Simple Steps for Improving SEO

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Search engine optimization is an important part of marketing your business online and there are many steps that you can take to improve your website to help increase rankings. Below we’ve put together a few tips that cover the basics and can help you get your SEO efforts on the right track. Remember, search engine optimization is an ongoing process and something you must do consistently. Be sure to pay close attention to trends and best practices as they evolve and apply these to your website for any new and existing content.

Title tags:
Title tags are a key aspect of your SEO efforts. When your website is crawled by search engines, the crawler is looking for a theme for each page. A title tag is the first thing that is typically “seen” when crawling your website and carries a heavy weight in establishing the theme for a page.

Here’s a look at how the title tag appears within the HTML for a page:

…and within the search engine results page:

When you’re planning your SEO strategy think about each page of content and the keyword you’re targeting for each. When setting up your title tags be sure to include the targeted keyword within each title tag. This is not only advantageous for the crawler as it helps to understand the theme for each page, but these keywords are also bolded within search engine results which can increase click-throughs for your website.

Meta description:
The meta description for each page on your website is similar to the title tag in that it helps the crawler understand the theme for a page. The meta description is shown within search engine results and like the title tag, any included keywords are bolded.

Here’s a look at the meta description and how it appears within the HTML for a page:

…and within the search engine results page:

Be sure to include your targeted keyword within the meta description for each page and clearly describe the benefits of your product or service to encourage more click-throughs for your organic listing. You can even include a call-to-action here which can help generate more clicks. An example of a call-to-action could be: “Click to learn more”, “Sign up here”, or “Get started now!”.

Keyword(s) within URLs:
So, for each page you should include the targeted keyword within the title tag and meta description. The URL for a page is also a great place to include the targeted keyword. Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, recommends including dashes versus underscores between the keywords in your URL. For example, if you were targeting the term “marketing optimization” for a page, you could include this keyphrase within the URL as:

www.mydomain.com/marketing-optimization

Here’s a video where Matt Cutts explains dashes versus underscores in URLs and how Google interprets each:

Incoming links:
We are all looking for quality content when we search, so think about this as you’re designing pages for your website and writing copy. By providing quality content on a particular topic, there’s a great chance that others will link to this page on your website. If you can attract a large number of incoming links from quality sites this will help you rank higher for the targeted term.

One of the important aspects of incoming links is the anchor text. Anchor text is the text within content that is hyperlinked. This text should contain the targeted keyword/phrase. For instance, if you were optimizing a page for the term “web-based software” and someone linked to this page on your website, it would be ideal if that term was hyperlinked in this sentence: “A leading web-based software that helps you manage your finances.”

Using tools from SEOMoz and similar services, you can track incoming links along with the anchor text that’s used. This will help you track the anchor text used most often and give you the ability to track down incoming links that are not using optimal anchor text.

Internal linking:
As mentioned above, anchor text is important for incoming links. The same is true for any links within the content of your website that links to other pages on your site. Although these links do not carry the same amount of weight as incoming links, they can help the search engines find and index other pages on your website.

Keyword density:
When optimizing a page for a targeted term, it’s obviously important to include the term within the content of the page, however don’t get too caught up in keyword density. Focus on the user’s experience and include the keyword several times within the content of the page, but avoid “stuffing” the keyword throughout the content as the search engines will penalize you.

Site speed counts:
In May 2010, Google began factoring site speed in determining rankings. The speed of your website should be optimized to ensure a positive experience for the user, but this is also an important factor for rankings.

There are several things you can do to measure and improve the speed of your website:

  • Use a tool like Yahoo’s YSlow to measure the speed of your website.
  • Remove any unnecessary javascript from your pages.
  • Look for other tags/scripts that are calling external files that could be slowing the speed for your site.

Adding a Sitemap:
A sitemap is an important element in making sure that search engines can find and index content for your website. Using a tool like XML-Sitemaps, set up a sitemap for your website and add it within Google’s Webmaster tools and within Bing’s Webmaster tools. As you add new content it will be automatically added to your sitemap which will help the search engines locate and index this new content.

