Failure To Plan Is A Plan To Fail

/in , /by

This week I drove across the country visiting our offices and taking in the good ole US of A. Driving that long and that far in between meetings and other obligations meant I really had to know when and where I would be. Before I started the journey I planned out where I would stop for the night as well as rough estimates as to where I’d need gas. Excessive? Maybe, but I never ran out of gas, never went starving, and had a warm bed every night. This reminded me about how important having a plan is. How do you know where to go if you don’t know where you’re going?

Before you begin any digital marketing campaign it is imperative that you develop a plan, such as:

  • Who are we targeting?
  • How do we target them?
  • What do we say to them?
  • Where do we send them?
  • What is their goal?
  • How do we track them?

If you do not have the answers to all of those questions then you ARE NOT ready to launch your campaign. More importantly, don’t look at these within a vacuum. The question that is not listed above is “How does this campaign fit in with our overall strategy?” That question is so important but is rarely asked. If you do not stop and ask yourself these questions you will have gaps within your digital marketing and you’re missing out on opportunities. Do us a solid… ask these questions each and every time you launch a new campaign. You’ll be better off for it and you won’t have to pull off to the side of the road on your tip to more conversions!

How to Focus on Landing Page Content that Converts

/in /by

When most people hear Conversion Centered Design, it’s common that their first thoughts go towards layout, imagery, design psychology and the hierarchy of your landing page’s copy.

However, what most often gets overlooked is whether the copy on the page that is optimized for conversion as well.

X tips on landing page content that converts

Create clear rather than clever landing page copy

As with most campaigns, you want your campaign to stand out and avoid being sterile and lifeless.  Yet, often in the race to be witty, landing page copy can become obtuse and generic, creating confusion for visitors and accidentally replacing your Value Proposition with superlative jargon.

This doesn’t mean your copy needs have the spirit of a toaster manual, it simply means that the key elements in your content’s conversion hierarchy should make it as easy as possible for a visitor to determine the unique value and campaign proposition you’re providing.

 

landing page copy example 1

The above example is clear in what it is offering (free landing page tutorial) and the value the product provides (helps users understand key concepts about building a landing page).

Unbounce Dejargonator Chrome Extension

If you’re looking for a quick scan of superlatives and jargon, Unbounce has created a Chrome extension called the Dejargonator designed to identify fluffy copy that’s worth installing.

Unbounce Dejargonator

5 Second User Test Your Landing Page

Once you have your landing page content to converting level of clarity, it’s worth investing time to see how clear it is to potential users.  When you know your company, your products and services and the goals behind your campaigns, it’s hard to be objective when reviewing whether your landing page copy is clear.

Tools like Usability Hub allow you to create 5 Second User Tests to bring objective data to determine if users can quickly determine things like:

  • What does your product do?
  • How much is your service?
  • What is that you’re offering them?

Quick feedback like this can offer real data on whether your campaign’s landing page copy is clearly communicating critical information or not.

A/B Test Which Landing Page Content Converts

ab testing landing page copy to convert

Landing page copywriting shouldn’t be “set and forget”.  While a starting foundation is important, iterating on that foundation is critical.

 

 

The important part with creating landing page copy that converts is to make it a major part of your conversion optimization plan.

Want to learn more about making clear landing page content?  Unbounce has a great examination of how increase conversions by using clarity in your landing page copy.

The Agency & Client Relationship

/in /by

Hiring an agency is often a difficult task as many companies claim to bring you all the conversions you want despite providing a clear plan to do so. I say that hypocritically as we have that phrase prominently featured on our homepage. It is difficult for many companies or marketing teams to stay on top of the digital trends, so naturally they seek out agencies to help them. It’s a win-win situation, agencies get a client where as clients get the assistance they need. It is all about transparency though, which is something we ensure every client receives Here are some things to consider on both sides of the fence when entering into a new relationship and how to make your expectations very clear from the start.

The Beginning

Both parties should agree on the goals and success metrics up front. Sometimes it’s even beneficial to have these metrics as an addendum to the initial contract. There will be metrics that are quantifiable and those that are not, but both parties need to understand what defines success of the agreement they are engaging in. Here are some quantifiable metrics to consider:

  • X% Increase in organic search traffic & conversion
  • X% Increase in overall website conversion
  • X% Decrease in overall website bounce rate

The Honeymoon is Over

Clients, please give the agencies enough time to implement their strategies. Agencies, please understand that clients need to see results. Never the less, after the initial excitement of starting a new campaign or strategy there will be things that work, some that don’t, and new ideas presented. You must work together as a team to overcome these issues and make tweaks to the initial strategies. Short leashes don’t work for college football coaches and they sure don’t work for digital marketing partnerships.

