In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 3 part series, I took a look at some of the individual benefits of SEO and PPC and how they compare to one another in terms of effectiveness. Today I’ll be taking a look at the outcome of this debate and drawing some conclusions from the benefits of each marketing method that we’ve identified in previous blog posts. Check it out…

So, who’s the winner?

Truth is there is no “winner” as such. SEO and PPC both have their individual benefits and are in essence two very different search marketing tools that can’t actually be compared to one another because they are just too dissimilar. The “winning” situation and strategy that all companies should really think about implementing is a balanced combination of the two strategies in order to take advantage of both of their individual strengths.

The Benefits of Using both SEO AND PPC in Order to Market your Website Online:

As mentioned above, the best strategy for an all round marketing plan is to use both SEO and PPC in a cleverly constructed combination of the two strategies. Some of the key benefits of a well designed combined strategy include the following:

1. Page 1 Domination

Probably the greatest benefit of combing SEO with PPC is that you get to dominate Page 1 of Google when relevant search terms are entered. If you’re ranking organically in the top 3 positions and being listed in the paid search section of the SERPS, you have good brand presence within the available real estate above the fold on Page 1. This means that regardless of what type of user you’re dealing with (those who use organic results and those who prefer paid advertisements), you stand a much better chance of gaining a click through to your website.

2. Achieve Success both Short and Long Term

Whereas PPC is a great way of gaining immediate traffic volumes to a brand new website, it is important that one also immediately starts investing in SEO in order to improve the overall worth of a website and eventually reach a point of sustained incoming traffic that is free. This means that while you are investing in receiving immediate traffic volumes to your website via PPC advertising, you can also expect to build up the authority score of your website organically in order to receive free organic traffic in the long term. Focusing on just one of these marketing methods limits your traffic potential, short and long term.

3. Dominate both Locally and Internationally

By combining an extremely targeted PPC campaign in terms of location and a well constructed SEO campaign internationally, you are able to ensure that you receive visits from both local and international web users. If for example you have an online store as well as a physical store for local users, you can use a combination of SEO and PPC to ensure optimal results. PPC can be refined to display only to visitors that are in driving distance of your shop and SEO strategies can be targeted nationwide or internationally to ensure that the success of your online store flourishes at the same time. This is extremely useful in this sort of situation and is yet another benefit of cleverly combining SEO and PPC marketing strategies for your website.

The Bottom Line

When it comes down to it, SEO and PPC are two very different marketing tools that each have their own benefits. Neither one is better than the other and if budget allows for it, investment should be made in both forms of online marketing. It’s all about catering to different audiences, be it local vs. international or people who prefer using paid search results instead of organic search results. Yes, there are situations when one form of marketing is more suitable than the other, but in general a well constructed online marketing plan should make use of both SEO and PPC marketing.

Related posts:

1. SEO vs. PPC – Part 1 of 3
2. Search Usability
3. SEO vs. PPC – Part 2 of 3

SEO vs. PPC – Part 3 of 3

The Benefits of PPC – Pay Per Click – Paid Search Marketing:

PPC, an acronym for Pay Per Click, literally refers to advertising on search engines via display advertising that you only pay for once somebody actually clicks on one of your displayed ads. The cost of the click is determined by a bidding system whereby relevance to a search term combined with the amount bid on an advertisement determine when and where your ad will be displayed. I could go into much more detail regarding the calculation of the actual cost per click, but that’s for another blog post on another day.

Due to the nature of PPC and the way campaigns are run, there are numerous benefits to this type of marketing over organic search marketing (SEO) and in general. Let’s not waste any more time and take a look at the advantages of PPC advertising.

