Local Marketing: Don't Forget Promotional Items

With all the fancy new ways to promote a new local restaurant, I find some obvious marketing tactics have been largely over-looked. In today's world, when I say local marketing everyone thinks Yelp, SuperPages, Yellowbook.com and Google Local Merchant. These are still important vehicles to promote a new local restaurant on the Internet but what are we missing?

Promotional items, maybe logoed pens and t-shirts but that might be too expensive. I walked into Dickey's Barbecue Pit for the first time and was transformed into a Texas style barbeque. The picnic table clothes in checkered blue and white, the smell of barbeque and a big yellow cup? At first I thought that drinking out of a big yellow cup wasn't part of the experience but then I thought, "Hmm, you drink beer & coke out of 32 ounce tumblers when you are at a barbecue or ball game."

On the bottom of the cup's front side it says "Take me home! I'm a Souvenir Cup. Big Yellow Cup. Reusable. Recyclable. Dishwasher & Microwave Safe." Next time I have the guys over to watch football and I am drinking out of my new, 32 ounce tumbler, Boss Hogg will ask, "You been down to Dickey's Barbecue Pit? Hot damn! How was it?" Then the perfect advertising happens, Word of Mouth from a close friend or family member.

I tell Boss Hogg that me and Luke took out the General Lee to pick up Bo and head over to Dickey's Barbecue Pit. Of course we saw Rosco P Coltrane at Dickey's! We traded some Moonshine for a rack of Dickey's ribs and a side of macaroni & cheese. 10-4 Good Buddy! That's some good eats!

My cQualified Website was Hacked

This is a warning to all that run a website, regardless of the platform you use. It is very important to review your site once a week to make sure that your website has not been hacked (or that you don't have broken links, steady reduction in traffic, no index tags or website redirect loops).

My cQualified Website was Hacked

Thanks to Atlantic Drugs online atlantic-drugs(dot)net, I found three links in one of my blog articles to their website. Of course I didn't let them do this. How can you prevent this from happening?

1) Use a password with upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers and symbols
2) Change your login on a regular basis
3) Try not to use robot password tools
4) Don't keep files on your computer titled "My Passwords"

SEO is Ranking Insurance too

Not only is SEO about improving search rankings, an SEO consultant can also monitor your ranking and traffic to identify problems. I have seen homepages get "too many redirects" causing a redirect loop. A few years ago, a client blocked their whole website with a robots.txt file (when updating your website with a dev site, make sure to not upload the dev site's robots.txt).

Getting de-indexed from Google by spam tactics is not the only reason your URLs disappear from the index. Without an SEO consultant your website is in jeopardy. I have seen it all. We know what steps to take and places to look if your website rankings, traffic, or URLs disappear from Google organic search results.

Ghost Mall Phenomenon

As a young boy, the Mall was the center of my universe. A place to watch movies, play video games, shop for clothes and meet friends after school and on the weekends. With the local Mall being the only outlet for most products, it was the center of commerce as well.

Ghost Mall Phenomenon
With the poor economy and the migration of customers to the Internet, many Brick & Mortar retailers and product manufacturers are seeing a major decrease in sales at Malls around the US. Malls are becoming ghost towns and the customers that are shopping probably have iPhone in hand doing comparison shopping for better deals by scanning barcodes.

Looking to the Internet to regain sales levels, these companies have a large learning curve and can spend tens of thousands of dollars learning how to marketing products on the Internet.

Mall Store = Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is similar to paying for mall space. The new mall is Google. Instead of people visiting malls they are visiting Google to search for the products they want to purchase. Getting listed among organic search results in Google is critical for the success of an Internet retailer or manufacturer that wants to sell direct on the Internet.

Local Advertising = Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Instead of purchasing newspaper ads or regional television ads, Google offers paid advertising for both national and local visibility. Start advertising without delay and quickly promote a sale or special promotion. However, before paying for visitors, make sure the conversion process is flawless. There is no reason to pay for customers if you know they are not going to convert.

