Should Google News be your priority?

Many people believe that Google News is the end-all and be-all of their content marketing strategy. After all, why not they own somewhere around 85% of the Search Engine Market Share and being included in Google News does lead to the infamous, “halo-effect.” It can be great, I’ve seen it bring in some serious traffic numbers, increase inbound links, and even a few conversions here and there. But I ask you this: have you thought about where the traffic comes from and if you’re Organic SEO strategy is catering to the same areas?

How many of you out there actually go to http://www.google.com/news and search for news? I bet some of you do. However, I bet a majority of you end up on Google News from searching in Google’s main search (www.google.com). If your website’s first purpose is to provide a wide variety of current events, AWESOME! You’re in the right place. However, if you’re website’s main purpose isn’t the news we need to rethink a few things.

A majority of the traffic from Google News will come from the Google Main Search or http://www.google.com, also, this traffic will be people who are researching a topic, service or product as opposed to searching for news specifically. Google will typically give itself a pat on the back by including News Results, Google Images, Google Maps, etc. on the first page. This traffic is the traffic we’re trying to attract. It actually gives you a short cut to the first page for a short period of time. Ok, so we’ve identified where the traffic is coming from. But now I need to ask, is your keyword strategy in line with this strategy.

What if I sold hockey equipment online? It may be somewhat of a niche, but a very popular industry if you play hockey, especially because skates can run you almost $1000.00 these days. My main short tail keywords would be something like this:

• Hockey Skates
• Hockey Stick
• Hockey Glove
• Hockey Helmet

Type these words into Google Main Search. You’ll probably find “Shopping Results” maybe even “Image Results” but you will rarely ever find “News Results.” Now if you’re keyword strategy uses different short tail terms such as:

• Boston Bruins
• Tim Thomas
• Milan Lucic

You will probably see Google respond with “News Results.” That being said if you want to try for inclusion in Google News, you might want to try this test out before you go to the trouble of making all of the tweaks to your content and website.

In reality, sometimes it’s best to stay on your promotional path and use outlets such as Social Media and article aggregators. Lists and how-to articles can be very successful in these areas and have a similar affect to Google News if done right. Plus you can keep using your same keyword strategy short tail and long tail.

-Kevin W. Elliot

Let your leads nurture themselves through media

Remember in college when you got that C- in some obscure history class? Remember when your parents asked you about it you said you had a different learning style then the teacher? For some reason this made all the sense in the world to you and your parents. It may have partially been true, some of us learn orally and some visually. Some of us spend endless time skimming through the headlines on Twitter while some of us search for videos on YouTube about the exact same topics. Why is this? We were born with tendencies and like to learn different ways. Now, let’s put two and two together here, who does our traffic consist of? Crawlers? Well yes, but also people! People have the tendencies and the ability to tell you how they want to learn.

How does your traffic learn? Is it through educational landing pages targeted at your keywords? You may be right. This may be how they learn; however, I guarantee this is only because it’s all you’ve given them. Why not let them choose how they are going to be educated. Now, just for the record, when I speak about educating traffic, I’m referring to nurturing a lead; they should be one and the same, after all.

I want to introduce you, to your new best friend: A Resource Landing Page. This landing page will help you become not only a Marketing Machine, but also a leading authority in your vertical due to the library you have (are going) to build up.

Imagine a landing page that holds all of the following in a neatly categorized manner:

• Articles
• Whitepapers
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Videos

You let some one click on one of the above means of media. Once they’re on the “Webinars Landing Page,” you can show them more Webinars! This will allow you to increase the click through of your website and nurture your clients by allowing them to be nurtured how they want to, whether they know it or not.

 Next thing you know, you have someone on your site, and they’ve watched 5 videos, 3 of the 5 videos on Widgets and 2 to Gidgets. If they do convert into a lead and you have the right analytics you know quite a bit about them. More importantly, they are extremely comfortable with you because you have a completely nurtured lead.