1. PPC is Instant

Due to the nature of PPC, one doesn’t need to wait years, months or even days before being able to gain valuable traffic to your website. Unlike organic SEO which takes a while to build up an authoritive website that ranks for relevant keywords, PPC is instant and as soon as you start paying for different ad campaigns, your ads WILL start appearing in the SERPs and your website will start achieving increased traffic volumes. This is especially true if your campaigns are well constructed and implemented by a qualified PPC manager. PPC is particularly beneficial to new websites, however; older websites that are looking to invest more in their existing website traffic volumes can also benefit from PPC when fast results and greater ROI are required.

2. Reach only your Target Audience

Whereas organic search, especially when carried out incorrectly, has the potential to attract a certain percentage of irrelevant traffic to your website; PPC enables you to thoroughly refine your search campaigns to only display to an extremely niche audience that is highly likely to convert into paying customers. Google AdWords and other paid search tools such as Yahoo Advertising and Facebook, give one the ability to refine target audiences by near exact location, languages, categories and what devices people are using to search. Some social media PPC platforms enable you to go as far as targeting age, gender, race, income bracket and marital status. So whether you’re a large retailer in the middle of London, or a tiny boutique store that sells antique coins in a little village like Bridgenorth in the Midlands, you can define exactly how broad or focused you want your search to be. Speaking of large retailers, this brings us to our next point…

3. Get a Second Chance with Remarketing

What is remarketing I hear you ask? Remarketing is a feature in Google AdWords that enables one to target visitors who have previously visited your site, left and visited any other site that makes use of the Google display network. By placing a piece of code on relevant pages of your website, you can tag a user that has, for example, visited the LED television page of your website and left. When these users then visit another related page on another website that makes use of the Google display network, Google will then show the user your advertisement for LED Televisions, or cross selling categories such as DVD players for example. Basically, what it comes down to is that once a user has visited your site and visits any other sites, they will continue to be bombarded with ads for your business which could result in a sale on the second or third time round.

4. Who Needs Rich Snippets when we have Ad Extensions?

Rich snippets are in essence the extra markup displayed in organic search results, such as reviews, ratings or prices and more. We’ve all seen them at some point, but what we don’t see is the amount of blood sweat and tears that goes into getting these very limited snippets of information to actually work. Once we have them working, it’s really up to Google to decide if it’s actually going to bother displaying the snippets. This whole process is eliminated in PPC advertising where you have the ability to use what we call Ad extensions. Ad extensions enable one to display site links, products from the merchant feed, a telephone number, maps for location etc. All can be added and can be seen immediately in most instances resulting in an eye catching ad and improving clickthrough rate for ads. As I said before, who needs rich snippets when we have Ad Extensions?

5. PPC the Leveler

With organic search, it takes a lot of time and investment to be able to compete with and out-rank big, well established websites. As a new website for your small online shop starting out as a delivery service of groceries to your local village, it is near impossible to immediately, or even over a long term, compete with bigger retailers such as Tescos or Sainsburys online for keywords such as “online shopping” or “buy groceries online”. However, with PPC, one is able to bid on keywords and compete against the biggest brands out there. The overall authority of your website has very little to do with how well you compete against tough competitors and larger brands.

6. Short Term Marketing

For e-commerce stores in particular, PPC is an extremely useful tool for the marketing of short term promotions or competitions. PPC Ad text can be changed instantly to reflect special offers and prices that one doesn’t normally have the ability to list via organic search marketing. Carrying out a search for “LED Television London” can provide one with many general LED Television results, but the one that’s going to catch your eye is the sponsored ad advertising an exact special offer for the LED telly that you require. Once the promotion is complete, no sweat, simply stop the ad and move on to the next promotion or seasonal trend.

7. Dominate the SERPS

Whilst organic search results do generally have a slightly higher clickthrough rate from SERPs, paid advertising does still occupy a significant portion of real estate on results pages. If you are currently ranking well for organic search results in a particular category or industry, one can strive for page 1 domination by showing up for related keywords in the sponsored results of the SERPs as well. This results in 2 of your results showing up above the fold in SERPs which is great for your brand and will result not only in more traffic, but also increased brand awareness as your name continuously pops up in a particular industry for related keywords.