If you are in this situation, cQualified has helped retailers transition successfully to the Internet, helped weave SEO into their Companies DNA, and put them back on the road to success. Email us to talk more about this opportunity.

Google Remarketing: A One-To-One Conversation

If you have driven down the interstate in the last 50 years you would see billboards promoting restaurants and amenities all along your trip. My favorite is the drive to Las Vegas right before you get to Jean, Nevada. You see a succession of signs promoting everything you can do when you visit the casinos in this city.

Google Remarketing
Google Remarketing works in this way as well. You know that the customer has visited your website (or intends to pass it on the interstate) and they are interested in your product/service. It is now time to convert those potential customers.

One-To-One Conversation
Talk directly to the customer and identify the Benefit to the Customer if they purchase. Then, create a succession of banner ads to educate them on your product/service and entice them to return and convert. For example, eBay would have banners with themes like; save money, browse a wide variety of products, ship it today, etc. Figure out what will motivate your customers and create a set of banners and improve your conversion rate.

Banner Blindness
Be sure to rotate in new banner ads on a regular basis. After 4 impressions a day, most banners become white noise. Also consider different color backgrounds since most blogs and websites are built on white backgrounds. This will give your banner ads more pop.

Conclusion
Google Remarketing gives you the opportunity to advertise to interested customers. Speak directly to your customers and tell them what they will get if they purchase. Don't waste the opportunity!

Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels: Last-Click Attribution is Dead

If a tree falls in the forest and Google Analytics is their to hear it, does it make an impression. Corney, I know but this is a great example of the issue with last-click attribution. We all know that most conversions take more than one touchpoint. Just because Google Analytics doesn't record those touchpoints for conversion click-paths doesn't mean you shouldn't spend time and money on those top of funnel search queries.

Google is now a player in multi-attribution analytics. With the full roll-out of the new Google Analytics features including the My Conversion tab on Google Analytics it is much easier to understand the click-path of a conversion. Obviously Google Analytics needs much more work to compete with other specialty analytics packages that can tell you the exact search query that triggered the multi-touch.

First-Click & Last-Click Attribution is Dead
Just because Google doesn't attribute conversions to general organic search queries, Google Remarketing and other top of funnel search queries doesn't mean that they are not integral in the conversion process. This at least confirms that the first-click, last-click attribution models are dead.

Traditional Marketing Executives
Before Internet Marketing, most marketing executives would say, "I know I am wasting 50% of my budget but I don't know which half." Well now you have a little bit more insight into the conversion process and that it is made up of multiple touchpoints from multiple channels.

Multi-Channel Buying Cycle
Don't forget that the buying cycle includes more than just online channels. Consider all online and offline channels when building multi-channel funnels.

Attend the Google Analytics Webinar on Multi-Channel Funnels October 11, 2011.

SEO Keyword Selection Best Practices

Picking keywords to target with SEO efforts is much more complicated than it looks. Many variables should be taken in consideration when choosing keywords to keep track of SEO success.

One distinction I would like to make is for small websites, the SEO keyword list should be all inclusive. On small websites, with under 100 Web pages, each page of the website should be mapped to an individual keyword. Large websites, with over 300 Web pages, should pick keywords to report on that best represent different sections of the website. Each URL should still be mapped to one keyword but you will only report on under 300 keywords (any more can be un-manageable).

When creating your SEO keyword list:

1) Theme Relevance - Create a list of URLs and their corresponding keyword theme. Make sure to include a keyword that is relevant to current content. You can also add keywords to the SEO keyword list that you plan on optimizing for in the future.

2) Google Impression Share - You want to make sure that the keywords you add to the list have some Google impressions. However, don't get trapped in the selection of very generic keywords just because they have a lot of impressions. Consider the following variables to refine your keyword list, after impression share is identified.

3) Competitiveness - The keywords you choose must allow you to rank in the top 5 rankings. See who ranks in the top positions, are they websites that own the top spot or can you break into the top 5 spots. The majority of Google users will only look at the organic search results above the fold (make sure you can get ranked here).

