Choose a Path & Move Forward

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There are probably more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising companies out there than there are fast food joints. It makes sense because search marketing is a highly competitive and sought after medium. Add in email and display vendors and you’ve got quite the group. The problem we often see is that with so many cooks int he kitchen the recipe never turns into a finished cake. The reason, lack of a cohesive strategy. One vendor says ‘do this’ and another vendor says ‘do that’. Marketing teams often let vendors decide the direction, because after all they are the ‘experts’. Bonus reason, you can always blame the vendor! But in this environment digital strategy efforts fall short because of conflicting or muddled visions.

Build Your Own Strategy & Path

Don’t allow the vendors to dictate what your vision should be! Come to a new vendor with you 1) Your Goals 2) Your Targets and 3) Your Messaging to allow them to be more effective. Let them build off of that vision and devise a tactical plan that drives it forward. Need help with 1, 2 or 3? This is where Bluefin Strategy comes in so give us a shout.

Take the Path Towards Goals

At the outset of any engagement with a new vendor make sure the focus is on your goals. Let them know that they will be graded on whether the traffic they drive achieves the goals and don’t let them tell you otherwise. Many vendors will him and haw about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and give you excuses as to why they might not be met. It’s your advertising dollars, it’s your vision, they are there to implement it.

You have the power to select your path. Choose wisely and push forward to digital strategy optimization!

3 Free High Quality Stock Video Sites We Love

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Using online video has become the rage over the last few years whether you’re looking to add some excitement to your homepage, social or search campaigns.

Yet, one of the biggest hurdles in creating video content compared to image and text content is the heavy-lifting required to either create or purchase high-quality video content.

Mazwai

Website: http://mazwai.com

Pros: Mazwai offers a long list of short-duration high-definition stock videos ranging from aerial landscape to city life which are organized in a stunning and modern layout.  The majority of videos Mazwai offers have a modern and non-typical cinematography compared to other more typical, corporate stock video catalogs.

Cons: Currently, Mazwai lacks a search component making it difficult to find videos by keyword.

Pexels Videos

Website: https://videos.pexels.com

Pros: A large catalog of high quality stock video that hits on nearly every keyword and theme possible.

Cons: Their search results intermingle paid Shutterstock videos and can be confusing when trying to find free stock videos using their search.

Coverr

Website: http://www.coverr.co/

Pros: These videos are specifically designed to act as background videos for your homepage or landing page and while they can be used for other purposes, Coverr is a great resource if you’re looking for a high quality background video.

Cons: With new videos every week, it can be a bit difficult to find specific video themes due to a lack of search function.

What are you favorite free stock video sites?

As more marketers begin to rely on video for their content while struggling to increase their content budgets, there seems to be wave of free stock video sites trying to fill that gap.

What are some of your favorite stock video sites or resources?  Do you rely more on in-house video creation or have you found a better way to make quick video content on the fly?

 

Google Adwords adds historic quality score reporting

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As anyone fluent in Google AdWords knows, Quality Score is the great and powerful Wizard behind the curtain.

Google AdWords has added seven new Quality Score related data columns for reporting, including:

  • Expected CTR
  • Ad Relevance
  • Landing Page Experience
  • Quality Score (Historic)
  • Landing Page Experience (Historic)
  • Ad Relevance (Historic)
  • Expected Click Through Rate (Historic)
google adwords historical quality score menu

7 new options for Quality Score now available in  AdWords

Until this week, there were a number of ways to ascertain if a change to keywords, ads or a landing page impacted your Quality Score directly. However, these were 3rd party workarounds and prone to error.

How does this help my AdWords campaigns?

As stated by Google in their official announcement, this data allows marketers to understand how changes to ad relevance, landing page experience and keyword optimization directly impacts Quality Score.

Being able to tie account changes directly to changes in Quality Score will allow a great efficiency in split testing and vastly increase data-supported best practices across the board.

While historical data for Quality Score will only be available from January 22nd, 2016 forward, this gives marketers a chance to begin to tie specific optimization efforts to AdWords Quality Score and understand at a deeper level what elements (ad relevance, landing page experience, etc) of Quality Score are holding back select keywords.

Until now, trial and error had been the main tactic in improving Quality Score and while the relationship between keywords, ad relevance and landing page experience isn’t a new theory, the ability to view historic impact from these optimizations has been a gaping hole in the process.

You can learn more about this update below:

Google’s official announcement on improved Quality Score reporting

Let us know how you’ve improved your AdWords campaigns based on this new update in the comments below.

