Archives for September 2013

A Guide to Data-Informed SEO Storytelling

September 25, 2013 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

How our SEO Tools led us Astray

Experience has shown that for a large portion of business owners, a glaring issue exists with the accepted perception of search engine optimization and the plethora of assistive software suites. Everyone seems to tout that high rankings and “the top spot on Google” are the primary goals associated with an SEO campaign, so vendors make solutions to fit those expectations. The problem is that these tools are proving ineffective at impacting businesses’ actual goals and objectives because they don’t help answer some fundamental questions, including:

Why is the business choosing to explore search engine marketing tactics?
Why are high rankings the primary goal?
In what way(s) do rankings specifically impact future marketing efforts?
How will SEO be justified from a budgeting standpoint?
Where is the connection between SEO and more leads and sales?

Getting Back to Basics with Goals and Objectives

The first step toward finding the answer to the questions above falls to outlining goals and objectives. Generally speaking, these goals and objectives help businesses enhance their “kwan” (And yes, that was a Jerry Maguire reference!). An example of a business goal would be to grow sales. An example of an objective would be to grow sales among new customers through organic search traffic by 25% of the next 12 months. Note the distinct differences here. While goals are very general statements, objectives provide additional context with which appropriate metrics can be identified.

It is critical that all key stakeholders agree and sign-off on the business goals and objectives because they’ll form the foundation for the next step toward data-informed storytelling: identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Regardless of whether you work for an agency or an in-house marketing team, it always boils down to, “Did we make money or lose money as a result of our efforts?” For that, proper measurement planning is essential.

KPI Mapping that Aligns with Goals and Objectives

KPIs represent the way by which progress is measured regarding a marketing campaign. When defining these metrics, it’s important to also identify reasonable thresholds. That way, appropriate action can be taken if the numbers fall above or below your expectations. By aligning the KPIs with the aforementioned goals and objectives, it will help the key higher-ups to see SEO’s tangible value. Figure 1 (below) shows a very generic mapping of a goal and objective with a possible choice of KPI. If you complete this process, it will give you a better understanding of what data needs to be collected to show the impact the SEO is having on your business.

The Case for a Measurement Plan

The fact of the matter is that with all of this data making its way into your SEO campaigns, you’re going to need analytics to effectively capture your metrics and provide a way to visualize progress (and tell a truly impactful story). This will require an approach and a plan of action to accurately collect the data necessary for reporting. One of the most simple, but effective approaches can be found on Occam’s Razor By Avanish Kaushik. Just be sure to thoroughly document what data you’re collecting, how, why, and provide an example of the output. It should help everyone not only understand what you’re trying to show, but also offer them the chance to make changes to the approach if necessary.

Analytics Implementation

Google Analytics is a commonly used solution for analyzing this type of information. It’s important that you implement the measurement plan accurately and evaluate the data that’s being collected for reporting. A good place to start is the setup checklist and starter guide provided by Google. There are also numerous videos available on the Google Analytics YouTube channel.

Reporting

Using GA’s more advanced features as our primary example, there are multiple opportunities to not only streamline your reporting process, but also add deeper dimensions to your data-driven “story.” Creating advanced segments, custom filters, and dashboards can bring to light information you may not have otherwise seen. Exploring deeper into the data you’ve collected can make for more established insights, which lead to greater impact among your audience.

For your SEO campaigns, this could mean creating a dashboard showing correlations between site visit metrics and organic keywords or pages per visit organized by geographical location. With a little analytical know-how, you’ll have no problem tying your data back to your high-level goals and objectives.

Figure 3 and 4 are example of items that might be found in your SEO performance dashboard.

Conclusion

There is a big misconception surrounding SEO for the average uninformed business owner, VP of marketing, or IT professional. On the frontlines, we always seem to hear business professionals talk about rankings, but they rarely care to understand why their business is even paying for or considering paying for SEO services. We still hear that the need for “visits” or more “hits” to the websites is the be-all end-all. Rather than the end in and of itself, SEO provides the means towards achieving unique business goals. The story of this journey from campaigns and tactics to business success is told through data, first and foremost.

Have your SEO tools and processes led you on the path to righteousness or dishonorable data? Let us know in the comments below!

Why Manage Local Listings?