There you have it, some of the key benefits of running an effective PPC campaign. Whether you’re a new business looking to get some immediate traffic and increase your brand awareness amongst the SERPs, or a much more established site looking for ways to further increase traffic to your site by dominating page one of the search engines and social media pages; PPC is an extremely useful tool for any kind of business and should be considered an essential part of any all round online marketing campaign that has the required budget.

That’s it for part 2 of my three part series of blog posts dedicated to the benefits of SEO vs. PPC. My final part of the series will take a look at the key benefits of both PPC and SEO and see how we can effectively combine them together to form a flawless online marketing campaign that will guarantee not just increased traffic volumes and brand awareness, but also result in a great ROI overall for your website or business. Until then…

Related posts:

1. SEO vs. PPC – Part 1 of 3
2. Google’s new search-based keyword tool is a welcome aid for advertisers
3. Online Video SEO for SMBs

SEO vs. PPC – Part 2 of 3

I have decided to do a 3 part blog focusing on the Benefits of SEO, the Benefits of PPC and the Benefit of using both in cahoots with one another in order to form a well balanced, all-round online marketing strategy.

Today’s post takes a look at the benefits of SEO when compared to PPC. Next week we will take a look at PPC and conclude the week after that. I hope you’ll find it as interesting to read as I have found it interesting to write.

The Benefits of SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Organic Search:

Organic search refers to traffic that has entered your site via free organic search results in search engines, whereby a search result appears because of its relevance to the search terms that were entered by the user and in no way affected by sponsored or paid advertising. This type of traffic is free and is based on the relevant search engine’s impression of your website and its available content.

As mentioned above, organic search clicks through to your website are technically free, but believe me, getting your website to a point where you are ranking on page one of all major SERPs and thereby achieving significant traffic volumes, is no easy task and requires a lot of skill and time. Skilled time = money.

So… if SEO costs money and takes so much time, skill and effort to get to page one of the SERPS before you can start experiencing any significant traffic volumes, then why do people bother with SEO? Let’s take a look…

1. SEO is long term

Probably the greatest benefit of an effective and ethical SEO company strategy is that it results in long term benefits. Unlike PPC campaigns that literally stop driving traffic to your site the moment you cease a campaign, SEO continues to deliver results as long as a site maintains a good level of relevance and authority which, if an SEO campaign is delivered effectively, almost takes care of itself after certain amount of time.

2. Larger Audience

Research has shown that the majority of search engine users view and click organic search results rather than paid search results down the right hand side of the page. The general perception amongst industry professionals is that a standard search engine results page (one that excludes images, map listings, videos etc.) will attract a 70% to 30% split between organic search clicks and paid search clicks.  This means you have a significantly larger audience that is likely to click through to you website, especially if you are ranking towards the top of the SERPs for the searched keyword.

3. An even LARGER audience

In addition to the point above, another factor that allows you to reach a much larger audience via an effective SEO strategy is that generally your site will perform well across all search engines rather than just those on which you are paying to advertise your services. With the rise in popularity of bing and the sustained popularity of Yahoo and similar search engines, this can add up to a fairly large number clicks through to your website each month.

4. Increase the value of your website

SEO is effectively an investment of sorts; one that if it is carefully managed, can result in a website of increased value due to increased traffic volumes and therefore increased revenue. A website that is already achieving a good bottom line is very much like any other business that is doing well – it is a sought after asset and can be sold to the highest bidder. Because of the long term effectiveness of a well SEO’d site, it is a lot easier to sell a website that is achieving excellent rankings and traffic from constant organic sources, rather than one that is relying on paid advertising.

All in all, SEO is an essential and integral part of any worthy online business’ marketing strategy. Whereas a new company might want to focus a large amount of budget on PPC for immediate results, one would be silly not to start with an effective SEO campaign as soon as possible. And in this regard, read my earlier blog post which discusses the importance of a hiring an SEO company to do your work for you, as opposed to doing it yourself.

