SEO is a must for your company, but it takes time to move your target keywords up the search ranking pages. The goal of SEO is to rank your website for highly coveted keywords that will affect your bottom line. If you can include PPC as part of your search engine marketing budget, you can affect your leads coming in immediately. That’s why a mix of PPC and SEO can be awesome together. The best way to develop long-term digital success is to adopt a marketing strategy that combines the power of SEO practices alongside Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC). SEO works by increasing the visibility of your site through rankings. That is achieved by using things like keywords and keyphrases to signal search engines when someone is organically searching to find something within your industry. And it also takes quality content that is both informative and useful to the reader. Some key factors in SEO are: With PPC, you’re dealing with a strategy, whereby, you pay for advertising only when followers directly click an ad on Google, Bing, Social Media sites, retargeting or other paid advertising sites. This type of digital marketing strategy has a high likelihood of success if your ads are properly managed, tested, tracked, evaluated and adjusted. Pay per click fees are worth it IF you get the leads and convert them to justify the expense. SEO and PPC both help to enhance the exposure of your website. SEO helps you show up in organic search results just below Google Map listings, and PPC helps you show your ad at the top of Google search results. The reason that you should incorporate SEO and PPC is that you get maximum exposure with successful PPC and SEO campaigns. You can double the chance of click-throughs to your website by showing up both in the number one ranking in organic results and on the ad for search queries. SEO also impacts if you show up in the Google Map listings as well. If you have a properly designed website, it will be designed for maximum conversions when visitors go to your site. More on that below. Small businesses have the challenge of building both their audience and their reputation when starting up. PPC and SEO combined are an excellent way to both gain visibility and to rapidly enhance it at the same time. When you combine targeted PPC adverts with high ranking for keywords simultaneously, you provide two different modalities to establish your site as an authority in your industry. And once you have users, you can start converting visitors into leads. Driving consumers to view your site is only half of the battle; you have to make sure that they find the advertising promised via your meta-descriptions and PPC adverts. Getting them there is not enough; you have to keep them there. The key analytic you want to pay attention to is the “bounce rate”. The bounce rate is how many visitors leave your site before they engage. It is the measure of how successful your strategy is working. Factors like load time or aesthetics can both increase the bounce rate, leading to poorer outcomes. The trick is to make it easy for your customers to convert by guiding them through the process. To do that you have to consider four key aspects: Since digital marketing is not an exact science, there is always a built-in element of chance. The key is to minimize it through a successful combination of using SEO and PPC. If you keep in mind the user’s focus and experience, understand that it is not static, and follow the strategies outlined above, you will position yourself to have the best digital marketing campaign possible for success. At Fu Dog Media, our goal is to create the most effective digital marketing campaign, using all the weapons in our arsenal including SEO & PPC. Contact us today to discuss how we can get your website on the road to success with a successful digital marketing campaign that uses both SEO and PPC.Search Engine Marketing – Where do you start?
PPC Ad Management
So, Why Combine SEO & PPC?
Challenges Specific to Small Business
Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
How to Entice the Consumer
Successful Digital Marketing includes Both SEO & PPC
Tag: SEO
Digital Marketing Mythbusters…Don’t Always Believe What you Hear! Myths debunked here!
There is a reason why the show “Mythbusters” was so popular when it debuted.
We all have those things that we accept as fact, but they are based on no such thing. No, your blood is not blue until it hits oxygen and turns red.
Yes, it is totally okay if you wake someone while they are sleepwalking. And, no, there is no such thing as the five second rule. In fact, the amount of bacteria that is transferred to a piece of food when it hits the floor is the same no matter how long you let it sit there.
So, you think that you know all there is to know about digital marketing. Or, you believe that what you do know is actually fact, and that you are doing things to foster your business, not hurt it. But, do you know for sure? We are here to debunk the most common seven myths that most people believe about digital marketing practices and how they work.
Marketing Myth One: More Traffic to Your Website Translates Into Increased Revenue
All you have to do to increase your bottom line is drive more people to your website and kaboom…your profits will soar!
