When it comes to content management systems (CMS), over 45% of the top websites use WordPress. Even Google’s own Matt Cutts chooses WordPress for his personal blog, stating that WordPress takes care of 80 – 90% of search engine optimization. In this post, we’re going to look at the reasons why you should choose WordPress for optimum search and social media optimization.

The Themes 

Unlike standard website templates, many WordPress themes are designed for looks and functionality. Companies that specialize in creating SEO-friendly premium WordPress designs offer WordPress frameworks and themes that include the following:

Clean Code

Your website’s code does not have to be perfect, but it should be as clean as possible in order to ensure that your website runs at optimum performance. WordPress themes from reputable developers tend to have a very clean code for the best performance possible.

You can always use the W3C Markup Validator tool to check your website’s code as well as any WordPress theme you are considering purchasing. For the latter, simply enter the URL of the theme’s demo page.

Responsive Design

Many WordPress themes have incorporated responsive design to ensure users can enjoy your website on any device. Responsive design is Google recommended as it enables you to serve one website URL to any viewer, regardless of whether they are on their desktop or their smartphone. A responsive WordPress theme will also ensure that your website will benefit from increased mobile traffic following Google’s latest update.

Built-in SEO Optimization

Theme developers such as StudioPress and DIYthemes include built-in search optimization with their frameworks and child themes. When you install one of their themes, you will automatically have access to search engine optimization fields for your website’s homepage, pages, posts, and archive pages.

These fields will allow you to enter basic on-site optimization elements, custom SEO titles, meta descriptions, and keywords, as well as mark specific posts and pages as no follow or no index when needed. For the site as a whole, you will have the option to no index or no archive specific pages or archive pages, append specific text to post and page titles, and configure additional SEO settings.

The Plugins

If you don’t have a WordPress theme that comes with built-in search engine optimization fields, then you can use a plugin. The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast is one of the best free optimization plugins. You can use it to implement all of the fields you need to optimize your WordPress website’s homepage, pages, posts, and archives for search.

In addition to optimizing your website for search, WordPress SEO can help you with social media optimization as well. For individual posts, you can customize the description and image that will be used when people share your content on Facebook. For your website as a whole, you can configure Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter Cards to customize the look of your content further when shared on those networks.

Another way to socially-optimize your content is by adding social sharing buttons. Plugins like Digg Digg and ShareThis will allow you to implement social sharing buttons quickly for the top social networks without having to code them into your WordPress theme.

Yoast can even help you build links from content scrapers by using the RSS footer setting. Just by adding a simple link that says the post was originally published on your website, you can claim authorship of your content, even when it is stolen.

Beyond the basics, you will find that there are many additional WordPress plugins that can help you with search and social optimization.

You can install plugins that will automatically build internal links, help you create 301 redirects, optimize for video content, and optimize for local content.

The Services

Beyond design and optimization, there are lots of great service providers for WordPress website owners. Hosting companies such as WP Engine and Web Synthesis host only WordPress websites, so they are experts at creating safe, secure, and performance-enhanced environments for WordPress websites. High-performing websites are user-friendly, and Google loves to serve websites that users love.

If you prefer your hosting company but, need a little extra security, Sucuri can monitor your WordPress website for malware and hacking. Their security can prevent your website from getting marked as infected in search results.

Choosing WordPress will allow you to have a widely supported and user-friendly website, making SEO and social engagement hassle free.

The post Why Choose WordPress for Search & Social Optimization appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Over the past two decades B2B marketing has emerged as a separate and distinct discipline in its own right, with significantly different marketing practices from those used to reach the consumer or end user. This has implications that marketers and business owners need to take into account when you’re implementing a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy, to maximize the effectiveness of your investment.

Here are the main criteria that make B2B marketing different and unique.

Product Types; What to Expect

In B2B marketing, products are different from those that are typically distributed in the B2C environment. Firstly, they are often more complex and require a higher level of knowledge and expertise on the part of the buyer than consumer products do. Even in the case of consumer products that are considered more complex, such as motor vehicles or computers, the buyer’s choice is based on fairly basic criteria. A car buyer might select a new vehicle based on aesthetics, speed, quality, reputation and comfort, while a private user buying a computer will take account of the unit’s weight, reliability and the quantity of storage.

With business products, issues such as appearance are seldom a factor. The purchase of industrial equipment, for example, requires the buyer to know the purpose of the item, its integration into the purchasing company’s processes and the deliverables expected from it. He (or she) needs to clearly understand the role of the purchase in contributing to the company’s operations and by extension, its profitability. This means that the marketing process needs to fulfill the buyer’s requirements for

• Detailed Technical Specifications
• In-depth Analyses of the Output & Functionality
• Operational Costs
• Productivity Statistics
• Return on Investment (ROI)

In addition, companies that sell goods or services in a B2B marketplace typically provide either high cost items (in small or large quantities) or low cost items in large quantities. Regardless of the size of the item, this means the overall purchase cost in B2B marketing is generally higher than it is in B2C. Even products not intended for resale are destined to generate profit in some form or another, which makes ROI an important factor.

Audience Attributes

Target markets are different in B2B, with more focus on C-level leadership than exists in consumer marketing. Prospective buyers are typically more sophisticated, at least in terms of their specific industry, and more knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the product. Target market segments are usually smaller groups and segmentation is based less on behaviours and more on factors such as industry, size of operations and client base. And even when the purchaser is the end user, it isn’t an individual buying for personal use but on behalf of a company that will use the product in the generation of its business.

B2B Marketing Methods

The methods used to marketing to B2B customers have a much higher focus on ROI than in the B2C world. This can be seen particularly in the following three areas:

Pricing

Where price is the driving force for consumers and often comes second to potential returns, the price point itself is less of an issue for business clients than individuals. The primary driver in most B2B transactions is for the buyer to spend his money in the most productive fashion and get the best return, which often means spending more to get the best quality, longest life-span or lowest maintenance costs.

CRM

B2B sales are more relationship-driven than B2C, which is usually product-driven. This makes strong client relationship management (CRM) a critical aspect of B2B marketing. Suppliers often have tough competition in their marketplace, and your relationships with your clients may be the only factor differentiating you from your competitors.

Communication

Reaching a B2B audience requires the use of different communication channels. Marketers rely heavily on professional networks, in both physical environments and on virtual platforms such as LinkedIn. Communicating the features and benefits of the product or service effectively uses methods such as content marketing, with a strong focus on items such as webinars, white papers, product demos and trials.

The Buying Process

The sales cycle for B2B products and services are usually longer and more complex, with multi-step processes that require higher levels of consultation. Direct purchases take place less frequently, at least for first-time purchases. Once the relationship is established and recurring purchases become the norm, B2B customers might automate their ordering procedures and require less engagement, but initially the levels are higher.

Buyers need to feel secure in the fact that they have made a rational purchasing decision based on the business value of the product. Fulfilling this need requires you to develop a robust B2B inbound marketing plan, which builds awareness of your brand and develops the lifetime value of your customer through sound relationship management.

The post What is B2B Marketing & Why is it Different? appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to enable your website to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. A study by Compete.com showed that 53% of clicks from users searching online go to the first result on the list.

Reaching the first page of results has always been challenging, but with the constant changes in the way Google indexes content it has become even more so. Bad SEO can harm your business and your online profile, so it’s imperative that your optimization is done both correctly and cost-effectively.

Here are 8 reasons why you should hire an expert in SEO to do it for you.

Time Saving

Attempting to do your own SEO is hugely time-consuming, especially if you or your Chief Marketing Officer is an SEO novice. One of the primary reasons why companies outsource various marketing functions is to save time, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2014 report on B2B benchmarks, budget and trends. Free up your time to focus on the core competencies that are critical to your business operations.

Knowledge and Expertise

Someone proficient in SEO has the knowledge and expertise to employ best practices for coding as well as optimizing the structure of your site. He (or she) will conduct an analysis of your website’s performance and do advanced keyword research on what users are searching for in your industry. They will evaluate the strategy of your competitors to see what is working for them, provide advice on additional content required and help you develop a plan for producing the content strategy and search engine-friendly content you need.

Keeping Up with Changes

Google updates its search algorithm several times a day, according to leading SEO consultancy Moz.com. That makes it fairly difficult for the busy marketing executive to focus on tracking and implementing changes as fast as necessary. For example, Google’s latest update—nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”—went live on April 21, 2015. Within a couple of days, those that were prepared were afforded a ranking increase in mobile search while less prepared websites watched their mobile web traffic declined. An SEO expert, however, makes it his business to know precisely when new updates are due to kick in and to ensure that they are implemented.

Delivering Cost Effective Operations

You can spend a lot of money on optimizing your website for organic search, and unless you have a reasonable degree of expertise you could be wasting your funds. For SEO to be cost-effective, it needs to be a continuous, consistent process. An expert treats every page of your website content as a potential campaign, optimizing it to target prospective customers in different stages of the buying cycle.

By delivering value-driven on-page SEO in conjunction with offsite optimization and strategic link building, your expert can help to build you an online profile that appears natural to the search engines.

Avoid Expensive Mistakes

It’s no secret that time is money, and this is particularly true when it comes to SEO. What might seem like an insignificant error can cause a massive problem with the search engines. For example, using your primary keyword a little too often or naming the images in your blog posts incorrectly can constitute over-optimization, even if it’s unintentional. This can cause your website to be penalized by search engines and possibly blacklisted, resulting in a loss of traffic, reduced number of sales leads, and the need to spend time and money regaining lost ground in search rankings.

Analysis of Results

Regardless of how well your website is optimized, SEO can only truly serve you if you’re analyzing your results on a regular basis and making adjustments accordingly. Metrics that require ongoing monitoring include:

• The number of visitors referred by the search engines
• Ranking of key terms and phrases in search
• Conversion rates associated with search queries

With continuous monitoring, any drop in your search traffic can be diagnosed and addressed immediately, according to SearchEngineWatch.com.

Easy-To-Understand Reports

It’s essential to generate and interpret reports on the performance of your SEO activities. By doing so, you’re able to evaluate whether your efforts are helping you to achieve your business goals, determine the impact of your marketing on operations and identify new opportunities or threats from competitors. An SEO expert understands the significance of the statistics provided in the reports and will convert them into usable business intelligence that you can easily digest.

Improves ROI

When you’re investing hard-earned money in an inbound marketing strategy, it’s essential to do it correctly if you want to realize the full benefit of your expenditure. By contracting an expert to deliver against specific, measurable goals you’ll boost your brand recognition, improve your ROI and reduce the amount of time and energy you’d have to expend if you attempted to do it yourself.

SEO does not equal DIY. Get an expert and do it right.

The post 8 Reasons You Need To Hire an SEO Expert appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

When you’re trying to reach a particular audience, your success depends on how thoroughly you’re able to target them. It also depends on your market positioning and segmentation, but to achieve both of those you need, first and foremost, to know who your ideal buyer is—and how to reach him (or her). These six steps will give you a clear road map for how to target your ideal buyer today.

Identify Your Customer Profile

This is more complex than identifying whether your ideal customer is an individual or a businessperson. You need to determine what solution your product or service offers the buyer. This might seem intuitive, but it’s like Features vs. Benefits—the answer isn’t always obvious. For example, what does an Enterprise management company really offer? A product/service, or a solution to a problem?

In the B2B environment, it’s necessary to drill down deeper than just identifying companies who can make use of your solution. Is your ideal buyer the “chooser” or the “end user?” Specifically, who in the company is your buyer— the CEO, the CIO or CMO? Or does your typical customer have a purchasing department and if so, who has the authority needed to make the buying decision for your product category?

Gather Data

To target your buyer effectively, you need to research him and understand what his needs and wants are, as well as the triggers that guide him to the next stage of his buying cycle. This requires research, so gather data such as:

• Company financial information
• Recent sales volumes
• Delivery turnaround times
• Target’s levels of customer satisfaction
• Location
• Storage capabilities

This intelligence will help you to determine the customer’s buying power, and whether he is in the market for your offering.

For B2C clients, you need basic demographic information, but the more in-depth knowledge you have of his circumstances and requirements, the better your targeting will be.

Create Buyer Personas

Creating buyer personas is a complex process. According to a study by ITSMA, only 15% of respondents were satisfied that they got it right. Unless your offering is highly specialized, it’s likely you’ll need more than one persona. On average, most marketers create four main personas to represent segments of their market, although you can have more if you need to according to Barbra Gago, Director of Marketing and Growth at Greenhouse Software.

