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DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

3 Reasons to Fire Your Local SEO Service Provider

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Clicking the send button for the third time, you’re starting to wonder if your Internet is down. Or if you spelled your account rep’s email wrong. Or if a sinkhole opened up beneath the city where your local SEO agency is located.

In any case, this lack of communication is the straw that’s about to break the camel’s back. And that’s not even the half of it. It’s time to cut ties with your local SEO service provider. Open up your company letterhead and start that strongly-worded termination notice, because…

1. They’ve been trying to game the system

local SEO services in Reading, Pa - DaBrian Marketing Group

It’s no secret that there are companies out there that disguise unethical tricks and aggressive techniques as “premier local SEO services.” The bottom line? They might be able to provide temporary boosts in rankings, but you shouldn’t expect those incremental shifts to stay for very long. In fact, if you haven’t seen your organic search performance take a nosedive as a result of your local SEO agency’s work, you should consider yourself lucky.

What else should throw a red flag? If you notice any of the following:

  • Inaccurate or non-specific local listing information
  • Too many Google reviews you don’t recognize
  • Multiple listings for your single business location

It’s very likely that the agency providing your local SEO services is more concerned with compensation than actually helping your business’s local visibility. And if you haven’t heard from them in a while, it’s probably because…

2. They’ve Left the the “O” out of “Local SEO”

Because the local SEO space changes so often, whether from the perspective of user search trends, algorithms, or the platforms themselves, it’s in a local SEO service provider’s best interest to stay up-to-date. And really, that’s what it’s all about. It’s called “Optimization” for a reason; it’s a process that must change and adapt as the search engines do. No business can hope to succeed if their agency is taking a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach. If you suspect your vendor is guilty of this, here’s a great way to evaluate their approach:

Simply ask: “What does your roadmap for local SEO services look like for the next 3 months?”

If your agency rep either A) has no idea what you’re asking them, or B) makes no mention of a specific change made by Google, Yahoo, or Bing, your Spidey senses were spot-on. And while you have your agency on the line, it might be worth asking about why…

3. They’re not measuring progress in a meaningful way

If you can remember the last time you got an SEO report from your agency, you’re off to a good start. The better question is, “When was the last time you took that report and actually did something with it?”. In reality, local SEO services shouldn’t stop at the services themselves. Without a transparent culture where the client is fully aware of the progress of a local SEO campaign as it relates to your business as a whole, there’s an immediate disconnect. A disconnect not only between what your local SEO agency has promised and the results you should be seeing, but also between your marketing budget and what led to a measurable return on investment. A professional local SEO report should contain:
  • Key measures of success that you’ve seen before and/or approved
  • A comprehensive data set without any big gaps or inconsistencies
  • Action items and/or a timeline of next steps that they will take on your behalf
A good way to determine whether it’s really time to pull the plug on this agency of yours? Do some research on your own and challenge them to see if they’ve done theirs. If they don’t have data to back up what they’re doing or a culture of measurement to prove that what they are doing is effective, it’s time to show them the door. That is, as soon as they answer one of the emails you’ve been sending.
Is your local SEO agency helping or hurting you? Share your thoughts in the comments!

PPC Christmas Time KPIs

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right; it’s Christmas shopping time. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching. The question is—Are your PPC Campaigns ready? Whether you think you are prepared for the holiday season or just starting to get ready, here are a few things to keep in mind.

What to Expect this Holiday Season

During the 2014 Christmas season, everyone is going to be searching for that perfect gift. This means more online searches and more impression opportunities. Below is a screenshot from Google trends showing that search volume for retail-related keywords and phrases   this time of the year. Although the graph only goes back 3 years, the trend is consistent for much longer.

Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season
Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season

While an increase is search volume may be the only guarantee, it is safe to assume you will also see an increase in Impressions, Clicks, and Cost. However, the real Christmas joy comes from seeing the increase in Conversions and ROI, which is never guaranteed. Keeping your focus on specific KPI’s and not the rising search volume will help you achieve PPC success this holiday season.

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

First off, ensure that you maintain your IS compared to previous months, and not miss  out on impression opportunities due to low bids or insufficient budget this holiday season. This will at least guarantee that your Ads are being shown.