Black, White & Grey

Web analytics will tell both parties a lot about the effectiveness of campaigns. While the numbers are pretty black and white there will always be grey areas where a conversation regarding the strategy must take place. For instance, Social Media traffic may have an abysmal bounce rate and terrible conversion rate. However, this could be due to the targeting, the creative, the landing page, and a myriad of other issues. It should be the responsibility of the agency to point these things out, but again, this is a team effort and we must work together for our common goals.

A Few Reminders

Hey Agencies…

  • It’s not your client’s fault that they don’t know the proper calls to action or creatives to show
  • Your client needs direction in what content to write and what keywords to target, not just a big list of terms
  • It is your responsibility to be your client’s eyes and ears, so continue to bring new ideas & strategies to the table

Hey Clients…

  • Agencies are an extension of your team, so please keep them in the loop (eg: Product launches, organizational changes, etc)
  • Are you unhappy with the current strategy direction? Work together to change it by discussing your concerns with the agency
  • Do you need help implementing those recommendations? Just ask, because not implementing those recommendations hurts everyone’s chance at success

There are so many things to consider, but at the end of the day it is transparency. Agencies should not be hiding keywords, costs, nor strategies behind some curtain. It is important that you both consider this a partnership and that everyone is on the same team with the same goals in mind!

Redirects: The difference between 301, 302s and Canonical tags

/in /by

When should I use a 301 redirect, a 302 redirect or a canonical tag?  Don’t they do the exact same thing?

If you work even remotely close to SEO, you’ve heard these questions in one form or the other multiple times.

The short-answers:

  1. Are 301s, 302s and canonicals the same thing? No.
  2. When should I use 301 redirects? Whenever you’re permanently moving content to a new domain or URL, have multiple paths to the same page or when merging two sites together.
  3. When should I use 302 redirects? Rarely.  Commonly used whenever an unexpected or limited time event requires redirecting traffic from a URL to a new URL temporarily.
  4. When should I use Canonical tags? When you have duplicate pages and want to tell a search bot what page you’d prefer they display in results.

The long-answer:

While I could spend time reinventing the wheel, Moz put together a fantastic whiteboard post titled “Aren’t 301s, 302s, and Canonicals All Basically the Same?” that covers the long-form answers to this question.

 

 

Content is King, and Queen, and Prince…

/in /by

types of digital contentAl Gore created the internet to distribute content to all (*Disclaimer, Al Gore did not create the internet). Too often we see websites with too much or too little content and no clear strategy about what content they should have. An eMarketer article recently noted that many organizations are just pushing out content with no clear strategy, as evidenced by the chart on the right. We believe in data-backed decision making and content decisions are no different. Below are a few quick things that you could do next week in a white board session to make sure you’re presenting the right content to the right audience.

How to determine the right content for your website

  • What is it ya do here? : Develop 5-10 competitive advantages & business goals. Involve EVERYONE; Sales, Upper Management, R&D…
  • Who are your customers? : Develop about 5 target personas. What are their needs & wants? What do they do an a day-to-day basis online. Are they heavy social users? Are they mostly offline?
  • Does your marketing match their needs? : Too often upper management forces messages or tactics on marketing departments. Take the time to review all of your marketing messages and see if they align with your goals as well as the customers.
  • How do you deliver messages? : Evaluate the tactics you’re using and match them up with what you developed in bullet number two. Are there gaps and areas you might be missing?
  • Are you delivering the right content? : Now back to that eMarketer article! If you’ve followed the steps above you should have a perfect guide for what you do, who to target, how to target them, and what to say to them. Now you need to evaluate the types of content you have on your site. Does it match customer expectations?

    • A few content type case studies;

    PROBLEM: We once worked with a hospital who provided Harvard-level explanations on how they treated patients however their target audience were parents who leaned more towards having a high school education.
    SOLUTION: We developed a shortened version that cut the content down by more than 75% and then provided links to the more in-depth sections for visitors to learn even more.

