Top 5 Reasons to Invest In SEO Now

There’s a lot of skepticism about whether or not SEO is still a relevant tactic. That’s why in today’s article we address 5 reasons why SEO is (and likely will always be) a great investment for your business.

The Top 5 Reasons to Invest in SEO

 

Does SEO still matter?
 
Given how dramatically the online landscape has changed — more people access the Web through smartphones than desktop, and social media is king among mobile users — it’s natural to wonder whether good-old fashioned SEO tactics have suddenly become obsolete.
 

But don’t worry, the answer is yes, SEO still matters.
 

In fact, good SEO might matter more today than it did a few years ago.
 

Google still processes more than 100 billion searches per month, and more than half of those searches are made from mobile devices. And while some aspects of old-fashioned SEO have been greatly diminished, many of the old rules still ring true today.
 

For example, content is still king, but there’s vastly more content online and more businesses are vying for attention. Marketers and business owners must evolve with the times or risk being left behind.
 

Good SEO doesn’t happen overnight, and getting more active on Facebook won’t replace the value of a great ranking in Google. Read on to learn the top 5 reasons why business owners should still invest in SEO.
 

 

1. SEO is an asset – it’s a good investment since it keeps paying dividends.

See all those people with their noses in their smartphones? They might be texting someone about what their spouse, friends or coworkers said. Or, they might be finding a place for happy hour, researching home improvement ideas or eyeing new running shoes.
 
Mobile technology has greatly affected how people interact with the Internet, and that includes how and when people search for the goods and services they need. Now, people are more likely to use Google when standing in line for coffee, waiting for doctor appointments or riding in cars with friends.
 
Given the mobile nature of Web searches, people are much more likely to visit businesses or buy products online as a direct result of good SEO – and that’s huge.
 
The simple truth is that investing in SEO is a smart business decision. It always has been, and there’s no reason to believe that will change. It’s crucial to view SEO as an investment rather than a purchase. Business owners who continue to invest in good SEO are much more likely to continue connecting with customers online despite seismic shifts in how people interact with the Web.
 

2. SEO helps conversions.

Having a great website that’s fully functional on smartphones and tablets is a must in today’s mobile world – but what good is an amazing website if nobody ever sees it?
 
When your website ranks at the top of Google, people are pre-sold on working with you. Organic results at or near the top of the rankings are often assumed to be authorities in their fields of expertise and make prospects more likely to trust you and therefore more likely to convert.
 
Having good content (remember, content is king) is the foundation of good SEO, and visitors are more likely to become paying customers when your website provides useful, engaging content.
 
The combination of having a solid website and a high ranking in Google is great for your company’s brand. Visitors and customers are both more likely to not only find your business, but to come back again later.
 

3. SEO is a zero sum game. So if you stand still, you’ll lose market share.

Ever play musical chairs? There are never enough seats for everyone in the circle, and when the music stops, someone always loses – and snagging a chair only gets tougher.
 
These days, landing an above-the-fold position in Google is a lot like musical chairs. Google is allocating less space for organic results and more room for PPC ads, local Web directory listings and even direct answers for search queries. Investing in SEO is absolutely vital for staying on the first page of the Google results.
 
Mobile SEO is even more competitive. According to 2015 data from the marketing firm MobileMoxie, only 3 percent of Google searches in the United States return only organic search results. In many cases, Google prevents any organic results from showing above the fold, instead opting to show lists, graphs, PPC ads with extensions, locator maps and more.
 
When the music stops, you want to make sure there’s still a seat for your business!
 

4. It’s not a fad — it will continue to change, but it’s not going anywhere.

Ah, the 1980s… The decade of success is fondly remembered for saxophone solos, fluorescent colors, Showtime basketball and angsty coming-of-age films.
But marketing gurus look back at the 80s and see it as something far more profound – the last days of advertising when the Internet didn’t matter.
 
It seems almost obligatory that people wonder each year whether SEO really matters. Not only has SEO mattered for roughly 20 years, but it will likely evolve and be relevant for decades.
 
Up until the end of the 80s, consumers tended to learn about products via radio, television and print ads, and purchasing decisions were often made in stores.
 
Nowadays, consumers often reach decisions on what to purchase – a moment that Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT – while browsing websites on their phones. In other words, good SEO is arguably more influential to consumers than the full force of advertising channels from yesteryear.
 

