How to Use Press Releases to Boost Local Google Rankings

Local SEO Case Study:
The Power of Press Releases

Until July 2013, public statements were an incredible strategy for building great connects to your site.

What's more, the procedure was basic. Compose a public statement that incorporates connects to your site, pay an official statement circulation benefit like PRWeb, and after that watch your internet searcher rankings enhance as an ever increasing number of honest to goodness sites posted the official statement with connections to your website.

Obviously, that all changed in July 2013 when Google declared the passing of public statements for site improvement (SEO).

Yet, would it say it was truly the finish of public statements as a SEO strategy? No, and for this situation examine I'll demonstrate there is still a great deal of energy in official statements (in the event that you know how to utilize them effectively).



What Changed in July 2013?

In July 2013, Google declared they would now consider interfaces in public statements as "paid connections" and urged dissemination administrations to utilize "nofollow" interfaces in the discharges. This change bodes well since organizations were paying public statement appropriation locales keeping in mind the end goal to get excellent connects to their sites.

In the event that you're not mindful, Google does not tally paid connections or "no take after" connections in their positioning calculation. Those sorts of connections are disregarded by the calculation. That implies the greater part of the connections you get from the public statement would not specifically enhance your web search tool rankings.

Thus, the reverberating cry that official statements were dead for SEO.

While it's actual the connections don't straightforwardly enhance your rankings, there is another effective SEO advantage of official statements.

The Key Benefit is Citations

A reference is a specify of your NAP (business Name, Address, and Phone number) on another site. For instance, if your business is recorded in Yelp, at that point your profile on Yelp is a reference since it records your NAP.

When drafting an official statement, on the off chance that you incorporate your business NAP in the byline of the discharge, at that point when your discharge is distributed over the web, each distributed page is another reference for your business. You can see a case beneath:



That implies you could issue one official statements and inside a day or two have handfuls or even several new references.

That sounds awesome, yet why are references critical?

References Are Critical For Local Rankings

One of the greatest considers positioning high in the neighborhood "outline" is the amount and nature of your references. Of course, you can make accounts on professional references and develop a decent establishment of references, however so can your rivals.

To pick up an upper hand, you can utilize public statements to rank higher in the nearby outcomes. To demonstrate this works, we should take a gander at a contextual analysis...

How Our Client Jumped from #20 to #1

One of our dental specialist customers was stuck around #20 in the neighborhood "delineate."

We had effectively finished our site tune-up and set up all the important professional resources, yet the rankings would not enhance past #20 for his top need catchphrase, "Savannah dental practitioner." At this point we knew we needed to take it to the following level to surpass the contenders positioning on the principal page of Google.

This is what we did...

Over a 4-month time frame, we issued 4 official statements for our customer. Obviously, in the public statement we included connects to our customer's site, yet as you most likely are aware those connections were "nofollow" so they didn't specifically help for SEO. The power was in the references, or the notices of our customer's business name, address, and telephone number.

As an ever increasing number of sites distributed the public statements, our customer started to hop up in the Google neighborhood rankings. In the end he was #1 on the principal page of Google in the nearby outcomes for his essential watchword.



As should be obvious from the screenshot over, the references helped our customer rank in the neighborhood "outline" on the main page of Google. At the point when Google decides the searcher is searching for a nearby business, at that point frequently Google shows a guide with neighborhood organizations recorded underneath.

To rank high in these nearby indexed lists, you should have references, and that is one reason you ought to consider utilizing official statements as a major aspect of your Local SEO technique.

The 4-Part Framework for Digital Marketing Success

Did you know there are 4 sections, or pieces, that each fruitful advanced showcasing effort must have?

In case you're lost or insufficient in any of these 4 territories, at that point your showcasing will come up short. It's truly that basic.



That leads us to the main key idea here...

Advanced Marketing Is A Lot Like Assembling A Puzzle

As a child, I cherished riddles. Actually, regardless I have a confound hanging in my loft of a Norman Rockwell painting that I finished in grade school. It's not simply astounds however.

I simply cherish the way toward finding how all the individual pieces fit together to make something. That is one reason I in the long run went ahead to think about building in school.

Presently, as a grown-up, despite everything I adore baffles, yet I haven't finished a 1,000 piece jigsaw in a while. Rather, I concentrate the vast majority of my time and vitality nowadays assembling the confuse pieces that make up advanced advertising. Believe it or not, advanced showcasing is only one major bewilder holding up to be gathered one piece at once.

Be that as it may, there's one major distinction...

With showcasing, you don't have the completed picture on the case to demonstrate to you where and how the distinctive pieces will in the long run fit together! That positively makes promoting a great deal harder, isn't that right?

That is the reason in this article will give you that completed picture. I'll stroll through the demonstrated computerized advertising system so you can perceive how the majority of the showcasing choices accessible fit together to make an effective promoting plan.