If you’ve done this right, each piece of media is optimized for your Search campaigns, you’ve reduced your bounce rate and you’re producing nurtured leads. At a more macro level, you’re actually developing that reputation as a thought leader that everyone with a blog is after these days.

–Kevin W. Elliot

What calls your traffic to action?

We often have a few main concerns when it comes to how our website is performing. Obviously, we want to engage traffic and nurture them into a quality lead. We also measure conversion, which is a great way to measure how all of the different aspects of our website are performing. Why can’t we do both at the same time? Why can’t we nurture and convert a lead in the same click? It’s much easier than you think.

A common used term in Website Optimization is, “Call to Action.” Simply put, this is some type of button or form which you can use to either generate or convert a lead. Some of the more common Call’s to Action are buttons with the phrasing:

–          “Request a Quote”

–          “Sign up for our E-Newsletter”

–          “Contact our Sales Team”

These are so commonly used that as a Web-Savvy American public we’re conditioned to skim over these as if they’re speed limit signs on the interstate. As our traffic evolves we have to evolve along with it. Don’t get me wrong, the aforementioned Calls to Action are still valuable. There will be traffic that will come to your site and be ready to convert immediately, so let them. I’m talking about the traffic that comes to your site that might still need a little nurturing.

Imagine you are at a Cell-phone providers website, you’re looking for a Smart phone and want to do the research beforehand. Regardless, you’re putting around on each phones “Product Description Page,” looking at its details and comparing it to the others.  In reality, is the number of Pixels on the display going to make or break your life? Possibly, but a majority of the time I’d highly doubt it. You want to see the different features! These features aren’t visible by comparing the fact by fact comparison on the product pages. After staring at the different Product Descriptions blankly for 45 seconds you see a link at the bottom right with an image, it says “See our Blackberry Storm Demo Video.” This type of media is much more valuable so you educate yourself this way. As you click into it you see options to view the videos for other phones you’re interested in! Why can’t you do this with the other types of media above? Let your traffic tell you the type of media they’re interested in and educate them. At the end of the education you have a completely nurtured lead!

How can we nurture a client and convert a lead at the same time? A well designed Internet Marketing campaign will include:

–          Unique Industry News Articles

–          Whitepapers and/or Case Studies

–          Webinars

–          Podcasts

–          YouTube Videos

–          Press Releases

 Imagine that someone is already gone into a category from the homepage. I know they’re interested in Widgets! Hit them with more relevant content: “Download our Whitepaper on Widgets.” I’m also going to have a form pop up when they click on it asking for their information: “Please provide your Name, Company and Email address and we will send across the Whitepaper in the next 30 seconds.” I’m doing three things at once:

–          Positioning myself as a thought leader, I have this awesome Whitepaper

–          Generating a lead, name, company and Email address (this might vary for you)

–          Nurturing a lead, I’m educating them, they’re interacting with me and I know exactly what they’re looking for… WIDGETS!

–Kevin W. Elliot

What can Christmas shopping teach you about your Website’s Navigation Structure

Getting and holding the traffic is one thing. Being organized enough to guide visitors through your web page and getting them to take action is a whole different ball game. All of the visitors are going to be reacting to different topics, products, and content you have on your page. With that said a different call to action will speak more to one visitor than the next. Instead of putting more and more old leaky buckets under the last, let’s trade in the leaky buckets for funnels. These funnels are much better then leaky buckets, instead of water pouring out from random holes we now are guiding the traffic with a purpose. With well built funnels we can hold traffic for a little while, nurture them and then pass them on to the next predetermined level. But what do we use as funnels? Should we just toss up a landing page, target at a keyword and hope for the best? No, we should set up “Category Landing Pages.” Look at your keyword strategy and pick out 5-8 of the best keywords that you think could handle all of the content you would ever need.  