There you have it – 4 key benefits that SEO has over PPC. It doesn’t stop here though. Check back in next week to see how an effectively managed PPC campaign can help your online business and start earning ROI in no time at all.

Related posts:

1. HR SEO a new weapon in reducing cost per hire
2. The Power in Words
3. Social marketing versus organic

SEO vs. PPC – Part 1 of 3

Let’s take a brief look at the latest reporting tools introduced by Google:

1. Google +1 Metrics in Webmaster Tools

Google has introduced what they’ve called the “+1 Metrics” section to Webmaster Tools. This section essentially gives webmasters the ability to see how Google +1 is affecting the traffic coming into their site from Google’s SERPs. The +1 Metrics are split into 3 sections:

1.1 Search Impact: One is able to track how many impressions your +1’d pages have received and how many clickthrough’s you’ve had to your site as a result of these impressions.

1.2 Activity: With the Activity report, one is able track how many times any particular page on your website has been +1’d, either via buttons on your site, or buttons elsewhere such as Google search results or ads.

1.3 Audience Report: The audience report enables you to track different characteristics of people have previously +1’d a page on your website, via search engines or you site itself.

Below is a screenshot taken from the Google Analytics Blog of the new Webmaster Tools Metrics section:

2. Google analytics Social Engagement Plug-in

The Social Engagement Plug-in enables one to track social interaction on your website, across most key social platforms such as Google +1, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. If you are using the latest version of Google Analytics on your website, you will automatically be tracking Google +1 engagement, however for the remainder of the social platforms you will need to customize your JavaScript tracking script in order to analyze these.

The Social Engagement data can be found under the “Visitors” section of your analytics profile. As with Webmaster Tools, the Social Engagement Plug-in for analytics is also broken up into 3 different sections:

2.1 Social Engagement: This section enables you to see the differences in behavior of people who share pages on your site via +1 or any other social platforms. You can for example see if people who share data convert better than those who don’t, or whether they spend more time on the site than “non-sharers”.

2.2 Social Actions: A well organized collection of data in one place that allows you to see exactly how many social actions have been taken on your site as a whole via the different social media platforms that you are tracking. You can for example see how many “likes” or “tweets” your site has received in its entirety.

2.3 Social Pages: The last of the social engagement tools allows you to see compare the social activity of individual pages and track which pages are being shared the most compared to the rest of the site.

Below is a screenshot of the Social Engagement Plug-in in Google Analytics, taken from the Google analytics blog:

All in all, this is an extremely useful addition to Google analytics which could have an interesting effect on the social media strategies that are being implemented and paid for around the world. Unfortunately there are many self proclaimed “Social Media Gurus” out there who are going to be challenged by the fact that the monetary worth and ROI of social media work is becoming more measurable by the day. No longer will ineffective social media strategies get away with not actually providing any worthy results for clients. Only the best in the game will be able to back up the investments their clients are making in them with some cold hard facts and measurable social media statistics.

Either way, this is a great new addition to social media that is sure to continue evolving over the next few months as Google gets an even tighter grasp on the measurement of social engagement.

Related posts:

1. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?
2. Are your social media monitoring tools giving you the information you need?
3. DO’s and DON’Ts of Using Annotations in Google Analytics

Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics

Let’s start by taking a look at Me on the Web:

Now, the more tech savvy amongst us will be screaming out “what about Google alerts?” and the truth is, they have a point; Me on the Web is very much like Google alerts, but is far more accessible and easy to use. Below is a screenshot of the interface that comes with Me on the Web and the numerous options and filters that are available:

As mentioned above, Me on the Web enables users to more easily set up alerts to their account as well as suggest additional search terms that one might want to consider when setting up a system to manage their online reputation. In addition to this basic alert system however, Google has also created some useful links to a resources section that contains all the information one needs to bear in mind when stumbling across any malicious news or blog posts about oneself. Some of the ideas discussed in this resources section include basic search engine reputation management tips such as contacting a webmaster to request certain information be taken down, or the more complicated approach of search engine reputation management that involves writing articles of your own that could “out rack” the damaging posts that were written about you, thereby pushing them further down the results pages and making them less obvious to people searching for your name.

