As we celebrate the Christmas season it again leaves us looking forward to 2013, but not
before we offer our final challenge of 2012.
When it comes to seasons, it is our view that all businesses have them. We were reminded of this at the beginning of December when the same client who emails us every year about this time did so again: “It’s a bit quiet on our website, performance is down.”
We replied: “Well, it is December, and for the last six years your performance is worst in December. Not many customers are shopping for your services in the Christmas season. So performance is down on November, but not December 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006.” Continue reading “How to Wreck Seasonal Digital Marketing Campaigns”
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.
It is easy to get seduced by real-time numbers. When you work on a website, all the visitors are remote, often relegated to numbers in a spreadsheet or weekly report. So real time analytics can seem like the perfect answer – you can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW on your website.
Look, there they are, in this specific millisecond… the region they are in, the device they are using, the page they are on, where they came from and more. It attracts, it engages, it hypnotises.
What is worse than not measuring anything on a website? When you use the wrong measures!
Most business owners know they need to analyse their AdWords and Analytics, but normally they choose the wrong ‘key performance indicators’, and end up measuring rainfall with a thermometer (or the digital equivalent).
Those who use Pay Per Click a lot, have got used to work-around solutions to try to squeeze the best value out of this medium. After all, that’s what optimisation is all about.
One of the most frustrating areas has been managing mobile advertising – if we wanted a specific mobile message and campaign we had to setup a separate Mobile campaign, with separate adverts and landing pages.
So, it’s likely that someone has recently leaned over the ‘digital’ table to you and whispered a sweet nothing in your ear…
‘Content Marketing, it’s the future of SEO, dontcha know?’
In fact, we’d go a little further than that – content marketing is SEO right now and, on top of that, it’s also a key driver for your future digital leads and new business generation. Or rather, it should be.
For virtually every business with a website in the world, the one measure which makes the most immediate and substantial change to their fortunes is their website conversion rate.
Yet few businesses spend much attention on improving conversion rates through optimisation of their website and therefore they lose the one single area where they could generate an immediate improvement to their profitability.
Look, we’ll be the first to jump on any truck passing which could serve our clients better, particularly when it comes to the Internet.
In the Internet’s case, if you don’t get on the truck straight away you find it’s fuller than a bendy bus in rush hour… however, we have served ourselves a cease and desist order when it comes to ‘Social Media Marketing’ – quotes intentional.
Put this into real-world context: if you’ve ever been at a drinks party and wanted to engage with a conversation, do you:
a) Barge into the conversion, talk over people, relentlessly pursue your message, hand out some business cards and fliers and then exit without hearing what anyone else has to say, or do you
b) Listen carefully, wait until you have something relevant to say, and then engage with the group in order to participate
If you can retain this picture, then you can understand better why so many marketing businesses are perplexed with social media – because social media marketing contradicts itself. Continue reading “Social Media Marketing – Don’t be a Twitter!”
In the good ol’ days the marketing budget was the ground rule for all marketing. Sure you could stretch it here or there, but it was set, rigid, in stone, and if you wanted to gain something you had to pilfer from somewhere else in the budget.
This made sense, because often stretching a budget in a certain field of marketing would actually reduce the overall effectiveness of the campaign.
For example, with direct mail, the larger the list bought, normally the less targeted it becomes; or with advertising, repeat advertising, whilst reinforcing the message normally has less effectiveness with the same creative.
As we celebrate the Christmas season it again leaves us looking forward to 2013, but not
If we were to make two wagers with visitors to this blog, we’d suggest these two things:
It is easy to get seduced by real-time numbers. When you work on a website, all the visitors are remote, often relegated to numbers in a spreadsheet or weekly report. So real time analytics can seem like the perfect answer – you can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW on your website.
For virtually every business with a website in the world, the one measure which makes the most immediate and substantial change to their fortunes is their website conversion rate.
Put this into real-world context: if you’ve ever been at a drinks party and wanted to engage with a conversation, do you:
