Why Local SEO Might Be the Best Investment You Ever Make

Remember the days that you had to Google a place for lunch before you left the house earlier that day? Or, take it even further back and think about a time that you opened up the phone book to find the closest hardware store.

The growth of mobile technology has made it possible for us to search for nearby businesses literally at the exact moment we need them. If you decide you have a craving for ice cream while walking around downtown, you can take out your phone and simply type in “ice cream shops near me” and be given a list of local spots to indulge in your favorite sundae.

These local search results are an amazing opportunity for businesses to generate traffic and prospective clients in the geographic area they serve, making them ideal prospects. That’s why local SEO is such an important part of any small business’ digital marketing strategy.

Moz recently released their 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors Report that details the elements that affect local SEO. With the updates to this report and the growing importance of local SEO, I figured it would be a good idea to get our SEO analysts to weigh in on ways to improve local SEO. Read on below to find out their top 6 tips for improving your rankings in search results. 

1. Verify and Optimize Your Google My Business Profile Page

It’s important to ensure your Google My Business Profile is set up correctly and maintained for accuracy. Local search results feature the most relevant results for each search. If your business information is complete and accurate, then it’s much easier and more likely that Google will match you to the right searches.

Make sure that you have entered all of the correctly business information into Google My Business. You should select the profile category that most accurately describes your business and verify your location(s). Make sure that when someone looks at your profile they know what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you. List your updated hours, phone number, and any other relevant contact information in your profile.

And it’s important to keep this information up to date. For example, if you’re closed for a holiday, you should make sure that’s in your profile so it says you are closed at that time. Or, if your phone number or location changes, this needs to be updated as well.

2. Get Your "NAP" in Order

If you want your business to rank at the top of the local maps results, it's critical that you keep your "NAP" consistent. NAP refers to your business Name, Address, and Phone number.

You'll want to keep your NAP consistent anywhere you can, including:

• Your website - make sure to include your NAP on the footer of your website so it's on every page
  
  
• Business profiles and directory listings - you can use MozLocal to check for any errors

And if you've ever changed business names or addresses or phone numbers, then you'll want to search for instances of old/outdated info and get it updated.

3. Get LOTS of Citations

"Citations" are mentions of your NAP across different websites and listings. Here are the steps we recommend for getting lots of citations.

1. Submit to the major data aggregators. You can do this via several companies including MozLocal or YEXT or BrightLocal or AdviceLocal. The best deal we've found is BrightLocal which is $55/year.
   
   
2. Get listed in lots of directories. Focus on local, national and industry-specific directories.
   
   
3. Publish press releases. By including your NAP in the byline of your release, you can get dozens or even hundreds of citations when your press release is republished online. You can read about this approach in this case study here.

4. Get Reviews and Respond to Them

Whether customers are finding your business on social media or simply searching in Google, one of the first things they see is your business reviews. This can instantly put a good or bad taste in their mouth, depending on what those reviews say.

From eating at a new restaurant to buying new clothes or choosing a doctor, people are reading reviews. Positive reviews on social media and Google My Business can show your potential customers that your past clients trust you and believe in the product and services you have to offer. By asking your past customers for reviews, you will not only be helping your local SEO, but you will also be helping attract more people to your business.

You can add another layer to this by making sure to respond to reviews. If someone leaves you a positive review, thank them. If for some reason someone leaves a negative review, make sure to promptly provide a response that is nice, professional, and explains why you feel that’s not correct. By connecting with your customers, it shows that you care about their opinions.

5. Optimize Your Website for Service + Geographic Keywords

One way to improve the likelihood of ranking in Local Search Results is to make sure that the pages on your site are optimized.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is having one “Services” page on their website that lists all of the different products or services you have available.

It is much more SEO-friendly to have separate service area pages for each of the services your business offers. That way, when people are looking for a specific service of yours, that specific page can rank in Google. In addition, if you operate in multiple towns, then you may want to add "service area" pages focused on each of the 5-10 primary towns within your service area.

It’s also extremely important that the title tags and meta descriptions on your site are optimized.

Think of the title tags and meta descriptions on your site as key real estate to promote and describe your business. Title tags can have geographical keywords in them to promote your site to the areas you want to rank in. Meta descriptions can be a little longer and have more descriptive keywords to relay the message your title tags are already saying.

Ultimately, both title tags and meta descriptions can serve as perfect billboards in search results that illustrate your business’ services and improve your SEO presence.

6. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

There has been a long standing belief (mainly through black-hat SEOs) that adding multiple cities or ZIP code keywords into the footer of your website helps boost the ranking of a website for different location-based search queries. At one time this actually worked.

However, Google is smarter than that. They have since released algorithm updates which have penalized sites who try to manipulate the search engine with this frowned-upon technique. Therefore, if you stuff keywords into your site it can actually hurt your rankings rather than help them.

How Much Does Local SEO Cost?

There’s a common misconception that search engine traffic (aka SEO traffic) is free.  That’s primarily due to the logical comparison against search engine advertising, which is obviously not free.  With search engine advertising, you’ll pay for every click on your ad.  With organic SEO traffic there is no cost for clicks to your website.  Hence the conclusion that SEO traffic is free.

 
But is it really free?  Is it possible to invest zero time and money and still generate traffic from SEO?
 
Of course not.  Just because you built a beautiful website does not mean you’re going to rank high enough in Google to drive any meaningful traffic.  As I explained in this article, to rank high in Google, you’ll need a relevant webpage and an authoritative domain.
 
You may be wondering, how relevant and how authoritative does your website really need to be?  That question leads us to the #1 factor that will determine how much local SEO will cost.
 

      

#1 Factor That Determines the Cost of SEO

Ever hear the joke about outrunning a bear?  I’m no comedian so I’m sure I’ll butcher this, but it’s an important lesson so here we go… If you’re in the woods with your friends and an adult black bear starts chasing you, then how fast do you need to run?
 
Do you know the answer?  If you’ve never heard this before then you’re probably trying to figure out how fast an adult black bear can run.  Hint: It doesn’t matter how fast the black bear can run.  What matters is how fast your slowest friend can run, and whether you can outrun him! :)
 
OK, I know that’s not a great joke, but it’ll get your brain warmed up and you may have already guessed the #1 factor that determines the cost of SEO.
 
The #1 factor is your competition.
 
If you’re in a more competitive industry, then unfortunately, you’ll have to invest more in your SEO.  You’ll have to work harder to create a more relevant webpage (e.g. create better content) and to build up your domain authority (e.g. build more links) than a business in a less competitive industry.
 
In other words, to rank high you just need to outrun your “friends.”  The first step is to review the websites that are ranking high in Google for your target keywords.  An easy and fast tool to complete this analysis is Moz’s Open Site Explorer.
 
Head over to Open Site Explorer and simply copy/paste your competitor domains into the tool.  You’ll instantly see their domain authority score and their total number of backlinks.  The higher the authority score and the more backlinks your competitors have, the more you’ll have to invest in SEO to outrank them.
 

Do You Have Multiple Office Locations?

With local SEO, the number of office locations will also play role in determining how much you need to invest.  This is pretty straight forward.  Ranking each location in Google requires more resources than ranking just one.
 
At a minimum, each additional location will require you to build additional citations.  Citations are mentions of your name, address, and phone number on another website.  Think of citations like reference checks for job candidates.  Search engines need to confirm your business information is accurate and up-to-date and they do this by reviewing all the citations on different websites. If all your information checks out, then you have a better shot at ranking on the first page.
 
Creating citations for one location can be tedious enough.  Each additional location multiplies the workload.
 

Do You Have Multiple Products or Services?

The third consideration is how many products or services you’re trying to promote via SEO.  Again, this is straight forward.  As you try to expand your reach by targeting more and more product or service keywords, then you’ll need to invest more in your SEO. At minimum, you’ll want to build separate webpages for each of the products or services you’re promoting.
 
Remember, each additional product or service comes with a new set a competitors already ranking high in Google.  So make sure you analyze the competition using Open Site Explorer before diving in too deep.
 

No One-Size-Fits-All Solution

I hope at this point it’s clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for SEO. That’s why if you’ve done your homework, then you’ve noticed the range in fees is quite wide.
 
For businesses in less competitive industries, with one location, targeting just one product or service, the investment could be $500 or $1,000 per month. For businesses in more competitive industries, targeting multiple locations and multiple products and services, the investment could be $2,000 or more per month.  It just depends on your unique situation.
   

[Local SEO] The 3 C's to Rank #1

What are the 3 most important factors in real estate?

 

The answer is location, location, and location.  Every real estate agent knows that location is far and away the biggest selling point for a home.  A crappy studio apartment in Chelsea can sell for more than a fully renovated 2-bedroom in Harlem.

 

And if you own a business that depends on local customers, then you know location is also a critical factor.  Clearly, businesses near Super Bowl Boulevard are going to attract more customers simply because of their proximity to the Super Bowl festivities on weekend.
 
The same is even true with local SEO.  A business located near the industry hub within a city has a greater likelihood of ranking high in the local Google results (aka the Google+ Local results).  This is known as the “centroid bias.”  So if your office or store is located too far away from where Google thinks is the hub of your industry, then you’re going to have a harder time ranking in the local results.
 
 

Location Is Not Enough

Take a minute and re-read what I just said above about the centroid bias.  It’s a bit technical so make sure you fully understand it before moving on.
 
Now blink your eyes twice.
 