Now, let’s take a look at the REAL motivation behind this tool:

You need a Google Account to make use of Me on the Web. You also need a Google Account to make use of Google’s +1, personalized search and many other tools that come into play with Google’s social search. Now, getting everyone to “manage their online reputation” is a great premise to getting everyone to simultaneously sign up to a Google Account. The more people that have Google accounts, the more control Google has over the social profiles that they have such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. That’s essentially what it comes down to – control over social search. Google lost out big time when bing bought the rights to access Facebook data, but Me on the Web essentially enables users to manually link their Facebook accounts with their Google account, giving Google LEGAL access to a lot more of the information that Facebook has on users’ profiles than before.

BOTTOM LINE: With all this information, Google now has the ability to compete with bing and other search engines on a social level.

Related posts:

1. Google Search to Produce “Google Me”?
2. Google Revives Realtime Search With Google+
3. Are we being too hard on Google’s attempt at social media?

Google Launches “Me on the Web”

In the past if you ranked at number 1, it was said that you would receive a CTR of 30% or more purely by outranking your competitors. Now however, we have so many other factors that come into play such as Google’s social search results, videos, shopping results and map listings that simply ranking at number 1 no longer guarantees the CTR that you might have been used to in the past.

A useful example of ranking at number 1 and having more “attractive” listings than your plain listing would be as shown below when doing a search for “Xbox 360”. I’ve highlighted all the different areas that catch a user’s eye:

Whereas the official Xbox 360 website is outranking its competitors and sellers, there is no way you can tell me that over a third of the people faced with this page will be clicking on the number one ranking (1). If you were looking to buy an Xbox, the shopping results (2) with prices would immediately catch your eye and you might click there. If you’re one those users that looks at PPC results, you will be drawn to the right of the page where you see a 5 star result with John Lewis (4) that offers free delivery, or even the next result that promises an Xbox with a mobile phone contract. Perhaps you’re the real techie type and you see the Google News (3) results further down because of the nice image that is neatly placed there and you decide to get sidetracked on your mission to buy an Xbox by clicking and reading recent news about the Xbox 360. Either way, there is very little drawing you to the Xbox website at position number one.

The above results don’t even take into account Google social search results with the new personalization that is taking place in search results. Take a look at the heatmap image below from Feng-GUI that illustrates the amount of people that consider social search results and end up following recommendations from their network of friends instead of following position one in Google:

Image Courtesy of Fen-GUI

Essentially what it comes down to is that one needs to ensure that you carefully analyze the current state of your industry’s page one results and see what type of results are appearing and figure out which results are dominating CTR. You will also need to look and social media more actively in terms of personalization, instead of just focusing on Facebook fan pages and “spammy” twitter feeds.

These factors are also important to consider when doing your monthly reports. Any fluctuations in traffic can be due to the fact that a shop listing has been introduced to related searches in your industry or perhaps a very popular post from an authority figure in your industry has been shared by half of Europe. Either of these factors could cause a sharp decline in traffic to what was an excellent performing number one ranking in Google.

Related posts:

1. Staying on top of local search: ranking and tracking made easy.
2. What 2010 holds for Brand Reputation Management
3. The Rise of Mobile Marketing in 2010

Simply Ranking Number 1 is so 2010

I’ve been involved in online marketing for about 3 years now, having started out touching on SEO at a price comparison website. After that I moved on to become a project manager at an online marketing company and was bitten by the SEO bug. I moved to MediaVision to leave the complicated world of project management and get started with pure SEO work.