 

 

Google Analytics Settings in Google Tag Manager

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Do you have similar Google Analytics settings that you keep having to enter each and every time you enter a new tag in Google Tag Manager? Well fret not as Google has saved the day for you with “Google Analytics Settings” as a variable inside of Google Tag Manager. This variable allows you to set all of the typical settings you used to set at the tag level, but now you can save yourself some time by doing it once at the variable level.

How Do Google Analytics Settings Help?

Great question and I’m not so sure I would ever use them. Why? Well there are times when you may want to set the same Custom Dimension across every GA fire. Or, more likely, the cookie domain status field. The big thing to remember here is that whatever you set at the variable level will then be applied EVERY TIME a tag with that variable fires. If you want to set these to be more specific at the tag level then you can do that by selecting the “Enable overriding settings in this tag” option.

A Common Issue This Doesn’t Solve: Tracking Code

While using Google Analytics Settings variables will help make field settings easier they do not help with the problem of having different Universal Analytics account numbers per domain. Typically we will use a “Lookup Table” to serve up the right UA-### based on the hostname a user is accessing the site from. So for instance staging.bluefinstrategy.com vs. www.bluefinstrategy.com (please tell me you have different Universal Analytics accounts for these?!?!). This is important when you have tons of different Google Analytics Events and other things that you’d like to track. Why? Well, typically you’ll want to test them on a staging environment first then push them to production. Instead of having to change the tag when you do that push using a variable allows for the tag to work automatically on both domains!

Both the tactics above allow you to replicate settings using variables and should speed the entry of new Universal Analytics tags within Google Tag Manager. Happy Tagging!

Median Lead Generation Rates by Industry

Landing Page Conversion Rates by Industry 2017

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The smart people at Unbounce recently released their 2017 Conversion Benchmark Reports detailing an in-depth breakdown of lead generation benchmarks per industry.

While it’s an amazing benchmark report to download (and you all should), one of the biggest items the document covers is the answer to a question most marketers get asked frequently.

What is the average landing page conversion rate for our industry?

Median Landing Page Conversion Rates by Industry

  • Business Consulting 5.0%
  • Business Services 3.4%
  • Credit & Lending 5.5%
  • Health 2.8%
  • Higher Education 2.6%
  • Home Improvement 3.3%
  • Legal 3.2%
  • Real Estate 2.8%
  • Travel 5.0%
  • Vocational Studies & Job Training 6.0%

How Does Your Landing Page Stack Up?

Are you meeting these benchmarks? They may seem like small numbers, but we’ve seen worse. There are a few reasons landing pages aren’t quite as effective as they should be. Take a moment to think about if these issues are affecting your landing pages and take steps to correct them:

  • Asking for too much personal information : Do you ‘really’ need to collect gender or their affinity for Batman vs. Superman
  • Lost Call To Action (CTA) : Are you directing people to a specific action? If you look at the page for 3-seconds can you easily spot the directive?
  • Missing information or lack of relevancy : Consider ‘how’ visitors are arriving on this page. Are you teasing them with an offer or information that isn’t present on the page? Don’t laugh, this happens ALL THE TIME!

Technical SEO Agencies & You

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Recently a friend asked me to help him evaluate some SEO agencies much larger than we are (so we weren’t upset…). As we went through the process a theme developed over and over again. Nearly every agency focused on Technical SEO at the outset and then a ‘pass the buck’ approach with ongoing optimization. So I figured it was important to jot down some things you should consider when evaluating SEO agencies so that you don’t get caught in their margin game.

A Solely Technical SEO Focus

Not to discount this tactic, as it is incredibly important, but it is not the sole thing you should focus on. A solid technical foundation helps your site get found and ensures that your content is able to be read by the search engines. But that content it is reading must still be well-written and supporting a keyword theme. Therefore, having perfect technical SEO on a site won’t get you far if you sacrificed content. Make sure your agency is focused on a holistic content strategy as opposed to just fixing the technical stuff! Ask them how they approach keyword research, do they have content writers on staff, do they conduct voice exercises, etc.

Here’s a Report For You

Ongoing SEO requires vigilance to searcher behavior, search engine algorithm changes, content-writing, and back-links. There’s plenty more, but the main thing you do not see listed there is “reporting”. Is reporting important? Absolutely. BUT, you can go buy one of the tools yourself. We use Moz, SEMRush, Screaming Frog, among others. Go download or use them. They are awesome. OK, now that we gave you our secret sauce, how’s your SEO? Hiring an agency is more than the tools they bring to the table. It is the experience and strategy that they bring. Ask your agency what a typical monthly engagement looks like. How often are they re-evaluating keywords, do they have a strategy for algorithm pivots, how often are they writing or suggesting articles, and how many websites do they typically go after for back links?