Tracking Conversions from SEO:
Search engine optimization takes a lot of hard work and it’s something that must be done consistently with each piece of content you add to your website. One of the challenges of search engine optimization is justifying the investment in both time and dollars. A great feature of Spring Metrics is the ability to easily track visits and conversions, in real-time, from organic search rankings. You can see the search phrase a visitor typed and the landing page where the user converted. By tracking conversions from organic search, you can pinpoint opportunities to target related keywords and single out those keywords that may need additional optimization work.

We hope these tips help you with your SEO efforts and drive more traffic and conversions from organic search!

The ABCs of PPC

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Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to reach targeted users. You can bid on keywords that are aligned with your product or service, set a budget, and track the performance of your campaigns, but getting started can sometimes be intimidating for those who are new to paid search/pay-per-click advertising. Below are a few tips to help you get started.

Structuring Your Campaigns:
Adwords organizes your account by Campaigns with AdGroups, ads, and keywords within each Campaign.

For each Campaign you’ll want to create a couple of AdGroups with targeted ads and keywords for each. Keeping things simple by creating only a couple of AdGroups per Campaign, 2-3 ads per AdGroup, and 25-50 keywords for each AdGroup allows you to focus your Campaigns on a specific topic and create a consistent experience from the keyword to the ad, and onto the landing page. As visitors search for a keyword that’s related to the products or services you offer, they will see your ad and if it sounds interesting and clearly describes what they’re looking for, there’s a great chance they’ll click. That’s why this consistency is key and setting up your Campaigns in a way that are easily managed can help ensure this consistency.

Developing Your Keyword List & Determining Match Types
The first step is to develop a list of keywords that aligns with the products or services that you sell. Google provides a handy keyword tool that allows you to view ideas for keywords, their search volume, competitiveness, and the average cost-per-click for each keyword.

Writing Your Ads
There are a few key elements that you should include when writing your text ads for pay-per-click advertising.

  • Include the primary benefit of purchasing your product or service:
    Here are a few examples: “Increase your revenue and lower your expenses”, “Get More Conversions from Your Marketing Campaigns”, or “Turn Visitors into Customers”.
  • Including the keyword within the ad:
    By developing tightly themed, and smaller, keyword lists this will allow you to focus on a specific topic and include a keyword within the headline of your text ad. By including the keyword within the headline it will be bolded within the search results which can drive more click-throughs for your ad.
  • Include a call-to-action:
    Tell people what you would like for them to do next after reading your ad. Here are a few examples: “Download Here”, “Free Signup!”, “Learn More”, “Sign up Now!”, or “Get Your Free Account”.

Here’s an example from one of our campaigns:

Setting up Landing Pages:
Creating consistency from the keyword, to the ad, and onto the landing page is absolutely critical in converting more visitors to customers. There is an expectation the visitor has after clicking your ad and arriving on your landing page, so be sure to meet these expectations by creating consistency from the ad to the landing page.

Be sure to check out our 2 part article 8 Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages to read more details about optimizing landing pages.

Tracking Performance & Key Metrics:
Tracking the proper metrics for your campaigns is critical to understanding what is and is not working. There are a number of things you can track for your campaigns, but here is list of the most important metrics to better understand performance:

Spend:
When adding keywords to an AdGroup Google provides a tool to estimate traffic and factors in your max bid and match type. Set a realistic monthly budget that allows you to get enough volume to properly test what is and isn’t working. If you aren’t investing enough to drive volume for the most relevant keywords it will be challenging to establish results that are statistically significant.

Conversions & Acquisition Cost:
Obviously the number of conversions is a leading indicator of how effective a Campaign is performing for you and should serve as a litmus test for performance, however the cost per acquisition is critical to singling out those Campaigns that are performing best and most profitable.
Establishing a target acquisition cost is important and there are a few things to consider. If you are just launching your business there will be some “guesstimating” involved. If you have had several conversions use those numbers as a ballpark but if you have no conversions keep it conservative and constantly adjust as conversions increase.