Click thru Rate (CTR) and Quality Score

More Impressions are great, but more Clicks are even better. Monitor your CTR to ensure that this influx of impressions is maintaining or improving your CTR. If not, take action immediately! Whether it is new ad copy testing, increasing bids, or changing keywords and their match types, make sure that you are at least maintaining your average CTR. Dropping CTR could lead to lower Quality Scores and worse positioning, which means you will need to increase your CPC to stay competitive. Of course, the inverse is true too. A higher CTR can allow you to lower CPC without hurting position and performance, which means increased profit margins.

Conversion Rate and Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Again, more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions is the best. Seeing how this is Pay per Click, more Clicks also means higher Cost. So, an increase in Clicks without an increase in Conversions will seriously lower profits and drive up your CPA. Although it seems obvious, monitor your CPA and make sure it does not exceed the value of your Conversion. This should not be a problem if you are able to maintain your Conversion Rate during the holiday season.

Have a Wonderful PPC Christmas

During all the craziness that is the holiday season, if you are able to stay focused on the basic KPIs of PPC you will have a wonderful PPC Christmas. Remember that more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions are the best. Keep an eye on CTR and Conversion Rate. While growth is always the goal, just maintaining these rates through the holidays will lead to higher totals of Clicks and Conversions, since searches will be increasing. Most importantly always remember to watch Cost, especially CPA, compared to revenue of your Conversions, and keep your PPC out of the red this Christmas.

If you have any feedback, questions or other holiday preparation suggestions, please leave a comment below. Wishing everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday Season!

The Right Way to Get Your Videos Shared More

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This week, DMG is proud to feature a guest blog post from Michelle Downs, Director of Content & Community at 12 Stars Media. 12 Stars is an Indianapolis-based video production company focusing on producing video that allows companies to build closer connections with their target audience.

Looking to get your videos shared more? Of course you are. But in order to get your videos shared, you’ll need to have a purpose for them as well as know what your audience wants from your videos. How many times have you just shared your video once and then expected it to go viral? Or created a video without your audience in mind? In order to get your videos shared you need to first have a purpose for them.

Have a purpose for sharing

Before you even tweet out your video, make sure you have a purpose for it. What do you want your video to accomplish? Do you want someone to sign up for your next event? Plan your purpose out and make it clear when you share your video. By having a purpose for your video before you share it, you’ll know exactly what you want and how you want to present it, which is much better than just throwing it out there.

The best way to make sure your video gets shared more is for it to have a distinct purpose.

Know your audience

If you know what your audience wants, then it will be much easier to get them to share your videos. For example: on Facebook we share a lot of behind the scenes videos, because our audience on Facebook already knows us and loves to see things with our team members in it, unlike Twitter where most of our audience loves to hear the latest tips for shooting and editing their videos. It’s important to monitor your channels and find out what your audience wants on each of them because odds are, your audience won’t be the same on each social site.

Share it often

Don’t be afraid to share your video a lot. If you want your video to get out there then you can’t just post it on YouTube and expect it to take off. Share it on your social sites where the video is relevant to that particular audience. And don’t be afraid to share it multiple times in one day on Twitter or a couple of times a month on Facebook. This is especially helpful if you happen to have clients who live in different time zones because you’re more likely to reach them by sharing your video at different times throughout the day.

Change up the way you share

It’s also a good idea to change up the way you present your video when you share it. Don’t just share it with the title of the video. Add some more info to it or your take on the video or how this video will help your audience with something. Ask a question. Present a challenge. You’re more likely to reach a wider audience by mixing up the way you share the video and by sharing it multiple times, and when you reach a wider audience, you’re more likely to get more shares.

There are many different tactics to use when sharing a new video production.
By knowing your audience, having a purpose for your video, and understanding each social channel, you’ll be able to expand your reach with each video you share and provide content that your clients and potential clients are looking for.

Your Guide to Measuring SEO in 2015

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Danny Laws, Principal Owner and resident “Sharp Dressed Man” here at DMG takes to our big whiteboard wall to cover the top considerations for measuring SEO in 2015.

Learn the tactics and metrics your team should look to measure, what’s coming down the pipeline, and what you can leave at the door.