What Does it all Mean?

A solid >90% of agencies out there push as much work as possible upon lower cost resources in order to increase margins. Everyone does it, even at the grocery store. The issue in the agency world is that often this results in a lack of strategy to the client. Our advice, constantly challenge your agency on new ideas, industry news, keyword suggestions. Don’t just accept a monthly report of numbers, but request an action plan of recommendations and how they are keeping you on the forefront of the SEO world!

The SEO Value of Breadcrumb Navigation

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Website navigation gets a lot of attention when it comes to usability and SEO.

If my own experience with hundreds of websites is any indication, that fourth one likely stands out for some of you.

Do Breadcrumbs impact SEO?

Yes.  As with most on-page content, when breadcrumbs are properly optimized they can improve the overall SEO health and usability of your site in a few ways:

  • Breadcrumbs influence triggering site hierarchy in your search results
  • Improves a Search Engine’s ability of crawl your site
  • Improves a Search Engine’s ability to attribute links more efficiently based on site hierarchy
  • Improves and supplements the usability of your complex navigation

How do I optimize my Breadcrumbs for SEO?

 

  1. Ensure that your breadcrumbs are accurately displaying across your site with an accurate category hierarchy
  2. Add structured markup to your breadcrumbs using the BreadcrumbList schema
  3. Follow Google’s guidelines on Breadcrumb optimization.

Matt Cutts also provided some insight into why, if you already have Breadcrumbs on your site, why it may not be showing in search results:

You’re Doing Google Analytics Wrong

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I’ve had a few conversations the last few months where someone told me that we couldn’t tag something a certain way because Google Analytics isn’t set up to do it that way. And no, I’m not talking about personally identifiable information here. You must be able to think outside the box and break free from what everyone else is doing to ensure you’re getting the most value out of your web data!

Event Tracking

“Action means an Action”

An “Action” was defined to me by the person I was chatting with as the ‘exact action the user takes’. Therefore all of his event actions were labeled as “Click”. My argument was; well, if the event fired didn’t they click? Why do you need to know that? Instead why not use the field to answer better questions, such as Page URL, Click URL, Button/Link Type, etc. See, Google Analytics Event Tracking allows you to put whatever you’d like in those fields (except only an integer for Value of course), so why not take advantage of the flexibility they are offering? How many reports will you pull to see “Event Action=Click” vs. “Event Action=Page URL”. With the former there is no actionable data, but the latter allows you to know which pages may be driving the most clicks. Again, there are a ton of different use cases here, but just don’t get bogged down into thinking you have to follow Google’s naming conventions as law.

Campaign Tracking Variables

“Cost Per Click Advertising”

Campaign Tracking Variables are tough ones, because they do inherently drive a lot of out of the box reports within GA. However, you’re not necessarily handcuffed, especially outside the Pay Per Click walls. For instance, we usually only tag PPC advertising with the “cpc” medium, which is what Google does out of the box. But AdWords is not the only “Cost Per Click” medium in the world. You might be using display ads or social feeds to drive visitors and every time they click you get charged. For me, I’d like to see them all differently as separate line times, so I create separate “Mediums” for them. But alas, grouping is not lost. If you’d still like the group them in an easy report BUT have the flexibility to see them separately Google offers you Custom Channel Groupings. This gem allows you to group inbound traffic in any way you see fit while not losing the granularity you might need to make very specific decisions. This doesn’t just apply to “Mediums” but all of the other ‘UTM’ variables Google provides.

So don’t let someone tell you that “Goofle doesn’t work that way”. It can and it will. Google Analytics is a tool for you to use as you see best to make actionable decisions for your website. Any time you go to tag something just ask yourself, “Will I ever make a marketing or design decision based on this field?” If the answer is no, then get granular!

Attending NowWhat Conference April 26-27

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Now that winter is seemingly on the retreat, we’re gearing up to start making a few stops on the Conference tour this year to stay ahead of trends, speak, meet, greet and hear from incredibly talented individuals in the space

Next Wednesday, we will be kicking the season off by attending the 2017 NowWhat Conference April 26-27th.  (http://2017.nowwhatconference.com/).

Let us know if you’ll be attending as we’d love to meet.