    PROBLEM: One of our clients featured lengthy thought-leadership content when their audience targets were mostly ‘people on the go’ with little time to read.
    SOLUTION: We helped them to develop infographics that showed their expertise on the subject matter but displayed it in bite-sized pieces so it was easily scannable.

    PROBLEM: An upper-level manager forced the marketing team to take up a large amount of homepage real estate for logos of media sites that had mentioned the brand in the past. After talking with customers they told us these logos were either not seen nor useful in their purchase decision.
    SOLUTION: We removed the logos which brought the Calls to Action front and center. Conversion subsequently increased!

    In conclusion…

    Follow the steps we bulleted above to make sure you’re delivering the content experience that meets your business goals but also matches your customers’ expectations. Give visitors what they want and conversion will climb higher and higher!

Alternatives to Homepage Carousel Sliders (Say No to Sliders)

/in /by

I could spend an entire post describing all the ways sliders are bad for SEO, conversion, page speed and usability.  The reasons why you should avoid homepage sliders have been been the subject of multiple case studies over the years.  If you’re using or considering the use of a content slider on your website, you’re hopefully asking:

What alternatives are there for homepage sliders?

Often, slider’s are used as a way to cheat on the valuable upper-fold of the homepage.  The theory is that if you can fit one marketing message in the most visible area of your homepage, why not ten?

The issue there is on multiple fronts:

  • First, user’s don’t want multiple marketing messages, they want the right content.  Marketing departments want multiple marketing messages on the homepage which leads to the second issue.
  • Second, “Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in Marketing/Senior Management that their latest idea is now on the Home Page” – Lee Duddel

How then do you serve the right content to your audience while satisfying marketing fears that you won’t be showing the right message?

A static hero image with multiple CTAs within

If your issue is that you have more than one main call to action, a simple approach is simply offering them both alongside a striking visual.  Moz.com uses one such tactic well:

screenshot-moz-slider-alternatives

Hero image with a main tagline and two calls to actions. (Screenshot of Moz.com)

A hero background with CTAs split in three areas

Unbounce goes a similar route but splits their messages & calls to actions between the header, the main hero image and directly below it:

screenshot-unbounce-slider-alternatives

Hero background image with a tagline and singular call to action along with a secondary one below it and another in the header. (Screenshot of Unbounce.com)

A singular CTA and quick form

If there’s a real strategic reason for multiple main CTAs on the homepage, then the above are great alternatives.  However, in most cases, having multiple CTAs is typically a symptom of a marketing department not having faith in a singular CTA.

Lyft puts it’s eggs in a singular basket on their homepage, knowing that users will typically already be using their app while potential drivers are more likely to visit their website.

screenshot-lyft-slider-alternatives

Main focus is a simplified form and call to action. (Screenshot of Lyft.com)

What slider alternatives have you used?

The above are great examples of slider alternatives but maybe you’ve found something not listed above? Let us know in the comments!

Internal Campaign Tracking

/in /by

Campaign Tracking Variables are a great tool to evaluate how various traffic sources perform on your website after arriving. However, that is their limitation and where they should stop; upon arrival. Too many times we take a stroll through the Campaigns or Source reports and start to see some odd items that immediately send the color red to the top of the flag pole!

How to use Campaign Tracking Variables

We covered this subject in-depth already, but for the sake of this post we wanted to remind our readers that Campaign Tracking Variables are simply for tracking external traffic that arrive on your website. This may be PPC traffic, Email links, or referral traffic. Basically if you have access to touch the destination URL it should absolutely have campaign tracking variable on it.

Tracking Visitors Interactions on Your Website

Google Analytics Event Tracking ParametersDo not, under any circumstance, ever use campaign tracking variables to track internal campaigns. Your internal ads, upsell areas, sliders, etc should not have any “utm” variables attached the the URL. Instead you should be using Event Tracking. Google Analytics Event Tracking tags allow for three fields (well, technically 4 if you count ‘value’) that you can enter any text you’d like. These fields are called Category, Action and Label (optional). So for instance, maybe your Category is “Internal Advertising” and then your Action is “300×250 Red Upsell Ad” and your Label could be {{Page Path}} (notes what page the visitor was on when they clicked. These events are tracked in a separate way and do not overwrite the previous Campaign Tracking Variables used to enter the site, therefore you can even attribute these clicks to the different campaigns you are tracking upon site entry.