Gago suggests assigning a name to each persona, along with full lifestyle scenario: Name, age, familial circumstances, income level, career goals and aspirations (particularly important for B2B), pain points, interests and hobbies. One of the best ways to do this, says HubSpot’s Ellie Mirman, is to recruit interviewees from your pool of existing customers. Ask them questions such as:

• What does a day in their lives look like?
• What experience are they looking for when they purchase your product or service?
• What are the common objections when they’re considering making a buying decision?

Determine How to Reach Buyers

Once you know who you’re targeting, the “how” becomes the primary question. How do you reach them, using what media channels, and which methods/formats are most effective?

To answer this, you need to establish where your ideal buyer goes for information. Does he typically search online? Does he consume content such as blog posts, articles or video clips? What are his thoughts about direct mail and email marketing, and which sources does he trust—recommendations from friends and colleagues, peer reviews or industry experts?

When you know the answers to these questions, you can develop your presence in these places and work on building your credibility in the buyer community.

Develop Suitable, Compelling Content

Creating content that convinces your buyer to take action is a fine art. Statistics show when your target accesses your material, you have 30 seconds to convince him you can help. Your buyer, not your solution, needs to be the focus of your content, according to the Buyer Persona Institute:

• Develop a content strategy and get everyone involved on board with the approach you want to take.
• Create content grounded in insights about your buyer’s reasons to choose you over your competitors.
• Dump the marketing-speak in favour of customer-centric material that informs, educates and provides valuable advice. Your buyer is much likely to come back if you’re telling him what he needs to know, rather than trying to sell him your product, according to statistics from Jacobs and Clevenger.

Promote in the Right Places

Promote your company, your content and your solution in all the places where your buyer is likely to be found.

• Engage with him online through discussion forums, and get it in front of his eyes through marketing automation and CRM programs.
• Use social media: Your ideal buyer is a person first, and the majority of educated people with purchasing power in the Western hemisphere are on social media–even in

Use Social Media

Your ideal buyer is a person first, and the majority of educated people with purchasing power in the Western hemisphere are on social media–even in the B2B environment.

Employ best search engine optimization practices to get found online. And when your buyer starts to bite, shepherd him through the various stages of his buying cycle using effective lead nurturing methods until he becomes a loyal customer.

The post How To Target Your Ideal Buyer in 6 Steps appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Reports are a vital tool for determining whether your marketing expenditure is delivering value. They’re only useful, however, if you receive—and use—them regularly. What’s equally important, however, is that you are reviewing the right metrics to provide the information you need. Here are 8 critical reports your marketing agency need to be building you each month.

Conversions

Tracking and monitoring conversions indicates the value your various marketing channels contribute to your overall strategic goals, according to HubSpot. Conversion reports should provide in-depth information on factors such as:

• Macro conversions, which are those supporting your overarching business goals such as submission of contact forms, scheduling a consultation or making a purchase.
• Micro conversions, which are steps towards the macro conversions including the length of time visitors spend on a page, how they interact with your social media and pay-per-click results.
• Cost per conversion, or the amount you spend to achieve those conversions. When this is compared with the value of the conversion it provides you with your return on investment (ROI).
• Leads generated per channel / offer, so you can identify which opportunities are the most successful.

This report provides detailed information on how website visitors interact with your content, and which of those interactions are the ones driving conversions.

Unique Visitors

It’s one thing to know how many visits or page impressions your site gets, but unique visitors are what you really want to know. Your marketing agency should provide you with a monthly report detailing how many individual users came to your site each day, week, month and year.

A unique visitor is counted once each day, but is also counted once for the purposes of weekly, monthly and annual reporting. This information gives you a sense of the size of your audience, according to Anthony Valela of Agility CMS. It enables you to compare the traffic to your website year over year, and determine whether you’re experiencing growth.

Bounce Rate

Your website’s “comings” may be important but so are the “goings,” and by tracking your bounce rate you can identify what’s not working. Analyzing a high bounce rate or one that increases over time can highlight whether you have pages that have low usability, don’t convert visitors easily or take too long to load. It can also help identify products and services that get a lower response. By reviewing patterns in your bounce rate you can pinpoint and adjust pages that aren’t working.

Keyword Performance

The success of your inbound marketing hinges partly on the accuracy of keyword research and usage, so keyword performance is a critical report. This is important not only for you to know which keywords are driving the majority of your traffic and leads, but to:

• Identify negative keywords and the results of using them
• Monitor your quality score on Google and ranking in search
• Know which keywords to use to optimize your AdWords campaigns
• Optimize landing pages to draw the most traffic.

Content Performance

The majority of content channels are unique, and it’s important to know how well your content is performing on each. With content becoming a “big ticket” expenditure item for marketers, you want to know just what it’s achieving.

Your agency should be able to provide a comprehensive content performance report that shows which pieces of content drove the most traffic and evaluates the results of each channel against a set of universal KPIs.  That’s the only way you’ll know how your content is doing overall.

Landing Page Performance

Your landing pages have specific reasons for existence and specific roles to play. By tracking and interpreting monthly landing page reports you can identify how each offer is received by the market, how usable the page is, how long the average user spends on the page and how often he comes back to it. This will give you the information to conclude how well your offers are doing, and whether they need adjustment.

Summary of Work Completed

Do you sometimes wonder what your marketing agency is up to all day? You might be surprised to find out just how much work goes into making your marketing happen. The better your agency, the more effortless campaigns will appear—and that means better talent, more work and effort put into creating them. Agencies know their customers don’t always understand what they do, however, and comprehensive reporting is a critical aspect of the client relationship. Regular reporting gives the agency an opportunity to communicate with clients, and a summary of work provides the information you need. For any sizeable client, most agencies create feedback reports detailing what has taken place during the month.

Challenges, Wins & Recommendations

Your marketing agency should provide you with reports on the progress of your account, including challenges presented, wins achieved and recommendations for ongoing success. Your job is managing the business while theirs is to market it, so you’re entitled to feedback on how well it’s going and anything else you need.

The post 8 Reports Your Marketing Agency Needs To Be Building Every Month appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Measuring your marketing efforts effectively takes more than simply getting monthly reports on your website’s performance. A recent survey by ITSMA found that marketers generally aren’t measuring the things top executives care about, with the result that the C-Suite typically doesn’t use marketing data to inform business decisions. You can change that today, by implementing approaches that will help you to measure marketing outcomes effectively and develop intelligence that supports your business strategy.

Create Clear Objectives

The old saying “how long is a piece of string?” applies really well to measuring marketing outcomes. After all, it’s difficult to measure anything unless you know what you’re trying to achieve. Your marketing objectives should support the business goals of your company, both in the short term and the long term. Common marketing objectives include issues such as:

• Growing your market share to reach a specific percentage
• Increasing the return on marketing investment based on lifetime customer value
• Customer retention based on effective relationship management
• Achieving a specific ratio of new versus existing customers
• Spearheading the company’s expansion into new target markets

According to Six Sigma principles, sound objectives enable you to create benchmarks to measure your performance against goals and determine whether your marketing is achieving the outcomes you need it to.

Develop Key Performance Indicators

Marketing reports typically track and record metrics such as the number of visitors who come to a website, the leads generated and the value of those leads. Sure, those are important data to have, but without key performance indicators to compare them against, you’re merely tracking activities, not measuring outcomes.

Create key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:

• the number of qualified prospects identified in each given period,
• content downloads
• the profitability score of your key customers
• the closure rate of your sales leads, and
• your customer retention score.

This will help you to determine whether you’re achieving what you set out to do.

Implement Comprehensive Analytics Methods

Having the information is one thing, but analyzing and interpreting it is another. Avoid presenting your C-suite with pages and pages of statistical data; rather, identify comprehensive ways to pull out the salient facts and provide executive summaries that clearly state what your marketing outcomes are.

Analyze the data and identify where your opportunities for improvement lie, and what is your best way of realizing improvements. According to the Content Marketing Institute, if your data shows activity on a specific channel, in-depth analysis will enable you to find the best ways to leverage that channel to optimize the results.

Monitor & Review Reports Regularly

Things happen quickly on the World Wide Web. Unless you’re monitoring your metrics and reviewing your reports weekly—or at least monthly—you could be in for an unpleasant surprise. What was working last week may not be working this week, and vice versa. By reviewing your reports regularly you can continue to align your marketing outcomes with the company’s missions and goals—even as things change.

Measuring Your Marketing Efforts Effectively

The whole point of your marketing strategy is to achieve sales and drive your revenue. To determine whether your marketing is achieving its desired outcomes, it’s important to decide how to calculate the value of your sales and then to compare it to your revenue projections.

Identify Underperforming Areas & Adjust Activities

Adapt or die. By benchmarking your performance and comparing it to your goals, you’ll discover some marketing activities aren’t working as well as you’d like. Evaluate these over a specific period of time and adjust your strategy accordingly.

It’s also necessary to occasionally review your measurement methods. How well are your methods doing to record and identify outcomes? Are you getting all the information you need, or are you getting superfluous details that aren’t necessary? Adjust your methods and review them again after a few months to see whether the quality of your data enables better control.

Review ROI Against Overall Business Strategy

Finally, review your return on marketing investment and compare it against your overall business strategy. Does it correlate with your budget and projections? Are you achieving the goals you set out in the timeframe you intended? This is the final step towards helping you decide if your marketing is delivering the outcomes you want and need, or whether you need to make drastic changes.

Measuring the outcomes of your marketing activities is crucial to maintaining a “big picture” view of your business. It’s not enough to simply track the metrics, but by gathering data and then using it to build a detailed report of what works with your customers you can capitalize on those factors that are effective. The result will be continuous growth and improvement—in both your marketing program and your company overall. And that will make the C-Suite very happy.

The post Are You Measuring Your Marketing Efforts Effectively? appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Your keyword strategy is a cornerstone of your inbound marketing program. It helps you to coordinate your online content across your website and social media profiles, ties in your search engine marketing with your organic search results and gets you found among customers who are looking for your product and service. That’s IF you get it right. If you get the strategy wrong, however, it can actually do the opposite—destroy your lead conversion efforts completely!

When is a Keyword Strategy Wrong?

Your keyword strategy is unlikely to deliver the results you want if any of these criteria apply:

• It’s not well researched
• You’re using mainly highly competitive keywords
• It doesn’t include long-tail keyword phrases
• You haven’t researched your competitors and what they’re doing—a primary mistake among marketers, according to HubSpot
• You’re trying to rank for too many—or too few—keywords
• Your keywords don’t focus on profitable terms for your industry
• You don’t monitor changes in search trends regularly
• You aren’t reviewing and adjusting your keyword strategy periodically
• You haven’t build buyer personas and matched those keywords to those personas
• You haven’t segmented keywords into informational, transactional and directional “buckets”

In addition, a keyword strategy that doesn’t incorporate concepts such as semantic search will be unlikely to deliver much in the way of results, according to Search Engine Watch.

What Are the Consequences?

All these actions can cause your keyword strategy to be less than effective. We took a look at the way in which each action (or lack of it) impacts your lead conversion:

Inadequate Research

Doing keyword research enables you to identify the search terms your target audience is most likely to use when looking for your product or service. You’ll discover the actual words and terms people use when they talk about the problem your product solves.

Research also helps you turn up more obscure search terms that you’re less likely to think of initially, but which could generate more website traffic because they have lower competition (we’ll say more about that issue later). The better your traffic, the higher your number of leads and the earlier you’ll achieve a return on your marketing investment.

Without adequate research, therefore, not only can you expect to be using the wrong keywords and losing leads, but you’ll waste money, too. Instead of focusing on keywords that deliver results, you’ll be spending resources and cash on words that don’t result in conversions.

Using the Wrong Keywords

The whole point of a keyword strategy is to improve your ranking in search, so more people will find your website. That’s not going to happen when your listing comes up on page 973,000, is it? Take “marketing” for example: Google turns up 1.7 billion results for the word, and the users could be searching for marketing products, services, lessons, news or campaigns, among dozens of other options!

Ok, that’s what you call a really high competition keyword, and the higher the competition the lower your ROI. By reviewing all the related keywords that turn up in your research, however, you can identify lower competition keywords and phrases that are being used by far fewer marketers. Those exponentially increase your chances of being found in the results, because not as many people are searching for them.

In the past, a keyword strategy typically focused on keywords with the highest search volume, and downplayed attributes such as relevance and competition. That’s no longer the case according to Forbes.com, and a strategy that does so is likely to gradually slow down the number of leads you convert from your website until very few are coming in.

Skipping Testing and Evaluation

You’d be surprised at the number of companies that do excellent keyword research and even halfway good content marketing, but they stop short of including testing and evaluation in their keyword strategy!