OK, the online marketing landscape has just changed in the time it took you to read this far!  I know, it’s frustrating.  As soon as you think you’ve figured it all out, Google goes and changes everything!
 
Location is not enough to rank high in the local results.  Sorry, it’s going to take a little bit more work.
 

The 3 C’s of Local Search Engine Optimization

Google changed the rules of local SEO when they decided to migrate Google Places to their social media platform, Google+.  Google Places was fairly straight forward because there simply wasn’t much you could do.  It was a static business page with contact information and customer reviews.
 
Now, take a look at the new Google+ Local pages and you’ll see text updates, pictures, videos, reviews, and even conversations between the business and their customers and prospects.  The businesses ranking and getting the most out of their local SEO investments use what I call the 3 C’s:

1. Citations
2. Community
3. Content

 

1. Citations

Citations are mentions of your name, address, and phone number on other websites.  Citations have always been important for local SEO because search engines use them to verify the accuracy of your business information.  Generally speaking, the more citations you can get for your business, then higher you’ll rank in Google because Google will have more confidence in the accuracy of your business information.
 

2. Community

As I mentioned above, Google Places was migrated over to be part of Google’s social media platform, Google+.  Google is still ironing out all the kinks of this overhaul, but we can see that local SEO is clearly merging with social media.  Community is now a factor in how your business is going to rank in the local results.
 
By community, I mean your Google+ Local followers, shares, +1′s, and reviews.  The stronger the community, and the more activity on your business page, the better.
 

3. Content

The new kid on the local SEO block is content.  This is good news to anyone already using content marketing for non-local search engine optimization. For traditional, non-local SEO, content has always been king.  Now it’s even a factor in your local SEO rankings. Great content will get you more high quality links from other websites, it’ll help you build community on your Google+ Local page, and it’ll improve your Author Rank.  All of this will in turn help you rank higher in the local results.

   

Optimizing for SEO vs Google AdWords

Today I want to clear up a common misconception about your website.  Scroll down to learn why it’s a mistake to try to optimize the same webpage for both SEO and online advertising.

Why You Can Not Optimize One Webpage

For Both SEO and Advertising 

I realized as I was meeting with a client last week that there’s a common misconception about how to optimize your website for search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising (i.e. Google AdWords).
 
For both SEO and search advertising, your website plays a critical, yet very different, role.  The misconception is that a single webpage can be optimized for both online marketing tactics.  This is simply not possible and in this article I’ll explain why you need separate pages for SEO versus search advertising.
 

The Many Roles of Your Website

 

The primary role of your website is to convert visitors into leads and customers.  It’s no different than a sales position in your company, and you should judge your website performance accordingly.  Sure, you may love your new, slick design, but does your “upgraded” website drive any more sales than the previous one?  That’s the all important question.
 
Next, assuming your prospects search for your products and services in Google, then your website must also have the appropriate pages for Google to display in the search results.  If your prospect searches for “huarache running sandals” and your website does not have a page about huarache running sandals, then guess what, Google is not going to show your website in the results.  The first step with SEO is to make sure you have a webpage for each of your target keywords.  That’s SEO 101.
 
Finally, if you’re going to advertise, then you need pages on your site that perfectly match the different offers you’re going to make in your ads.  For example, if you advertise a special buy one pair of sandals and get a free running shirt offer, then you better prominently display that on the ad landing page.  If prospects don’t find what they’re looking for within seconds of clicking an ad, then they’ll click back and go to a competitor’s website.
 
So let’s recap:

1. Your website should be designed to convert visitors to sales.
2. To optimize your website for search engines like Google, you must have pages that match the keywords you want to target.  These pages need to be set up properly so Google knows they are 100% relevant to the target keywords.  The goal of your SEO efforts is to first get ranked in Google so you drive traffic to your site.  If you can’t drive traffic, then there’s no one to convert into customer :)
3. To optimize your website for search advertising, you must have pages that match the offer in your ads (which also must match the keywords you’re targeting).  The sole purpose of these pages is to sell.  You’re buying traffic so all you need to worry about with your ad landing pages is converting the traffic into sales.

See how your pages optimized for SEO have different goals than your ad landing pages?  With SEO, your webpage must be set up to get ranked in Google.  Of course, you also need to convert the SEO traffic, but getting ranked is the primary goal.  With advertising, your webpage should be structured with only one goal in mind: get the highest conversion rate possible.
 

Why SEO Pages Do Not Make Great Ad Landing Pages

The temptation is to try to optimize your webpages for both SEO and advertising.  Sure, they are both online advertising tactics.  Plus, your website is an integral component in both.  But they really are different beasts.  A webpage optimized for SEO will typically not be the best landing page for your advertising campaign.
 
