At any of these levels, there are important new features and updates available to you within Google Analytics that will benefit your business and grow your sales opportunity. Now is the time to get acquainted with the new Google features that will empower your analytics tracking and conversion measurements.

Flow Visualization Tool

This tool provides a quick snapshot that allows you to analyze data on your site in a graphical representation:

• Visitors Flow
  • Instantly understand how visitors flow across your site by traffic source (or any other dimension you choose to measure)
  • See where users drop off your site

• Goal Flow
  • View the flow through your goal steps
  • See where users drop off your goal path

This data representation allows you to understand:

• The relative volume of visits to the site by the dimensions you chose to measure
• The rate at which visitors abandon pathways
• Where and how visitors navigate each of the steps you defined
• How visitors interacted with your site

Why it’s important: Provides quick, advanced data on your goal funnels for optimizing your website traffic.

Real-Time Analytics

This tool enables marketers to view visitor behavior as they use and interact with your site.

Why it’s important: Allows for quick lead or sales follow-up to those who may drop off your site and provides beneficial insight on the performance of your site page by page and action on your specific offerings.

Site speed reports

This tool allows you to view the average load time page by page of your site.

Why it’s important: Slow landing pages will influence your Adwords Quality Score and your organic rankings. Combat a low site speed by analyzing your load time and making sure your website is running appropriately on the technical side

Multi-Channel Funnels

This tool displays the media channels customers interacted with during the 30 days prior to converting or purchasing your product.

This data displays clicks such as:

• PPC ads
• Display ads
• Organic
• Affiliates
• Social networks

Why it’s important: Enables you to see which channels initiate, assist, and complete conversions. You can perform attribution analysis based on complete conversion path data with this easy, out-of-the-box reporting.

Check out our upcoming webinar sessions for February and register for the ones that relate most closely to your business goals and needs. After each webinar, we offer complimentary, customized website analyses for your company. Feel free to contact us to inquire about an appointment.

- Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123

1. Get found by the search engines

Google search bots follow links to get from page to page on your site. In order to ensure that your site is visible to the search spiders, you must first understand the process of crawling and indexing that defines how results are served to each individual search query.

Search spiders discover new and updated pages on the web on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Through this process, your site is indexed as search spiders compile data from crawls into data centers. When results are served, they are based on relevancy to the exact search query. Over 200 factors are considered

2. Choose the right keywords

Identify the top 5 keywords your company needs to appear #1 on Google in the search results. Then, evaluate where your company is currently ranking on these terms.

Try developing a mapping document to target 3-5 keywords per page of your site. This will allow your SEO impact to be spread equally among different pages of your site. This strategy will enable search spiders to recognize and understand the theme of your site as it relates to relevant search queries. Thus, your site pages will rank accordingly. You do not want to rank for terms that will bring the wrong audience to your site. This will cost time, resources, unwanted clicks, and a higher bounce rate on your website.

3. Generate leads

You need to capture audience interest within seconds. Tell visitors what your site is about and communicate your business proposition upfront. Try using graphics and hero images to direct attention to your main call-to-action. Keep your content clear, short, and to the point. Online readers scan instead of reading your content in full. Therefore, be sure your most important points are bold and simple. This allow your visitors to realize and understand your key takeaways and hopefully prompt them to browse through more pages of your site and follow a conversion path to the end before leaving.

4. Evaluate your lead quality

Analyze the keywords that are resulting in conversions and the conversion paths that are proving to be most successful. Keyword success means:

- Being able to pinpoint the keywords that bring converted leads to your site and your forms

- Using keyword selection and mapping strategy to optimize your keyword list

- Carefully attributing an accurate lead source to each closed deal

- Using an attribution management tool to measure the best performing keywords

Optimization should be approached as an ongoing project. To keep your SEO machine in tip top shape, dedicate specific resources and time to getting ahead of the competition online.

Join us next week on January 25th for our Google webinar: New Google Analytics Updates: What Every Marketer Needs to Know. As seating is limited, we recommend you reserve your space soon!

- Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123

#seo

Tip #1: SEO is important to your business success.

SEO benefits every type of business whether small, mid-sized, or a large corporation. More people are using the internet today to research, shop, buy, share, and communicate than in previous times. Analyzing your website’s performance and staying on top of the latest trends in search behavior can mean the difference between meeting your quarterly revenue goals and not.

If you are not ranking on Page 1 of Google, you are missing out on revenue that is going to your competition. Therefore, the way you position your website and the effort you dedicate to increasing your brand’s visibility online will have direct impact on your bottom line.

Tip #2: SEO needs to be customized for your industry.

Online ad spending is on the rise. According to Webmarketing123′s 2011 Digital Marketing Report, website traffic is the common denominator of success across both B2B and B2C digital media campaigns with SEO making the biggest impact on lead generation goals. By evaluating current trends and search behavior within your industry, you can start to incorporate stronger performing keywords to bring qualified leads directly to your site.

Keep the 5 Pillars for a successful SEO campaign in mind:

1. Keywords

2. Content

3. Meta Content

4. URLs

5. Links (Internal & Inbound)

Tip #3: Continually evaluate your online presence.

Keywords are critical to your SEO campaign. If you aren’t optimizing the right ones or best ones for your business, you are missing out on a large portion of market share.

1. Use generic and long-tail terms

2. Do not focus solely on search volume

3. Google your proposed search terms to see if the sites ranking on Page 1 are relevant to your business

4. Look at search trends for your proposed keywords

5. Expand on your keywords by finding variations

Tip #4: Measure ROI and customer engagement.

Website analytics programs are being used enterprise-wide. In 2012, Search is expected to expand in web and mobile use and in marketers’ budgets. As a marketer and a leader of your business, you want to stay ahead of the curve. Not only does this require time and resources, but also keen attention to analytics measurements and conversion goals. Now, you can measure and attribute traffic and visitor behavior to lead generation and closed sales. Rely on your analytics to guide decision-making in both on-page and off-page optimization.

1. Begin optimizing now to get ahead of competitors – don’t delay!

2. Invest in the time and resources to grow your online visibility.

3. Engage in SEO as a cost-effective, revenue-generating platform to grow your business, meet sales goals, and exceed ROI.

As the new year jumps into action, get your SEO program off the ground with our best tips and strategies for 2012. Join us on January 18th to Get Your SEO Machine Into Shape: Beginner’s Guide for Conversion Success in Q1.

Cheers!

~ Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123

#seo

A new year is upon us and new marketing goals and initiatives are spinning into action. Let’s get started with a quick recap of the top SEO tips you should know for a successful 2012.

Which keywords should I optimize for on my site?

Start by investigating the latest insights on Google. By comparing long-term search trends, you can identify how people are searching for your business, where they are searching, and which keywords they are using to perform their research. From here, you will want to create a keyword basket with a mix of long-tail and broad match keywords that fit the criteria of your most qualified website visitors.

How many keywords should I target per page?

It is critical to optimize long-tail keywords as part of your keyword basket. With the Google feature, Auto-complete, searchers are depending upon Google to help them narrow their search to exactly what they wish to find. Therefore, the longer tail keywords you can optimize that match your business offerings, the better chance you will have to attract and hold these visitors on your site. It is recommended to target 3-5 unique keywords per page of your site.

What does it mean to be a “trusted source”?

By developing and sharing unique content on your site and in social communities, you will draw inbound links as well as captivate regular readers of your material. Inbound links serve as “votes” for your website that come from directories, blogs, social networks, article syndication, and more. To support these channels, continue to publish material that is worthy of being shared and discussed within your industry. You need to offer:

1. Unique research

2. Informed opinions

3. Trends analysis and mentions in publications

4. Expert contribution at conferences and/or events

How can I manage page load speed and why is it important?

Google has identified page load speed as a factor in the ranking algorithm. Page load speed is important because it can affect your Quality Score as well as your ranking on the search engine results page (SERP). If your website isn’t running smoothly, it won’t be seen by Google, or your prospects, as the best result for Google’s searchers. Google wants to provide the best experience for its searchers, therefore it is imperative that your site is operating well.