Average Rate Per User/Average Order Value:
As conversions start to roll in keep a close eye on the average rate (if you have a subscription-based business) or the average order value. This will give you some indication as to the quality of customers you’re driving through paid search and help you understand how much you can pay to acquire a new subscriber or sale (acquisition cost).

Landing Page Conversion Rate:
Pay close attention to how your landing pages are converting and the quality of customers these pages are sending you. You can use Spring Metrics to easily see your top performing landing pages and drill down by conversions to understand more about the landing page that’s responsible for the conversion and detailed information about the customer.

There has been a lot written about pay-per-click advertising and advanced techniques and best practices, but for those of you who are just getting started we hope these basic tips help you get up and running and get more out of your investment.

8 Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages – Part 2

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This is the second part of a 2 part series. You can read our Part one for Optimizing Landing Pages here.

So we have defined a conversion, established a control, made sure we have consistency from the ad to our landing page, and decided how many visits we’ll consider statistically significant. Let’s dive into four more tips that can help us convert more visitors to customers from our landing pages.5. Leverage trust icons to give visitors confidence in your company and offer:Trust icons can help put a visitor’s mind at ease. When a visitor comes to your landing page it’s likely that this is the first interaction they have had with your business. They want to know that your company is reputable, so provide information and visuals that will help give them confidence in your company. These visuals can include logos from current customers, photos of current customers, a lock or shield icon near the sign-up button to show that a visitor’s data is passed securely, and logos from reputable press where your business has been featured (websites, blogs, magazines, etc).

Here’s an example from one of our landing pages that shows publications that have featured Spring Metrics:

6. Test various elements on the landing page:

Once you have kicked off a test and established a landing page that beats the control, you’ll want to take a deeper dive and begin testing various elements of the winning landing page to see if you can increase conversions further. Take the winning landing page from the first test and establish it as the new control. Next, test a landing page that is almost identical, however test one different element at a time to see if conversions increase.

There are a number of things you can test including: headline, copy, customer quotes, imagery, call-to-action, or sign-up form.

Headline: This will be first thing the visitor sees and should immediately grab their attention and give insight into what products or services you offer or the primary benefit gained from using your products or services. Here are a few examples:

  • “Track Conversions & Revenue in Real-time”
  • “Maximize Conversions. Minimize Costs.”
  • “Turn Visitors into Customers”

Copy: Testing copy can have a major influence on conversions as the positioning for your products or services is key. Even if you do not have any formal brand guidelines, you should definitely have an understanding of your target market and how to position your offer to this audience. In terms of layout for your copy, bullet points can work very well on your landing page by giving the visitor information in a digestible format, however be sure to lead in with 2-3 sentences of copy to “set-up” the information you’ll provide within the bullet points.

Customer Quotes: Quotes from customers work great in giving visitors confidence that others are using your service and getting results. If possible, tie in the concept for the landing page with the customer quote. For instance, if you include copy on the landing page about the ease-of-use for your solution, also add a quote from a customer that speaks to the same point. Here’s an example from one of our landing pages:

“Spring Metrics real time conversion tracking is fantastic and so much easier to use than Google Analytics.”
- Amy, Emerita

Imagery: Testing various images on your landing page can help the visitor connect with your brand and offer. Images can also help support copy. For instance, a customer quote is great, however if you can include a photo of the customer it can have a much greater impact. If your landing page includes a dominant image that the visitor sees immediately when visiting the page, this can be a great element to test. Most visitors want to see the product you’re selling, so show it to them. If you’ve developed an iPhone app, include screen shots on the landing page so the user can see what it will be like to use the app, but test various screen shots to see if one image converts better than another.

Call-to-action: The goal for your landing page is to get a visitor to take a desired action, so be clear in the action you’d like for them to take. As the visitor arrives to your landing page the headline and imagery should grab their attention and the copy should clearly tell them why they should use your product or service, but it’s the call-to-action that will be the last step in convincing the visitor to sign-up. Tell the visitor what you’d like for them to do next.
For example,

  • “Sign-up for a Free Trial!”
  • “Download Your Free Guide Here”
  • “Get Started with Your Free Account”
  • “Sign up Here”.