The reality is that yes, you want to drive people to your website, but not all traffic is the same. The only kind of website traffic that will translate into profits are the ones that can convert leads to sales.
Traffic is not just the number of IP addresses that make it to your page. Traffic is the audience that makes it to their intended target because behind those IP addresses are people who have the motivation, desire, problems and need for solutions.
What you have to do to make that traffic viable is to communicate to those people who do make it to your website that you have something valuable for them to invest in. You have to give them cause to take action and use your product or service, not just make it visible to them.
So, you can argue that more traffic might increase your bottom line. That part might not be a myth. What is not true is that just getting people to your page is enough to convert them to increasing revenue.
More traffic means more sales, but only if you have the right type of traffic and if you focus on the quality of the traffic flow rather than the quantity, which leads us to the second myth…
Marketing Myth Two: Your Ads Need to be Appealing to a General Audience to Attract as Many People as Possible
In the same respect that more traffic converts to more money, appealing to everyone across the board as being the goal of digital marketing is, likewise, not true. More customers do not always mean more sales.
If you run a campaign and throw out a huge net in hopes of catching everything, what you end up with are a whole lot of things you need to throw back and not a lot of what you were searching for. If you don’t specify your message to your target audience, you might appeal to more people.
But, in the end, you aren’t going to have the right message to get the specific niche that you are trying to capture. It is like fishing in the middle of the sea to get as many fish as you can instead of figuring out where the species of fish that you want to catch live.
So what is the answer?
It’s alright to use a campaign that not everyone is going to get, or an image that isn’t going to catch everyone’s eye. The key is to find out what makes your intended target tick, what gets them to focus attention and use that marketing to attract them.
The goal is not to appeal to everyone on earth. The goal is to appeal to everyone on earth who might be interested in using your product and service. And to do that, you have to find out not only what they are looking for, but what sets them apart from everyone else.
Marketing Myth Three: Email is as Dead as a Doornail
Sure, email might not be the end all be all that it used to be before things like instant messaging and texting came along, but there is no end to it. And the potential that it might present for your business is still valuable!
Although click-rates for email might be lower than other mediums, they tend to generate a lot of sales. In fact, the DMA found that for every one dollar that a company spends using email marketing $38 was generated in revenue. That would indicate that no, email is not dead, not even by a long shot.
Once more, according to Campaign Monitor, using email marketing is more effective than both Twitter or Facebook at generating leads that convert into sales. When you combine that with the fact that everyone, yes, even your grandma uses email, that says a lot!
Email is not on the decline, statistics from Statistica show that the number of emails both sent and received, is somewhere around three hundred billion, not million, literally billion, and that number is increasing every year.
Marketing Myth Four: All You Need to Succeed is an Excellent Ad, Campaign, Landing Page, etc…
A lot of digital marketers will tell you that all you have to do is get one thing right and the revenue will start pouring in. They believe that if they come up with the right ad, slogan, campaign of combination of things, the end result will be an instant success. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if that were only true?
The problem with their philosophy is that it neglects what the facts show, most customers aren’t a one-hit wonder. What I mean by that is it usually takes more than one look or glance to get a customer on the hook. In fact, there is a process that the average consumer goes through before they go from a “first glance” to a “sold.”
When we can explain the complexity of converting a stranger to a sale to our clients, they quickly see that you can’t build your business or your brand on just one hit campaign. There are several steps and processes that you need to go through before you have them hooked.
Instead of focusing on a one-hit wonder campaign, you have to create many different streams and campaigns to generate both engagement and awareness to the consumer. Once you get them to subscribe to one campaign, you shoot them another, and then the target is to get them to convert to sale by campaign three. It isn’t a once and done proposition. And anyone who tells you it isn’t, isn’t doing the groundwork necessary to make you a success.
Marketing Myth Five: Don’t be Creepy by Retargeting
No one wants to be a stalker; that isn’t cool. That is why most marketers stray away from retargeting ads to their consumer. They fear that the general public will get creeped out by being followed around the wide web. But do consumers really feel that way?