Hi, I’m Danny Laws, Principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, a full service digital marketing agency in Reading, PA. I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about measuring SEO in 2015 and some of the things that I believe are going to come down the pipeline and have a little bit more of an emphasis.

What we have here is our digital analytics framework: Strategy, Implement, Measure, Optimize. With that being said, when we talk about measurement of anything, we talk about the goals and objectives, the execution of the measurement plan as it pertains to the measurement of all things related to your business, but in the case of this particular scenario, we’re talking about the measurement of SEO. We want to gauge progress, and we want to make improvements as it relates to organic search traffic coming to your site.

Now, in the past we’ve talked about the “ABCs” of measurement, of digital analytics, of web analytics, however you want to define it, and we’ve talked about the Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. In my opinion, in 2015 when it comes to measuring SEO, we’re going to have a little bit more of a focus on the measurement of the Audience, the SEO-related Audience. From a measurement of the SEO-related Audience, we want to talk about the demographics, the interest information. We also want to talk about the location, the localization of keywords and phrases. Is that the same audience we’re talking about within this strategy, that we’ve identified with KPIs, that we’re concerned with? You want to keep that in consideration.

Also when talking about the measurement of SEO, of organic search traffic, you want to tie this back to Acquisition. When we talk about Acquisition, we’re talking about the search engines (Google vs. the Yahoo/Bing Network). Typically, we see roughly 90% of that traffic within the US coming from those areas. Is that trend holding true? Are we looking at those components consistently? At the same time, we’re talking about the Acquisition via keywords, phrases, themes of keywords. Are we getting users and visitors coming from organic search traffic when we measure Acquisition via SEO? Are we getting what we need or what we thought we were going to get from those keywords and phrases, as well as the appropriate search engines?

The next component when we start talking about the measurement of SEO in 2015 is the Behavior component. For us, we do a lot of creating of content, whether it be video, whether it be infographs, whether it be blog content, those types of components. Is the information, those URLs that we look to do some link earning with, are we seeing traffic coming to those specific URLs that we’ve targeted for people, that we’ve leveraged our relationships for? Are we seeing what we expected to happen from a link targeting, link bait, link earning, however you define it, in this particular area? At the same time, when we’re talking about measurement of SEO, where is SEO in the events that are coming from SEO? Are we seeing a difference there, and what kind of user behavior is happening on the site from a pageview perspective, from a depth of visit, from returning visits, those types of behaviors as well, looking at that information. And my favorite part here within the behavior, is looking at it from a testing perspective. So, when we run tests, have we sliced and diced the data to look at how SEO or organic-related traffic is being impacted from a behavioral perspective here.

The last piece of this is Conversions. When we talk about the micro/macro conversions, measuring conversions from SEO, we want to specifically look at the measurement of keywords, phrases, themed keywords, a group or cluster of keywords specifically, are we seeing organic search conversions coming from that particular area?

What I would recommend at this point when you’re talking about measuring SEO in 2015 is making sure we revisit the strategy to account for the appropriate KPIs associated with SEO in itself. We want to update the implementation, i.e. the configuration, making sure that the configuration is appropriate to capture this audience-related information because of the updates that have happened, a number of systems around collecting audience information. Also the privacy policies, don’t forget about this particular component when we talk about the audience.

The other piece here is to validate that the data as it pertains to SEO, as well as the overarching goals and objectives, is being collected according to what you’re trying to capture within the KPIs in general. And then, you want to create hypotheses around SEO. Whether it be checking out themed approaches, keywords, different landing pages, those types of things. Content ideas. Create hypotheses, test these components. Within the framework of measuring SEO in 2015, I wish you the best of luck in taking these items into consideration. The audience, the acquisition, the behavior, and the conversions.

Good hunting, and let us know if you have any questions. Have a good day!

DMG Appoints New Web Developer

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Reading, PA – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC, a full service digital marketing agency located in Reading, PA, has hired a new web developer to support its growing scope of digital marketing service offerings. Brett Shenk, a recent graduate of Berks Technical Institute with a degree in Web Design, has joined the DaBrian Marketing team to execute a wide range of technical and programming responsibilities.