But, here’s the thing: No strategy is complete without specific deliverables against which to measure its progress. Even having benchmark criteria in place is no guarantee of success, either, and unless your strategy includes a thorough performance evaluation you’re minimizing your chances of getting good lead conversions.

But that can’t be, you say. Our strategy covers all the right touch points for research and implementation, it’s well funded and it’s working, you say. Is it? Is it really working as well as it could be, and if so, how do you know that? Or are you just assuming that because you get some lead conversions, the strategy is a success? Here’s the rub: for many marketers, their keywords become permanent fixtures in their lives, according to Search Engine Land.

Many business owners and C-Suite execs compile a list of words associated with their brand and expect marketers to use those time and again in their content marketing. Sure, the leads come in. Certainly, there are conversions. But are those words continuing to perform, day after day and month after month? Can you track them through both your organic and paid search, all the way to the final step in your lead conversion process?

If you can’t answer these questions conclusively, you might have the wrong keyword strategy in place. Ditch the poorly performing keywords and replace them with well-researched, comprehensive ones.

Overlooking Other Players

A keyword strategy that ignores what your competitors are doing is destined for failure. Analyzing the key terms and methods used by other players in your industry is crucial if you want to maximize the number of leads you get from your site. With the wrong keywords, you’ll be missing out on capturing market share, or failing to target the audience with the terms your opposition is using.

One of the main reasons you use keywords in the first place is to improve your ranking in organic search, and 2014 research from Moz.com shows that 67.6% of click throughs go to websites that appear in the top 5 spots on Google. So if you aren’t targeting the same keywords as those in the first three positions, you’re effectively giving away the traffic to the companies that do.

Getting it Right

Ok, enough about what happens if you get it wrong. Instead, let’s look at what’s needed to get it right. Apart from the points raised so far, there are other things you can do to ensure that your keyword strategy is sound:

Focusing on Profitable Terms

Find out which keywords actually result in conversions. You can get this kind of information by implementing content marketing with closed-loop analytics such as the HubSpot methodology, or working with an experienced marketer who has access to the software and systems needed to provide the information.

Having a Mix of Keyword Types

Some keywords are harder to rank for than others. That’s no reason not to include them in your strategy, though; the secret to achieving continual improvement in your search rankings is to have an even spread of keywords at all levels of difficulty. Target terms with low search volume and low competition such as long-tail keywords to drive highly qualified traffic, while simultaneously working at improving your rank for the commonly used words that have high search volumes.

Staying Up-to-Date on Search Trends

No matter how good your keyword strategy is, if Google makes significant changes to its algorithm it can throw you off kilter overnight. Don’t sit back and wait to be surprised by a drop in lead conversions; make a point of keeping up with trends in the world of search engines so you can adapt as quickly as they change.

A Matter of Semantics

These days, it’s important to take note of the trend towards semantic search, which is the way search engines work to not only find the keywords, but to understand what the user is searching for. To do so, the algorithm has to take into account the context of the search query. This is where your long-tailed keywords come into play—they provide a concept or a clue for the algorithm, instead of simply giving a single word.

The Final Word 

From all this data, it’s clear that a keyword strategy is much more than simply identifying the primary words that describe your product or service and stuffing them onto your website somewhere. It’s essential that your strategy is well thought-out, researched, refined and tested.

You also need spend the time required on keeping up with changing trends, evaluating your strategy’s performance and making the adjustments necessary to ensure your content continues to deliver results.

So, how successful are YOUR keywords proving to be, based on the number of leads you get? Are you unwittingly destroying your conversion opportunities by having the wrong strategy in place?

The post How The Wrong Keyword Strategy Can Destroy Lead Conversion appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

It’s easy to assume that once you outsource your search engine optimization (SEO) to a company specializing in it, you’re going to see a surge in website traffic and inbound leads. It would be great if you get those, but the fact is that good SEO takes both time and regular monitoring, and you need to evaluate the deliverables from your SEO provider against more scientific benchmarks than just an upward spike (or two!).

Here are our top 10 methods of evaluating your SEO company logically and objectively, which you can start to apply even before you begin to see an increase in your bottom line.

#1: Examine the Quality of Communications

After approval of the SEO strategy and signing of the agreement, the communications with your provider is probably the most important aspect of the contract, according to Moz.com:

• Establish how often you will get updates about your account, what level of detail to expect and what format the reports will take.
• Find out who your contacts are and how to get hold of them, and schedule regular discussions well in advance.
• Ask for confirmation of the communications plan in writing if possible, so you can be sure your expectations are clearly understood.

It’s critical for you to know from the outset who your dedicated SEO account manager is, partly because it’s not likely to be the salesperson you dealt with to finalize the relationship.

#2: Assess the Keyword Strategy

A vital task for your SEO company is the implementation of a customer-centric keyword strategy. Even if the whole keyword thing seems like a foreign language to you, ask to see the strategy and evaluate it to make sure they are using these updated methods and practices:

1. The strategy should be based on keyword research and competitive analysis combined with your website’s Google Analytics data
2. It should include a list of keywords that apply to your various products and services
3. The list should also be relevant to your industry
4. Keywords must include less common terms with lower competition to reduce the amount of unqualified traffic and deliver a higher ROI from your SEO efforts.

Your company’s keyword strategy should also include “long-tail” keywords (phrases) that deliver more closely targeted traffic and often attract much faster conversions, according to SearchEngineLand.com.

#3: Evaluate Reporting and Analytics Quality

Regardless how competent your SEO company is at delivering the goods, unless you know what’s being delivered you’re still going to be in the dark. Often, service providers are excellent at doing their jobs but not quite so great at providing reports to clients. While part of this falls under the quality of communication, it’s not enough to simply receive the reports. You have to be getting the right information, and it needs to be presented in a format that your C-Suite can easily understand.

Some of the reports you should be getting regularly include the number of visitors to your site, the way your landing pages are performing and the speed with which users leave your site.

#4: Review Website Rankings

These days, SEO is largely about making your website more relevant to users, building its visibility and importance through your online profile and your position in search. Google ranks sites according to how well they meet these criteria, based on ranking factors such as:

• Quality of content
• Responsiveness/mobile adaptability
• Link building strategies
• Use of keywords
• Organic traffic versus paid traffic

Ultimately, what you want from your website are conversions that bring you qualified, actionable leads, but you aren’t likely to get those unless all these factors are in place. Reviewing your rankings will help you to identify that. Your SEO company can bring your site up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), but if you still aren’t getting leads then something is wrong.

#5: Measure Revenue Shifts Against Traffic

We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the principle applies equally to your SEO strategy. Monitoring the various metrics is a great way of keeping on top of what your SEO company is doing, but ultimately it’s the bottom line that counts.

Unless you can draw a correlation between shifts in your revenue and the changes to your website traffic, you won’t be able to conclusively say whether your SEO tactics are working or not.

It takes a while for the majority of visitors to a site to convert, according to Google digital marketing evangelist Avinash Kaushik, so any evaluation needs to take an “end-to-end” view of the various important activities.

#6:Look At Local Optimization

Local is big at the moment. Scratch that—it’s HUGE. One of the biggest objections many newbie customers have to inbound marketing is that it uses a global medium and their business is local. Having realized this, Google introduced ways of optimizing online content so it targets specific geographical users, and an SEO company worth its salt will know that.

Evaluate your local SEO by:

• Conducting a quarterly business review
• Comparing your conversions and profits with traffic
• Taking a look at your mobile activity

Review your onsite and offsite SEO reports to make sure local features high in the implementation of your strategy.

#7: Check SEM Integration

Chances are good that your SEO company also handles your paid search activities or search engine marketing (SEM). If so, it’s useful to know whether they are integrating your SEM with organic SEO to maximize your returns. Google no longer provides the keyword data for organic SEO that marketers used to rely on, but if you’re investing in paid search then the information is available through your SEM reports. Review these periodically to make sure you aren’t bidding on keywords that are no longer converting your visitors, and that updates to your keyword strategy take cognizance of your SEM data.

#8: Rate Lead Generation Levels

As we mentioned earlier it’s all about profitability, so the overall purpose of your inbound marketing is to generate qualified leads. No matter how well you’re doing in all areas, and regardless of objectives such as increased awareness, in the long term it comes down to the results.

Unless you’re getting sales you aren’t making money, so the Litmus test of your SEO company’s value is the level of lead generation. Not the amount of money you make—because if your sales team is less than effective it’s hardly the fault of the SEO practitioner—but how much solid intel your sales people get to work with.

#9: Analyze Social Signals

Google recently turned up the heat on the importance of social signals in an SEO strategy, because the level of sharing is an obvious validation of a website’s quality. Review the reports from your SEO company for evidence of your visibility in social media.

According to Social Media Today, you can use social metrics to determine the numbers of social referrals, evaluate social conversions, measure the reach of your content, track your business’s social engagement levels, such as the reach of your social media activities and your business’s social engagement.

#10: Look at Link Building Tactics

It’s also useful to take a peek every now and again at the link building activities—both inbound and outbound. Link building is a critical aspect of a good SEO strategy, and the higher the number of authoritative sites that are linked to yours, the better you’re likely to fare in search.

This is an activity fraught with risk, however, and if your SEO company isn’t on top of this it could be dangerous for you according to SEO expert Neil Patel. Your SEO process should include “white hat” activities such as guest blogging, linking to quality sources and encouraging links from industry websites with a sound reputation. Sharing your content on social media is also an excellent way of building inbound links, because your profile (and any others who share your updates) link directly to your website. This not only counts for social signals but also for link building.

Spotting Red Flags

At the end of the day, the measure of an effective SEO company is whether or not your business is profitable. These methods are merely tools to help you evaluate in the interim between appointing a company and seeing final results. By using them, you should be able to spot any red flags early in the process. This will enable you to rectify them (or at least, tackle the SEO provider about doing so) or to move on to find a provider who knows what they are doing.

The great thing is that you don’t have to be an expert yourself to do this kind of evaluation; your SEO company should be providing a full set of regular reports and be prepared to review, explain and summarize them for you. If they aren’t doing that, it’s an immediate indication that you need to drill down deeper and find out what’s really going on with your money.

The post 10 Ways To Evaluate Your SEO Company appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Remember the age old adage, keep your friends close but, your enemies closer? In the world of digital marketing and search engine optimization, there is no one closer to you in search rankings than your competitors. So why do business’ often overlook this step and jump right to building strategy?  There is a wealth of information and competitive advantage that can be gained from finding and analyzing your competitors. When it comes to a thorough search engine optimization strategy, seeking out what your competitors are doing right (and what they’re doing wrong) will help guide you on your way to SEO success.

Determine Your Real Competitors

Find your real competitors, and remember they include any website or organization with whom you are competing with for traffic and visibility, regardless of whether their product or service is exactly like yours. I included this because a complete competitive analysis, although worth it, is no small task so knowing who you’re truly competing against in SERPs is important. You should be able to identify at least one competitor on your own but, here’s some advice on finding some more top competitors. You should aim to make a list of 5-10 competitors in your industry and geographical area.

• Set up a Google Alert to receive email notifications on updates on competing products/services, be notified when other people mention your business, and keep up to date with industry news
• Use industry keywords to search for other businesses on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing
• Use associations’ member directories to find other competitors in your niche.

Analyze Which Keywords & Long-Tail Keyword Search Queries You’re Competing For

After you’ve determined the keywords which are most relevant to your business’ product or service through brainstorming what you already know about your business and some preliminary keyword research, you can begin analyzing who else is ranking for those same terms. A commonly known tool that is easy to use is Google Keyword Planner. Enter your competitor’s URL one at a time and discover what keywords Google determines are most closely related to the topic and content on their site. You can also view keyword volume and level of competition.

Use another keyword tool like SEM Rush to enter the web address of a competitor and view what keywords their website ranks for organically. You can also discover new organic competition you may not have found in your own research, and monitor ranking changes for multiple domains.

Scope out the Competition’s Content Marketing

To reap benefits like more brand awareness, improved rankings and increased organic traffic, you need to produce high-quality content regularly. It is one of the most significant tools for gaining qualified traffic online. Learn from your competitor’s strengths and shortfalls by taking some time to explore their content marketing. So what does high quality content mean, anyway? While reviewing competitor sites pages and building strategy for your own web pages, remember these tips:

Purpose: Firstly, it should serve the audience with relevant and useful information. It should be keyword focused, and targeted to the ideal audience. Step one is to build buyer personas so you can use them to guide your content marketing.

Style: The content should talk with visitors, not at them. For blog posts, it should be value-based, not product/service or sales focused. Content should include visuals or other interactive media.