Sign-up Form: If your offer is a service where the user must complete a contact or sign-up form, think about your approach. If you want to get as many leads as possible, take away barriers in your sign-up form like fields that are not required or simply cut down the number of fields or information you need from each sign up. On the other hand, if you’re looking to filter leads and you’d rather have higher quality leads, even if it means lower volume, think about ways to cut down on the number of lower quality leads by leveraging your sign-up form. Perhaps ask for more information where you’d typically wait to get this additional information after they have signed up or simply make all fields required.

7. Resist the urge to add unnecessary elements that can distract the visitor:

Your landing page is designed to encourage the visitor to take a desired action. All elements that are included on the landing page should share this goal. If you include additional navigation, images, or copy that can distract the visitor you risk losing the conversion. Each element that is added to your landing page should answer the question – How does this encourage the visitor to take the desired action?

8. Use the proper tools to help conduct the test and track conversions from these landing pages:

There are a number of tools that can help in building, serving, tracking, and splitting traffic for your landing pages. Here’s a list of tools that can help make landing page optimization a lot easier.

Spring Metrics: We help you track conversions, revenue, and visitors in real-time for your landing pages. Tracking this data in real-time allows you to know immediately which landing page is converting best. You can also view top performing landing pages and sort based on conversions, visits, and conversion rate.

Unbounce:Unbounce is an easy-to-use DIY landing page platform. You can conduct split A/B tests, track the results and it integrates with other popular web-apps.Visual Website Optimizer: Visual Website Optimizer allows you to easily conduct split and multivariate tests and track landing page performance.

Optimizely: Optimizely gives you the tools to easily build, edit, launch, and measure your landing pages.

Google Website Optimizer: This is one of the most popular tools as it works with Adwords and Google Analytics. It allows you to split traffic to your landing pages and track conversions.

This concludes our 2 part series on optimizing your landing pages for conversions. We hope these 8 tips will help you drive more conversions and revenue for your online business.

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If you’re new to Spring Metrics be sure to learn more by checking out our features and sign up for a Free account!

8 Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages – Part 1

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Landing page optimization can be a daunting process when you consider all the various elements you can test. Landing pages are important, however if you take a step back, measuring the performance of a landing page doesn’t start on the page itself. You have to understand the source of the visitors and the creative that was used to drive the click.

If we’re considering paid search, it’s possible to test keywords, ad headlines and copy, the design of the ad if it’s a banner, where the ads are served (Google’s Search Network versus their Display Network for instance), and landing pages. Landing pages alone contain many elements that you can test including but not limited to call-to-action, sign-up form, headlines, and imagery that can influence a visitor to convert.

So how do you go about navigating through this sea of variables in order to figure out what you should test and how to test it? I’ve put together eight tips below to help you get started and get on the right track to testing and optimizing your landing pages:

1. Define a conversion:

Before testing a landing page you must first define a conversion. A conversion could be a visitor who signs up for a trial account, enters their email address to download a whitepaper, signs up for a webinar, or purchases a product or service. This will serve as your “success metric”, so you’ll know whether landing page “A” is converting better than landing page “B”. Spring Metrics allows you to track these conversions in real-time, so you’ll be able to instantly see if landing page “A” is performing better than “B”.

2. Establish a control:

You have to start with what you’re using now as the control. If you are not currently using a landing page for your campaigns, I’d recommend using your current sign-up page (or home page) as the control. If you’re currently using a landing page, split-test a completely different concept to see which converts better. This can help lead you in the right direction and understand the type of layout that converts well. If you need help getting started on a design, I recommend checking out Unbounce’s landing page templates.

3. Consistency is key:

Be sure to maintain consistency from the ad to your landing page. The ad sets an expectation for the user, so be sure to meet these expectations once a visitor clicks your ad and is presented with your landing page. This consistency is even more important when optimizing for Google Paid Search campaigns as a large portion of your Quality Score is calculated by factoring in the consistency of your keywords, ads and landing page.