What a great decision! A year on and I have four of my own clients who are flourishing thanks to the knowledge I’ve gained in SEO, conversion analysis and effective copywriting. Here’s how I got to where I am now as an SEO specialist…

1. Read, read and read some more…

Starting out at MediaVision I was given some basic reading material on the way things were done at MediaVision. Once I understood what I was reading and how our basic strategy works, I continued to expand my knowledge by following industry experts on Twitter and reading some of the strategies they had tried and tested with some of their clients. This proved to be extremely useful as SEO is an evolving science and one can never stop researching to keep up to date with the latest practices. Some interesting people that I followed include:

- @brettpringle

- @louisventer

- @Searchcowboys

- @JonDMyers

- @theGypsy

- @DaveNaylor

- @avinash

- @mattcutts

Follow these people and you will not only learn some of the basics of SEO, but also learn some very advanced trickery that you can test and see if it works for you.

Reading SEO books and dummies guides to SEO might work here and there, but I would really suggest that the best way to get involved is to be taught and then to read as much as you can to really understand the MANY different views and strategies that people have all around the world. SEO IS NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE!

2. Master the tools

You need to master the use of the basic SEO tools if you wish to be able to do effective keyword research, index your websites and monthly reporting. Three of the most important tools that you will need to make use of include:

- Google AdWords external keyword research tool

- Google Analytics

- Webmaster Tools

Google AdWords external keyword research tool and Google analytics will become two of your most valuable online tools. Regardless of what people say, the fact is that Google is still the MAJOR market share leader in the world of search engines and therefore most of your research will be based on their tools.

The external keyword tool is a great tool for finding out what phrases are related to any website that you are working on. Google Analytics is a data collection tool that gives you ridiculous amounts of information about the traffic that is arriving at your (or your client’s) website. Based on the data presented to you in Analytics you will then be able to make strategic decisions regarding the promotion of your website and different keywords therein.

Most of the tools have their own help sections or courses that you can read in order to learn how to use them, but the best way of learning how to use them is to practice. That takes us on to our next step, Practice makes Perfect….

3. Practice Makes Perfect!

As I’ve mentioned above, SEO is not an exact science. What works for someone else will not necessarily work for you and your clients. It is essential that you practice, try out different strategies and tactics that you read about and see if they work for you. Obviously you can’t experiment too much at the expense of your own clients, so often setting up a blog of your own or having some sort of “side-project” will give you the opportunity to practice new ideas and measure the effect that they might have.

4. Live SEO

SEO is not a job, it is not a 9–5 type of career and it is not something you can learn about in a few days and then just apply your basic knowledge for the next 5 years – YOU NEED TO LIVE SEO. It needs to become a lifestyle, a passion and something that you talk about at any given opportunity. Some of the best knowledge that I have learnt over the last year has been in the pub after work as we wind down from yet another hard day’s work. Often, instead of chatting about cars, booze, sex, drugs and rock n roll (as you do of course), we opt to chat about different SEO strategies that we’ve read about during the course of the day. Sounds boring, but this is the sort of commitment and passion you need to have towards SEO if you really want to make a success of it.

5. Join in Forum Discussions

Another great way to learn more about SEO is to join forums. This is one avenue I am yet to try myself simply due to a lack of time, but some of the biggest names in SEO that I’ve had the chance of chatting to have told me that this is one way to take your SEO knowledge from an intermediate level to expert status. One of 2011’s resolutions is to get involved in forums and get the “SupaDave” brand out there whilst learning at the same time.

6. Conferencing

Attending conferences is a great way to expand your knowledge, get your name out there whilst at the same time getting to rub shoulders with some of the biggest names in SEO. I’ve attended smaller conferences here in South Africa, but some of the bigger and better conferences that take place annually in the UK include:

- http://searchmarketingexpo.com/

- http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/

- http://www.pubcon.com/ – Las Vegas

Conferencing is all about getting yourself known in the industry and learning what the absolute legends of SEO have to say about various hot topics. Attending a couple of conferences a year might seem like a large investment of time and money, but believe me, the knowledge learnt during these conferences is simply priceless – MasterCard style!