Substance: Not too much information, not too little. Put value before volume. Internal pages should be a minimum of 350-500 words each. Ideal length of a blog post is approx. 1600 words.

UX: User experience is of the utmost importance. The content should address the ideal audiences’ question or problem in an appealing way and be accessible via mobile devices. How quickly the page loads, how content is formatted on the page, its readability, and ease of guiding the user through to their end goal are all critical – and just some of the considerations for UX.

All Hail the Blog

Take the time to review each of your competitor’s websites for an active blog. Take detailed notes on:

• how often they post
• the quality of their content
  • is it applicable to the target audience?
  • is it relevant, engaging and helpful?
  • does it follow best practices?
• Don’t forget social; take a peek at whether or not they’re consistently social syndicating the posts they’re publishing
• Assess total number of views, comments, social shares, and other interactions.

Get a feel for what sort of content (topics, style, medium) your target audience is interacting with on competitor’s websites, what seems to be resonating with them? What’s inspiring them to comment or share with their own social network?

Remember, if any of the above seems lacking or is missing all together, those are golden opportunities to put the work in now to quickly outshine that competitor.

Not only is blogging a vehicle for generating more relevant content for your business in order to be ranked for a larger set of keywords, or improve your current rankings, your target audience will find more value on your website and reward you for it.

Even if you’re of the mindset that your industry borders on boring, you can still easily find relevant and interesting topics which will be found by your desired audience when executed correctly.

Get Social!

It is usually quite easy to track down some data to find out which social networks your ideal audience engages with the most. Simply put: fish where the fish are. The biggest obstacle is obvious; you’re not the only one fishing.

The most popular social media networks that are likely to be utilized by your competitors include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• You Tube

Explore more than one competitor’s social presence and keep notes on these important indicators of social media stardom:

The following suggestions will need to be adjusted for which network your exploring but, this gives you a good idea of what to look for.

• Total number of fans/followers. Quick Tip: If you don’t have competitor monitoring software set-up, record the date also so when you return to check in on them down the road, you know whether they’ve grown or not, and by how much.
• Total number of daily/weekly/monthly posts; frequency per network
• Fan/follower engagement (comments, social shares, +1’s, retweets, favorites etc.)
• Style/topic of content published
• Frequency of their own, original content – versus – content from outside sources
• Use of network features (how thoroughly a competitor fills in all the profile features available for any one social network)

Perform a Competitors Backlink Analysis

Using high-quality, relevant and engaging content that’s appealing to your target audience is the first step to being in a position to begin link building. Why? Simply because all link building campaigns start with something worth linking to. Before you craft your own link building strategy, use your detective skills (and some handy tools) to scope out your competitor’s links. You’re likely to find some potential link opportunities for your own business too.

Use one of these free website link explorer tools to:

• Discover competitors high-authority backlinks
• Perform an in-depth link analysis
• Distinguish between quality links and spam
• Discover potential backlink sources

Free Tools: Moz’s Open Site Explorer | Majestic Site Explorer | Bing Link Explorer

If you or your marketing provider can master the task of building high-quality links to your website, it can put you ahead of your competition in search results.

Check Your Own Website (& competitors) for Broken Links

Understanding the landscape of the link profile for your site and competitors can help you further improve your efforts in this critical area of your SEO marketing strategy.

Broken backlinks if left unattended can add up, and they negatively affect user experience (ever been annoyed by the “404 page not found” message when you’re expecting the content you were clicking for? Yes, me too.) They can also work against your site’s ability to improve rankings so it’s important to find and manage them by either removing them or redirecting them to an active URL.

There are several free tools you can use to discover broken backlinks on your own site like Google Analytics. Check out this comprehensive step-by-step guide. You can also use the free tools mentioned in the previous section.

Title Elements

Title elements, or title tags are a good place to start to access your competitor’s search engine optimization. Title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO elements because they communicate to the search engines and users what the content of the page is about. They appear in the search results pages, in tabs in your browser after you navigate to the site, as the auto description when a page is bookmarked, and in some cases, link anchor text on external websites.

Here are some best practices for you to easily analyze your competitor’s title tags and guide decisions on your own site to improve your SEO

Title tags should

• be unique for each page; even if the content is different, having identical title tags on multiple pages is considered duplicate content which can and eventually will get the guilty site penalized by Google Panda.
• include targeted keywords which make sense with the page content, describing what the page is about
• use keywords in the head of the titles & branding at the end (keyword proximity)
• mindful of length; no more than 70 characters

Title tags shouldn’t

• overstuff keywords, called keyword cannibalization. No more than 3 keywords should be assigned per title, per page. Keywords should be spaced throughout the content and page focused.
• shouldn’t mirror H1’s

Are They Mobile?

With the recent Google Mobilegeddon update, you’ll want to know whether your competitor’s sites load and are usable on a smartphone. Notice I said load and usable, they are two different things. So, test it out using Google’s simple mobile friendly test as well as on your own smartphone.

Mobile has become increasingly important, and if you want to compete alongside and eventually get ahead of your competitors, a mobile responsive site is a requirement. If competitors haven’t got a mobile responsive site, and you are redesigning an existing site or launching a new website, you have a golden opportunity to get ahead.

Local Signals

Your competitions marketing efforts in the local landscape is important to note, especially if your business has a brick and mortar location, you can’t overlook the importance of your presence in local search results.

Since one of the keys to local SEO is a presence on popular online directories, investigate where your competition has up-to-date local profiles. Sites like Google My Business, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Yellowpages.com, Bing Places, and any other local directories which may be lesser known but, specific for your industry – check those too.

Look for:

• Consistency between the contact information on their website and their various profiles
• How well they’ve utilized all the profile features (i.e. including a professional photo, full description etc.)
• Whether they have any local reviews; are they interacting with their audience by replying to reviews, or complaints? Observe their communication strategy.

Your competitor’s presence on directories like these may be strong, or non-existent but, either way, be sure to include time to build out these profiles carefully and thoroughly. You will benefit from the increased accessibility to your business’ information through directory profiles.

Now that you’ve got a good idea of some of the valuable information you can gain from competitor research and analysis, get started! Knowledge is power. With the knowledge of what your competitors are doing well, and not so well, you can improve your business online to outshine them all. Comment below to add your own tips on how you can learn from competitors to improve your search engine optimization.

The post 10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About SEO appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Are you seeing a downward trend in your rankings and traffic? Many factors contribute to improving these metrics, however, one of the common reasons is a poor link profile.

If you’re here, you may suspect you have some poor quality, spam, & toxic links pointing to your website that can hurt your site performance, or you may have received a notification from Google that they’ve detected a pattern of unnatural links pointing to your site.

No matter the situation, having the know-how to manage the link profile of your website is important to the overall health and performance of your site in search engines.

Why?

Links are like votes of confidence which contribute to the overall authority of your website in the eyes of search engines. The value of a particular website or page can be measured with Domain Authority and Page Authority (MOZ metrics). Although “PageRank” (PR) is referenced in some Google help console sources as an indicator of quality, the PR measurement is largely obsolete as it has not been updated by Google in years.

That being said, we will still reference PageRank as it relates to Google’s own quality guidelines. Although the scoring metric is out of date, it is still valuable on a basis of measuring link manipulation throughout your review as typically low-quality links are commonly developed during a time when PageRank manipulation was at its peak.

Irrelevant links, restricted content, or just plain terrible spam links can significantly hurt your site and when too many occur, even bring crippling penalties to your domain’s doorstep.

How do you know which links to remove, which ones to disavow and which ones to keep? Follow the guide below to analyze your link profile and determine the best actions to take with each link.

There are some rules here:

Request removal of the link first, before requesting Google disavow it. In the disavow tool, Google states:

This means that you shouldn’t use this tool willy-nilly, there are specific situations it should be employed, and they are:

• Your website has received a manual penalty
• Your website has received an algorithmic penalty
• You or your marketing provider are regularly monitoring your backlinks and using best practices to request removal and in some cases, requesting Google disavow links.

For more info on the latter, please review this video from Google’s Matt Cutt’s “Should I use the disavow tool even if there’s not a manual action on my site?”

Step One: Source Several Lists of all the Backlinks to Your Site

There are several free tools you can use here, we recommend sourcing more than one list so you have a better chance of gaining a complete view of all the links pointing to your site.

Firstly, Google Webmaster Tools.

If you have a Gmail account, you can access Google Webmaster Tools and add your site(s) if you haven’t completed this step already.

SEO Tip: You will want to verify both the www and the non-www version of your domain in your search console. To Google, these are entirely different sites.

i.e. www dot riverbedmarketing dot com and riverbedmarketing dot com

If you’re setting up search console in Google Webmaster Tools for your site for the first time, you will need to verify your website(s) and wait a few business days for it to show any data.  

To get a list of links to your website, follow these steps:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Home Page, click the site you want to view
2. On the Dashboard, click Search Traffic, and then click Links to Your Site
3. Under Who links the most, click More
4. Click Download More Sample Links. If you click Download latest links, you’ll see dates as well.

Don’t stop there, explore these user-friendly (and free!) backlink tracking tools to help you build a robust list of the links to your site.

With some more work and patience, you can see notable improvements in your website’s rank and traffic.

Bing Link Explorer: Sign up for a free account and use their link explorer to view and download your backlinks. You can register with Bing Webmaster Tools (also free) to check out more resource tools for keyword research, SEO & competitive backlink analysis.

Majestic SEO: The most robust source of data you can get for backlinks is from majestic.com. Easily sign up for a free profile and verify Google Webmaster Tools with Majestic SEO to unlock the free options for your owned site. Once you verify your domain, click ‘Historic Index’ to view links. Then click on the backlinks tab, scroll down, and click download data.

You can also check out:

Moz’s Open Site Explorer: You can sign up for a free 30 day trial for Moz Pro but, your credit card is required. The link explorer features are easy to use and you’ll have additional resources to explore your site for the trial and get a feel for how the tools perform. You can easily cancel or continue with a paid subscription after 30 days.

Step Two: Create a Spreadsheet To Easily Organize All of Your Data

You’ll have a lot of data to comb through at this point so I recommend a well-formatted spreadsheet like this one from Pinpoint Designs.

This is critical because there are specific requirements for the type and format of the file you can submit to Google to request disavow of links and domains. Especially if you are making a case for removing a manual or algorithmic penalty, the provided spreadsheet will help you immensely in tracking your own efforts to have a toxic link removed, which Google will consider as part of your reconsideration request to lift a penalty.

Make a copy of the file in your own Google Docs account, and add all your data to the corresponding sheet in the template.

There is already a formula built in to pull the data you enter on each of the sheets into the master data sheet and remove duplicates.

Step Three: Identify Unnatural, Low-quality & Spam Links

Review, review, review – everything! Go to each URL on your spreadsheet and make a judgement call on whether you should keep the link or request it be removed – failing removal by the webmaster, you can request Google disavow the link or all links from a specific domain.

In your disavow file, you can mark whether you want to disavow an entire domain by entering

domain:spamsite.com

or disavow a specific page by specifying the URL like this: spamsite.com/page-with-toxic-link

Each link needs to be on its own line and usually you will want to do a domain-wide disavow when you see multiple low quality links from the same website.

You can also annotate a link or group of links and record your efforts towards removal by adding the number sign # before comments for your own documentation such as, “#High spam domain contacted webmaster by email several times with no response. Include for disavow”

The notes are optional but helpful for your own records and in submitting a reconsideration request to Google if you are experiencing a manual penalty.

Some bad links are easy to spot, and some aren’t so I recommend reviewing Google’s Quality Guidelines to familiarize yourself with their quality standards.

In the Link Schemes section, Google explains an unnatural, low-quality link:

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank (Website authority) or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results:

• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
• Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
• Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
• Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

I also recommend you check out this blacklist link checker by Marie Haynes who has significant experience as a major influencer in the link disavow/penalty landscape. This tool can help you check the quality of a particular link you are unsure about by referencing it against a blacklist of domains manually reviewed for exclusion.

If you are unsure about the quality of a link, try this tool see if the domain shows up on any known blacklists.

Step Four: Contact Webmasters and Request Removal

Once you’ve sorted out the bad links from the good ones, you want to make every effort to contact the owner/webmaster of the sites which are connected to yours via toxic links and request they remove them.

Wherever possible, personalized email outreach directly to the webmaster stating the page(s) the link is on, where it is positioned on the page, the anchor text, and the URL it points to can help take a lot of the work out of the equation for the webmaster and you’ll have a better chance that they’ll follow through and remove it.