To start with, The Foundation

Before we jump into the system, I have to highlight how computerized advertising really functions. On the off chance that you separate everything to the individual pieces, at that point advanced promoting takes after an extremely essential recipe:

(Income) = (Website Traffic) x (Conversion Rate) x (Customer Value)

At the end of the day, income from computerized promoting is specifically corresponding to what number of individuals visit your site, what number of those individuals change over into clients, and how much those clients are worth to your business.

Or, on the other hand to put it another route, there are 3 approaches to build your income from advanced showcasing: increment your movement, increment your transformation rate, and additionally increment your client esteem.

Likewise, before we proceed onward it's imperative to recollect that your income will be zero if any of those 3 factors is zero. That is quite recently fundamental math. It doesn't make a difference in the event that you drive a huge number of guests to your site if your transformation rate is zero. Despite everything you'll wind up with zero income!

Since you comprehend this equation, it's a great opportunity to present the structure, which I call the 4 Pillars of Digital Marketing achievement. These are the 4 Pillars each business should persistently attempt to enhance to contend on the web.

1. Site Traffic

The primary Pillar is site activity. Clearly in the event that you don't get any activity to your site, at that point you're not going to be extremely effective with computerized showcasing. In case you're simply beginning, at that point this is the place you have to center.

Consider site activity like fuel.

You require a consistent supply of "fuel" or else you're showcasing will go to a dramatic stop.

2. Site Conversions
As I specified over, all the activity on the planet does nothing for your business unless you can really change over it into leads and deals. For built up organizations that as of now have a constant flow of guests, enhancing site change is likely the greatest use point to expand deals.

Here's a fast case to highlight this point...

Suppose your site gets around 1,000 visits for each month and of those guests around 5 change over into deals. That is a 0.5% transformation rate. What happens on the off chance that you can build your change rate to 1%?

You'll twofold your deals with a similar activity you're as of now getting to your site! That implies you would twofold your deals without any interest in movement strategies like publicizing, SEO, online networking, and so forth.

3. Client Value
Client esteem is frequently the X-calculate computerized promoting, yet numerous organizations overlook it. Once more, I'll utilize a case so you can perceive how your client esteem assumes a part in your showcasing.

Suppose your transformation rate is 0.5% and your normal client esteem is $100. That implies, by and large one guest to your site is worth $0.50.

That additionally implies you can not stand to pay more than $0.50 to drive a guest to your site. In the event that you pay more than 50 pennies, at that point you'll lose cash.

What happens in the event that one of your rivals has a similar change rate, yet a marginally higher client estimation of $150? Indeed, this contender can bear to pay $0.75 and will unavoidably have the capacity to purchase more movement than you. Despite the fact that the contender may have a similar offer, a comparative site, and a similar change rate, they'll command the market because of their higher client esteem.

4. Following

The last Pillar is following. Without appropriate following set up, at that point you'll be flying visually impaired with almost no plan to enhance the other 3 Pillars.

Consider following like the dashboard of your auto. Would you be able to envision driving in the event that you didn't have a speedometer or a fuel gage? That would be truly distressing in light of the fact that you wouldn't know whether you expected to back off or accelerate. In addition, you would likely come up short on fuel with no notice signs.

Legitimate attaching will manage your showcasing choices by letting you know precisely where you have to center.

[AdWords Case Study] 33% Reduction in Cost Per Lead Using the Kaizen Approach

In today’s article, learn how we used the Kaizen approach of continual improvement to help our client reduce the cost-per-lead by 33%.

Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement. Ever since I studied Kaizen in a college Operations class (specifically how Kaizen has been a competitive advantage for Toyota), I've tried to apply the concept to different areas of my life. And looking back on recent successes, I've discovered that they were all the result of this idea of continuous improvement, or Kaizen. In our world of flashy marketing tactics like Twitter, Snapchat, mobile apps, Facebook messenger, and [insert the new latest and greatest tactic here], it's important to remember that strong marketing performance does not magically happen overnight. It's almost always the result of months and even years of, you guessed it, continuous improvement. With this in mind, I'm going to share a Google AdWords case study that exemplifies the Kaizen approach to AdWords optimization. I'm not going to share "the one secret that reduced our cost per lead by 36%." I'm also not going to share "the one trick." That's because there is no one secret or one trick... The reality with Google AdWords is that success is built on continuous improvement, month after month, and year after year. Let's dive in to the details so you can see this in action...