If I had to sit down with someone interesting in becoming an SEO expert, the above advice is the basic things that I would tell them. The biggest and most important thing to remember is that SEO, as with many other online careers, is a lifestyle choice and you need to be passionate about it in order to learn about all spheres of the industry.

Do you have any other resources or tips for anyone looking to become and SEO expert? Comments would be great….

Related posts:

1. Who exactly are expert SEOs?
2. The what not to do in social media guide
3. A (very) simple guide to Cost Per internet advertising models.

SupaDave’s Guide to Becoming an SEO “Expert”

We’ve all been to conferences, seminars and online marketing networking events where we meet new people and exchange ideas, theories and strategies that have worked on our websites and others. It is always useful to take note of these strategies and give them a go yourself to try and measure the effectiveness of each strategy on your own websites.

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of different strategies, it is important that you are able to segregate the different tactics you have implemented and be able to measure the effectiveness of EACH INDIVIDUAL TACTIC. The most common mistake in these situations is when online marketers hear of a few good ideas which they decide to try out. They get home; take hours to implement all the recommended changes to their website and wait to see what happens at the end of the month. Come the end of the month, they see a vast improvement in rankings, traffic and conversion and think, “WOW, I need to do this with all my websites! “ They then proceed to spend hour upon hour making ALL these changes to ALL their sites in the hope that similar results will be achieved.

Now, there is one MAJOR problem with this scenario…

Yes, great results have been achieved, but it took ages to implement all the recommended changes to all the different sites, and because all changes were made at the same time, one is unable to measure the effectiveness of each individual change made to a site. You will probably find that you spend 5 hours making changes to your site to achieve the above-mentioned results, however it could very well be just that one title tag that you altered that resulted in ALL the improvement. Hence, you could have spent a mere 10 minutes making the change and achieved the same results.

This is where effective performance management comes in!

The basics of measuring any new strategies

The best way to measure the effectiveness of a particular change to a website is to make ONE CHANGE AT A TIME. By doing this, you can accurately measure the effectiveness of each change and identify which changes result in which improvements. Thus, by effectively measuring the performance of each tactic, you can more easily identify opportunities on other websites where you can implement a similar tactic and know what to expect.

Often as SEO professionals working for an SEO agency, we have more than one website which we optimize for ourselves or for clients. This is the perfect scenario in which to easily measure the effectiveness of numerous tactics by simply using one tactic per site and effectively measuring the results on each site. Yes, strategies change for different sites in different industries etc., but by measuring the effectiveness of one strategy at a time, we are able to obtain some genuine results with measurable performance. We are also able to save time by eliminating tactics that we identified as a waste of time thanks to effective performance measurement.

All of this culminates in the fact that when we bump into different clients and other SEO professionals at future events, we are able to suggest innovative strategies and tactics to them; backed-up by factual information which helps to motivate why you think these tactics could benefit them. All of this thanks to logically measuring the effectiveness of individual strategies.

Related posts:

1. Online Marketing + Conversion Analysis = ROI
2. Online Video SEO for SMBs
3. Review Your SEO Strategies Regularly And Be Surprised At What Opens Up!

How to Accurately Measure the Effectiveness of Experimental Online Marketing Strategies

A Screenshot of annotations being used in Analytics

1. DO: Noting any technical or structural changes to your site is important. If you’ve switched servers, hosting companies, added new H1 tags, changed URL structures or anything that could affect your sites performance, by tracking these changes in Google web analytics you will get a good idea whether these changes have had a positive or negative effect on your site’s indexing and traffic.

DON’T: Note every single tiny change that you make to your site. Annotating tiny changes to your site that will have no effect on site performance or conversion is not necessary and will only end up crowding your Google analytics data.