According to a study done by Wishpond, retargeting ads are viewed much more positively than negatively. That is why savvy marketers know this little secret and use it! Retargeting is one of the best and most efficient ways of bringing people back to your website. And we all know what that means…don’t we?
- Website visitors who have been retargeted with a display ad are 70% more likely to convert
- Over 70% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart and only 8% of those lost consumers return to complete the purchase
- Ad retargeting brings over 25% of lost consumers back to finalize their sale
The more they visit, the more likely they are to bite. In the same study done by Wishpond, it was revealed that most digital marketing professionals would insist that retargeting is the best use of marketing there is.
So, no retargeting is not creepy. Not to retarget gives the consumer the impression that you aren’t all that interested in them, and overall, that you aren’t all that interesting.
Instead of focusing on a one-hit wonder campaign, you have to create many different streams and campaigns to generate both engagement and awareness to the consumer. Once you get them to subscribe to one campaign, you shoot them another, and then the target is to get them to convert to sale by campaign three. It isn’t a once and done proposition. And anyone who tells you it isn’t, isn’t doing the groundwork necessary to make you a success.
Marketing Myth Six: Content is King
Just because you find something that catches and sounds official, that doesn’t mean it is. There is a great argument brewing that content needs to take off the crown and take a step back. The reality is that the online content is quickly exceeding the demand for it. But that isn’t really the problem.
For purposes of marketing success, content marketing isn’t just about putting out a good blog. Content marketing is about something called full-funnel, or the concept that content is there only to lead your potential consumers through the process of awareness to evaluation ending in conversion.
If content is done correctly, it educates potential prospects about what they have to know to appreciate the full value of what you produce or service is and why they need it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be content. There are many ways to get your point across including lead magnets, a podcast, a webinar, or a video.
So is content king…the answer is definitely yes! But not in just one medium or forum.
The best way to convert potential consumers is through using all the content avenues possible to get them to realize the value of what you are offering so that they “gotta have it”!
So, sorry…. That is one myth that can not be debunked, brought up to date yes, but wrong, no!
Marketing Myth Seven: SEO is all in the Keywords
Early in the dark ages SEO was pretty simple. You found a keyword, you used it, your audience found you. And once you found that keyword, you went about stuffing the heck out of your pages to signal search engines “come find me.” Then, there was a point where you don't want to appear to be stuffing so you used hidden text (BTW, huge no-no).
The problem is that many SEO professionals still treat keywords like they are the magic key that will open any door. Don’t misunderstand, keywords are important! But if you want to beat the SEO machine, you have to consider more than finding the right word to punch in and wallah!
You have to consider not just the keyword but the intent that people have when they do a search to really understand a word’s importance and then make sure that you write content that is targeted toward the intent.
Google is Google because Google knows what Google is doing…am I right? Their entire success relies on people having a good experience using their search engine. So if someone does a search and they don’t get what they want, that isn’t going to make them happy or leave a good impression.
If you can make content based around exactly what the intention of the viewer is looking for, then they will stay put on your site. And when they do, Google counts it as a very low “bounce rate,” which means how long someone stays on your page because you had the information they needed instead of bouncing to another page. The lower your bounce rate, the higher your ranking.
So keywords are enough to get them there, but to keep them there you have to provide what a consumer is researching or looking for. So, keywords are still necessary but only to the extent that they point you in the right direction as well as the internet browser.
So, what do all of these myths have in common?
Although the myths we presented were in fact mythical, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t based on some truth. It pays to understand what the myth is to alter what works and what doesn’t. For instance, yes, people are okay with retargeting so that is a myth.
But, no, they do not want to be inundated hundreds of times a day…that IS stalking. More traffic does not necessarily convert directly to more sales. But if you have more traffic and give the necessary tools to those who need it, you have a higher likelihood that you will convert.
If there is one thing that is true about digital marketing, it is ever changing. So, what works today might not work tomorrow. That is why it is important to understand the process, not just the cliff notes.
At Fu Dog Media we take great pains to stay ahead of the game, to recognize what is truth inside of the myth and to always stay ahead of the game to keep you ahead of your competition. Contact us today to discuss how we can convert your SEO into successful sales.
