Latest SEO Tactics and Strategies

“Latest” SEO Tactics & Strategies

Sitelinks for your Website

Sitelinks are links on the search engine results page that help the user to navigate your site before even entering it.  It helps the user navigate your site easier and faster by giving them a preview of what is within your site.  They can go directly to what they want to from the search engine results page.   Depending on the query the user typed into the search engine, you may get a single column or a double column.  This is because some sitelinks are more authoritative than others.  The best way for sitelinks to work to your advantage is to create a website that is easy to navigate.  Have relevant page titles that will help the users find your site. Make sure your anchor text, titles, and navigation tools are consistent.  

Here is an example of searching for “Samsung.”

Website Speed Optimization: “The Need for Speed”

Google ranks the faster sites higher.  This isn't the only metric being used, but it could affect your rank.  Photo and video sites typically load much slower than blogs and text-oriented sites.  You shouldn’t be concerned with all sites beating you out, only those with competing content.   Don’t focus on having the fastest site, just focus on being fast relative to your competitors.  

How to improve loading speed

Script Language:  avoid using Flash, it’s not easily optimized, and slow to load

Hosting Server Speed:  check with your hosting provider’s service agreement to determine speed and bandwidth allocation

Coding quality:  your code can be simplified, this will speed up loading

Picture Resolution:  high resolution photos are not always required, high resolution photos slow things down

Bulky Applications:  Adobe is notorious for slowing loading speeds

Increasing Traffic by using Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is when a business owner bookmarks some of their favorite sites on their social media accounts and websites.  Using Pinterest.com is a great way to do this today!  The text mentions Twitter and StumbleUpon.  Social bookmarking will increase traffic to your site.  This will result in more sales and higher revenue.  

Here are a few tools to help you monitor and analyze your social media accounts:

• TweetStats
• HubSpot Marketing Grader
• Twitterholic
• BackTweets
• Facebook Insights
• Google Alerts
• Icerocket
• Klout

Local Search Marketing

Local Search Marketing

Local Search Marketing is the use of search engines to search for local resources. The search engine use is limited to specific geographical areas.  Local Search Marketing has been on the rise for the past few years.  According to Webvisible and Nielson, 74% of the surveyed adults mentioned that they had used search engines for obtaining local information.  Keyword research is the main focus for local search marketing.  Usually, when keywords are typed into the search engine, users use local qualifiers such as zip codes, city names, county names, state names, and streets.  

Marketers should use local on-page optimization, such as posting local phone numbers and physical addresses across all pages.  Using geographical qualifiers in title and heading tags will also help you rank as well.  Using these tags will result in your location having more prominence.  Off-page optimization factors that should be used are anchor text for incoming links.  

All major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) have a local business center where local businesses can submit their information and details about their business.  This will ensure your business will list in the "local" section and on maps as well.  

Other search engines, yellow pages, and directories:

Yelp.com

Local.com

Infousa.com

Yellowpages.com

Superpages.com

Citysearch.com

These sites will help drive traffic to your site and business if used properly. Make sure to study how they work. I use Yelp.com regularly when deciding where to eat dinner! Find out what works for you and your organization, and use it.

How to Delight your Customers

Customer delight is not just a post-sale activity, it should be practiced both pre and post-sale.  This is a priority. This will get your customers to trust you, and recommend your product or service to someone else.  Customer delight is key because it spans the entire life cycle of the inbound methodology.  Delighting customer is turning them into promoters.  There was a quote in the video and it basically said “if you build trust between the people you serve, they will return the favor and serve you.”  The inbound experience is formed by every interaction with you or an employee.  These interactions contribute to the inbound experience.  However, these interactions can either make or break you.  They must be trust building experiences, not trust breaking.  

Three Pillars to Customer Delight:

1. Innovation
2. Communication
3. Education

Always challenge the status quo, this will help to serve people with the right products and services.  Learn from your buyer personas how you can better innovate.  Being personal is also important.  This is a critical piece of building an inbound experience.  And lastly, educate people to grow their knowledge.  Embrace these pillars, and become inspired by them.  

Seven Customer Delight Guidelines

1. Delight Employees
2. Educate Employees
3. Empower Employees
4. Listen
5. Ask Questions
6. Help & Educate
7. Follow up

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first”  Simon Sinek

Delight your employees and they will delight your customers.  Happy employees create happy customers and allow for sustained customer delight.  Customers and employees are a business’s greatest assets.  Understand this or you will never be able to delight both groups.  Test for culture fit.  