September 19, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

For any business, your customers need to be able to find you. You wouldn’t take any signage down from your building, would you? This includes the customer having quick and easy access to basic information such a telephone number and hours of operation. The majority of customers now turn to the internet to find this information; about 97% of customers use the internet to research business and products at a local level according to a study conducted by Bia/Kelsey. With this much purchasing intent at a local level, wouldn’t you like to boost your visibility?

Benefits of Local Listings

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the obvious benefit of managing local listings is to make your business visible to those customers searching at a local level. But what else is there? When internet searchers utilize a specific geographic location, they are usually close to converting (i.e. making a purchase). It is imperative to draw these searchers in to convert, whatever you choose to define as a conversion.

Speaking of drawing in searchers to convert, making sure you have top notch local listings can help you stand out among the plethora of competitors. A great way to ensure that your local listings are up to par is to develop a local listing strategy for your business.

Local Listing Strategy

The process of managing local listings sounds relatively simple, but there are actually many steps in this entire process that require attention. The first step in your local listing strategy is to verify your place of business. Google, Bing, and Yahoo! have similar processes in which the business must fill out an online form. The form automatically generates and will send a postcard with a verification PIN to the business address listed. Therefore, you must have a physical location to claim a local listing via these major search engines.
While implementing a local listing strategy to the fullest extent, you will be maintaining business information across several platforms. It is important to ensure that this information is consistent across the board so that your prospective customers can find the correct information. Not only will you have to provide the correct information initially, but you will have to maintain this information. If there is a large-scale re-branding or something as small as a new telephone extension number, remember to update your local listings.

Local Listings are Going Mobile

Knowing the importance of local listings, where will it go from here? Will it affect certain demographics? With the rapid growth of mobile searching, business information will have to be available at a local level to be seen by this growing demographic. Just to explain this point by some numbers: According to Google, 95% of smartphone users look for local information specifically. Knowing this, local listings can be a significant source of traffic and potential customers. In conjunction with local listings management, it may be a good idea to create a mobile site or configure your current desktop site to fit a mobile screen. As mobile usage continues to rise, it will be critical to stay on top.

Have any questions about local listings management? Contact us today or leave us a comment below!

A Guide to Marketing Yourself Using Content

September 11, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

This week, we’re taking time to explore a topic that’s a little different. You. Yes, you. Not your business, not your marketing campaigns, but you on an individual level. If you think about it, the time and effort invested in marketing yourself plays just as crucial a role as marketing your business. This is especially true when it comes to goal achievement. If you work for a large corporation, growth is always welcomed, and if you’re employed by a local start-up, brand establishment is the name of the game. Both of these can benefit from the individual efforts of employees, but the question is, “what’s going to be your approach?” Well feast your eyes on the steps you’ll need to get started!

Step 1: Realize That LinkedIn is Your Friend

Your position as a thought leader is highly influenced by the people your message reaches. That should be a given. You wouldn’t want to spend your time and effort crafting content that embodies both your work and your personality, only to have it sit in perpetual stagnancy. The best remedy here is social networking, particularly using LinkedIn, self-proclaimed as the “World’s Largest Professional Network.”

LinkedIn contains distinct advantages over other popular platforms like Facebook or Twitter, including:

An environment for professionals to connect. This works to filter out audiences that may ignore your message
Groups that allow you to hone in on audiences within your industry, your geographic location, or your level of experience
An environment that’s becoming a big part of recruiting and talent acquisition processes

By taking advantage of this powerful networking tool, you’ll be able to easily contribute to the industry-wide conversation, connect with influential people in the space, and explore opportunities to progress in your field.

Step 2: Seek out Media to Showcase Your Insight

While LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for getting your name out there and having discourse with others in your industry, the platform can sometimes lack recency and structure from the standpoint of interesting and innovative content creation. In other words, LinkedIn may offer a place to discuss your thoughts on a particular topic, but you’ll need a way to more formally (and regularly) share your ideas. In this regard, a great place to start is by using the resources already at your disposal.

Get together with colleagues and propose a company blog or YouTube channel if they don’t already exist. If they do, you’ve got a few options. You can develop a regular blog series that appears alongside your company’s posts or set up a YouTube playlist that features content that incorporates your unique personality. If you’re comfortable exploring digital roads-less-traveled, there are a host of less-traditional content outlets at your disposal, including SlideShare, infographics, screencast tutorials, or microcontent sites like Vine and Instagram).