You’ll likely need to contact them more than once and make an effort to reach them in numerous ways. Wherever possible, call them, contact them by email, utilize their live chat, message them on their social networks – do everything you can to get the toxic links removed and document every action you take in an attempt to get the links removed.

Step Five: Creating Your Disavow File

From your spreadsheet, copy the list of links and domains you want to disavow into their own Google Docs spreadsheet and select File – then, Download As – and select Plain text – this will create a .txt file that you can upload in Google Webmaster Tools.

Here’s how:

1. Sign into Google
2. Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

• Select your site from the dropdown menu

1. Select Disavow Links
2. Select Disavow Links once again
3. Click Choose File

• Upload your .txt file

Some common errors that prevent a successful upload of a disavow file are:

You’ve neglected to remove http://www. before the url or domain

There are sometimes domains with weird symbols or characters, for example, a colon in the domain will cause an error to be flagged.

Go through your list to remove any domains that are made up of nothing but symbols, numbers, punctuation and re-try your upload.

It’s very important to know that a new disavow file will automatically override a previously uploaded file so if you have submitted a disavow file in the past, you want to add your existing list.

For example, if I previously submitted a disavow file with 50 domains, and my most recent link audit turned up 50 more domains that I also want to disavow, my new .txt disavow file would have 100 domains listed.  

To access a previously submitted disavow file so that you can update your list and re-upload to Google, follow these steps:

1. Sign into Google
2. Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

• Select your site from the dropdown menu

1. Select Disavow Links
2. Select Disavow Links once again
3. Click Download

Once download successfully,

1. Copy your list of domains
2. Paste it into a Google Doc

• Add the new links you want to disavow to the previously submitted list

1. Save as a .txt file

And then, go back to webmaster tools and follow the steps from earlier in this post to upload your file.

Once your disavow file has been uploaded, it’s important to note that changes won’t be recognized by Google until they re-crawl the websites called out in the disavow file. This can take some time, so the benefits of disavowing may not be immediately visible and will typically occur over a period of 1-2 months in most cases.

In summary, to create the building blocks of a disavow file to submit to Google, you’ll need to:

• Collect ample data from several sources to compose a robust list of your link profile
• Review the links and domains to determine the good from the bad and the ugly.
• Keep an organized record of your removal requests and notes on the links/domains; you can also group links and domains to make note keeping simpler.
• Format the disavow file according to domains and links to disavow
• Create a .txt file and upload to Google Webmaster Tools

Although it is a lot of work to complete a link audit and work through the process of removal requests and disavowing, when done properly, you will see improvements to the health of your link profile, page rank, traffic and most importantly, user experience. You want links which will add value to the content on your site and to the user navigating your content and links.

Remember, it’s not just the search engines that you need to satisfy, it’s critical to create an enjoyable, relevant, simple and responsive experience for your ideal customer.

Comment below and share your own experience and tips!

The post How To Disavow Links In Google Webmaster Tools appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Last week Google officially updated its Penguin algorithm again. First released in April of 2012, Google introduced the algorithm codenamed Penguin, with the primary function of decreasing the search engine rankings of websites that were found to violate

First released in April of 2012, Google introduced the algorithm codenamed Penguin, with the primary function of decreasing the search engine rankings of websites that were found to violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, this focused on penalizing excessive use of keyword-rich links that were typically built unnaturally in bulk – or the websites themselves were owned by the marketers to maliciously bolster website rankings above competitors. This was done by using what are now affectionately called Black Hat SEO techniques, or Spamdexing – in layman’s terms: a deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes.

The History of Penguin

Back on April 24th, 2012, Google shook the SEO landscape by introducing its first revision of the Penguin algorithm. This was at a critical time where SEO was much simpler than it is today, and when a large number of links pointed towards a target website would serve to bolster website rankings and manipulate traffic to accelerate past competitors.

This initial change impacted 3.1% of queries that were manipulated by spammy tactics, in contrast to their future updates the initial launch of Penguin was instrumental in setting the tone for what was yet to come in the coming years.

The algorithm was updated a few times over the years, notably in October of 2012, as Penguin 3 – which affected approximately 0.3% of search engine queries. Penguin 2.0 was released in May of 2013 and affected 2.3% of queries.

Penguin 3.0 was speculatively released on October 18th, 2014 – with Google confirming on the 21st of that month that the Penguin update was only a “refresh” without adding new signals.

These long lulls in the history of updating the Penguin algorithm left many business owners high-and-dry when trying to resolve problems with their current domain, many waiting upwards of two years with hopes of seeing a return to their former glory.

The algorithmic penalty that was applied in each milestone updates would penalize entire sites for utilizing spammy tactics. Despite performing immediate cleanups with genuine intent to correct the problem, webmasters remained penalized until the Google would refresh their status.

Google released Penguin 4.0 in late September 2016, and it represents a number of new features and capabilities: most importantly, it now operates in real-time and is one of Google’s core ranking algorithms.

[Above image kindly borrowed from Eden Consultancy Group]

What’s Changed?

Penguin Now Operates in Real Time

Yes, that’s right – this new update to Penguin operates in real time, meaning that SEOs and marketers don’t have to wait for refreshes and updates to see the results of a cleanup to a backlink profile.

Because data is refreshed so much faster, corrections to your backlink profile can be made and changes are visible much faster; recovery isn’t instant just yet, so it’s still necessary to wait for Google to recrawl and reindex sites that link back to you. Page rankings are re-evaluated each time Google recrawl’s a page, and therefore, the impact of any incoming spam and links are altered almost immediately.

With the algorithm now operating in real time, this probably spells the end of public announcements from Google citing any updates, so don’t expect any more comment from Google’s head-honcho’s on future revamps or refreshes.

Site owners are going to be able to see results much more quickly in Google’s search results as links are disavowed and negated. You’ll still have to wait for a refresh, mind you – this keeps Penguin different from Panda, which still operates on a long-cycle.

What Has Changed in How Google Penalizes Bad Links?

This real-time aspect can have a slightly negative reaction on sites with bad link issues. Penguin has been made part of the core Google Ranking Algorithm, along with Panda, meaning sites will be able to quickly discover that they could have a potential new issue with Penguin.

Google’s Gary Illyes says that the Penguin update “managed to devalue spam instead of demoting.”

This means that spammy link tactics will be de-valued where they are applied to a page, instead of penalizing a brand as a whole, which has caused heated lawsuits in the past and has quite literally handed businesses to bankruptcy.

Illyes also noted publicly that Google still recommends using the Disavow file to recover from Penguin issues, although you technically may not need to, instead focusing on correcting the problem at its origins.

“If you still see the crap, you can help us help you by using it,” Illyes said on a public Facebook post.  “There’s less need… Also, manual actions are still there so if we see that someone is systematically trying to spam, the manual actions team might take harsher action against the site.”

As a result, many SEO’s and webmasters interpret this to mean that Penguin doesn’t penalize anymore – to an extent – it now seems to simply ignore and devalue spammed links instead, adjusting their rankings.

Core Ranking

Penguin is now a part of Google’s core ranking algorithms, along with Panda, one of the company’s strongest spam-fighting algorithms. Penguin is now “baked into” Google’s larger search algorithm network, which encompasses over 200 signals.

The big change here, is that Penguin is now part of the main search algorithm, rather than just a filter which is refreshed during core algorithm updates after extended waits as we outlined above in Penguin’s history.

Penguin will also be implemented in all languages worldwide, so searchers around the globe will begin to notice these changes. This will, of course, take a couple of weeks, so if you haven’t noticed updates or changes yet – they’re coming.

More “Granular”

Google themselves call this Penguin update “more granular” than its predecessor. But what does this actually mean for webmasters and marketers?

Previously, Penguin was usually applied as a site-wide penalty which would suppress traffic until low-quality links pointed towards the penalized site were corrected – from here, the corrections were realized only once a new Penguin update “refresh” had been rolled out.

So when asked what “granular” meant – Google responded by saying: It means it affects finer granularity than sites. It does not mean it only affects pages.”

What we can take into consideration as a result of these insights, is that Google will be focusing on suppressing results to offending pages instead of websites in their entirety. Sections of a website will experience reduced traffic and rankings instead of the entire website.

A good interpretation of this explanation comes from Searchengineland.com, who translate it as meaning that Penguin may impact specific pages or sections of a website, while other pages remain untouched.

The good news is that the positive outcome of corrections and improvements to these areas can be realized in months, rather than years.

With the calculations happening in real time, marketers can now correct, measure, improve and repeat. This change ultimately puts site owners back in the driver’s seat on amended offenses to Google’s guidelines in a timely manner.

What Does the Future of Penguin Look Like?

This could represent the beginning of a more forgiving, collaborative Google.

Penalizing actions – and not entire brands – means supporting site owners who have potentially fallen victim to poor marketing tactics they’ve been unaware of.

RankBrain, a machine-learning artificial intelligence technology used by Google to help process its search engine results could be calculating these new link factors since it is now part of the core algorithm. If RankBrain is assisting this development, we may see Google learning to more effectively counter spam in the future as computers actually learn to do these things, rather than rely on humans to teach them detailed programming.

It’s business-as-usual for SEO best practices. Continue to avoid heavy use of spammy keywords in links like “Buy Red Shoes,” and continue to focus on branded links and naturally occurring contextual links.

The post Google Officially Updates Penguin Algorithm – Here’s What You Should Know appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Keywords. Probably one of the most if not the most important part of any online marketing whether it be PPC or SEO, it is also especially important for creating your content plan. Creating a well-researched keyword list for your online marketing campaign or site can provide insight into what the competition might be like, how to gauge what to spend, and ranking opportunities you should take advantage of.  

For most popping the list into Google Adwords Keyword Planner provides all the information needed as well as ideas for where to build out your keyword research. However as you may know you need a paid Google Adwords campaign running to gain access to all the good data. So you might find yourself in need of some alternatives.  

Well look no further, I’ve created a list of 5 alternatives that I use when building out my keyword list and why I find them useful.

1.  SEM Rush

The first is SEM Rush. SEM Rush does have a free option that gives you 10 free searches a day. That’s a lot if you’re not in any rush (see how I used that) and use them wisely. If you need more consider getting an upgraded account.

SEM Rush gives you a lot of great information for both paid and organic keywords. You can see competitor information such as rankings, as well as search volume for specific keywords. You can also see average cost per clicks on keywords to get an idea of a budget for your campaign. Another cool piece of information SEM Rush shares is ad copy for specific keywords and phrases.

2. Moz

Moz’s Keyword Explorer is another tool that gives you 1-2 keyword search per day free. It gives you lots of great information on search volume, and difficulty as well as keyword suggestions and SERP Analysis of domains ranking for that keyword.  The keyword suggestions can be exported to a CSV file as well.

Keyword Explorer is just one of the great tools Moz has to offer, if you’re looking for a tool for your overall SEO I would recommend looking into all that Moz has to offer.

3. keywordtool.io

Keyword Tool uses Google Autocomplete to generate keywords relevant to any search. There is a free account that will give you information on suggested keywords, a great way to build out your keyword list. Another cool aspect of the tool is the ability to add in negative keywords to eliminate any unwanted searches.

The paid account gives you access to search volume and cost per click information as well as competition level for Adwords.  You can take a look at average monthly searches and export the list to Excel.

4. Wordstream

Wordstream is better used as a paid tool, although it does have a free option that shows related keywords for 30 searches per day, which is quite a lot. To get access to all the keyword information requires a paid account.

If you decide to stick to the free account, the Wordstream Keyword tool offers keyword suggestions to help build out your keyword list, which you could then pop into Keyword Planner to get a better estimate of search volume.

5. SEOBook Keyword Tool

This is a free tool that gives a lot of great information on not only the keyword you’re looking for but related keywords.  You can see monthly as well as daily search volumes for keywords and average cost per clicks. This is a great alternative to some of the paid tools I’ve mentioned.

There are a lot of options out there and while Google’s Keyword Planner is where I start my research for any PPC or SEO Campaign I always like to pop on a couple of the other tools to see if they have some suggestions or opportunities I might have missed.  

The post 5 Effective Alternatives to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Whitney Wells

In The Ordeal of Change Eric Hoffer writes…

“In times of change, learners will inherit the earth, and the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can’t read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and re-learn.”

And when it comes to inbound marketing, we’re certainly talking about a gigantic, and often agonizingly painful, unlearning and relearning process.
Human nature is conditioned to do more of the same, but doing it harder and longer.

In Change Or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life, Alan Deutschman tells us that over 80% of people refuse to change their lifestyles even when their doctors tell them that unless they change, they most probably die pretty soon.