Happy employees will create happy customers.  Both customers and employees are a business’s greatest assets.  They both cannot function without each other.  This must be understood, otherwise you will never be able to delight both groups.  First, the employee must be tested for culture fit. HubSpot suggests creating a hiring methodology that tests:  skills, culture fit, beliefs, experience, and ideas.  This will help figure out whether they will become an asset to both the company and the customer.

“Every small interaction makes a difference…. because they create the larger experience”

The next step in delighting customers it to educate your employees.  First, create team principles that your employees will live by.  This will create a sense of individuality and empower employees to make decisions on their own.  Educate your employees by teaching them the pillars of customer delight.  Create a new hire training program and implement it so standards are set.  Develop training programs that are on-going.  Educate employees by doing, rather than saying.  Share stories of great customer service.  Teach the employee what solving for the customer means, and what it looks like. All employees will contribute to one another’s education within the company.  Remember it is everyone’s job to contribute to delighting the customers.  

Empowering customers is done by allowing employees’ personalities to shine through.  Empower your employees with a customer delight checklist.  The checklist contains:  solve their problems, provide recommendations, and be enthusiastic and fun.  

Listen to your customers.  Collect data that is both qualitative and quantitative about the inbound experience.  Use social monitoring as a listening tool.  Social monitoring will automatically monitor what is being said about your company on social media.  When communicating with the customers, make sure you are listening and figuring out what the core issue you.  Repeat what they've said back to them to make sure you’re both on the same page.  

Asking questions will help you learn more about the customers problem or their question.  This will help to educate them and solve their problem.  Pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal communication.  The next step is to help and educate.  Use the checklist to become a problem solver.  This will help build trust with people.  And finally, the last step to delighting customers is to follow up.  This will ensure that your customer’s problem has been resolved.  This means that you have become a true “problem solver.”  

An Explanation of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. (Seocertification.org)

YouTube is a great example to help explain affiliate marketing.  Pewdiepie is one of the most subscribed YouTubers, with over 35 million subscribers.  He began creating gaming videos and then formed a partnership with Nintendo.  He would feature Nintendo products in his videos and receive payment based on his subscription count and other various factors.  Pewdiepie became a millionaire because his partnership with Nintendo and other companies who reached out to him.  

Affiliate marketing is the most trusted way to promote any business.  Pewdiepie has a very loyal following, and these subscribers take his opinion into consideration when purchasing products. Affiliate marketing is known as a pay for performance model.  This means that the there are no marketing expenses incurred until the results are finally realized.  Compensation is usually based on these few factors:  

• Pay-per-impression or Cost-per-thousand (CPM):  The publisher of the ad gets a fixed amount for every 1000 impressions.  The ad is either rich media, or a banner image.  

• Pay-per-click (PPC)/Cost-per-click (CPC):  This is the most popular method.  The advertiser must pay a set amount of money each time a potential customer clicks on the advertiser’s ads.  Commission can be generated by fraudulent clicks however.  

• Pay-per-lead (PPL):  The advertiser must pay commission to the publisher for every visitor that was referred.  If the referred visitor performs the desired action then the publisher is paid a commission.  Examples of desired actions may be filling an online form, creating a new account, or subscribing to a newsletter.  

• Pay-per-sale (PPS) or Cost-per-sale (CPS):  Also known as revenue sharing, this method is where the a percentage of a sale is given to the publisher.  The publisher refers their visitors to the advertiser and then sales are generated.

• Pay-per-call:  This is where an advertiser pays a fixed commission to the publisher for the phone calls received from the specific published ad.  This acts as a link between online and offline advertising.  

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is beneficial for merchants because it allows merchants to reach a broader market.  Sales can be generated more easily this way.  Research is required to determine who to contact, finding a good fit for their product is key, so a bit of healthy research is done.  Merchants can come in contact with the market and willing customers more easily.  Especially, the customers who will drive and enhance sales.  Affiliate marketing draws in visitors of different genres, so this gives marketers an idea of consumer trends, needs, and requirements.  Fast and easy sales are another result of affiliate marketing.  These initial customers will become repeat customers and the recommendations from the publisher usually works.  

How is the affiliate marketing success tracked?

There is various software available on the market, but the most popular is Affiliate Wiz (ASP.NET). Affiliate Wiz is used to manage affiliate marketing programs.  This software places a cookie on a visitor’s computer and tracks them as they browse the website.  When sales are made, the administrator is notified.  