5. Local SEO can be a huge opportunity.

About to leave the grocery store, and you feel like grabbing Indian food on the way home? Or are you out running errands and suddenly remember that you need a new outfit for an upcoming party?
 
In the past, finding on-the-fly answers for spur-of-the-moment impulses was significantly less convenient. Now, thanks to smartphones, consumers can instantly find and compare nearby restaurants, retailers and any other kind of business – and according to research from Google, 50 percent of local searches led to consumers visiting stores on the same day.
 
If you’re a business owner, make sure your company is listed on Google My Business and ensure your business name and contact information are displayed correctly on your website, Facebook page, Bing Local, and any other online channel. You should also register your business on leading online review sites such as Yelp, Angie’s List, Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor. Online review site listings like these are often listed on the first pages of search results.
 
While businesses are starting to put efforts into Local SEO, there is still plenty of opportunity to build yours up before your competitors and now is the time to beat your competitors to the punch.

7 Ideas to Generate More Leads From Your Website

If you’re looking for ideas to generate more leads from your website, then you’ve come to the right place.  In this article, I’ll walk through 7 tactics that nearly every business can use that will convert your website from a passive brochure into a 24/7 lead generating machine.

Before we get into the tactics, it’s important to understand there are two very different types of website visitors:

    Buyers – Buyers are visiting your website to learn more about your product or service in order to make a buying decision in the near future.  They know what they’re looking for and are are ready to pull the trigger as long as your product or service fits their criteria.

    Browsers – Browsers are visiting your website to learn more about your product or service, but they aren’t ready to buy.  They are interested, but don’t know if they really need what you’re offering.

Of course we all want more buyers, but the reality at any given time is that the vast majority of your website visitors are browsers.  This is a key insight that leads us to one of the most important jobs of your website, which is to capture contact information from as many visitors as possible.  That way you can follow up with both buyers and browsers until they are finally ready to buy.

With this in mind, let’s dive into the tactics to capture more of your visitors’ contact information.  We’ll start with the basic tactics and move our way to the more advanced tactics at the end.

1. Add a General Contact Form

This may come as a surprise, but I still see websites that don’t have a general contact form.  I guarantee these websites are missing out on potential sales from visitors that would have submitted the contact form with basic buying questions.

For example, many people do research during non-business hours when calling is not an option.  In this case, it’s easier to complete a website contact form to get an answer to a question that could ultimately lead to a purchase.

If you do not have a general contact form, then this is one of the easiest ways to start generating more leads from your website.


2. Add Product or Service Specific Forms

The next step once you have your general contact form set up is to create product or service specific forms.  For example, on your product or service description page, add a “request a quote” or “request a demo” or “schedule an appointment” form to capture the contact information from buyers interested in that particular product or service.

The leads from these more specific forms will tend to be higher quality and further along the buying process compared to leads from your general contact form.


3. Add a Lead Magnet

Once you have the first two types of forms installed on your website, then it’s time to switch gears and focus on capturing contact information from all of those browsers.  Again, browsers aren’t ready to buy right now so they are not likely going to request a quote or ask a buying question on your general contact form.

Therefore, we need to take a different approach by using what’s called a “lead magnet.”  A lead magnet is something valuable (information, coupons, access to a tool) that you can offer on your website for free, in exchange for contact information.  For example, our homepage lead magnet is the Internet Marketing Survival Guide.  Plus, we offer other free tools like an SEO checklist and an AdWords checklist.

As you can see in these examples, the key is to offer something relevant and valuable to your target market in exchange for at least an email address so you can follow up.


4. Use a 2-Step Checkout Process

If you have an e-commerce website, then this is a great way to start generating more leads immediately.

As you probably know, every e-commerce website suffers from shopping cart abandonment, which is when buyers go through the process of adding products to their shopping cart, but don’t end up completing the order.  On many e-commerce websites, the order form is the last step and it’s also the only form that collects the customer’s contact information.  Therefore, when shoppers abandon their carts, you have no contact information to follow up. That is the case, unless you use a 2-step checkout process.

Simply add a step right before the final checkout page to collect a little information like name and email address.  Then after the 1st step is complete, the customer is redirected to the final checkout page to complete the order.  If the customer does not complete the final form, then you can use the contact information you collected on the 1st step to follow up and close the sale.