Getting to the top of Google with South Carolina SEO
South Carolina SEO
Generate Leads and Grow Your Business
You may be wondering what the secret is to getting to the top of South Carolina SEO. Or if you live outside of the Palmetto State, how you can get to the top of search engines.
No matter where you are, the process is the same. To get great SEO rankings anywhere, there are a few main things you need to consider. We've laid out the top 5 SEO tactics that you need to tackle below:
1. Target the Right Keywords
When you start any SEO campaign it's important that first, you do keyword research. A reputable SEO company near you will probably ask you what your goal is and what keywords or phrases you are after. That data is then taken to do keyword research and figure out which keywords are the best targets.
You'll want to target high volume keywords that people are searching for a lot for your particular business.
2. Create Great Content
Content is still king. Google and other search engines crawl every inch of your site so it's important for your website to have great content. If you really cater to your target customer and think about what they want and what information they are looking for, you will be able to craft engaging content that ranks high.
Creating regular blog posts is a great way to build depth on your website and drive traffic. You can craft your blogs to focus on specific target keywords to continue your quest for ranking high on search engines.
3. Mobile Responsiveness & Speed
Your website design should be mobile responsive—over 60% of users are accessing your website from their phone, so a great mobile experience is paramount to your SEO strategy. Google will actually penalize your rankings for your site not being mobile responsive.
If you haven't updated your website design in a while it may be time to refresh your design to keep up with the latest standards.
4. Boost Your Backlinks
Backlinks are still a huge part of SEO rankings. If you want to rank high, you should have hundreds and even thousands of links on websites that “link back” to your website. Having your company listed on websites with high domain authority (usually big sites with lots of traffic) will give you great backlinks.
Social media profiles, business directory listings (like Yelp, YP, and Tripadvisor), news sites (via press releases) are just a few places you can get great backlinks for your site.
5. Track Your Data
Your website data, rankings and traffic should be tracked during your SEO campaign, so you can make adjustments to your South Carolina SEO strategy as you go. Knowledge is power, and knowing exactly where you are ranked for your target keywords will help you improve your website's visibility over time. For SEO beginners, MOZ has a great beginner's guide to refer to.
Remember that SEO is an investment that takes time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Same thing with SEO.
Finally, Hire the Right South Carolina SEO Company
SEO is a tremendous undertaking for DIY business owners. In many cases the entire SEO budget can be paid for with a just few jobs. SEO will generate revenue for years to come once you’ve invested the time, money and effort into it.
Call Fu Dog Media today or fill out our contact form to get started on your South Carolina SEO project.
How to Choose the Best Website Design Company for Your Business
Starting a new business can be overwhelming with a laundry list of things to do to get a new business going. When it comes to the branding of your company, choosing a logo design company will be one of your top priorities and after your logo is designed, your website design will be high priority. There are some important things you should know about choosing the best website design company in Charleston, SC.
- Choose a Web Design Company with a Solid Track Record
When selecting a web design company, it’s important to research them thoroughly. Some things you can do to make sure you are making the best choice for web design are to read online reviews, view their project portfolio and seek out references from some of their customers. Usually searching through their website portfolio will be a good indicator of the quality of work. Make sure to check websites projects on both your computer and mobile device so you can see that the company is designing mobile responsive websites as over 60% of website traffic is coming from users on mobile devices. - Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) important to you?
When your site is being built, the right web design company can also optimize your website for search engines like Google and Bing. If SEO is an important part of your marketing strategy, which it should be, SEO experience should be a factor in choosing a web design agency. A design agency should be able to show you case studies of current or past SEO clients so you can see results they have had with previous SEO clients. The right SEO company will provide you with ongoing SEO reports, analytics and progress on your target keywords so you can see exactly how your website’s keywords are performing. - Will you be managing your website content?