No matter the avenue you choose to carry your message, keep one thing in mind—whether you try to or not, you are always representing your employer when interacting online. Your individualized content marketing endeavors should be approved by the higher-ups, portray your company in a positive light, and offer relevant information to your intended audience (Basically, upload those cat videos on your own time).

Step 3: Maintain and Measure!

When your personal digital marketing gets off the ground, there are a few important maintenance items to consider. First off, don’t embark on any content-driven marketing medium if you can’t maintain it. You’ll have to be strategic about allocating your time to satisfy your existing work responsibilities and your chosen “side project.” This point can be summed up very succinctly: “Any digital asset, if left to languish, will leave you worse off than if you hadn’t created it in the first place.”

In addition, consider your process for demonstrating the value of your efforts. If you’re approached by your supervisor and she wants to see the “results” of your self-marketing campaign, what will you do? Incorporating a measurement plan that shows your time is paying off with tangible goals, key performance indicators, and metrics will be invaluable. Not only will you be able to quell your boss’s wariness, but you’ll also begin laying appropriate procedural groundwork, should your content become company policy down the line.

What form of content best suits you? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

Google Analytics API – Lesson 3: Starting to Code

September 5, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

If you’ve been with us through the entire series, welcome back! This time we’ll get in and get our hands dirty in some code. If you haven’t been with us for the series, start by reading the first part of the series, which discusses some background, and the second part of the series, which provides a high level overview of the steps we will be taking today.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning…

The last installment in this series will look markedly similar to this session. However, throughout the next few posts I intend to reference code samples and actually guide you through the step-by-step process from my perspective. The goal is that you should be able to follow these instructions as a supplementation to Google’s already thorough instructions.

Since my final goal is to query specific metrics from Google and eventually move them to a database, I chose to complete this process in PHP. This way, I can easily interface with a MySQL database. PHP may not be the best language for the process that you are trying to complete. For this reason, Google also provides several other languages. This guide still may be useful in understanding overall how the process works, for those of you who may prefer Java or Ruby.

…A Very Good Place to Start

The first step, if you have not yet completed it, is to read the first two blog posts in this series. This will give you the background necessary to understand the process that I am going to follow.

In the last post, I mentioned the code libraries and the Hello Analytics API tutorial. The first step for this process will be to download the proper files. The PHP library can be accessed here.

The download area looks like this:

Once you have reached this page, click to download the latest release file. The file will be in a tar.gz format. Use a file manager such as WinZip or 7Zip to extract the .tar file to your desktop or other convenient location.

Open the containing folder. Within this folder, there will be several more directories.

It should look like this:

License, notice, and readme are all files necessary for legal purposes. You will not need to access these files for this tutorial. The other three folders are of the most interest.

Open “examples”. Once you have done that, you will see a lengthy list of a multitude of examples. To keep things simple, I recommend that you delete all of the folders and files except for the analytics folder and the batch text file.

When that is complete, it should look like this:

Once that is complete, you will free up some more space and make the files easier to work with.

Now your files are prepared for the process.

Understanding the Files and Process

Within this analytics folder is the actual code that will run and display in your browser. In addition to this folder, the “src” folder at the high level holds the code that runs in the background. This code will ensure that you are authenticating properly.

In its simplest terms, the whole process works as follows:

Visit test site -> click link to authenticate -> allow application authentication via Google -> return to your original page with an auth token -> complete any more processes in your application.

Preparing for the Next Session

Now that all of the files are downloaded, you will need to prepare for the next post. In the next few posts, we will be editing and configuring code, getting this code on to our server, and running the code.

You will need the following programs to complete the next section:

A text editor such as Notepad++ or Notepad.
A FTP client such as FileZilla.
A live webserver. If a live webserver is out of the question, those of you who are comfortable with some development may be familiar with a locally hosted server such as WAMP, MAMP for Mac, or XAMPP.

I completed this testing on a protected subfolder of a live domain. If you do not have a testing environment that is live to work with one of the AMP programs will suffice. If you do have a live environment to work with, this is when you can edit or set up a new directory to work with. Either that, or install and configure your FTP client to work with your server.

In addition to having the proper software setup, you should familiarize yourself with the files in the analytics folder, such as the Hello Analytics file or the authorization files. Once downloading and installing the text editor, open the files and browse through them.

At this point, if you have not already done so, you will need to create a Google account. Once that has been completed, you are now ready to begin development. We’ll see you at the next tutorial!