In a past post I urged you to listen to your traffic. When a person clicks on a category they’re telling you something, whether they know it or not. They are looking for information on this specific topic. Take advantage of that! Once they’re in the Category Landing Page you can show specific content that’s relevant to the Category. From a Web Optimization perspective this is great because it should reduce the bounce rate. But from a Sales perspective, you’re nurturing a lead!

For example, when you walk into Best Buy, you may walk towards the TV’s, iPods, or Appliances. Let’s say we walk towards the TV’s, when we get there, there is usually a Sales Associate asking us if we need any help with anything. Because of where we are and what we’re looking at, they can assume we’re looking to buy a TV. When they ask me if I need any help, because I’m a guy, I almost always say, “thanks buddy, I’m just looking for now.” I browse a bit until I feel comfortable enough to buy a TV I’ll go find him and ask for his help.

Websites can be Inbound Marketing Machines! But this can only work if you set them up correctly. We need to use categories to learn something about the traffic. We need to show them more and more content to nurture them. Lastly, we’re going to need to show them a direct call to action to improve conversion.

-Kevin W. Elliot

Is your website an old leaky bucket? Or a well-tuned marketing machine?

The most important part of having a website is figuring out where the traffic you’re going to fight so hard for will start and end. Obviously, it’s going to start with the most authoritative landing page on your domain, your homepage. But where is the traffic going to go? Is it going to come to your website, click on three random links and then bounce? Afterall this is what the “three click rule” is telling us. For crawlers this may be completely true, but once we have traffic we aren’t concerned about the crawlers are we? The traffic coming to your site may also click three times and then bounce; however, these clicks won’t be random. These clicks are looking for something, our job is to figure out what that something is.

There is a common analogy known as the Leaky Bucket, you might remember it from a college Economics or Statistics class. Picture your homepage as a leaky bucket. Regardless of the amount of traffic you pour in traffic will pour out through the cracks. Overtime, we’ve realized that their needs to be a bunch of landing pages to allow the traffic to be captured.

We use these landing pages to increase our SEO efforts by targetting keywords with them. This can be great for SEO by constructing more content, title tags, URLs and meta description tags all including the targeted keyword. Furthermore, it serves as a landing page for internal linking, when you mention the keyword on other pages you can hyperlink the keyword and point it at the targeted landing page.

Great idea! However, at this point in time I’m not talking about SEO. As traffic hits the homepage and moves on to a landing page, the traffic is speaking to you. It’s telling you either the type of information it’s looking floor by clicking on a category, or it’s telling you the type of media it wants to learn from. We need to use this information to understand the traffic.

The main thing we forget about our Website is that they aren’t just a brochure anymore. When traffic hits the Homepage, the sales process has begun. We need to control the leaks and listen to what their telling us! We need to take advantage of ALL of the traffic we’ve earned through SEO and SEM.

–Kevin W. Elliot

Website Optimization Does Not Stop with SEO

Search engines have become a day-to-day obsession for the internet community. In a world that has been overrun with phrases that start with “Google,” we spend all of our time trying to impress the infamous Google Bot’s. While they own an 86% share of the search industry why not? A majority of our keyword research is based around Search Volumes and Competition, there’s a metaphorical gold rush to the top of the first page. We run around like the knights from Monte Python and the Holy Grail, convinced we’re hot on the trail.

When we get there, when we reach that Holy Grail, what now? We brag to our friends on Twitter that we’re at the top of the page? Is this why we did it? No of course not, we did it to make money, this is America after all. However, it may in fact be the American way of life to focus on getting somewhere without thinking about what you’re going to do when you get there. So let me ask you this, are you taking advantage of all of that hard earned traffic? If I had to put money on it I’d say a majority of websites in the internet community are not.

Welcome to my blog! This is a problem I’ve seen with 100’s of companies. I’ll be blogging about common mistakes and ways to correct those mistakes to turn your brochure website into an Internet Marketing Ninja!

–Kevin W. Elliot