2. DO: Track any major online PR articles or press releases that are written by you or about you and are bound to result in major inbound links and traffic. If you know that a major website has published an article about your company, note this in Google analytics so that you can be reminded of this when it comes time to complete your monthly report.

DON’T: Track each and every inbound link or online PR piece that is written by you or about you. If you’re a reputable company, you should have numerous press releases and links coming in to your site every month and annotating each one in Google Analytics would kind of defeat the purpose.



3. DO: Track the implementation dates of any major campaigns, be it an organic campaign, an AdWords campaign or any major offline advertising campaigns that your company may be implementing. Annotating these in Google Analytics is extremely important, especially in monitoring the seemingly “immeasurable” effect of offline advertising campaigns.

Summary of the “DON’Ts”: As a general rule, don’t fill your Google Analytics annotations tool with unnecessary information that is not going to make any major or immediate difference to your sites performance, traffic or conversion. The whole point of using Google Analytics annotations is so that when monthly report time arrives, you will be able to quickly and easily be reminded of the notable events and implementations that took place during the previous month, and compare these dates to the Google Analytics data for the weeks following these implementations.



All in all, annotations in Google Analytics can be extremely useful if used correctly. If, like me, you work for a search marketing company, then it is impossible to keep a mental track of all major work carried out on clients’ websites over the course of a month. Using Google Analytics annotations will ensure that when time comes to do monthly reports, you will be reminded of all significant events that took place for ALL of your clients. Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?
2. Google Analytics – Winds of Change
3. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics

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The 4Q survey revolves around the four most important questions that should be addressed to all visitors of a website:

1. What are my visitors at my website to do?
2. Are they completing what they set out to do?
3. If not, why not?
4. How satisfied are my visitors?

Now, the answers to these 4Q survey questions might not always be what a website owner wants to hear, but remember that all feedback, positive or negative, can be used constructively.

My client’s 4Q survey was completed by over 500 people in one month and provided us with the following information on which to base some important decisions:

As you can see above, this 4Q survey has revealed that the majority of our client’s visitors are visiting their site mainly to find out information about products, and not necessarily to buy products. Our 4Q survey has also stated that 70% of visitors are generally satisfied and have achieved what they set out to do. This means that we are still missing out on 2 important areas:

1. 30% of users are not achieving what they set out to do – this should be less.
2. We need to focus on converting the 78% of visitors who are simply looking for information, into paying customers.

Now, this is useful, but why aren’t 30% of our users achieving what they want to? Our 4Q survey has more information in the form of written comments from our users. Here are a couple of common answers we received from clients who completed the 4Q survey as to why they didn’t achieve their goal included the following comments:

“I am a beginner to the world of solar. I found it difficult to get my head around all the info. I need “entry level” recommendations.”

“I want more technical info on the solar panels: What is the voltage output per panel as well as the amps, What is the size of the battery I will need for me to give me an idea where to start.”

Now, these are two common answers we received from the 4Q survey and were thus able to address the issues with the following solutions which we implemented:

1. We analyzed the site and came to realize that some information was too technical for the average shopper, perhaps overwhelming and needed to be simplified. This has since been rectified and the 4Q survey feedback on this matter has improved as well.
2. In addressing both issues mentioned above in the 4Q survey, we implemented a series of buying guides for numerous products on the site and have since experienced improved conversion, better feedback on our 4Q survey, fewer unnecessary enquiries and improved traffic created by this extra content.

There are so many great uses for implementing a survey such as the above-mentioned 4Q survey. What is mentioned above is merely a small sample of the insight we have received with one client and a couple of the solutions we have been able to implement thanks to 4Q survey. Our clients are benefitting from this sort of 4Q survey feedback and it is also a great way for a search marketing company to go that extra mile for their clients. I am in NO WAY affiliated to 4Q, but I would definitely recommend it to clients and site owners everywhere.

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4Q Survey Software – A Good Survey Software Option