A few helpful resources for reviewing your site speed are:

• Page Speed
• YSlow
• WebPageTest
• Google Webmaster Tools

What should I continue to keep in mind throughout the year?

1. SEO is constantly evolving

Make sure you take advantage of the tools and resources readily available to you to stay up to date on the latest search marketing trends.

2. Identify & understand your goals always

Do not lose sight of the overall strategy and expected outcomes throughout the management of your campaign.

3. Be able to prove the ROI

Continue to demonstrate the ROI of digital marketing by measuring outcomes and reallocating budget to the highest performing channels.

Join us next week for our webinar session hosted by Bradley Joe, 4 Reasons Your CEO Needs to Know About SEO in 2012. Seating is limited so register today to reserve your space. See you there!

~ Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123 #seo

1.    Google Social Search Update – Feb 17
Google is constantly improving algorithms to provide the best search results.  Googlebot crawls through billions of websites providing the most relevant answers, but that’s not enough.  The opinions and suggestions of our family, friends, and colleagues matter the most to us, and Google listened.  In 2009, Google Social Search was introduced to allow the integration of social networking and Google Search.  But for Google, there’s always room for improvement.  An update was released in 2011 to further improve Google Social Search.

Some of the highlights include:

•    Placement:  Social search results will now be mixed throughout the page results.  In past years, social search results only appeared at the bottom of the page.  Now, Google is factoring social activity into organic result listings.

•    Annotations:  When one of your connections publically shares a link, an annotation will be visible displaying their profile picture, profile name, and name of the social media site used to share the content.

•    Control:  Google has given you more control over how and which accounts you wish to connect to your Google Account.  You can connect all your social media accounts to Google and still have the advantage to choose which ones you’d like to make publically available.

How does it influence SEO?  Your social media results have been prioritized, and therefore they occupy more space on Page 1 of the search results page.  Consequently, some website links that may have ranked on Page 1 in the past are now ranking on Page 2 or beyond.

What should you do about it?  Create unique and captivating content that encourages visitors to share and create links in social media.  The more material that you share within social communities and make available outside of your site, the likelihood that your website will rank closer to or on Page 1 increases.

2.    Google Panda – Feb 24
Google released an update to Google Farmer, now known as Panda.  Google Panda rearranged a number of search results pushing websites down in rankings and others up the page.  Some of the factors that influenced the change in rankings include:

•    Content:  There are many factors that can discourage search spiders from crawling your site as often as you would like, resulting in a ranking sink.  Some of these mistakes are created by:

1. Displaying too many advertisements on your website that distract from your main content and value proposition
2. Compiling a vast amount of content for the sole purpose of overly repeating keyword iterations for ‘easy’ site optimization

•    User Experience and Usage Metrics:  Metrics, such as Bounce Rate, Click-Through Rate, Page Views, Average Time on Site, and Site Loading Speed will now influence your ranking.  Google has established this algorithm change as an effort to reward websites that offer an outstanding user experience.

How does it influence SEO?  Panda is weighing a great amount of emphasis on website content quality, user satisfaction, and user engagement.  If you purposely make some of your site pages full of high quality content to demonstrate engaging performance, and others are clearly not as of high quality, Google will reduce the entire site’s ranking as a penalty.  Google’s algorithm is trained to recognize any type of ‘work-around’ you may try to make to affect its ranking logic.

What should you do about it?  As suggested for Google Social Search, creating content that is unique, fun, anecdotal, and entertaining will encourage others to share it and in turn, will improve your ranking.

3.    Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Change: Option to block all site results – March 10
Just when you thought that Google couldn’t further personalize your search results page, they did.  Meet the new feature which allows you to “block all example.com results”.  When clicking on a search result and then returning to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results”.  Once you click on the link to block the results from that particular website, a confirmation message will be displayed as well as an option to undo your action.

If the block is approved, that site will no longer appear in any future search results that individual makes on Google.  All the blocks are saved in the user’s Google Account, making it easy for the user to log in and undo any blocks that are currently activated.