5. Add Online Chat

I’m sure everyone is familiar with online chat.  There are two types of chat that you can use: Live and Automated.  Live chat is obviously when a live person is chatting with the website visitor.  Automated chat is pre-programmed to answer frequently asked questions from visitors, which can save you time and money (but also can frustrate visitors that have more unique questions).

Generally, I recommend businesses test out live chat during regular business hours as yet another way to capture contact information from leads.


6. Add an Exit Popup

Have you ever tried to leave a website and you were quickly presented with a popup window explaining a special offer?  That’s an exit popup.

Exit popups are a last ditch effort to capture contact information from a visitor about to leave your website (possibly forever).  For example, you can use a lead magnet exit popup to present a free offer or a special coupon, you can offer live chat to get the visitor’s questions answered, or you can offer a free quote or demo.


7. Add a Lightbox

The final tactic is to use what’s called a “lightbox.”  A lightbox is the more user friendly version of the old pop-up window.  With a lightbox, the form is presented on top of the webpage the visitor was reading.  This is a more advanced tactic because you need to be careful about where you use the lightbox and how frequently the lightbox appears for visitors.  Obviously it’s important to balance the pros of capturing contact information versus the cons of annoying potential buyers.

Hacking Quality Score: How One Advertiser Got A Quality Score Of 8.8/10

I believe that Quality Score is so critical to PPC success. To illustrate the point in a more concrete way, I want to present a detailed case study of a WordStream client that is absolutely crushing its AdWords Quality Score. In this case study, I’ll reveal exactly how they did it, and how much they’ve gained from their efforts.

Average Quality Score Of 8.8/10? What? How!

The advertiser in this case study is a small business operating in the insurance industry (I’ve anonymized the data to protect client identity), which happens to be one of the most competitive verticals in PPC. A skeptic might suggest that the situation is pretty hopeless, without chance of success.
But the truth is far from it! In fact, this AdWords advertiser is thriving! Take a look here:

Figure A: This advertiser’s Quality Score rocks!

Figure A shows a graph of the advertiser’s Quality Score distribution. The green bars on the graph show that all of the  keyword impressions in the advertiser’s account are being accrued to keywords with perfect Quality Scores of 10/10 or 7/10, for an impression-weighted average Quality Score of 8.8/10!
To give you a better sense of just how great this is, the yellow curve on the figure shows the typical Quality Score distribution based on some internal WordStream best practices that we’ve developed. From that, you can see that it’s quite rare to have such high percentages of perfect 10 Quality Score keywords and no low Quality Score keywords in an account.
So how the heck did they do it?

Quality Score Is Just Normalized Click-Through Rate

In a previous article, I showed how having a high click-through rate (CTR) relative to Google’s expected CTR for your ad position is the key for having high Quality Scores. Thus, you’d expect an advertiser with super-high Quality Scores to have decent click-through rates. This is indeed the case, as you can see in Figure B.

Figure B: High CTR = High Quality Scores

Above, I’ve graphed the CTR versus the average ad position for the advertiser’s top 200 keywords (those with the most impressions). Notice how this advertiser’s click-through rates are off the charts!
To give you a sense of how amazing these click-through rates are, the tiny little yellow curve on the bottom of the chart shows you what a typical CTR would be for a given ad position — again, based on internal best practices developed at WordStream. Also note that the advertiser’s overall average CTR from search is a whopping 14.06%, despite being in a relatively low average position of 2.88.
The reason for the high Quality Scores is straightforward: the advertiser has very high average click-through rates vs. what Google expects to see.
The real question here is: How do you get a 14.06% CTR in an average position of 2.88?
Most of the outlier keywords with CTRs of 30%, 40%, 50% and even 70% are branded keywords, which generally have very high CTRs — but the rest of the keywords aren’t. It’s interesting to note that there are even keywords with 0% CTR which have perfect Quality Scores of 10/10. It’s almost like the high account average CTR is pulling up the Quality Scores for all keywords in the account. I see this in a lot of accounts, and it’s one reason why I always advocate budgeting at least 15% of your PPC budget toward branded keywords.
But, what about all the other keywords with high CTRs? How the heck do they do that? Is there a secret computer glitch in the AdWords system that can be exploited?

This Advertiser Earned His High Quality Scores!