Intellectually we may know that trying harder (good ol’ Boxer’s approach to work in George Orwell’s Animal Farm) is as futile as trying to nail jello to a tree, but thanks to thousands of years of genetic programming, we do it anyway.

But when it comes to inbound marketing, we have to learn to do, following the old Monty Python wisdom…

Less But Something Completely Different

And this less but something different is, if you want to grow your business reasonably consistently and predictably, the replacement of inconsistent and unpredictable human performance with consistent and predictable system performance.

Yes, there are many aspects of your business that can’t be automated, but a big chunk of marketing can be.

Modern businesses, due to their complexities, can no longer rely on superstars’ heroic performance. Every now and then, and at one point finally, even super heroes become super zeros.

It’s not hard to imagine that in most businesses, the cost of the work force takes up a significant part of the company’s variable costs.

We also know from a McKinsey study that 1% reduction in variable costs can lead to as high as 7.8% increase in operating profit.

This number alone should be a good incentive for most business owners to stop regarding headcount increase as business growth. We can call it business enlargement, but definitely not business growth.

The other area that spurs business owners to marketing automation is that the buyer environment has changed. Once upon a time, even high-priced solutions could be transacted in “one fell swoop” in a short space of time at just a very few meetings.

Today, the buying cycle is much longer than it was only 10 years ago.

MarketingSherpa reports that 11% of B2B purchases take over 12 months from initiation to completion.

Another important consideration that adds a huge pile of money to the cost of sales is that while 10 years ago, and definitely before the Internet, the buying process was relatively linear, today it’s an iterative process. When you look at your sales funnel you see that even the slightest forwards movement of your prospects is preceded and succeeded by lots of sideways movements.

That’s when prospects consume a significant amount of your content without any forwards movement. And even after consuming enough content, they may not move forwards but backwards.

As the buying behaviour has changed, we have to change our behaviour about selling.

One big change is that specialization highly valued and appreciated.It means companies have to shift from mass marketing to niche marketing. Both lead generation and lead conversion processes must be highly personalized to your buyer persona, the perfect client who could be interested in doing business with you.

Also, since buyers have lots of alternatives besides doing business with you, you have to differentiate your business from the masses and effectively communicate this difference.

But before we go into it…

Let’s Start Automation With Non-Automation

This is it. Automation must start with manually designing and overseeing your marketing automation process. Here you have to define…

• Your target market and buyer persona (perfect client profile).
• Your message that represents your products/services.
• Your method of taking your message in front of your target market.
• The mechanism to bring interested buyers into our sales funnel for decision-making.

Your Target Market And Buyer Persona (Perfect Client Profile)

It’s far too easy to say that your target market is, let’s say, small businesses.
But what small businesses?
Product or service businesses?
B2B or B2C businesses. Or even B2G (government)?
How small are those businesses? A couple doing network marketing from the kitchen table or a 50-person manufacturing plant generating $20 million in annual revenue?

The reality is that there is huge perceived value in specialization. A “consulting firm” that consults on everything with executives, entrepreneurs and small business owners is likely to be price-shopped, because such a firm is easy to replace.

Address Your Market’s Biggest Problems And Links To Your Products/Services

Then you have to create the messages that address your market’s biggest high-level problems. High level problem is a problem that is recognized as a problem by the top executives in the boardroom. Those high-level problems are related to declining sales, shareholder value and similar high-level performance indicators.

People who can address those issues are treated as respected experts and paid generously. However, website graphics, search engine ranking and Facebook likes are not boardroom problems, and people who address those issues are traded like sacks of potatoes.

Once you’ve established your market’s biggest problems, you can start linking those problems to solutions, that is, to your products and services.

Do you plan to use field salespeople or do you want your sales copy do all the work?

Both approaches work, but you need slightly different copy. Keep in mind that if you send salespeople to buyers who are not ready to meet salespeople, it can backfire.

If you sell expensive and highly customized services, then you need salespeople. But if you sell SaaS services, you can use copy to do all the sales work.

Your Method Of Taking Your Message In Front Of Your Target Market

This is very industry specific. If you have a broad target market, here you’re in trouble again because you have to invest in several marketing platforms.

• Target market A, small, local coffin carving companies, may be active on Facebook but not on LinkedIn.
• Target market B, Fortune 500 CEOs are likely to be active on LinkedIn but not on Facebook.
• Target market C, retired people with diabetes may use only the Yellow Pages.

Now you have to set up three platforms because clients could come from either of them. But this scattered approach can also drive you as crazy as two waltzing mice.

You’re better off focusing on one single target market, with one specific perfect buyer type.
You can set up…

1. Perfect client company.
2. Perfect buyer – the buyer with whom you’re building the relationship.
3. Perfect project – The types of projects/work you enjoy and the type that you want to stay away from.

Once you have a detailed client profile, you can adjust everything you do and say to that imaginary person.

The Mechanism To Bring Interested Buyers Into Our Sales Funnel For Decision-Making

This is a step-by-step process of how you catch buyers’ attention, keep their interest and escort them from first contact to the decision-making point.
This is where you can set up your sales funnel and anticipate buyers to move inside your funnel.

You write every piece such that they allow readers to move to the next stage (qualify) or drop out (disqualify). And remember, dropping out is fine. Not everyone is meant to be your client.

And Then Comes The Automation

Once you have a pretty good idea of how buyers move inside your funnel, you can start automating the process.
Let’s start with events…

Before the Funnel

This is where, using fishing lingo, you put out an invitation to come and check your bait.

I like using a sequence of 3-5 pieces, which can be either email or snail mail. Yes, snail mail is alive and well. Actually, I’ve read, I believe in Target Marketing, that snail mail can offer some three-time higher ROI than email. Nevertheless, you can win big with email too.

Those who ignore your offer after five tries, will always ignore it, so you can end it here. Then 4-6 months later, you can put them on a new campaign.

But those who took your offer, they go to check your bait.

Here I like using something free that doesn’t require registration. The call to action at the end of this piece is to register for and download a white paper/special report.

Then, I have a 5-piece follow-up sequence going deeper into the report’s topic.

Inside The Funnel

Then I can settle into a steady and cozy follow-up process and keep buyers interested and gently advance them in the sales funnel.

Apart from writing the pieces, the whole process is pre-programmed and the emails go out automatically like clockwork.

As you can see, there is no chasing and convincing. Byers can enter and exit the sales funnel to their little hearts’ content. They are completely in charge of what they do.

Leaving The Funnel

Buyers can leave the funnel in two ways.

Either they drop out and leave your list or reach their decision points and become clients. But they’ve become clients on their own volition. They don’t feel forced or manipulated.

Summary

We’ve all heard it that a pen can be used either to write nice poetry or to pick someone’s eyes out. Marketing automation is the same. It can be either a miracle worker in your business or a certifiable nightmare.

But think of Bill Gates’ two rules:

1. “Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.”
2. “Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

This is why you have to make sure that your operation works well manually. Automate only the effective parts of your system.
Don’t rush it. You’re not chased by the Tatars.

Take one small segment of your system and test it repeatedly. Once you’re happy with its performance, then start automating it. Then take the next segment and repeat.

Automating your system is like recruiting talents. You do it one by one. There is no such thing as mass-recruitment of talented people.

You can mass hire workers, but recruiting talents is, ta… da… Monty Python again, something completely different.

Marketing automation is a beautiful thing. When it’s done well, it can make your marketing consistent and predictable which are good for your brand. You can also save a small fortune on headcount, which means that you can increase personal productivity, a.k.a. annual revenue per employee.

The post Automation’s Role In Inbound Marketing appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Marketing maven Dan Kennedy is fond of saying:

“The difference between chicken poop and chicken salad is timing.”

And when it comes to content marketing, we have to consider British journalist, musician, broadcaster and the inventor of Franglais, a fictional language, made up of French and English, Miles Beresford Kington’s view on the topic:

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

And if we look at inbound marketing from a pragmatic perspective, we can instantly see how perfectly both Dan’s and Miles’ maxims apply to it.

Inbound marketing is really the type of content we distribute and the timing of the distribution.

And when it comes to connecting with your target audience using content marketing, a content calendar is one of the main engines of your campaign.

What Is A Content Calendar?

A content calendar is a visual representation of the timing and the nature of content that your marketing team distributes to various segments of your database, depending on…

• What they’re interested in?
• Where they are in your sales funnel and at?
• What pace they’re moving forward?

The purpose of good content is to generate new sales leads and gently nudge existing sales leads towards the next stages of their decision-making processes inside the sales funnel.

The main benefit of the calendar approach is that…

• You can see the consistency of the distributable or already distributed content.
• You can see the exact timing of the distribution.
• You can adjust your content creation team’s time frames.

And now we can move and start building our content calendar starting with the first step…

Design Your Marketing Persona(s)

Before we can create sales cycles, funnels and other nipple-piercingly fancy bits and bobs, we have to decide who we want to send all that content to.

This video from the late Gary Halbert can help you to better understand the importance of the person to whom we send our messages.

One part of marketing is the target market, but the other, and often neglected part, is the very person who is going to receive our content.

The more you know about the type of that person, the more receptive your audience will be to your message.

For more about creating a buyer persona, please read Hubspot’s How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business.

Inspect Your Sales Cycle

This inspection is based on your target market’s buying process.

But don’t make the mistake of examining the sales cycle from the seller’s perspective, following a process like…

1. Lead
2. Prospect
3. Appointment
4. Proposal
5. New client

If you map your content calendar based on the above steps, you go against buyers’ buying processes, and it sooner or later result in a serious clash. And after the dust has settled, what you see is that otherwise high quality buyers have committed mass exodus from your sales funnel, and no amount of Baileys Irish Cream or Nutella on toast can seduce them back into your funnel.

Use the buyer’s perspective to:

1. Recognize problem
2. Define possible long-term consequences
3. Define cost of problem and consequences
4. Allocate budget
5. Define deciding criteria
6. Assess alternatives
7. Select solution
8. Select solution provider

Listing Your Content Pieces

We know that different pieces are suitable for different stages of the sales funnel.

Buyers at the beginning of their “funnel journeys” need eye-opening pieces that help them realize that there is a problem that costs the company big money and needs to be solved.

Also consider that some buyers love reading but hate videos or podcasts.

And some content pieces are…

• Social media posts
• Blogs
• New articles
• Videos
• White papers (B2B) or Special reports (B2C)
• Case studies
• Research studies
• Social media channels
• Podcasts
• Templates, cheat sheets, checklists
• Games and puzzles
• Calculators

At the beginning of the funnel, buyers need problem-driven articles because first they try to solve their problems in-house.

At the end of the funnel, after buyers have realized the problem can’t be solved in-house, buyers need case studies and some social proof to make their final decisions.

Brainstorm Your Content-Friendly Subjects

Decide which parts of your subject matter expertise land themselves to relatively easy content development and distribution.

Yes, every profession has some areas that are not exactly content-friendly, partly because they are very hands-on skills, and it’s pointless to write content on them.

In Knowledge Creating Company, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi make a distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge.

• Explicit knowledge is easy express in words and numbers. It’s easy to codify, document and then memorize. Large number of people can learn it in a short space of time. E.g. learning the chromatic scale.
• Tacit knowledge is impossible to put into words and numbers. It’s impossible to codify, document and then memorize. E.g. learning to compose like Mozart.

We have to make sure we use explicit knowledge for content. Trying to explain tacit knowledge would leave your audience as frustrated as a centipede on a shoe-shopping spree.

And this leads us to…

• Explicit capability that can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively using various codified methods, like written text, audio or video. E.g. online courses.
• Tacit capability that must be delivered in a hands-on manner over an extended period of time. That makes the delivery expensive. E. g. medical residency.

Mapping Out Your Sales Funnel And Calendar

This is where you map out what gets sent out to which segment of your list and when.

The timing is defined how buyers behave inside the funnel. If there is indication of a specific piece’s consumption, then the system can release the next piece of content.

So, the sales funnel dictates what piece of content goes into the calendar at what point.

We want to make sure that the calendar reactive in such a way that it sends out the next piece of content in reaction to buyers’ action.

If you publish an article on how to select a SaaS software development firm, first the buyer has to read about why his company may be losing out by running off-the-shelf cloud-based software and how custom-made cloud-based software can be more effective.

Other Factors That Can Influence Your Calendar

There are some other factors that must be calculated when assembling your calendar.

This is an area where marketing people should compare notes with salespeople, since they’re out in the field and they know about infinitesimal nuances that can make a big difference in buyer behaviors.