For one of my clients, the best ad landing page is simply a video that gives information and presents a compelling sales pitch to buy the product.  There’s no way we could optimize a video page like this for SEO.  On the flip side, the best pages for SEO typically do not convert high enough to be profitable on paid search advertising.
 
This is a very important concept to remember as you get started with online marketing.  Do not fall into the trap of trying to optimize your webpages for both SEO and advertising.  You must create different pages and optimize each tactic separately.

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.

Digital Marketing "Summer Tune-Up" (3 Simple Questions)

 

Before summer speeds by and we’re officially into the fall season, I recommend taking some time now to tune up your marketing so you have a strong finish to 2015. Before we know it, the holiday season will be here… and then with the blink of an eye, the ball will drop in Times Square.

 

To help you assess your digital marketing and make fast improvements I put together the following 3-question “summer tune-up.”

 

Question 1: Where Can You Get More Website Traffic?

First, look at what’s already working and find ways to improve those campaigns.  What are you doing now that is driving traffic to your website? For example, if SEO is working (generating leads and sales), then determine how you can improve your current rankings and expand to even more relevant keywords.

This sounds overly simple, but do not skip this step!  It’s easy to overlook these easy opportunities to improve your marketing because they are typically not very exciting.  Personally, I find it hard to rally behind “doing more of what we’re already doing,” but the reality is that it’s by far the cheapest and most effective option.

Expanding into new territory is nearly always more expensive and more time consuming so focus on what’s already working first.  Then once you’ve maxed out a particular marketing tactic, then review your options to expand.

Second, assess what’s missing.  What are you not doing that could be driving traffic to your website? For example, if you’re using AdWords Search advertising, then consider expanding to Bing Ads to get even more exposure when your prospects are searching in Bing or Yahoo.  Or if you’re advertising in AdWords and Bing, then look into launching an ad campaign on Facebook.

 

Question 2: How Can You Increase Your Website Conversions?

Driving traffic to your website is only half the battle in digital marketing, yet it’s where most businesses invest most of their time and resources.

The second half, which is arguably the more important half, is converting that traffic into leads and sales.

Consider this example.  One business invests in marketing to drive 1,000 visitors to their website and converts 1% into customers.  A competitor invests half as much to get 500 visitors , but their website converts 2% into customers. Both businesses generate 10 customers, but the competitor invested only half as much to get the same number of customers!  If everything else is equal then the competitor is twice as profitable and can now afford to invest to drive even more traffic.

Can you see now how important it is to focus on improving your website conversions?

Now let’s review your website.  Do you have what’s called a “lead magnet” to capture contact information from website visitors?  A lead magnet is a free offer (report, white paper, video, coupon).

Note that a lead magnet is not an email newsletter subscription!  Email newsletters are not as compelling all by themselves and only a very very small percentage of your visitors will sign up.  Instead of an offering your email newsletter directly, offer a report that provides information or reveals a secret your ideal prospect needs to know. And when people opt-in for this report, they’ll also receive a subscription to your email newsletter.

If you already have a lead magnet, then take a closer look at it.  Could you make it more compelling? Can you offer more lead magnets that more closely match each of your different customer avatars?

 

Question 3: How Can You Improve Your Digital Marketing Tracking?

I’m not going to waste time in this article explaining the importance of tracking. Most people know it’s critical.  The problem is many businesses don’t take the time to set it up correctly, which means they can’t accurately measure the results of their marketing campaigns.

Here are the 3 key components you need to track your digital marketing:

1. Google Analytics to measure visitors and their activity on your website
   
   
2. Phone tracking to measure number of calls for each of your marketing channels
   
   
3. CRM (customer relationship management) tracking to measure leads and sales for each of your marketing channels

If you’re missing any of the components above, then set them up in the order they are listed.

The thing about tracking is it’s not retroactive.  That means if you’re investing in marketing now without tracking, then there is no way to determine which campaigns were profitable and which were losing money.  Only after you set up tracking can you start to calculate your return on investment (ROI).  That’s why I always recommend businesses get their tracking set up as soon as possible.

How Hard Should You Press The Gas Pedal In #Paid #Search?

The following post contains a number of metaphors strained to the breaking point; viewer discretion is advised.

An enduring truth in the paid search business is that paid search managers and marketing teams spend far more time thinking about tactical minutia than they do thinking about what are far and away the most important questions to the business:

“What is the ultimate objective of paid search for our company? And how do we measure success against that goal?”

If the goals and measurement have been thoroughly fleshed out, considered and analyzed, then it makes sense that attention be focused on the “how to” questions — but often, it seems that applying scrutiny to the goals themselves leads to changed success metrics that have far more impact on performance than any number of geeky tactical maneuvers.

Every company can articulate their goals, but sometimes scratching deeper reveals shaky rationale supporting them.