How does it influence SEO? If your site appears as a result under a search term that is not relevant to your business or product offerings, not only are you optimizing the wrong keyword but you are also inviting your site to be ignored and worse, blocked from all future searches.

What should you do about it?  Integrate 3-5 keywords naturally into the content of each web page. Conducting this process of keyword mapping across different pages of your site will create cohesive content silos to organize into your navigation structure.  Making your site optimally SEO-friendly will guarantee that your visitor is landing on a page that answers their original query.

4.    Google Analytics 5 – Apr 20
Google Panda’s attempt to emphasize user experience also influenced Google Analytics’ ability to make new metrics available.  Analytics users are now able to view and analyze those metrics in order to make changes necessary to improve their ranking.  Some of the new features include:

•    Multiple Dashboards: Google Analytics allows you to choose from 4 types of widgets (metric, pie chart, timeline, and table) to easily create customized dashboards to get more insights from your Analytics data.

•    Event Goals:  This feature allows you to track and measure each activity goal.  For example: who paused or fast forwarded a video, who downloaded an eBook, who clicked on an ad, and more.

•    Site Speed Report:  Site speed should never be ignored.  By adding one line of code to your site, you can track the average load time, page by page.  A slow landing page will influence your Adwords Quality Score or your organic rankings.  Consequently, Analytics includes a Site Speed report in its newest version.

•    Enhanced Analytics Intelligence:  A new section called “Intelligence Events” includes 4 new reports for refining your analysis: Overview, Daily Events, Weekly Events, and Monthly Events.

How does it influence SEO?  It is crucial to stay up to date with all updates to metrics that influence your rankings. Not being aware of Google Analytic’s new features will not only set you back from your competitors, but it can also damage your SEO campaign.

What should you do about it?  Using Google Analytics is not a competitive advantage, it’s a norm. Familiarize yourself with Google Analytic’s new interface and features; learn and use all the tools that are available to you.

5.    Google Verbatim – Nov 15
Some of us aren’t the best spellers.  As a result Google introduced the “Did you mean: …” function suggesting the correct spelling and showing search results for that suggestion.  But sometimes, searchers type just what they mean and don’t wish for Google to show any other type of result. For example, you may have a friend whose band name is a play on words such as “Horrorscope.” When searching for that name, Google will suggest “horoscope” and give you results you are not interested in.  For this, Google introduced the Verbatim Search Tool.  It uses the literal words you entered without making normal improvements such as:

•    Spelling corrections
•    Including synonyms or similar terms
•    Personalizing your search by using information of your search history

How does it influence SEO?  When a searcher runs a misspelled branded search for your business and the Verbatim tool is on, Google will not suggest your correct business spelling.  Your website will not rank on any of the SERPs.

What should you do about it?  Optimize for a variety of keywords including common misspellings.

In the world of Google and the ever-changing digital landscape, it is your task as an online marketer to keep up with the latest news and developments in future search engine updates.  Suited with deep knowledge of the features that will impact or influence the success of your marketing initiatives, you will have the right tools at your fingertips to lead your business in the right direction.  There is no sleep for SEO, try to keep in step with the tips and tricks that Google freely offers to soak up the full benefits for your business.

~ Helsi Gonzales Schaefli | Marketing Research Analyst

1)      Tweet! Take some time to actually write tweets to your community. You cannot expect to gain followers if you aren’t tweeting anything yourself. We suggest tweeting 3-5 times daily, but if you don’t have time or resources to devote to consistent tweeting, once per day is a good start.

2)      Don’t only focus on yourself. Some businesses solely focus on tweeting company updates, promotions, or events. However, people are looking for more than that; engaging brands have to prove that they are more than just self-promoters. A better approach would be to position your brand as a “thought leader.” Try posting interesting articles or news stories about your industry as a whole. For example, if you represent a sports team, you might want to post news from around the league instead of focusing solely on your own franchise.

