tags were absolutely horrible (yes, there are still some with the title tag of “home” on their home/index page of their sites).
There are currently more than 1 million results for an “allintitle:” search on Google for “homepage” and nearly that many for the same search for “home page.”
But, these “one thing” opportunities don’t come around very often.
More often, you are engaging in an omni-channel approach to building authority, strategically developing content, technical stuff, and optimizing conversion rates as much as you are title tags.
This, in my opinion, is “today’s SEO.”
For many of you, this is not news. But, what became clear to me this past week is that there are still many who think of SEO as a “quick fix” or consider it a “do this one thing, and you’ve done SEO.” I’ve certainly read my fair share of wonderful columns detailing individual tactics that are involved in the SEO process, but I don’t know that I’ve seen one which tried to hit upon the various things that go into an SEO engagement, within the confines of one article. I will attempt to hit upon most of these, today.
Today’s SEO
A common expression in recent years has been that “if it’s digital, it’s optimizable.” If we’re really doing this well, our recipe to SEO success involves a lot of ingredients. Here are the few that jump out, to me:
Technical SEO
Once you have content, you need to make sure that it’s indexed. Developing a sound URL structure is very foundational to this effort (you would rather a URL such as www.sitename.com/products/name-of-product than www.mccoysbikeshop.com/Products.aspx?Categoryid=94&Productid=72 – example pulled from Josh McCoy’s post from two years ago on proper URL structure.) Alongside of this, you’ll want to develop and submit an XML sitemap and work on internal linking.
Content
The basis of SEO is that you have quality content that “speaks to” everything that you do. Finding the keywords/themes of this content is the art/science of SEO (you want to target keywords that have search volume, are relevant, AND that you stand a fair chance of ranking for; see Competitive Analysis, later). Once you have developed a list of targeted keywords, you must determine how these keywords match up with content that you current have on your website (or other properties – see Social Media Marketing) and what content you may need to develop (product/service page content/video/blog, etc.). When you’re creating content correctly, you are creating content that is original, high-quality content that speaks to your intended audience in the right manner, so that they might engage with the content (and your company) and possibly share that content, so that you can work toward earning links.
Competitive Analysis
As stated previously, everything in SEO is relative to the competitive set. You can spend a lot of time in this area of practice (and I suggest that this isn’t merely a “one-and-done” affair, either). At its core, the competitive analysis is about determining the opportunities that exist to do well in SEO (is there light at the end of the ROI tunnel?) and what you might need to do to be successful. My favorite tool remains SEMRush.com for a quick analysis of the opportunity. Enter in some competitor domains and see how much traction they have in Google (SEM Rush provides a “SE Traffic Price” metric, showing what it might cost – in AdWords spend – to get what these guys are otherwise getting “for free” via non-paid search). From there, you might also want to do some site: searches in Google to see how much content the competitors have indexed (and what kinds of content), to gain a sense for what you may need to build. You can also use any number of link research tools (OpenSiteExplorer, MajesticSEO, ahrefs/) just to name a few. Put all of this together in a spreadsheet and analyze the opportunity (and the opportunity cost/work) to get a sense for what the project is going to look like. A good illustration of the process, was developed by Aleyda Solis on Moz, but there are certainly more components that go into an in-depth competitive analysis. Some of those are outlined by Boris Demaria on woorank.
Analytics
To me, it is impossible to claim that you are an expert at SEO if you aren’t deep into analytics. At the end of the day, we are not optimizing for “rankings.” We are optimizing towards quality traffic increases and an increase in conversions/money.
Usability/Conversion Rate Optimization
In my opinion, an SEO engagement is all about “optimizing for results.” At the end of the day, if I’m the customer, I want money. I want ROI (more money back than I pay in). If it so happens that my “SEO company” happens to spend considerable time in usability/conversion rate optimization, then so be it. A 25 percent lift in conversions/sales is perhaps more important than a 25 percent lift in traffic (and certainly a hell of a lot more important than a general rankings increase). You can certainly use your analytics platform to identify where visitors are falling off and, in some cases, you can simply eye-ball test some things that are obviously wrong with the usability of a website. That aside, I do really like what Lucky Orange is doing with its real-time analytics product. You can see how people are navigating the site, in real time (as well as view recorded visits), gain insight on what the experience looks like in different browsers/platforms, get insight via heat maps for mouse movements, clicks, and scroll depth, and a whole lot more.
PR/SEO
For as long as I can recall, we have recognized the similarities in PR and SEO. PR “back in the day” may have strictly referred to “submit press releases to gain links,” but that has certainly not been the case for quite some time. PR is a way of amplifying your message. It’s outreach to journalists/influencers. It’s “promotion.” There’s a lot of great reading out there about how to synergize efforts. One such case study that was developed was this piece by Robin Swire on Moz.com. One very common practice for us is to set up alerts for our clients using HARO, to identify opportunities to contribute to pieces that are being published (folks seeking an expert opinion/contribution to an article that is being written). This is great for the agencies who have clients who are unwilling (unable) to commit the time necessary to write compelling “thought leadership pieces,” but may have time to contribute a few paragraphs. Often, these contributions will result in a link back to your site. Even without a link, I have think that Google is smart enough to pass some value through (as was hinted at last year, in Google’s John Mueller’s Webmaster Central hangout).
PPC
In a perfect world, you have enough money (and time) to support both SEO and PPC efforts. And, in a perfect world, there is a PPC budget that can be established/maintained for keyword research purposes. With PPC, you can obviously buy your way into position to gain traffic for specific keywords, and test them, so that you can determine if these keywords are worthy of being a part of the SEO effort.
Social Media Marketing
Much like PR, social media marketing is about amplifying content and trying to earn links, buzz, social shares, and build brand equity. The core of the effort may begin with hosting/maintaining a blog (with good/researched/resourceful content). Developing a blog is not something to take lightly. Please do NOT do this if you do not intend to maintain quality content on a regular basis. How often should you post? Every situation is unique, but I would say that if you don’t intend to update the blog AT LEAST once per week, then perhaps you should consider your options. Step one is determining how to structure your blog. There are reasons why you might consider sub-domain versus sub-directory versus a separate domain. From there, you will want to create an editorial calendar that helps to shape your content initiatives. That said, some of the best posts are those which – quickly – get posted on “hot topics” and are shared, immediately. If you are an early source on something, there is a better chance that you will earn links. Creating the content is one thing…promotion of that content, is another. This is where PR and social media promotion come in. You must get the right eyeballs on your content. If it’s engaging enough, folks will share it. If folks share it, you stand to earn a few links.
There are certainly many other elements that can go into a “full service” SEO engagement (I haven’t even talked about local SEO, video SEO, image SEO, mobile, or a number of other things), but I hope that this has helped to shape the discussion of “what SEO is,” and helps others to understand that it’s not – usually – any “one thing.”
The Original Search Marketing Event is Back!SES Denver (Oct 16) offers an intense day of learning all the critical aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). The mission of SES remains the same as it did from the start – to help you master being found on search engines. Register today!
SEO Is No One-Trick Pony
A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results
Advanced Web Ranking has released a study showing fresh data on the click-through-rate from Google’s organic search results. The data was taken from Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries reports from large accounts back in July 2014.
On average, 71.33% of searches resulted in a page one Google organic click. Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%.
Here is a chart showing the click through rate by exact position:
The study was first presented at SMX East yesterday by Philip Petrescu of Caphyon and then posted on Moz.
The full details of the study break down desktop versus mobile click through rates, branded versus non branded search queries and more. You can download the full study as a PDF over here.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)
A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results