4) Revenue Generation - There is no reason for you to try and rank on a keyword that doesn't offer revenue (or the goal you are trying to receive). I have ranked in Position 1 for very generic keywords that have a lot of impressions, however we didn't get any conversions. You want quality as well as quantity.

The difference between SEO & PPC keyword list creation is with SEO you want to map one keyword per URL. Whereas, with PPC, the goal is to exhaust the different combinations of keywords that your customers would use to search for your website. Same idea but a different strategy.

Don't forget to revisit those SEO keywords every 6 months, you may find that the keywords you thought would work don't.

Link Building: Value Calculation Variables

The link value calculation variables are always changing. Some of the traditional link building tactics no longer hold value. Google is putting more value on freshness of links (Social Media, Blog Articles, Facebook, Twitter, etc). Google still puts value in authority, but the paid link companies have taken away some of the value from authority sites since too many authority sites sold link value through text link brokers.

Raw number of links is still a good indicator of increased link value, but more is not always better. Another variable is the amount of external link endorsements the website that links to you has. The more link endorsements a website gives the less that endorsement is worth.

Google also puts value in keyword phrases in the anchor text but again too many paid text links have reduced the value of keywords in anchor text. Something that is harder to fake is the theme of the website and web page offering a link to your website. Stick to the basics of link building just remember that the variables are always changing and it is your responsibility to keep up.

Link Value Calculation Variable #1: Freshness

Yahoo! Directory Listing
With the Panda update, did Yahoo! Directory listings loose link value? In the past both the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ directory were duplicated thousands of times across the Internet. Did this actually hurt directory listing links?

I recently did a controlled experiment with a website and the purchase of a Yahoo! Directory Listing. I stopped building links one month prior to purchasing of the Yahoo! Directory listing, for $299. I have not seen any increase in rankings or traffic from the Yahoo! Directory listing purchase and it has been 3 months. Do Yahoo! Directory listings still give link value? Are the categories getting too filled and now all new listings are showing up on page 5+ of each sub-category?

Business.com Directory Listings
Even those at Business.com suggest that 90% of the clicks to external websites from Business.com comes from the top three ad units on every page. Those are purchased directly from Business.com.

Link Value Calculation Variable #2: Link Authority

Link Authority is calculated by the amount of link value pointed to a website three links deep. It is not just about the website that links to you, but the next few websites that link to that site and so on.


Link Value Calculation Variable #3: Raw Amount of Links

Since too many websites have created ridiculous amounts of links unnaturally, Google can track the raw number of links built and if unnatural will not give value to rankings. For example, getting a link from a blog that has that link located on every page of the blog. You would assume that more links are better, but one link on the home page is much more valuable than one link on every page of the blog.

Link Value Calculation Variable #4: Link Endorsements by External Website

It goes without saying that if you have 1 of 10 external links from a website, you get more link value than if you are 1 of 100 external links. Whether you get 10x more link value is however not as clear cut. Google sees external links as votes, a vote in favor of an external website's authority. The more someone is willing to endorse another website the less that endorsement is worth, especially in the eyes of Google (concerning link value).

Link Value Calculation Variable #5: Keyword Themed Link Text

Another variable Google puts a lot of value in is having keyword phrases in the link anchor text. However, too many people are building or paying for links with exact keyword phrases that they want to rank on in the link text. Remember that the keyword doesn't have to be exact, Google understands keywords semantically. Even a keyword in the anchor text with the same theme will offer keyword ranking link value.

Link Value Calculation Variable #6: Landing Page Keyword Theme

The theme of the page that links to your website is almost as important as the keyword anchor text. The website and web page must be relevant to the theme of your website to offer any link value.

Conclusion
Links are still the most important way to increase organic rankings. However, it is growing much harder to increase Google organic rankings because of irrelevant links, paid text links and large amounts of links. Your best bet is to get as many quality links from authoritative sites as you can, remembering that you need to continue to get new links to satisfy the freshness variable.