For companies that budget search spend, marketers need to ask:

• “Who determines the budget and what criteria do they use?”
• “Are these criteria the same or different than those used to determine the budgets of other marketing programs online and off?”
• “At that budget, do you expect a profitable ROI? Breakeven? Investment for long term growth? Brand exposure?”
• “Does the budget rise and fall with market opportunity or is it rigid quarter-to-quarter?”
• “How do you measure and think about the “R” in ROI?”

For companies that set efficiency targets for non-brand search and allow the advertising spend to rise and fall with opportunity, a different set of questions should follow:

• “Great! What’s the basis of that ROI constraint?”
• “How does that ROI relate to business profits? Screamingly profitable? Breakeven? Investment?”
• “How does the marginal ROI compare to your average ROI?”
• “Does your “R” factor in all relevant success metrics like cross-device, offline spillover, registries, email sign ups, catalog requests, etc.?”
• “Over what time frame do you think about getting the return: the first interaction with a customer, or is some notion of lifetime-value folded in?”

Much of this boils down to how aggressively a company can drive marketing without wrecking.
Google recently launched an initiative to help advertisers think more carefully about performance marketing objectives and asked me to do some evangelizing with them.

Maximizing Profit Vs. ROI

 Nicholas says that “the best way to increase profits from your digital marketing investments is to make profits your main KPI. It seems self-evident, but very few advertisers are actually doing this.”
His point is that too often companies take as their goal maximizing ROI — a ratio — rather than maximizing profit — which is what you put in the bank at the end of the month. Increasing bids may decrease ROI as a ratio, but may drive enough additional volume to more than make up the difference.

He is right, of course. Picking only the lowest hanging fruit yields great per-piece profitability, but not much total profit. If the goal is profit maximization, then the proper approach is to first pick the lowest hanging fruit (of course) but to also pick the fruit higher up the tree as long as the value of the fruit picked is greater than the time/cost of picking it.

Let’s look at the math of diminishing marginal returns and we’ll see this clearly. As spend levels increase, efficiency inevitably decreases because we buy wisely, grabbing the most efficient opportunities first leaving less-efficient opportunities left over to choose next.

Threshold 1 on the graph represents Observed ROI Maximization. Threshold 2 represents Observed Profitability Maximization. Threshold 3 represents Return Maximization at Breakeven Profits, and Threshold 4 Represents Return Maximization at Some Investment.

Putting The Pedal To The Metal

To switch metaphors, just for fun, Nicholas sees some advertisers putting the car in drive but hardly putting any pressure on the gas pedal. They’re content to idle forward and “save money” on gas, but they don’t see the opportunity-loss associated with going so slowly.

He advocates for moving from 1 to 2:

Moving from ROI ratio maximization to short term profit maximization is an unmistakable, indeed unquestionable win.

However, many advertisers already go well beyond that. Most of our clients spend at least to observed breakeven (position 3 on the graph) on non-brand search.

The marginal ROI (slope) is negative moving from 2 to 3, but the loss is justified on the grounds that the portfolio comes in at breakeven. This allows the company to generate the maximum observed return from search at a breakeven investment overall.

But how do marketers justify going beyond position 3? At that point, not only is each conversion coming at a loss on the margin, but the collective whole is underwater, as well.

How can that ever make sense? To many smart marketers it does, and the reasons for that perspective involve some combination of the following arguments:

• We don’t see all the conversions driven by paid search. There are cross-device effects, there is spillover to brick and mortar, people drop cookies reducing the observable conversions. Factoring in this hidden value makes the additional investment wise.
• The graph above only accounts for short-term ROI. The lifetime value of the consumers engaged is more than enough to justify additional investment.
• Growing the customer base is valuable in and of itself. It leads to more customers to market to via email, direct mail, re-marketing display ads, social media, etc. This increases the natural lifetime value of a customer.
• Growth gives additional clout with vendors. Volume discounts and co-op marketing dollars go to the companies that sell more product. Publishers can charge more for advertising on site. Insurance companies can spread risk over a larger base. Bigger is better.
• Broader awareness creates more buzz, more PR, more word-of-mouth marketing, more in-bound links and social mentions. One of the most under-appreciated components of customer lifetime value is the propensity of happy customers to spread the word to their friends, which is vastly more powerful given the connective tissue of social media, Pinterest boards, etc.
• There is brand value to prominence on the SERP, and visits to website and apps. Engagement and awareness has value even if hard to measure.
• The media buyers get to spend like drunken sailors, I should be able to, as well!

Okay, I haven’t heard anyone use the last argument explicitly, but they’ve kinda hinted at it, and vastly different ROI expectations between marketing channels is a bit hard to understand.

How Far Should You Go?