There are tons of options for website builders out there like Wix, Squarespace, and Godaddy Website Builder, but they offer very limited customization options. With a WordPress website design, your website is highly customizable and is powered with a very easy to use interface that we recommend for companies who want to manage their own site. This is particularly important when your website will be changing frequently or when you are managing an e-commerce site. If you are planning on managing your own site, WordPress is a great option. There are tons of plugins available to easily get the most out of your website and developers are constantly creating new themes, plugins and extensions that work with WordPress. - Does the web design company ask the right questions?
What are your goals? That’s one of the most important questions a web design company can ask. Designing a website isn’t just about creating a beautiful site. Your web designer should know exactly what you want to accomplish with your website. Do you want to convert traffic to sales in your online store? Do you want to generate leads via contact forms? Do you want to be #1 for target keywords on Google? What image do you want to convey with your brand?So many times, web designers are just churning out websites with no regard for the outcome. Choose a web design company that has your end result in mind. Dominating search engines and creating a beautiful and functional website go hand-in-hand. - Choose a Company that Communicates
One of the biggest pitfalls of web design companies is a lack of communication. You can usually tell how well a company is going to communicate early on in the process. How quickly are they returning calls and emails? How quickly did they get you a quote? Did they answer all your questions throughly? Are they thorough in asking about your goals for your new website design or redesign of your current site?All of these things are indicators of how well a web design company will communicate during the design process. Communication between the design team and the customer is so important in accomplishing a great design. - Cost vs. Value — You get what you pay for.
In today’s world, your website is one of the most important factors to having a successful business, and not just a beautiful design either. It needs to load quickly and be extremely user-friendly for website visitors. While cost is always a factor, your decision should not be based on cost entirely. There will always be someone willing to design your website cheaper, but what will you sacrifice by saving money in the short run? Time and time again, we’ve seen companies sell themselves short by choosing a cheap website design company or a website builder, and then come back to us asking for help. While there are times where a shoestring budget may be all you have, investing money into your website in the beginning will pay dividends in the future.It takes time to build your web presence and to rank on Google. If you have a subpar website designed, your wasting valuable time that you could be gaining more business via website traffic. A well designed website is not cheap, but the value you get back from that design and search engine optimization will pay off big time down the road.
5 Signs Your Website Design Needs a Makeover
For one reason or another, your website may have lost its flair and magnetic appeal. It may not be able to generate the same traffic as it once did. It may have worked once upon a time, but is no longer as effective. Here are several signs that may indicate your website needs a complete makeover.
- Dated Images, Fonts and Content
How long have you had your images, font and content posted and published on your website? They may have been impressive at the time. However, just like fashionable trends, web design trends come and go. If your images and font selection seem dated, this may be a clear telltale sign that a complete makeover is necessary. - Abandoned Shopping Carts Increase
Eighty-eight percent of online consumers abandon their shopping carts and leave them behind, per Kissmetrics – over 40 percent of which do so simply because they were not ready to make a purchase. You can reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates by enhancing your website to focus more on keeping your customers interested and engaged. Integrate pop-ups when they may click away from your page – offering promotional codes or discounted offers to stay put and continue shopping. - Accessing Website from Various Devices
Are you able to access your website with a variety of different devices without losing efficiency or encountering errors? Your website may look perfect and beautifully structured on a desktop or laptop computer. However, can the same thing be said when accessing your site from a tablet or smartphone? A complete website makeover that implements a responsive design can fix all of that for you, according to Inc. magazine.Responsive designs add a flexible element to your website infrastructure, allowing your site to be viewed and easily accessed without any hiccups regardless of the device or system used. - Page Loading Times
How long does it take for your webpages to load? Per KissMetrics, most online users abandon a website completely if it takes longer than 6-10 seconds for the page to load. Further studies show that you will start losing engaged users within the first 4-5 seconds. Therefore, if you notice any type of delay when loading any of your webpages, it may be time for a website makeover.
Heard Enough? Allow Us to Create Your New Website!
Our team of experts at Fu Dog Media can handle your website makeover on your behalf. We will first identify your current areas of concern and then work directly with you to create a strategic plan to redesign and revamp it accordingly. Give us a call today so we can get started!
