Month: August 2013

Not all SEO is good SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the key elements of any good online marketing strategy to give your business a competitive edge and attract new customers. Keeping your website in top shape is the key to earning Google’s respect and achieving a Page 1 ranking.

Performing SEO involves using a number of tactics to help your website rank for specific keywords in the natural search results. Most search engine users will only click on the first page of results, with the #1 ranked page or site receiving about 35% of clicks, #2 17% and #3 8% with the rest receiving around 1% and lower.

Search engine optimisation is not about typing in your business name and seeing it in results, the proof of success is in seeing your business rank well for the products and services you offer.

The recipe for a successful SEO campaign involves four ingredients: Keywords, Traffic, Competition, and Relevance.

Keywords

SEO providers can get your page a top ranking, but you want to make sure that it’s for the right keywords. There’s no point achieving a high ranking for keywords that your customers aren’t using, so this is something you’ll need to discuss with your provider. A good SEO provider will get to know your business and research the best keywords to give you long lasting and quality results.

Traffic

Investing in good SEO practices will help drive traffic and build your brand. Strong keyword selection is very important as it can determine how much traffic will be driven to your site. Sharing on social media is also becoming increasingly important for website referrals and brand exposure. Google + is especially useful as content is indexed efficiently and appears in search results for a long time.

Competition

Something to remember is that other businesses are competing for the same keywords as you. SEO providers will measure how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword and can estimate how long it will take to achieve a good ranking for that keyword. Page 1 rankings don’t happen overnight; it can take several months to achieve a high ranking for a competitive keyword.

Relevance

Make it easy for your potential customers to find exactly what they need. Very specific keywords are more likely to lead to conversions as they are more valuable to the person searching for them. The example used in our video is that, if you make gluten free cupcakes, you’ll want to focus on that instead of a generic term like ‘cupcakes’ which will have a lot of competition. Choosing relevant keywords is more important than choosing high traffic keywords.

SEO is never done. Google constantly changes and updates its algorithms and you will need to keep up. It is important to have fresh content to get noticed by the search engines, as an old page which hasn’t been updated in a long time is going to be deemed less relevant and up to date for search users. A basic way of producing fresh content is through blogging on relevant topics and sharing content through social media.

Think of SEO as fuel for a boat engine – your boat needs fuel to get up the river and without it, it will drift slowly backwards. When you put fuel back into the boat, you’ll be starting again to get back to where you were. Search engine optimisation is a long term investment that reaps long term rewards, and shouldn’t be left out of your online marketing strategy if you want to succeed.

If you have any questions about SEO, give us a call or send us an email. We’d love to help you out.

How much bang for your buck? Calculating your social media ROI

We all know how huge social media is– businesses big and small are jumping on board and making the most of what social media networks have to offer. Gaining likes and followers is fantastic, but how do you know if social media is turning fans into customers?

These days, you would have to have a very good reason not to be using social media as part of your marketing strategy. According to the latest Yellow Social Media report, 65% of Aussies are using social media, and 95% of those users are on Facebook, yet only 30% of small businesses are using social media. That’s a lot of missed opportunities! Learn more about why you should be using social media in the video at the top of the page.

The Yellow Social Media report also reveals that only 51% of large businesses are measuring their social media ROI. It is notoriously tricky to measure the ROI of social media because insights aren’t always available and the definition of “conversion” often needs to be altered. That said, even businesses with a small budget, can use a number of tactics to work out if their social media activity is working in their favour by using free tools and analytics provided by Facebook and Google Analytics and subscription based apps.

In measuring your conversions, ROI and overall success with social media, it is important to match metrics to the goals you wanted to reach by using social media. A return on investment could mean increased brand awareness, as well as revenue generation, so look at how many clicks, video plays, photo views, comments, shares, etc. your content is receiving. This will let you know if your brand awareness is increasing and where you might need to make changes.

Consider tracking anecdotes and correlation as a measurement for ROI. Anecdotal evidence could include asking your customers how did found you, or what drove them to make a purchase? You could measure by correlation if you seen an increase in sales at the same time as an increase in social media activity. If you’ve recently run a competition or have had particularly engaging or viral content, this could be linked to increased sales activity.

Google Analytics can help you track how many customers are visiting your website from your social media networks. Look at their activity on your site – depending on your goals, a download or subscription could be counted as a conversion.

Measuring the amount of traffic you need to drive to your website or store via social media can also be calculated. Start by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value, that is, the amount of revenue a customer will generate for a company during the customer’s engagement with a brand.

Say your CLV is $2000 and you allocate 10% of the CLV ($200) to use social media to acquire new customers. Now let’s say you’ve outsourced your social media to a consultant, who will cost you $1000. Divide the cost of the consultant by your social media spend and you will find that you need to acquire more than 5 new customers to achieve a positive ROI.

There are every evolving ways to calculate your social media ROI and this is just the beginning. Calculating how much bang social media is generating for your buck comes down to matching metrics to your company goals, looking at insights and developing measurements which best suit your products and services.