Nicholas at Google is certainly right that pushing from 1 to 2 is certain to be rational. Whether moving from 2 to 3 or even into 4 makes sense may depend on the shape of the curve.

If the marginal ROI drops like a rock, it could be that the channel is effectively maxed out, either because you’re at the top of everything that matters to your brand, or your competitors are being so much more aggressive it doesn’t make sense to chase them.

However, if bidding more aggressively generates material incremental returns, consider the extent to which the arguments for 4 apply to your brand. What’s the lifetime value of a customer for you? How significant could untracked spillover be? What is the Word-of-Mouth value of a customer?

To this last point — if the answer is, “I have no idea,” consider doing this down and dirty analysis:

1. Do a survey of 100 random converting new customers on your website who reached the site through a brand search or direct navigation and who had no prior interaction with other marketing channels as best you can tell.
2. Ask them: “Why did you come to our site that day?”
3. Tally up the fraction of these new customers who say something like ‘a friend/relative suggested I go to your site.’ Call that X. You might be startled at how large X is.
4. What fraction of all customers are new customers coming in via brand search or direct load? Call that Y.
5. Multiply X and Y and call that Z. Might Z represent the number of additional customers brought in by WOM of other customers? Would that materially increase the direct lifetime value a customer?

Hacky, yes — but sometime hacks are valuable enlightenment.

Whether 2 is right for you, or something more like 3 or 4, will depend on many factors. Ultimately, more aggressive advertising, into the world of untraceable effects, needs to result in a healthier P & L. If it doesn’t, maybe easing off the pedal is right.

Hope this is helpful fodder for discussion.

Drive carefully.

Stock image used with permission of Shutterstock.com

How To Understand And Optimize AdWords Search Partners Data

What Are Google Search Partners?

When it comes to buying clicks from Google AdWords, the Search Partner network remains one of the least transparent and hardest to optimize areas to work with. The official Google help page for Search Partners is pretty vague about exactly what you get from Search Partner traffic:

“On our search partners, your ads can appear on search results pages, on site directory pages, or on other pages related to the person’s search.”

In layman’s terms, depending on how liberal Google want to be with “other pages related to the person’s search,” you really can’t control anywhere near as much of your search partner traffic as you would like. I had always been under the mistaken assumption that Search Partners referred to search results pages for AOL or Ask.com and the like — search engines that decided to use Google’s algorithm and in turn get a share of the advertising profits.

An example of a Search Partner results page.

However, the scope of the Search Partner network is actually much broader than this. Both internal search results and product pages on sites like eBay, Amazon, Walmart or Target can be part of the network. Let’s take a look at whether Search Partners are right for your AdWords account and then dive into how we might start to identify the sources of your traffic.

Should You Be Using Search Partners?

From analysis across the accounts we manage, there really is nothing inherently wrong with Search Partner traffic. It tends to run at a similar (sometimes slightly higher) cost per conversion to the Google Search Network, and CPCs can be cheaper, too. As a rule, I tend to leave Search Partners turned on when starting a new campaign.

If my account is severely budget restricted from the get-go, I might consider turning them off — but otherwise the additional 20-60% of clicks that Search Partners bring is worth it (at least until you have data to suggest otherwise). If you have a more mature account and you’ve been running with Search Partners long enough to generate statistically significant data, you’ll want to judge the results for yourself. For a quick analysis, you can try using the segment button in your “all campaigns” menu and segmenting by “Network (with search partners).”

To manipulate this data, click segment by “Networks (with Search Partners)” when downloading a campaign report and then use a pivot table that has Campaigns for rows, network for columns, and a custom formula for either CPA or ROAS in your values. Here’s an example I pulled from one of my accounts earlier:

Notice that there really isn’t all that much difference CPA-wise here and that Search Partners are actually performing better in five out of eight campaigns. You might use this data to pause Search Partners anywhere that they are heavily underperforming by going back into your settings and switching to Google Search Network only. The bad news is that despite all of the recent upgrades to bid adjustments, a Search Partner bid adjustment is still nowhere in sight. Also, as a sidebar, don’t worry about your CTR from this traffic dragging down your overall as Google claims it has no impact on your keyword quality scores.

What Are These Weird Queries In My Search Term Report?

Ever seen something in your search term report that looks like this?

If so, you might have been confused as to why someone could possibly be searching for such a strange term. What’s even weirder is that the term apparently generated 571 impressions. A lone person copying and pasting that into Google might fly with me, but 571 people? Something weird is going on.

These queries are actually the result of Search Partner “searches” — it kind of shook my world to learn this (I’m a little slower than the rest of you who figured this out years ago.) As Google counts product pages on sites like Amazon as Search Partner pages (rather than just regular display), they have to pull a search query from somewhere. In this case, they are pulling the search query from the links that users are clicking to get to that page.

