One of the main problems for digital marketing is born out of eagerness to put the horse before the cart. To clarify… that is to decide on a campaign without a well thought-out strategy.
So it is with much of email marketing. It makes so much sense to use emails over pretty much every other form of direct maketing, and most fault foul of the two most common problems:
There has been a lot written about the London Olympic games and the ticketing. To a certain extent it would have been very difficult to get everything right, but having been through the initial round and then the ‘repechage’, it’s time to take a critical look at the online user experience.
We have come up with four reasons why they frustrated with their online ticketing and therefore reduced their chance of success.
As you fight to increase profit and opportunity, you know that every little improvement helps to increase conversions on your website.
Here are our top six areas where, if you apply these conversion ideas to your website, you can boost your sales, drive more leads and grow your business opportunity.
Have you ever noticed one of those business card printing kiosks? There’s one at Victoria Station.
Have you ever wondered why they are rarely, if ever used?
The reason is quite simple – the cards they create are embarrassing.
Most business people would prefer to fall into a large hole in the ground should they ever have to actually consider sharing one to someone else.
Even if the business owner in question has a thick skin and doesn’t particularly care about other people’s opinions, the message these cards communicate is one of lethargy and disinterest, price before everything else. Continue reading “Build Your Own Website? Do So at Your Own Peril!”
We have developed an end-to-end, legally sound, easy to manage solution for businesses and individuals seeking to meet the EU ePrivacy cookie law to ensure website compliance.
Step 1: Cookie Audit
The first step that any business needs to take is to perform a cookie audit, you can do this on your own or we can do this for your for a small fee – the advantage being that you get an endorsed and dated report from Ergo Digital detailing your requirements. Continue reading “One-Stop Solution to the EU ePrivacy Cookie Law”
When it comes to planning for a successful 2013, the first thing you should do is agree a budget for the year, then choose what areas you want to spend it in and then press ‘go’ and hope that all your plans and estimates prove correct over the next 12 months…
If we were to make two wagers with visitors to this blog, we’d suggest these two things:
You have measurements in place of virtually every activity you do online, yet
You are still struggling to discover which ones really make a difference
And that’s the challenge: It’s not about the data – it’s all there if you want it. Everything is to hand, BUT the more hay in the stack, the harder it is finding the needle!
Big Data is exactly that: big, ugly, unforgiving and frustrating. So, how can you slice through the fog? How can you discover your online business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)?
Last month we covered some important digital marketing KPIs and examples of businesses who’ve got it wrong. Today we’re going to look at how you can find them.
The aim of this article is not to downgrade SEO Agencies, or indeed give the impression that search optimisation is a waste of time. The issue it addresses is that most clients and businesses need to better understand how organic listings can be setup successfully, not just an income stream for a SEO agency or freelancer.
1. Use Analytics to Measure Your Performance (Google is Free)
The first challenge is to measure your traffic. If you don’t measure the visitors to your site, how can you then work out whether Search Engine Optimisation is working for you?
Whilst there are many good walkthroughs for setting up Google Analytics, and even some from Google themselves, the reality is that any web developer or designer can set this free service up with a minimum of fuss.
The next step is to login and take a look around. Too many businesses who have analytics never look at it. If your website is a serious part of your business, then you need to take it seriously too. Get to know Analytics, and in time, you will LOVE it, not because it’s beautiful, but because it can do beautiful things to your business performance!
2. (Virtually) Ignore Search Ranking Reports
This is a little contentious, but strikes at the heart of SEO. The old claim of ‘Page 1’ ranking or performance can miss out the two most important first steps:
The relevance of the keyword phrase: getting a good ranking is great, but not for terms which bear no relevance to your products or services
The popularity of the search terms: there is no use getting excited about ranking for a term no-one uses!
We are not saying that ranking reports are useless, but merely that they need to know their place, which is after ensuring that the keywords being targeted are both relevant and popular.
3. Understand The Traffic a SEO Agency Actually Delivers
Once you access Analytics, you can quickly find your ‘Organic’ traffic into the business. We have three ‘hats’ into which we put the keyword phrases we measure:
Branded – keyword phrases to do directly with the business brand, branded services or people who work for the business
Relevant – keyword phrases which do not mention the brand, but are relevant to the services and products supplied
Irrelevant – keyword phrases which are irrelevant to your brand and business and which you (mainly) accidentally rank for
The ONLY category which your SEO should be working in is the ‘Relevant‘ category. The ‘Branded’ phrases you will end up ranking for regardless, it is something that Google is fantastic at doing for you. The ‘Irrelevant’ phrases are to be ignored, if your SEO points to these, then just ask them to focus on the business aims as these are of no value to you.
4. Measure the Traffic and Use it to Value Your SEO Efforts
Here’s an example graph from a spreadsheet you can download here (the numbers have been modified as this is merely an illustration).
The spreadsheet illustrates clearly how we can then take this ‘Relevant’ traffic and work out the value of it to our business.
The guesswork is now gone, we actually understand the value of the traffic.
To clarify, we go through these steps:
Make sure we are viewing organic keywords only
Split out the keywords into their categories (see above)
Measure them over the course of time (seek growth)
Value them based on visit and/or enquiry
Then, we have something to work with, and can evaluate the performance of our SEO agency which will help us lead the process in the right direction.
5. Make Sure You Measure Correctly!
So, what happened in the top image, did the business in question upset Google and get ‘whacked’? Or, was it an update which affected rankings? Perhaps the site changed dramatically?
No, it was not an external factor causing the drop in organic traffic. In this instance it was that the client was running a Google AdWords campaign and didn’t tag the links correctly into the website.
So the reporting was bundling organic and paid traffic together and giving the impression that the overall traffic was really strong. Worse, it was also reporting that there were rankings on many of the target keyword phrases when it was the advertising, not the SEO, achieving this. It was only when we got involved that this error was corrected.
For any business, the key is to set a long term SEO objective for your business – if natural traffic can win you business, then SEO is an excellent channel to market. But only if tackled properly and effectively. If you need some help, just call us on 01962 605 000, or read more about our marketing services as we think SEO is great, but only successful as a part of the overall digital marketing mix.
We’re the rocket fuel that propels your business to new heights.
Have you ever noticed one of those 
We have developed an end-to-end, legally sound, easy to manage solution for businesses and individuals seeking to meet the 
If we were to make two wagers with visitors to this blog, we’d suggest these two things:
