Social Media & Search

[INFOGRAPHIC] 10 Steps to Leveraging Social Media & Search for Your Brand

[INFOGRAPHIC] Ten Steps to Optimizing Your Brand for Social Media and Search

The relationship between social media and search is here to stay.
Are you ready to initiate a proactive social media and search engine optimization strategy to reach your best customers?

This Infographic offers a Ten Step path to get you going.

Ten Steps to Leveraging Social Media and Search for your Brand

1. THINK – Develop proactive strategy to leverage social media and search to achieve goals.

2. BRAND – Create and Optimize your brand’s social media profiles and updates)

3. FOCUS – Don’t bite off more than you can chew, take a phased approach.

4. TARGET – Seek and engage individuals to begin building qualified audiences.

5. IGNORE – # of followers, likes, friends, klout. Instead, focus on quality and relevance to your goals.

6. ENGAGE – Interact in group and 1-to-1 conversation, keep it real.

7. PLAN – Create a Content Calendar for Search Engine Optimized Owned Content on website and social assets.

8. DEPLOY – Schedule Integrated Owned and Paid Content efforts to improve relevance & visibility.

9. MEASURE – Review and adapt your strategy to improve performance, conversion & ROI.

10. REPEAT! – Lather Rinse and Repeat. (You know what to do! : )

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SEO - Search Engine Optimization

How Google Freshness Search Algorithm Update and Your Website

Will The Google Freshness Algorithm Impact Your Website?

The volume of data being generated any given day, hour, minute or second continues to accelerate, prompting Google to update its search engine algorithm to identify the “freshest” content. According to Google, the Freshness Update to the Google Algorithm will impact 35% of websites.
Will your website be one of them?

Is Your Website Content Fresh?

If you were to compare your website to that of your competitors and easily identify that their website is continually offering fresh, new content to engage and convert visitors to customers, chances are your website is “stale”.

Go Ahead, Get Fresh!

I’ve been recommending, suggesting and pleading with clients for years to deploy a content generation strategy that would enable them to provide valuable information to website visitors, further qualify leads, and of course win favor with search engines like, Google, that have a veracious appetite for fresh content.

3 Ways to Improve Website Freshness

  1. Build a content strategy that includes ongoing updates with relevant content.
  2. Promote new content in email, blog, RSS feeds, social media, etc. to improve readership and visits to the website.
  3. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize! Make sure your content is search engine optimized to serve your competitive search efforts, resonate with your customers and promote conversion.

How Fresh Is Your Website?

If you had to rate the freshness of your website right now on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate it?
(1 being stale, 10 being fresh off the press!)

 

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SEM - Search Engine Marketing, SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Organic SEO and Paid Search Integration Strategy Works Best

The Value of Integrating Organic SEO and SEM Paid Search Efforts

All too often clients approach SEO and SEM independently of one another. I suppose if you must, this is one way to go. However, why wouldn’t you want to align both organic and paid search efforts to compliment and support one another as opposed to potentially competing against one another?

Optimization Of Sponsored Ads Pays Off When Integrated with Organic Search Engine Optimization

Proper search engine optimization of a website, and all related digital assets (blog, catalog, products, services, etc.) is no small task. In fact, many organizations avoid SEO because of the cost because it is an extremely involved process, when done properly. So, many resort to PPC programs like Google Adwords, looking for quick traffic, only to be disappointed by results, and more importantly conversion.

Consumers Trust Organic Over Sponsored Links in Search Results

Studies show that consumers trust organic search engine results over sponsored or paid links. This is never a suprise when I have this conversation with clients and I ask them which they click on…and they say “I never click on ads”…so why would they expect their cleints or customers to?! However, having said that, there is an appropriate place for sponsored ads in search.

Use of Branded and Non-Branded Keywords in Organic and Paid Search

A recent study by Razorfish demonstrates that the majority of conversions from Sponsored Search Ads.

81% of PPC conversions occured within 7 days of a visitor coming to the website via Organic Search.

SEO directly impacts PPC performance

The only component of the Razorfish study that I do not agree with, is that a customer is more likely to click if the website appears twice. We have tested this and effectively eliminted unnecessary PPC budgets that redundantly posted a sponsored link about the website that appeard  #1, #2 and or #3 in organic search results. Close tracking revealed NO loss in traffic, huge reduction in PPC monthly budget (Sponsored links used for occasional sale or promotion only) , and a boost to ROI and profitability.

Of course my Marketing Firm is NOT a Google Adwords Reseller (by choice). We do not wish to make commission from PPC investments made by our clients – I view it as a conflict in interest. We focus on optimization of PPC campaigns as a compliment to organic search engine optimization (SEO) to successfully deliver clicks and conversion.

The Most Effective Investment in PPC Closes The Deal

Most consumers that click on sponsored ads do so when they are in the final phase of the shopping experience. They are ready to BUY. The ads they are most likely to click on differentiate from the competition, present a discount, better deal deal, closest location, free shipping, highest rated, etc…You get the picture.

SEO and SEM Search Engine Strategies Should be Integrated

As a rule, organizations view PPC as a holistic approach to traffic generation do so at their own peril. Few businesses can afford to rely upon paid traffic as their sole source of traffic. The average business must rely upon search, social media, offline marketing and some sort of advertisement to bring new visitors to their website that they can convert to customers.

Always remember to leverage SEO and SEM to appeal to your target customers (or clients) during the 3 phases of the shopping experience!
Research, Compare & Purchase.

 

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