The Background Our client in this case study is a dentist in Georgia. When we started working together, our client had been advertising himself, but with no conversion tracking. That means he didn't really know if the ads were working or not... And even if the ads were miraculously working, he had no way to improve the ROI without conversion tracking. So guess what we did first? That's right, we set up conversion tracking. Since this is a dentist, the majority of the leads come from phone calls so we installed phone call tracking in addition to webform tracking on the website contact forms. Think of conversion tracking like a required course in college. In order to graduate, you have to complete the required courses. In order to optimize a Google AdWords campaign, you have to complete the conversion tracking setup. Of course, setting up conversion tracking does nothing unless you actually use the data to improve your campaigns. That brings us to our Kaizen process of AdWords optimization... Our Kaizen Process I'm calling this the Kaizen process because over the past 2 years we didn't just focus on one tactic; We focused on continuous improvement in all areas of the campaign. It's impossible to put your finger on the one or two activities that made all the difference because with optimizing AdWords campaigns you're dealing with a moving target. One day you need to adjust bids, while the next day you need to improve ad copy. So what exactly did we do? Below, in no particular order, are what I believe are the 5 most important edits we made that led to a 33% reduction in cost per lead. 1. Ad Schedule Optimization When you think of ad scheduling, you probably think of running ads during office hours. Or maybe turning ads off during holidays. Sure, that can make sense, but I'm specifically talking about ad schedule optimization here. With ad schedule optimization, we're looking at the conversion data for days of the week and times of day. There are reports in AdWords that will tell you which days of the week give you the lowest and highest cost per lead. There are also reports that tell you which times of the day give you the lowest and highest cost per lead. As you collect data, you can use this to refine your ad scheduling and adjust your bids so you're maximizing your budget during the best times. 2. Device Optimization This one is pretty straight forward, yet it's often overlooked in AdWords campaigns. There are reports in AdWords that will tell you how your ads are performing across different devices - Computers, Tablets, and Mobile. When you run those reports you will likely see a big discrepancy in performance across devices. This is especially true if you do not have a mobile optimized website! The reality is that people behave differently depending on which device they are using. You may find that your cost per lead is perfectly acceptable for Computers, but astronomically high for Mobile, or vice versa. Whatever the case is, you clearly need to adjust your bids accordingly to get the best ROI from your ad campaign. 3. Budget Optimization Unless you're familiar with how this works, the phrase "budget optimization" probably sounds strange. I mean, isn't your monthly budget simply your monthly budget? Well, if you only have one ad campaign, then the answer is yes. However, if you break up your advertising account into multiple campaigns, then you unlock the potential to optimize your budget. For example, our dentist has multiple different types of services like cosmetic dentistry, invisalign, sedation, implants, etc. Sure, you could have all of those services in one campaign, but that's not ideal. Instead, you want to break out all the individual services into their own campaigns with their own daily budgets. Then once you see your cost per lead for each service area, you'll be able to adjust your budgets accordingly. Obviously, you'll want to allocate more of your budget to the campaigns that drive the lowest cost leads and minimize your budget on the campaigns with higher cost leads. It's pretty simple, but only if you structure your account correctly. 4. Keyword Level Bid Optimization Most advertisers understand and are familiar with this tactic so I won't waste too much time here. If you know your keyword conversion rate is 5% (ex. you get 5 phone calls for every 100 clicks on the ad) and your target cost per lead is $50, then your max cost per click is $2.50 (conversion rate multiplied by the target cost per lead). Using that simple calculation you can adjust your bids to ensure you're hitting your target cost per lead. 5. Ad Copy Optimization I'm sure you're also already familiar with ad copy optimization. More specifically, the process of split testing two or more ad variations to determine which ad performs the best. But what does it mean to perform the best? That's a loaded question... One metric is certainly click-through rate. The higher the click-through rate, the better because that leads to higher Quality Scores. However, ads with the highest click-through rate are not always the ads driving the lowest cost per lead. With that in mind you must focus on both of those metrics. If you focus on click-through rate without any regard for cost per lead, then you'll likely be led astray. Likewise, if you focus on cost per lead without any regard for click-through rate, you may end up with low Quality Scores and in turn, higher cost per click. The Results Again, I can't emphasize enough that the above edits were continuously tweaked over 2 years. I'm not suggesting we made the edits above and then sat back and watched the performance improve. That's not how this works. The edits were made continuously, month after month. Remember the Kaizen process! Below is a graph showing the cost per lead and the number of leads per quarter over the past 2 years.

As you can see from the graph above, the cost per lead was $48 in Q2 2015. Then in Q2 2017 the cost per lead was $32. That's a drop of 33%! You'll notice the number of leads dropped in Q2 2017, but that's only because the budget was reduced for external reasons. To put the 33% reduction into perspective, let's compare the number of leads that you can get with a $5,000 per quarter budget ($1,666/month). With a 33% reduction in cost per lead, this dentist is now generating 51 more leads each quarter with the same exact budget! Obviously this didn't happen overnight, but I hope now you can see the power of continuous improvement in your AdWords campaigns.