Some factors are…

• The target market’s seasonality.
• Special industry trends.
• Industry-specific conferences, tradeshows, etc.
• Anticipated new product or service launches in target market.
• Anticipated news announcements.
• Industry’s regulation level – Highly regulated industries can be quite unpredictable.
• Effects of economic and political changes on industry.

Granted, many factors can’t be foreseen or anticipated, so the best thing you can do is build some flexibility into your content calendar.

When you find out about a major industrial tradeshow, you can tie your next few pieces of content to that tradeshow.

Mentioning these events also gives your content pieces a chance to be picked up by other news outlets.

Elements Of A Calendar Entry

Here we specify what is what in a specific content piece.

• Title: Title of the content piece.
• Problem: Clarifies the problem of the market which the piece addresses.
• KW 1: Long-tail keyword #1
• KW 2: Long-tail keyword #2
• KW 3: Long-tail keyword #3
• Key points: A short explanation of what the article does.
• Type: Blog, tip sheet, special report, case study, etc.
• Length: xyz words
• CTA (call to action): The action you want readers to take after consuming this piece.
• Preceded by: Title of the previous piece. (Vital to mimic the buyer’s thinking process)
• Succeeded by: Title of the next piece. (Vital to mimic the buyer’s thinking process)

You may use fewer or more fields in your calendar entries depending how complex your sales funnel is and how thinly you segment your database.

Calendar Template

There are more content calendar tools out there than stars in the sky.

You can read The Complete Guide to Choosing a Content Calendar, and most probably, you’ll find the one that is most suitable for your purposes.

Also, to complement the tool of your choice, you can read Michell Hall’s article on comprehensive list of calendar templates.

Once you select a tool and have a structure, then you can start creating your own content calendar.

Summary

Content type and timing are the two arms of the proverbial inbound marketing giant.

Yes, when you have both arms, you have a giant that can do amazing things seemingly effortlessly. The proverbial juggernaut that moves forwards unobstructed and generates dream clients for your business.

But if you miss either the type or the timing, you can end up with a paralyzed giant with his dominant arm missing and the other arm aimlessly flailing.

And now that you’re about to get your content calendar up and running, go and download our Inbound Marketing Checklist that will give you further tips on how to make the most of your marketing calendar in your inbound marketing campaigns.

The post What Is A Content Calendar and How Does It Help Marketing? appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Imagine this argument between a procurement agent and a real buyer he represents, as they try to hire a freelance graphic artist to revamp the company’s visual identity.

Procurement agent: Well, based on her qualifications, she’s clearly not qualified for the job.

Real buyer: Why not? Based on her education and portfolio, she is better than any other applicant. This is exactly what we need. She’s a real “pencil and paper” graphic artist who also knows how to use a computer. Considering that all other applicants are nothing more than skilled Photoshop users without the “artist” part, she’s clearly the winner.

Procurement agent: But she has no Photoshop experience.

Buyer: No, because she uses Gimp, the open source equivalent of Photoshop. It’s expertise that counts.

Procurement agent: But she doesn’t fit my job description in the RFP.

Buyer: The job description is to be an experienced graphic artist.

Procurement agent: No, my job description clearly states the applicant must be an experienced Photoshop user.

Buyer: Look, we need someone who really understands graphics as art and can help us.

Procurement agent: No! We need someone who fits my job description to the letter.

And the argument could go on and on, but I think you see what the problem is with RFPs.

Yes, RFP indeed means request for proposals from buyers’ standpoints, but it also means request for problems form the bidders’ standpoints.

Michael W. McLaughlin, the author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants and a former partner at Deloitte, calls it “real fools participate”.

Different people have different opinions about RFPs, but in general companies respond to them when the other option is long-term starvation or when they are not interested in doing proper marketing in their companies.

In this article, we examine only eight ways responding to RFPs can hurt companies, but I’m sure there are many more.

So, let’s get started with…

1. Clear Objectives Are Replaced With Arbitrary And Ill-Defined Tasks

In the non-RFP world, when it comes to projects, we discuss…

1. Goals: The type and magnitude of business improvement: E.g. increase online sales by 25% within one year.
2. Objectives: The documented work to be done during the project. (i.e. build a fully optimized and e-commerce website with lead generation/conversion ability and online payment systems.)
3. Scope of work: The list of tasks to be done to fulfill the objectives.
4. Value: The long-term value to client expect to garner from the successful completion of the project.
5. Investment: What the buyer pays to achieve the required objectives and to get on the path of achieving the desired business goal.

In RFPs, buyers have already listed the desired tasks, and they’re looking for someone to do the manual labour work. Using medical lingo, the patient has diagnosed himself and is now looking for a doctor to carry out the patient’s instructions.

If the RFP fails to communicate what the buyer wants to achieve through this project, then think twice before responding.

2. Decision-Making Is Abdicated To Disinterested And Non-Expert Bureaucrats

Imagine Johnny wants date and court Jenny with the intention of marrying her.

But Johnny can’t see Jenny until they are married.

No way! He must “date” Jenny older brother, Fred, who acts as Jenny’s romantic procurement agent.

But he doesn’t care about Johnny’s character and other things that would be important for Jenny.

And even the wedding will be done in Jenny’s absence by Johnny and Fred, in the presence of Jenny’s lawyer, signing the appropriate legal documents.

Fred only cares about how much money Johnny brings to the marriage, and how easily he can confiscate Johnny’s wealth and give it to his sister if Johnny dies or the couple divorces.

The situation is similar in real RFPs.

• The decision-maker is a slightly higher than rank-and-file employee.
• Procurement agents have no profit/loss responsibility.
• The decision-maker is not a boardroom dweller.
• A non-executive makes executive level decisions with executive level consequences.
• The decision-maker has neither business- nor subject matter expertise. I.e.: A procurement agent with a history degree decides who replaces the old IT infrastructure.

RFP proposals get evaluated by the wrong people based on the wrong criteria, which leads to the incorrect selections.

3. Short-Term Engagements

Companies issue RFPs either because the government regulates them to do so or they believe they can get better work out of their contractors by constantly holding their feet to the fire and reminding them how fragile their positions are… unless they dance as the client whistles.

It means whichever contractor gets the renewed contract, it’s a short-term deal and it soon turns into an ordeal when it’s time to renew it, and hundreds of RFP responders are banging on the gates for entry.

Incumbents know that no matter how great work they do and how satisfied the clients are, they soon get replaced by someone… usually cheaper.

It also means that most companies don’t give their best people to RFP work. Regardless of whether the work is done on site or at the back office, RFP projects are usually staffed by non-A-players, freeing up A-players to work on lucrative non-RFP projects.

This is also a great win for the sellers because they can train junior people on their clients’ dimes.

4. RFPs Are Very Expensive To Win

On average, it takes seven people about 185 person hours to digest and RFP and craft and submit a proposal for it.

Then from the issuance of the RFP, it can take as long as 45 days to get invited to the first bidder meeting that all bidders attend.

At those meetings, procurement people usually amend their RFPs a bit. They usually shave the time line and the price a bit and bloat the project’s scope a bit.

But look at the costs first. Just calculate the cost of those seven people. And that 185 hours exclude the support staff who do support work like photocopying, printing or checking little details to make sure that every T is crossed and I is dotted.

And what may happen after submission?

In unlucky cases, you get notified of the bad news.

In lucky cases, you get notified to rework some sections in the RFP where you haven’t properly adhered to the format.

And now the timer keeps ticking beyond the original 185 hours.

So, by the time, you submit the proposal in the proper format, you’ve spent the king’s ransom.

5. RFPs Ignore Lon-Term Consequences

Since it’s procurement agents, not executives, who handle RFPs, long-term consequences are almost always ignored.

Executives select suppliers based on…

• Factors that are beneficial to the company’s long-term success.
• Quality of relationships – Ease and effectiveness of working together.
• Long-term value to the client company.
• Seller’s ability to work effectively without supervision or micromanagement.

But procurement agents select suppliers based on…

• Factors that are personally beneficial to them (promotion, pay increase, extra perks, etc.) while working at the company.
• Price – Saving budget.
• Long-term job security for themselves.
• Seller’s ability to work as a supplicant micromanaged by procurement.

Unlike procurement agents, executives, since they know they have to live with the long-term consequences of mishandled projects, make their selection based on criteria that allow real A-players to win contracts.

Executives know that their projects are in good hands with A-players regardless of the prices they charge.

6. Most RFP-Driven Projects Are Over-Scoped, Under-Timed And Underpaid

From the perspective of project management, there are three factors that define projects at the initial, pre-negotiation stage.

1. Time frame: How much time has the buyer set?
2. Cost: The amount of money the buyer set aside for the project.
3. Scope: Amount of work that I planned to get done.

There some problems here.

The time frame confuses effort and duration. E.g. A Canadian passport takes 17 minutes of effort (actual work) and one month of duration (sitting in piles) to renew. RFPs tend to ignore duration and focus on effort, that is, demanding to receive a renewed passport in 17 minutes.

Cost is usually a wild guess E.g.: The dentist charges $200 for plaque removal from teeth, so a cardiologist should charge about the same for plaque removal from arteries.

Scope is a gallimaufry of tasks very often assembled by laypeople in certain influential positions. E.g. an IT infrastructure overhaul project gets scoped by some manager with an Ivy League MBA but zero IT expertise. Hence, many of those projects end up suffering from massive bloating of scope (Scope creep), while adhering to the original time frame and price.

Way #7: RFPs Are Based On Self-Diagnosis

According to a widely accepted medical maxim, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.

But it applies not only to medical professionals, but any professional in any industry.

The problem is that self-diagnoses don’t go “deep” enough and solutions are developed based on experienced symptoms, not root causes. The other side of the same coin is that solutions get developed by laypeople not experts.

Many moons ago, McKinsey & Co. did a study to see how effectively consulting engagements deliver value to clients. It turned out that…

• Some 75% of consulting engagements don’t return a profit to consulting firms.
• Some 50% of consulting engagements don’t deliver the expected value for clients.

Yes, and one of the main culprits is lack of expert diagnosis.

So, sellers are disallowed to diagnose buyers’ problems, but blindly follow buyers home-cooked – usually wrong – solutions.

And when the solution fails to solve the real problem, of course, very often clients blame and even sue sellers.

Mainly in the US, lots of fat people are suing their personal trainers, their doctors and fast food companies for “turning” them fat.

8. RFPs Ignore Your Uniqueness

One of the greatest things in the free market is that you can win great projects with your uniqueness.

• Many companies engineer optical lenses, but there is only one Carl Zeiss AG.
• Many companies make kitchen knives, but there is only one Cutco.
• Many architects design meat processing plants, but there is only one Temple Grandin.

The problem is that when you respond to RFPs, you are requested to respond in a plain vanilla fashion. You must rigidly follow the RFPs template, and can’t write about what makes you unique in your market and industry, because that would be stacking the deck in your favor and that’s unfair to the other bidders.

But the fact that you’re an accomplished specialist in the very area that the RFPs is all about is irrelevant and a generalist can easily win the project based on either lower price or some superficial factors.

Back in the day, when I was a technical buyer, having advised senior executives on technical purchases, I experienced how little procurement agents cared about real factors that actually could have contributed to the overall success of projects.

Summary

While procurement agents call it competitive bidding, the Actors’ Equity Association’s name, which is really actors’ union, appropriately calls it cattle call.

Unions are all about equality and seniority regardless of talent, performance and other practical factors.

So back in the days, lots of roles were given to talented actors and second-rate union actors were ignored.

Then the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) started lobbying for equal treatment regardless of talent.

The selection process required directors to compare lots of actors and actresses for each role, and hand out roles based on seniority and other obscure criteria, not talent.

RFPs are the same. In comparison to inbound marketing initiatives, responding to RFPs is one of the most ineffective ways of landing new clients.

Bidders are expected to show up and give their best, so the selection committee can select one bidder based on price and some other mysterious factors.

Knowing how expensive the process is to bidders, they’d better learn how to market their products and services properly and avoid cattle calls once and for all.

Hubspot’s 2015 State of Inbound Report clearly shows that good inbound marketing can deliver triple the ROI outbound marketing, including responding to RFPs can.

The only exception is when you jointly write the RFP with the buyer and you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that your business is the only one that can fulfil the RFP’s criteria. It means you have objective evidence (licence, etc.) that can’t be overruled with subjective reasons.

If the RFP calls for a Cisco CCIE certification and only you have that (objective evidence), the procurement agent can’t reject you based on subjective factors like incorrect hairstyle or the wrong shape of your nose.

But this is really the only case, and it doesn’t come up too often.