Daniel Laws, Jr., principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC, expressed great optimism with the latest addition to the agency, “As DaBrian Marketing Group looks forward to providing bigger and better digital marketing solutions, we need to anticipate shifts in software and technological standards. I’m confident that Brett will be able to provide insight into a wide variety of technical service areas and be a great asset to our company as a whole.”

Brett expressed his enthusiasm after accepting the Web Developer position with DMG, “After starting as an extern, I was really excited to be offered a full-time position with DaBrian Marketing,” said Brett. “I gained a lot of experience during my externship, and I can’t wait to begin putting all I’ve learned into practice on client projects.”

Want to learn more about Brett, or give him a digital pat on the back? Leave a comment below!

What Cheap SEO Services Actually Get You

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A December 2013 article posted over at Search Engine Watch titled, “How Much Should You Spend on SEO Services?” does a really good job of hinting at what to avoid when choosing a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) provider. Despite the article’s best attempts at deterring business owners and marketers from taking the cheapest route, we still see it happen time and time again. Today, I’m going to make the decision even easier for you. Not by detailing what to avoid, but telling you exactly what Cheap SEO services will do for (and to) your business.

Cheap SEO Services Lack in the Strategic Department

At DMG, we’re huge proponents of this marketing maxim: “Strategize first, execute second.” This is especially important for SEO because as a tactic, it plays a critical role in so many other digital campaigns a business may be running. If a search strategy isn’t comprehensive; that is, covering the client’s website structure, technical elements, keyword research, and content development, to name a few, suffice it to say that this agency is probably approaching SEO like it’s the year 2005.

As an example, imagine there is a retail business that’s currently running Paid Search advertising (PPC) focused on brand awareness and online sales. This company wants to begin incorporating SEO. A cheap service provider won’t perform industry research, conduct any sort of SWOT analysis, or take these PPC campaigns into consideration when devising its SEO strategy. In other words, they’re going to try to increase SEO performance in total isolation. Without a strategic approach that aligns all aspects of search marketing, this client can expect higher costs and diminished returns, both paid and organically.

A Note on “Instant” SEO Results

A cheap SEO provider is one that guarantees #1 spots and “instant results.” To be blunt, this is a bold-faced lie. It’s common knowledge that the search environment is constantly changing, and SEO providers can only base their offerings on what information Google (and reputable news outlets) is willing to make public. What’s interesting is that many of these cheap SEO firms operate as if the search engines can be fooled. Nearly every major change made by Google, Yahoo, and Bing is to combat tactics that work to “cheat” the system.

To move forward and actually help your business in organic search, don’t think about rankings as the goal. Being #1 for a keyword has little to no impact on whether a prospective customer can find you or if they’ll actually buy from you. Any company that claims to have the “secret sauce” to making that happen has a completely inaccurate notion of SEO’s business value.

The Man Behind the SEO Curtain

When browsing a service list for an SEO provider, take a look to see the type of support they offer. Are there any “checks and balances” in place, such as a project management system? How much insight are you given into what they’re actually doing on your behalf? How accessible are they on and off business hours? Over the years, we’ve learned that successful SEO doesn’t happen without transparent communication.

An open dialogue about what’s being done, what’s being planned, and how SEO can benefit other marketing initiatives is critical to a successful agency/client relationship. Failing to provide SEO transparently means there will be no accountability on the execution of the project. Even if the strategy is comprehensive, it takes communication to make sure it’s being executed properly and adjusted when necessary.

SEO website audit
How’s this for transparency? These SEO audits allow us to establish a baseline of fundamental SEO issues on client websites.

Here’s Our Recommendation

When choosing an SEO provider, it’s important to go into the process understanding that every other business out there is competing on the same playing field. And if there was a silver bullet to maximized ROI and sales, it wouldn’t take long before SEO agencies all went out of business. Approach the selection process with key questions, both about the agency’s SEO process as well as how they manage client relationships. Keep an eye out for talk of “guarantees,” because like we said, SEO is too varied and dynamic an environment for that. Finally, do a bit of your own research about what realistic SEO goals actually look like and how they’re measured. Don’t be afraid to put the agency on the spot and ask the question, “How will you prove that the money we spend led to a positive business result?” If they can’t answer these questions with confidence, you’ve got more searching to do.
Have a bargain-bin SEO horror story? Share it in the comments!