4. Establish the number of visitors that you will consider statistically significant:

You’ll need to draw a line in the sand in order to establish whether a landing page was a success. Set a baseline of visitors that you will use as a benchmark in order to decide a winner. I would recommend at least 100 visits for each landing page as this will help ensure the data is statistically significant.

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Related Post:  8 Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages – Part 2

If you’re new to Spring Metrics be sure to learn more by checking out our features and sign up for a Free account!

Updated Spring Metrics Dashboard

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If you have subscribed to the Spring Metrics service recently, you have probably noticed some significant improvements to the look-and-feel and features of our dashboard. These improvements include:

  • A completely redesigned user interface. Along with a top ribbon which shows you key metrics, we have also created a more dynamic, color coded status which alerts you visually to changes in trends.
  • Introduced a new concept called “channels” which allows you to easily compare and contrast the results from different campaigns.
  • Drill down – From the highest level channel, you can click down through multiple layers to see what is happening at the most granular level. For example, you can compare how Paid is doing versus Direct versus Social versus Search, and then drill down into Paid to see which how Paid Search compares to Paid Content.
  • Contextual awareness – click on the Conversions box in the top ribbon and all info on the dashboard represents conversions….click on Visits and everything morphs to show metrics revolving around visits. Instead of seeing how many people visited the site, you can see what all those visits mean with respect to your conversions, revenue, etc.

While this isn’t a complete list of everything we have recently rolled out, it does represent some areas you might be interested in exploring further. And stay tuned. We are working on additional improvements that should be coming your way in the next few weeks….

New comScore E-Commerce Report Released

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This week, comScore released its quarterly retail e-commerce report which indicated robust growth of 14% over the same period last year (total of $37.5 billion for the quarter).  This was the 7th consecutitive quarter of year-over-year growth for the index.

“Other highlights from Q2 2011 include:

  • The top-performing online product categories were: Consumer Electronics (excl. PC peripherals), Computer Hardware, Computer Software, and Event Tickets. Each category grew at least 15 percent vs. year ago.
  • The top 25 online retailers accounted for 66.4 percent of dollars spent online, down from 67.7 percent a year ago and down from a peak of 69.9 percent in Q3 2010, as small and mid-sized retailers continue to regain lost market share.
  • The 14-percent growth in the quarter was primarily a function of an increase in the number of buyers (up 16 percent), with 70 percent of all Internet users making at least one online purchase in the quarter.”

New Feature: Untrack Your IP Address

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Sometimes your visits to your own website can obfuscate your true performance metrics. A number of our customers have requested — and we have now delivered — the ability to specify “Untracked IP Addresses” that will not register in Spring Metrics’ numbers.  

 

To “Untrack” your IP address, start by clicking on “My Account” 

 

…and scroll down to the “Untracked IP Addresses” area, and enter your IP address in the area appropriate box.

 

Improve Conversions Rates Of Your Bing Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

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I’m a big fan of SEOMOZ. They’re masters of SEO! They’re also very generous with their knowledge, often giving away tons of valuable advice on their blog.

Although almost all of their information relates to SEO, every now and then they post information about Pay Per Click (PPC) – and given how difficult it is to run effective (i.e., profitable) PPC campaigns, these posts are always welcome. Continue reading “Improve Conversions Rates Of Your Bing Pay-Per-Click Campaigns” »

Blogging Gives Potential Customers a Reason to Come Back

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Over the coming weeks and months we plan to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of blog posts with information relevant to our customers (small and medium-sized businesses trying to make more efficient use of the web).  Our suggestion – you should be doing the same.   The fact is that it often requires multiple visits for a customer to make a buying decision.  You probably worked hard (and spent marketing dollars) to get that first visit, so give them a reason to return to your site via content that is relevant to their business.

If you don’t currently have a blog on your site, this article “How to Pick Up the Blogging Habit” has some great suggestions on how to get started.  Also, check out “Big Business Blogging the Right Way” at TopRank for additional corporate blogging tips.   As you begin blogging, make sure to track your visitors over time and see them turn into customers.

 If you haven’t already done so, consider subscribing to our blog via the RSS link at the right.