3)      Follow current thought leaders. Don’t be afraid to follow other users on Twitter.  If you are writing engaging tweets, people you follow will be excited that you are following them and be prompted to check out your page. They might even become a valuable lead. You can also look at the list of people who follow thought leaders in your market. Take note of what they like and what they are tweeting about, and give them a follow if you think they might be interested in what you do.

4)      Spread tweets throughout the day. Twitter organizes the “Twitter feed,” as a constant stream of updates from the people you follow, arranged chronologically. So, if you tweet 3 times per day, but all of your updates are between 9-10 A.M., your messages might be lost on users who log on sometime in the afternoon.

5)      Take advantage of 3rd party tools. There are many free tools that 3rd party developers offer that can make managing a Twitter account a whole lot easier. Some of these tools allow you to schedule tweets, set up automatic greetings to new followers, create organized lists of mentions, and offer statistical insight. Some of these tools allow you to schedule tweets, set up automatic greetings to new followers, create organized list or mentions, and offer statistical insight. There are also advanced tools such as Radian6 and Lithium that can help monitor all social media activity and brand mentions across the Internet.

Happy Tweeting Holidays!

- Zach Rubin | Account Manager, Digital Media

Let’s take a look at traffic sources and website bounce rate which are imperative metrics to monitor and manage in your SEO campaign.

Traffic Sources

It is important to measure your traffic and define the sources that bring the most qualified volume to your site. The better you understand where your traffic comes from, you will gain valuable insight into the types of visitors who are coming to your site and how they landed there. According to Google Benchmark results, Direct traffic continues to lead the way at nearly 37% of overall traffic. Consequently, search engine traffic has also grown substantially year over year.

To improve your site traffic flow and increase the quality of your data, try investigating Google Insights to compare long-term trends on keyword search behavior. This will enable you to pinpoint the specific head match and long-tail terms that are proving to bring the most qualified traffic to your site vs. the terms that are proving to be not as effective for your business goals.

Benefits of analyzing your traffic sources include:

- Comparing long term trends in Search

- Defining visitor behavior differences stemming from direct, referral, and search engine traffic

- Determining where your marketing efforts should be focused to gain the highest volume of conversion-friendly traffic

Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits your site receives when a visitor leaves your site from the page on which he or she entered. It is important to measure this metric because it means the difference between attracting relevant visitor interest or missing the mark completely. Is your website ranking on key terms that have nothing to do with the services or products your business offers?

Your bounce rate will show you if certain keywords are bringing visitors to your site whose queries are not being answered. An average bounce rate, in Google Benchmark results, hovers around 50% which is equal to half of the visitors who arrive to your site and leave immediately without browsing through any other pages.

To improve your bounce rate, develop an organized keyword mapping document to segment the power of your best performing keywords into groups of 3-5 per page. By distributing your key terms in this manner, each section of your site will be optimized to answer the particular search query that fits to the content you offer. Keep in mind that you want to decrease your overall website bounce rate as much as possible over time.

Benefits of analyzing your bounce rate include:

- It is easy to understand.

- It is actionable as it allows you to shift your keyword optimization focus towards strengthening your best performing terms.

- It measures customer behavior, enabling you to better tailor your marketing efforts on different digital channels.

Join us next week for our last webinar of 2011! Reserve your space today as it is guaranteed to be a packed audience for Best SEO Link Building Tips for 2012.

Happy Holidays!

~ Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123 #seo

Learn more about the Webmarketing123 team, mission, and culture in our new video.

Follow us on Twitter @ #wm123 #webmarketing123

If you missed the webinar by Jim Lecinski, the “Zero Moment of Truth” is a new stage in the mental marketing cycle that all online marketers should know about.  The traditional marketing cycle featured 3 stages: Stimulus (an ad or marketing element that got your brand into the consumer’s head), First Moment of Truth (a personal interaction with your lead), and the Second Moment of Truth (a closed deal and the customer experience).  Advancing digital technology coupled with the economic recession environment, many B2B companies have changed their buying behavior.  Being especially cautious with spending budgets has impacted the course of purchasing decisions and the path companies take to fulfill their research requirements.