If you want to follow along in your own account here’s how: First, pull a Search Term report and filter for “clicks=0″. Then, sort by impressions and segment by search partners. If you find a query with 0 impressions on the Google Search Network and a ton on the Search Partners Network, you’ve probably found one of these terms. Weird formatting is another giveaway for these. In this case, I’m going to take that search query and type it into Google:

The organic search results should pull up the page your ad was triggered on as that combination of phrase and formatting is normally fairly unique. In this case my search turned up a page on Gumtree:

Notice in the above that Google is pulling the navigation options for “Cars, Vans & Utes” into my search term report? A quick scroll down the page also reveals the placement of the Search Partner ads:

This page seems fairly logical as a Search Partner to me. Someone was clearly searching Gumtree for Nissan vehicles and was shown one of my related ads. Makes sense, right? Well, what about on product results pages (which I find a little more dubious to label as “Search” rather than “Display”)? Here’s a search term from another one of my accounts:

Once again, via the Google search results page, I was able to tie the query to this page where my ad was shown:

Now I don’t know about you, but to me, this really isn’t a search results page — it’s a product page. Yet the ads shown in this page are clearly being counted as Search Partner results (as the user was searching to get here and Google followed them down the rabbit hole):

I’m not entirely sure how much Display and Search Partner traffic are overlapping in these placements. I know that they work a little differently in AdSense, so my guess is that they are still kept separate.

How Can I Optimize My Search Partner Settings With This Information?

Short answer: with a great deal of effort and patience that might not even be worth it. If you have the time, you could categorically go through your search term report and start spinning queries with lots of impressions out into their own Search Partner ad groups. Take a look at an example I’ve created below:

Through some tireless checking of pages, you can separate out these strange terms by the site they appear on and start to learn more about CPAs by Search Partner. However, I don’t really like the structure of an account organized in this way and the volume of traffic will probably still be too low for the cost of the time you would have to sink into this.

Another hack attempt that I’ve seen before is duplicate campaigns, one with both Google & Search Partners, and one with just Google. By having the Google one set to slightly higher bids, the Google-only campaign tends to win the auction, which leaves just Search Partner traffic for the campaign with both. I don’t really like this method either, as it kind of defeats the point of wanting to optimize search partners on a keyword basis and any CPC changes have to be meticulously recreated for both campaigns. (Accidentally bidding up the Search Partner-only one would break everything.)

For now, we’re left with two real options:

• Use negative keywords to remove poor performing search partner pages.
• Turn search partners off entirely if the CPA/ROAS is bad.

Of course in an ideal world, Google would be up front with us about Search Partners. It remains a fevered dream that we will be able to set up Search Partner-only campaigns, segment by specific search partners, and bid adjust for search partners. (It is worth noting that Bing already offers all these things with their partner network, so perhaps we’ll see Google catch up to them eventually.)

Using Paid Search To Aid Your SEO

A lot has changed in the world of search marketing over the last year. From Enhanced Campaigns to Hummingbird and not provided, search marketers have had to rethink and re-calibrate their strategies significantly. Some changes caused more uproar than others; but, one thing has become increasingly clear: the art and science of both SEO and paid search, respectively, are on a crash course, and a consolidated strategy is required to get the most out of both channels.

At my agency, we’ve been working on ways to get more creative with our PPC campaigns in order to directly benefit our SEO efforts. PPC has much more immediate and measurable results than SEO, and as a result, we can use paid search as a testing environment for SEO strategies. The goal is to provide a proof of concept before investing any long-term resources into a project.
In the holiday spirit, we’d like to share three of the concepts we’ve tested and had some success with.

1. Keyword Identification

Both paid search and SEO revolve around keyword lists. Paid search provides one of the cleanest environments for organically identifying search queries used to reach your site.

Search Query Reporting

When using paid search to inform your SEO keywords, you should:

1. Identify the highest converting and highest cost-per-click keywords in your paid campaigns driving high value visits
2. Organize by difficulty to rank organically on these terms through Google keyword planner and SERP analysis

Prioritize SEO resources to rank for converting and/or high-value, visit-generating search terms by developing and promoting content around those terms.

2. Title & Meta Description Testing

Paid search ad copy consists of a maximum 95 characters. Meta descriptions are optimally 155 characters. Those aren’t exact matches, but the character limits are close enough to legitimize a testing ground for user preference.
AB test description snippets in ads tied to relevant keywords. Let click-through rates dictate description evolution while considering Quality Score improvements as Google’s way of suggesting what is and isn’t relevant.

Meta Description Opportunities

In the example above, Foot Locker could use proven paid search ad copy to write up an engaging meta description.