Perfecting the Conversion Process

Perfecting the Conversion Process

Conversion is so critical because this is how to gain leads.  Conversion can guide visitors to landing pages and become leads for your business.  Conversion can turn an anonymous visitor into a lead.  This is an opportunity to turn this anonymous visitor into a real person. With landing pages we can collect information about a visitor.  We can learn about their needs and interests with this information and lead them through the buyer’s journey. Building conversion paths is a key step as a marketer.  This will help the process and make it easier for visitors to navigate and become leads.  

The three building blocks to building a successful conversion page include a call-to-action (CTA), a landing page, and a thank you page.  A CTA will catch the visitor’s attention and bring them to a landing page.  After they have entered their information into the form, they are then led to the thank you page where they can receive the offer.  

What is a call-to-action?  A button or image placed on pages with the sole purpose driving visitors to your landing page.  Can be placed on different pages within your site.  

After we have attracted the buyer persona, we will guide them to make a sale.  In the awareness stage the visitor is discovering your site for the first time.  The consideration stage is next and this is where the visitor is learning more information about your company. Finally, in the decision stage they are getting all the information they need about the product or service you offer that will help them decide whether or not they should buy the product.   

At each stage of the buyer’s journey, the three building blocks (CTA, landing page, and a thank you page) should be featured.  They should be different to ensure that they fit each stage.  Think about what you can offer them at each stage that will benefit them. Remember to keep the visitor’s wants and needs a priority.  Without the visitors we have no reason to exist.  This is stressed throughout the entire HubSpot certification courses.  

How to choose an SEO Consultant

How to Choose an SEO Consultant

SEO Consultants provide their services to website owners who would like to rank exceptionally. SEO consultants can offer various services such as on-page optimization, off-page optimization, PPC campaigns, link building, site restructuring, and more.  Overall, the goal of the consultant is to achieve higher rankings for the client’s website. 

Search for a consultant who is either SEO Certified or an SEO Certified Professional.  Beware of the guarantees of promising top rankings.  Reputable freelance SEO specialists and firms will never guarantee because they realize much is not in their control.  If the firm can show past work that they have done ask to see the numbers.  

Avoid those who use search engine spam and also black hat SEO.  Google is keeping an eye out for those using black hat techniques and knocking their rank down.  Ensure the specialist has a physical address posted on their website.  Paying for SEO services can vary as well.  Due to the fact that the results are not guaranteed, payment may also be negotiated regarding results.  Some reputable firms may ask only for ⅓ to ½ of the payment up front.  If the firm you are negotiating with asks for a full payment up front, be cautious.  

Throughout this process be cautious and ask questions.  It is better to be safe than sorry.  If the total payment is asked for upfront or if they guarantee results beware.  There are many SEO scams that involve having you pay and then as soon as they receive the payment they remove all the advertising and you will lose rankings.

Entrepreneur.com has a helpful post with 10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant.

What is Smarketing? And Why is it Important?

What is Smarketing?  And Why is it Important?

Smarketing is a mixture between Sales and Marketing.  There is a bad relationship between Sales and Marketing among companies.  This is bad news because they are supposed to be on the same team, team revenue.  Both sales and marketing are responsible for growth and revenue.  Marketing plays the role of attracting and nurturing customers, and sales takes it to a one-on-one place where their specific needs can be determined and sold to at the right time.  

This is an example of how each department views one another. Unfortunately, they're both on "team revenue" and must work together.

Alignment Around Goals

• Having the same or related goals
• Marketing pipeline=Sales quota
• Visibility into each other’s goals and progress
• Compensation based on each other’s goals

A suggestion the HubSpot video gave was to have both a sales team member and a marketing team member work towards the same goal.  They would also receive compensation based on each other’s goals also.  They ensured they had alignment around a single goal and helped each other get there.  They were hyper aware of each others situation at all times.  This reinforced the concept that they’re on the same team.  

Alignment Around Personas

• Communicate persona details across the company
• Educate each other about new persona details
• Specialize teams around particular personas

What is a persona?  A persona is a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer based on real data and qualitative interviews.  If we have these personas in mind while creating, it will better drive each departments priorities.  We will have this ideal customer in our mind and work to please them.  Both the sales and marketing teams work with actual customers on a regular basis.  It’s important to keep everyone informed about the personas so they can better their plans and ideas.  The customers may have new motivations, new goals, new challenges, and it’s important to keep everyone up-to-date and informed.  This will help the entire company (not just one team) better understand who you’re trying to reach.