When To Use What

Here’s a quick and handy guide on a few common instances of when to use which tracking method:

Campaign Tracking Variables

  • Pay Per Click ads (if not auto-tagged)
  • Email Marketing links
  • Text links on referring website

Event Tracking Tags

  • Internal advertising campaigns
  • Call To Action (CTA) buttons
  • External links that point to other domains from your site

SEO Pitfalls: Recovering from a Website Redesign

/in /by

Finally, the redesign you’ve been working on for months has launched.  A few weeks later you proudly pull together a report, ready to show everyone that all the pain and anxiety was worth it. However, as you begin to compare metrics you start to realize the hero’s journey you wanted to tell may actually be a tragedy.

Perhaps traffic is down since launch.  The major decline potentially from natural search.  Worse yet, maybe you’re starting to get questions like “Why aren’t we showing up for [insert random keyword here] anymore?!” that you don’t have a good answer for yet.

…Redesigns.

Natural Search Traffic is Down After our Redesign, Now What?

While most guides talk about prepping for your website redesign, I noticed few give tips to those trying to recover from the aftermath of a redesign that’s negatively impacted their SEO efforts. Whether you’re a new employee being being tasked with figuring out what broke after our redesign or the one being held responsible for it, this multi-part series is for you.

The question you’re likely asking is “Where do I even start?”

Investigation #1: Google Search Console

The first question to ask is:

  • Do we have Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) setup on the new site?

Google Search Console is a free SEO tool from Google that provides an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes SEO data that is directly from the source which is invaluable for evaluating your site’s technical SEO health.

Google Search Console

Investigation #2: Review your Robots

The second question to ask is:

  • Did we launch our redesign with the correct Robot.txt and Meta Robots tags?

While this may seem obvious, it’s common during a redesign to use a staging site to test and review your redesign prior to launch.  To prevent these staging sites from being crawled by search engines, many redesigns add restrictive Robots.txt and Meta Robots tag parameters to instruct search bots not to index a staging site.

While rare, it’s not unheard of that these same restrictive parameters get overlooked when your redesign launches.  As you may imagine, this can have disastrous consequences.

Validate your Robots.txt are Correct

Ensure that your robots.txt (usually located at www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt) meets the correct Robots.txt criteria for bots.  You can do this by referencing the Moz Robots.txt & Meta Robots Guide or using the Google Search Console Robots.txt Tester.

Search Console Robots.txt Tester

Validating your Meta Robots tags:

Ensure that that pages on your site that you want indexed don’t have an incorrect meta tag like <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>. You can do this manually by viewing the source of each page, by installing and using SEO toolbar (Moz Toolbar) or using a bulk tool like SEO Reviewtools Robots Checker.

SEO Review Tools Bulk Robots Checker

Investigation #3: Review your Redirects

The third question to ask is:

  • Did our redesign change the URL structure of the site in any way?

No. Redirects are likely not to blame.

Yes. (even slightly). Start your research there.  There’s a reason every SEO checklist for website redesigns mention redirects (301s, 302s, 307s, & Meta Redirects). Very few technical SEO elements create the collateral search damage that broken or incorrect redirects have post-redesign.

Validate your Redirects are Correct

301s, 302s/307s and Meta Redirects: Before starting, it’s important to have a firm grasp on the different kinds of redirects and how they impact SEO.  Moz has a great guide Redirects and on the differences between each, explaining how and when they should be used.

Search Console Crawl Errors Report: The first sign that broken or incorrect redirects may be negatively impacting your organic traffic and rankings can be found by checking your Google Search Console Crawl Errors report.  Note your redesign launch date and see if there’s been an increase in 404 errors.  If so, this can give you a great starting list of old URLs and where they’re being linked from.  Cross check these against your current URLs to see if these are URLs that need to be 301 redirected to their locations or if they no longer exist.

Note on 404 errors: Keep in mind, 404 errors an expected part of websites and aren’t always a sign that something is wrong in cases where it’s an actual page that no longer exists in any form on your website.

Google Search Console Crawl Errors Screenshot

Double-check preferred versions of URLs: Another common redirect mistake in redesigns is overlooking simple default redirects that can lead to rampant content duplication These include:

  • Preferred URL Redirects: 301 redirects to your preferred subdomain (www.domain.com or domain.com), HTTP/HTTPS version, directory structure (/page/, /page, /page.html, etc) and URL case-sensitivity (/page/, /PAGE/, /Page/, etc).  Depending on the CMS or server setup you use, making sure that there aren’t duplicate versions of each page simply by changing any of the above is a rare but often critical aspect that can be overlooked.
  • Duplicate Title/Meta Descriptions in Search Console: A great way to catch hints of duplication of URLs is by checking the Google Search Consoles HTML Improvements.  Often these are simple mistakes of using the same Title or Meta Description on multiple pages.  However, after a redesign, it can be a quick way to catch if the same page is being crawled on multiple URLs due to a lack of redirects or proper canonical tags which I’ll cover more in-depth in a future blog post.