The first thing I notice when looking over this account is that this advertiser is no lazy bum! His amazing Quality Scores weren’t the result of some computer glitch, but rather of diligent, smart PPC optimization work. He’s in his account at least once a week for half an hour or so actually optimizing stuff. Take a look here:

Figure C: Slow and steady wins the race – ongoing PPC optimization is key to success

The figure above was created by looking at the change history logs in AdWords, from which I can ascertain what (if anything) is actually happening in the account. Notice how, in the last month, this small business advertiser has diligently created 10 new ads, tried out 164 new keywords, and added 4 new ad groups. Furthermore, by looking at the 90-day change history numbers, you can see that the advertiser’s optimization activities are consistent over time — definitely a key habit for solving the Quality Score mystery.
It’s also worth noting that even with his amazing Quality Scores of 8.8, he’s not resting on his laurels — he’s still in his account every week, optimizing stuff! This is an attitude that I’ve found to be common among PPC marketers with high Quality Scores.
Okay, so now we know that to get good Quality Scores, you have to do some optimization work. But you’re probably still wondering what exactly the advertiser is optimizing! Let’s first take a look at his keywords.

Focus On Long Tail Keywords

In order to get double digit CTRs, you’ll need to be a little picky in choosing your keywords, especially in a super competitive vertical like insurance. How picky? Take a look here.

Figure D: To get double digit CTRs, you’ll need to be a little picky in choosing your keywords

In the preceding chart, I analyzed the account’s keywords to see what percentage of impressions are being attributed to keywords with one word (e.g., “insurance,” which is hopelessly broad and unspecific) versus long tail keywords with 3 or more words (e.g., “boston motorcycle insurance,” which is far more relevant and specific). Notice how a whopping 82% of this advertiser’s keyword impressions are being attributed to long tail keywords? This is a key to achieving double digit CTRs.
Being picky is more than just picking specific keywords; you also need to eliminate junk search queries using negative keywords. But, do negative keywords impact Quality Score?

According To Google, Negative Keywords Do Not Impact Quality Score

The official word from Google is that using negative keywords do not impact Quality Score; however, I’m not so sure about that. I can assure you that smart usage of negative keywords will most certainly raise your CTR — and higher CTR almost always leads to higher Quality Score. (It will also improve your ROI!) Let’s take a look at this advertiser’s use of negative keywords:

Figure E: Do negative keywords raise Quality Score? The Goog says no, but this advertiser swears by it.
Regardless, it certainly raises CTR and improves ROI.

You can see that negative keyword optimization is probably the advertiser’s most favored PPC optimization method, having added around 100 negative keywords in the last month and around 200 in the last quarter. Like weeding a garden, negative keyword optimization is an important ongoing task!
The combination of targeted keywords and specific negative keywords is a very powerful combination. Notice how, in the following figure, you can see that the advertiser’s average impression share across the entire account (on a budget weighted basis) is 89%!

Figure F: Being picky with keywords means capturing a high impression share of a more narrow portfolio of keywords.

This is pretty much as high an impression share as you’ll ever get, since Google never monetizes 100% of any keyword search. Since there are billions of insurance searches every month, and it would cost too much to buy them all, your keyword targeting strategy should involve being picky and capturing a high impression share of a narrow portfolio of keywords, as opposed to targeting broader keywords and capturing a lower impression share.

Ad Text Optimization

The next step to getting high CTRs is matching those “golden” keywords with killer ads — and to do ad text optimization, as this advertiser has clearly done:

Figure G: This small business advertiser has 100 ads!

Above, you can see that even this small business advertiser has over 100 active ads in his account, which is relatively high for a small account.

Leveraging PPC Best Practices

Finally, a quick scan of the account shows that the advertiser is leveraging all the various AdWords best practices like ad extensions, advanced match types, etc. While this may seem obvious to advanced PPC marketers, adoption of many of these features is quite low — for example, only about half of small businesses have conversion tracking turned on!

Figure H: A quick check of PPC best practices!

The Benefits Of Quality Score

I’ve previously discussed the benefits of having a high Quality Score, but how does the theory align with the reality of this case study?
This particular advertiser was previously spending around $1,000/month on PPC and is now spending about half that much. His CPC is roughly half the industry average. His average CPA is approximately $12. What’s not to love here?

This Could Be Your Quality Score, Too

Hopefully in this article today, I’ve convinced you that “hacking” AdWords Quality Score amounts to doing some smart PPC optimization work, with the proper expectation that it’s going to take some time to figure it out. So, what the heck are you waiting for?