3. “Proof Of Content” Testing

Targeting a highly competitive term for SEO can be costly. Working all the way to the top only to find out that your content is not what users are looking for is both frustrating and a waste of resources.
Paid search can be an effective way to quickly and efficiently send traffic to new content to gauge user reaction and test interaction rates. If users like the content, so should Google.
Build out a handful of ad groups with highly relevant keywords and ad copy directing traffic to the content you wish to promote. If the call-to-action is clear, then the data should tell you fairly quickly whether or not the content is viable and potentially valuable.
The cost to generate a statistically significant amount of data via paid search is far less than the cost of technical resources to rank organically in a top position.

Concluding Thoughts

Whether your marketing department is on a shoestring budget or you work for a large corporation with unlimited resources, you need to be intelligent about prioritizing your search marketing efforts. Chances are your paid search team is already doing most of these tasks and can easily incorporate some ad hoc analysis to aid SEO efforts.

How Recent Organic Search Changes Will Affect Paid Search

Search marketers were pitched not one but two curveballs recently which have forever reshaped the landscape of search engine optimization (SEO).

The industry saw the first one coming a mile away as Google began encrypting organic search queries two years ago. Now, there’s almost zero visibility into the organic keywords which drive visitors to websites (other than what is offered in Google Webmaster Tools).
Understanding the granular relationship between a website and its organic keyword traffic has been the core of modern SEO. Without this deep level of insight, it becomes clear that organic search marketers will have to adjust their approach.
The other major change crept up on the SEO community as the Hummingbird algorithm was live for a month and was a virtual secret until Google announced it in September. This is rather unusual as SEOs have been quick to notice previous, major algorithmic changes the moment they have been introduced. For example, when Google released the Panda update a few years ago, some sites immediately experienced a major drop in traffic and publicized their woes.
Hummingbird focuses on better understanding the concepts within a query rather than relying strictly on the alphanumeric characters and matching them up.
Google provided fairly transparent rationale for both changes. Consumer privacy concerns were at the root of organic search keyword encryption and prompted a larger discussion over what kind of data Web publishers should share outside of their own walls. With Hummingbird, Google hopes to improve search engine results by better discerning the concepts behind a search than ever before. It reportedly works much better with mobile search where consumers using voice search generally input longer queries than typed searches.

The Impact On Paid Search

A complex relationship has existed between paid and organic search ever since the rise of search engine marketing in the late 1990s. The most successful brands have found ways to integrate the two disciplines and connect them as one holistic search engine marketing program. These elite marketers operate with an understanding that when one lever is pushed, it pulls on the other.
One of the initial assumptions discussed in the SEM blogosphere was that these recent natural search changes may drive some SEO budgets to pay-per-click (PPC) search. Well-known search marketer, Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting, hasn’t yet noticed this shift. “While some people may do more PPC as a result of the recent Google changes, we have not seen any mass movement in that direction among our clients,” says Enge.
Advice Interactive Group’s VP of Media, Shelley Ellis, feels there may have been some business motivations behind some of these moves. “Shortly after the first time SEO encryption was announced around May of 2010, I predicted that part of Google’s reasoning behind that decision might have something to do with the future of search remarketing on Google AdWords,” Ellis explains. “I found it interesting that Google’s recent announcement or update on this element of SEO coincided with Google’s search remarketing coming out of beta (now available to all advertisers).”

Will Budgets Migrate?

Only time will tell if some portion of SEO budgets will migrate to paid search campaigns. For now, SEOs seem to be contemplating how their approach needs to change in order to roll with the punches. One of the action items is to get more integrated with PPC counterparts to supplement the data loss from encrypted search.
“It used to be that SEO pushed keyword information to PPC but, with SEO keyword encryption, now the SEO teams are asking for information from the paid media teams,” says Ellis. “Through analytics and matched search queries, we can now break down the types of keyword searches that brought a searcher to specific PPC landing pages.”
Paid search marketers may find their approach evolving as well. With Google now matching search queries slightly differently than before, there could be some useful insights from organic search on how to best to target and message consumers.
“Hummingbird’s push toward better understanding a user’s intent during a search may cause publishers to focus more themselves on building pages and PPC campaigns around user intent, as well,” says Enge. “That won’t happen overnight, but I can see it happening over time.”
There’s no doubt it’s key to tap into Google’s deep understanding of what consumers really want from their searches. Before Hummingbird, it was all about matching alphanumeric strings, so many paid search marketers may not have paid much attention to user intent. Now, as Google applies its Knowledge Graph for better organic search results, paid marketers can leverage these insights as valuable market research.
Paid and organic search are the yin and yang to the bigger puzzle that is search engine marketing. Whatever impacts one, may impact the other. Although the long-term effect that these recent organic changes will have on both may not be known for some time, search marketers can only act in the short term and hope for the best. It would make sense for each side of the lake to stay connected – there’s a good chance that the ripples and waves from one will certainly be felt by the other.