Google Search Console Duplicate Content

The above should give you a good start.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding additional guides on canonical tags, on-page SEO elements and more.  Be sure to check back.

 

Using Dimensions in AdWords to Optimize Campaigns

/in /by

Google AdWords needn’t be difficult to manage and you don’t need expensive tools like WordStream nor Marin if you’re a small company or have a small budget under $2,000 per month. AdWords offers several amazing tools out of the box that are simple to use and provide great optimization benefits. Below are a few easy dimensions AdWords provides that can help you spend your money more efficiently.

adwords dimensions

AdWords Dimension: Hour of Day

Since you set AdWords budgets by day often times clients run out of money before the day is done. Now, AdWords does have the option of spreading your budget more evenly throughout the timeframe you select but even then it is possible to miss out on qualified visitors. By seeing what times of day searchers not only click on your ads but also go through and convert you are able to adjust your budget for a more optimized timeframe. For instance, on one client’s account we found that PPC conversions only happened over the span of nine to three. So we adjusted the budgets and our Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) sank dramatically as a result!

AdWords Dimension: Day of Week

Similar to Hour of Day the Day of Week dimension allows you to target your spend even more effectively. Knowing the exact days that searchers click and convert more allows you to target those days only or perhaps spend less on those days. This helps further reduce your CPA and optimizes your overall monthly spend.

AdWords Dimension: Geographic

If you are a nationwide brand it is often tempting to target the entire United States with your PPC campaigns. However different geographies convert better than others. The Geographic dimension allows you to see State, Region, Metro, City and Most Specific Location data. Additionally you can also see if a searchers was physically in a certain location or if they were just searching terms about the location. This may help with travel, mortgage, or other companies that serve customers outside their local geography.

Use these great reports to better optimize your PPC budget and drive more conversions!

Writing SEO Titles that Encourage Clicks

/in /by

If you’ve been working in the SEO field for any length of time, you’re likely familiar with the standard Title template:

Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Tertiary Keywords | Brand Name

The idea that it’s good SEO to have all your keywords in your Title Element, while a proven method, has begun to lose it’s luster over the last few years.  While it allows a Title element to cover all bases and may help admittedly with ranking signals, more and more Google is paying attention to engagement and user-intent than ever before.

This also ignores the increase in search prowess for the typical user who has begun to attribute certain mental models to what they encounter in search results.  Take for instance these two examples of a Title element:

  • Affordable Desks | Cheap Desks | Budget Desks – Desks-For-Less
  • Quality affordable desks that fit any budget | Desks-For-Less

The first hits all the standard marks.  Lead with your primary keyword, list your secondary keywords and your brand.  However, when compared to a title wrote towards the intent of the user, it reads as spammy and robotic while the latter still includes the primary keyword but drives home their value.   The issue at hand has become that optimizing Titles has been long stuck in optimizing for rank while meta-descriptions were to influence engagement versus the more modern ideal which is optimizing both for engagement.

What many marketers forget is that their search results are not just competing for rank but competing for engagement against results that may be more optimized for relevance and engagement than theirs.  Take for instance these results for “Fashionable shoes for tall men” (I’m 6’8″ so this search happens daily):

google search results for tall fashion

Despite my searching for what fashionable shoes for tall men, many of the results are targeting someone wanting a shoe that makes them taller.  Taking that to the Title Element, compare the Tall Shoes | Height Increasing Shoes  to the 10 Style Tips for Tall Guys from an NBA Stylist result and imagine which would be more enticing to me based on my search intent?

When approaching the Title element, try and consider why a user is searching for your products or services.  While keyword data may return a number of variants for the same product, the days of simply adding each into your Title and measuring its success solely on rank are behind us.  The goal should be combining your keyword data with the topics and user intent behind your customer’s searches so that your search results provide the most relevant option to them.

Want to learn more?  Moz has put together a good list of 8 old school SEO best practices that are no longer effective including a section on Title elements.