62% of business buyers spend more time researching before making a purchase since the recession began in 2009.  The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) is that moment when a prospect becomes curious about a product or service, surfacing from the first touch point with an advertisement or other form of marketing communication.  At this point, the prospect will search on the internet for more information and make comparisons before making their final purchasing decision.  Some things a prospect may consider are reviews, competitors, price samples, and testimonials.  Your SEO efforts can help make sure leads find what they need to know about your business on the search engines, before landing on your competition.

An important question to ask yourself when selecting keywords for your company to rank on is “What questions are potential leads asking, and how can I answer them?”  When leads are searching for your brand name, what are they looking for?  Google’s auto-fill option keeps track of trends when people search for your brand.  You can type in your brand name and see what pops up.   [Your company] reviews or best [your category] are two examples of how you can target potential customers looking for information.  Leading prospects to the type of content or information that matches their query can be fulfilled with a successful SEO program.  You’ve already got the lead’s interest, don’t lose it by letting your competitors rank above you and answer the query first.

Once you start ranking for keywords related to your brand, it’s important to provide content for the customer to view and read.  Case studies and testimonials will increase trust around your brand and provide valuable links in the search results for queries about your client work, success stories, and your company reputation in the industry.  Providing this kind of information and making it easy to find on Google will move the prospect further down the path to convert.  What we are seeing it that more often, B2B prospects are taking more time to complete research before making a purchase decision.  Critical to online marketers is the fact that B2B companies are conducting their research online with Search.  According to ZMOT research, 84% of buyers are making their purchase decisions based on the influence of the Zero Moment of Truth phase.

What does this mean for online marketers?  Jump in to SEO and start the path to success and recognition for your business among your leads.  Be visible, reliable, and offer enough information to your prospects so that they continue to follow your conversion funnel without dropping off.

- Gregg Hanano | Marketing Research Analyst

#wm123

#seo

Keyword Strength

Getting noticed before your competition is critical in today’s online marketplace.  In order to be successful, you must follow the right process, avoid cutting corners, and delegate necessary resources towards each effort.  When it comes to good writing, you must weave carefully selected words together in a compelling manner to entice, engage, and activate the reader.  The same holds true when optimizing your site with words and phrases that must be pulled together to create a thorough, well-connected theme for your business.

By repeating and overusing keyword iterations in an unnatural manner throughout your website pages, Google will recognize this type of “black hat” tactic, and to your disadvantage, will actually drop your site in ranking.  Therefore, marketers must integrate appropriate SEO copywriting to rank well on selected keywords, create valuable inbound links, and engage customers.

Headline Optimization

Making your business solution compelling requires not a good headline, but a great one.  To wrap your call-to-action messaging into a tight package that will ignite attention within a couple seconds, your headline must incorporate these 3 elements:

• Keyword-enhanced call to action
• Short statement or a question
• Descriptive initiative

For each offering you promote, follow this success-proven formula to lead each visitor down your conversion funnel in a logical path:

• Headline – Make it compelling.
• Visual – Include image ALT tags.
• Caption – Place beneath your visual for increased keyword support.
• Main Copy – Integrate keywords with supportive content.
• Contact Information – Make it easy for your prospects to get in touch with you for further information.

Content Writing

Be sure to write for humans when composing unique website material, just as you would if you were writing a paper or report.  Proofread, check grammar, and carry a natural writing style and tone of voice throughout.  Keep in mind that your website is comparable to the front door of your business and you want to display your value proposition and sales offerings in the most attractive and convincing manner.  Do not take short cuts by overusing keywords or repeating content in an unnatural way.  This method will come off as bombarding and superfluous.  Google spiders, like your audience, will notice these tactics and will not recognize your site as a reliable, trustworthy source.

At the end of the day, if you don’t write about it, you will not rank for it.  Therefore, make it clear throughout the entirety of your online marketing material and website copy what you do and why customers should choose your company.  If you are successful in marketing to people, you will be successful in marketing to the search engines.  The key is in knowing how to do it just right.

- Genevieve Waldron | Marketing Communications Manager

#wm123

#seo