Considering the cost of responding to an RFP and the chances of winning it, it’s not a cost-effective game and you’re better off focusing on improving your marketing and getting higher quality business.

The post 8 Ways RFPs Can Lead Businesses To Their Doom appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Reports are a vital tool for determining whether your marketing expenditure is delivering value. They’re only useful, however, if you receive—and use—them regularly. What’s equally important, however, is that you are reviewing the right metrics to provide the information you need. Here are 8 critical reports your marketing agency need to be building you each month.

Conversions

Tracking and monitoring conversions indicates the value your various marketing channels contribute to your overall strategic goals, according to HubSpot. Conversion reports should provide in-depth information on factors such as:

• Macro conversions, which are those supporting your overarching business goals such as submission of contact forms, scheduling a consultation or making a purchase.
• Micro conversions, which are steps towards the macro conversions including the length of time visitors spend on a page, how they interact with your social media and pay-per-click results.
• Cost per conversion, or the amount you spend to achieve those conversions. When this is compared with the value of the conversion it provides you with your return on investment (ROI).
• Leads generated per channel / offer, so you can identify which opportunities are the most successful.

This report provides detailed information on how website visitors interact with your content, and which of those interactions are the ones driving conversions.

Unique Visitors

It’s one thing to know how many visits or page impressions your site gets, but unique visitors are what you really want to know. Your marketing agency should provide you with a monthly report detailing how many individual users came to your site each day, week, month and year.

A unique visitor is counted once each day, but is also counted once for the purposes of weekly, monthly and annual reporting. This information gives you a sense of the size of your audience, according to Anthony Valela of Agility CMS. It enables you to compare the traffic to your website year over year, and determine whether you’re experiencing growth.

Bounce Rate

Your website’s “comings” may be important but so are the “goings,” and by tracking your bounce rate you can identify what’s not working. Analyzing a high bounce rate or one that increases over time can highlight whether you have pages that have low usability, don’t convert visitors easily or take too long to load. It can also help identify products and services that get a lower response. By reviewing patterns in your bounce rate you can pinpoint and adjust pages that aren’t working.

Keyword Performance

The success of your inbound marketing hinges partly on the accuracy of keyword research and usage, so keyword performance is a critical report. This is important not only for you to know which keywords are driving the majority of your traffic and leads, but to:

• Identify negative keywords and the results of using them
• Monitor your quality score on Google and ranking in search
• Know which keywords to use to optimize your AdWords campaigns
• Optimize landing pages to draw the most traffic.

Content Performance

The majority of content channels are unique, and it’s important to know how well your content is performing on each. With content becoming a “big ticket” expenditure item for marketers, you want to know just what it’s achieving.

Your agency should be able to provide a comprehensive content performance report that shows which pieces of content drove the most traffic and evaluates the results of each channel against a set of universal KPIs.  That’s the only way you’ll know how your content is doing overall.

Landing Page Performance

Your landing pages have specific reasons for existence and specific roles to play. By tracking and interpreting monthly landing page reports you can identify how each offer is received by the market, how usable the page is, how long the average user spends on the page and how often he comes back to it. This will give you the information to conclude how well your offers are doing, and whether they need adjustment.

Summary of Work Completed

Do you sometimes wonder what your marketing agency is up to all day? You might be surprised to find out just how much work goes into making your marketing happen. The better your agency, the more effortless campaigns will appear—and that means better talent, more work and effort put into creating them. Agencies know their customers don’t always understand what they do, however, and comprehensive reporting is a critical aspect of the client relationship. Regular reporting gives the agency an opportunity to communicate with clients, and a summary of work provides the information you need. For any sizeable client, most agencies create feedback reports detailing what has taken place during the month.

Challenges, Wins & Recommendations

Your marketing agency should provide you with reports on the progress of your account, including challenges presented, wins achieved and recommendations for ongoing success. Your job is managing the business while theirs is to market it, so you’re entitled to feedback on how well it’s going and anything else you need.

The post 8 Reports Your Marketing Agency Needs To Be Building Every Month appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

In many small- and medium-sized (SME) B2B organizations, search engine optimization, using American inventor and marketer, Ron Popeil’s famous slogan for his Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, is a “set it and forget it” function.

Business owners erroneously believe that once they’ve “done SEO”, it’s done forever, and requires no further attention on their parts.

But to do effective SEO, they have to establish where they are right now, and to do that, they have to do a SEO audit.

And when they look up what a B2B SEO audit is, they realise it’s a pretty complex process.

The good news is that you can do a scaled down mini-audit, and in this article, we outline what you should check.

So, let’s start with…

Some Serious Problems

Because of this “set it and forget it” attitude, many websites show serious SEO neglect, with the top 10 problems, according to Semrush, being…

• 1. Duplicate content
• 2. ALT attributes missing
• 3. Duplicate title tags
• 4-5. Internal and external link rot (broken link)
• 6-7. Duplicate and/or missing meta descriptions
• 8.Low text to HTML ratio
• 9-10. Missing or multiple H1 tags on one page

The reality is that SEO is changing very fast, and we haven’t even talked about Google’s recent “Fred” manoeuvre.

It means that companies that get a significant portion of their customers, thus revenues, through their web presence, have no option but to consider SEO as an ongoing business function.

If they want to reap, they have to sow first.

When businesses realize that they should do SEO on an ongoing basis, they start as if they always had been doing it without any interruption.

It means, they start doing various SEO tactics, without strategies and another key component.

As the saying goes in alcoholism recovery, the basic criterion of recovery is to recognize that one is an alcoholic.

That’s why the first step of the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program is to say, “My name is XYZ, and I am an alcoholic”.

This short statement is a sort of audit of the current situation, without which no recovery is possible.

So, if you belong to the SEO “set it and forget it” camp and now want to re-start, the first step must be to declare that your website suffers from the SEO “set it and forget it” syndrome, and then perform a mini SEO audit to evaluate the search engine friendliness of your company’s website to see where actually you stand.

So, let’s move on to…

Preparing For The SEO Audit

The first question right out of the gate is…

Who Should Do The Mini Audit?

Just like in every kind of audit, there must be checks and balances in place, which means that the audit must not be done by one person. Ideally there are two auditors to avoid random acts of naughtiness and mischief.

They should be people who are somewhat web-savvy but are not involved in web work on a daily basis – People are reluctant to criticize their own work.

So, ideally, it’s a dual role between the marketing manager and marketing coordinator.

In sub-$10M companies, it’s often the VP of sales and marketing with another sales and marketing manager.

Where To Start?

Continuing with your preparation, you have three key questions to ask…

• Check which accounts do you need unrestricted access to?
• What exactly do you need to know about your website to audit it properly?
• What audit tools do you need to do the job?

Accessible Accounts

Please note that many of the following tools and services are provided by Google, so if you have one Google account, may that me Gmail, Google+ or any other Google tool, you can use that login info to with most Google tools.

Access to all web analytics login information: It’s common problem in many companies that certain people have the nasty habit of keeping login information to themselves, and in doing so believing they have made themselves fire-proof. But it’s also a crime. As the business owner, or the business owner’s representative, you must have unlimited access to any login info.

Access to all social media accounts: Social media can have a serious impact on any company both in positive and negative way. Within four weeks after breaking Dave Carroll’s guitar and wiggling out of responsibility, due to backlash on YouTube (16,347,776 views and 99,139 likes), United Airlines’ stock price fell 10% and stockholders lost about $180 million.

Access to payments systems accounts: If your company takes online payments or does online banking, you need this access.

Access to Google AdWords and all other PPC accounts: If your company uses PPC marketing, then you need access because you need key numbers from the PPC dashboards.

Access to Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) accounts: This is many of the tools your webmaster uses on a daily basis to keep your website in good working order.

Access to business accounts: This includes access to CRM, email management and distribution program, project management program and any cloud-based account that has anything to do with your company’s performance.

List Of Tools to Aid Your SEO Audit

Here we look at a list of tools you need for your SEO mini-audit.

Knowing that what you do is a SEO mini-audit not a full 360° SEO audit, and with this in mind, there is no point to flood you with expensive tools, since they would be underused and the extra data would be overwhelming.

It’s like when you don’t feel well. You take your temperature, your blood pressure and maybe your heart rate and that’s all.

But you don’t self-administer ECG, EEG or blood gas analysis. You ask the respective experts to do those procedures.

So, the tools here enable you to perform the proverbial temperature-, blood pressure- and pulse check.

So, let’s see…

For every tool, you can find several makes from different companies, but this list gives you all the tools for a mini audit.

• Google Analytics or some other web analytics: This is where good audit starts. Start with Google and step up later to more advanced tools.
• WooRank has a free SEO audit tool that analyses your website and gives you a prioritized to-do list.
• Google Webmaster Tools: For the price (free), this is an amazing tool and you can perform an almost full audit with it.
• SnagIt: It’s a visual tool that you can use to take screenshot and record videos. Cost: $67

I know it’s not much, but using Einstein’s words, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

And we shouldn’t hunt for sparrows with AIM-7 Sparrow missiles.

Wow, if chairman Mao Zedong knew that during the Great Chinese Sparrow Campaign between 1958 and 1962!

Look Into The SEO Audit Itself

Overview

Checking your domain’s indexed pages

• Do a Google search for your site and see what comes up. In the Google search box, type “site:yourwebsite.com” (without quotes).
• Note the number of returned pages right under the Google Search box: E.g.: “About 416,000 results (0.63 seconds)”.
• Is the first page your home page? If not, it can be the sign of some SEO errors, poor branding, poor internal linking (too many links to home page or too many exact match keywords) or even some form of penalty against your site.

Open your Google Analytics and check for organic landing pages.

• Is this number close to your previous search results?
• This gives you a pretty good idea about your indexed pages.

Run a search on your branded terms

• Make a note of your domain’s pages that come up.
• If the proper pages aren’t showing up as the first result, there could be issues, like a penalty, in play.

Check Google’s cache for your key pages

• Can you see your content with the appropriate navigation links?
• Are there any invisible?

Using this bookmarklet, you can also check the text-only version of the cached page.

Now do a search on your mobile devices

• Is your listing marked up as “mobile friendly”? One good source is Akamai’s white paper, Delivering the Best Mobile Experience. Read How AMP Works for detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make your website mobile-friendly.
• Are your pages mobile friendly? What that means is that both text and images properly scale based on the size of your mobile device and all buttons are recognizable for their functions.

Mobile unfriendliness can cause the loss of organic visits.

On-Page Optimization

A big part of on-page optimization is optimizing meta tags because they are read by both search engines and visitors. And since they make the first impression of a web page, you have to pay attention to them.

Also, Google’s new ranking algorithm uses machine learning known as RankBrain.

It takes metrics from user behavior such as click through rate (CTR) from search results and uses it to determine the site’s quality factors.

Title tags

• A standalone title tag should be optimized for each page.
• Title tags should be max. 55-60 characters (512 pixels) long. You can preview this with a tool such as Screaming Frog.
• Write down pages with missing title tags.

Description tags

• A standalone description should be optimized for each page.
• Give a brief description of what’s on the page.
• Description tags can be as long as you make them, but they get cut off at 160 characters. You can check it in Screaming Frog.
• Since 2009, meta the description is no longer Google ranking a factor. However, today’s meta descriptions should be written like ad copy to entice users to click through. This supports SEO by improving click through rate from search results pages.
• All key pages of your website should have a properly optimize meta description with a compelling call-to-action.

To quickly audit your title and description tags, type in the google search box: site:yourwebsite.com

At Search Engine Watch, you can see some both good and bad examples for title tags and meta descriptions.

Keywords

• Each page includes one primary keyword phrase multiple times and some alternate keyword phrases
• Make sure every keyword has significant amount of supporting content on your website. Write about related themes or more granular points of focus on the subject.
• Make sure the page’s primary keyword phrase is included in the H1 tag
• Check images for alt text and make sure alt texts include keyword phrases.

SEMrush has a free version, in which you can enter your website and it will spit out all the keywords that the website currently ranks for. First type in your URL and then click ”organic research” under “domain analysis” in the top left side menu (second menu item under Overview).

Clean URLs

• Make sure your URL is descriptive.
• Separate words with hyphens not underscores
• Keep the addresses of your indexed pages static
• If you use short URLs (bit.ly, etc.), keep each of them under 150 characters.

Some extra points

• Best Practices for URLs
• URL Rewriting Tool
• mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet
• Creating 301 Redirects With .htaccess

Content

For a long time, conventional wisdom was that no one wants to read long articles on the web. And with the proliferation of smart phones, this notion became even stronger.

However, after a few algorithm changes at Google, even the staunchest short-article fanatics have started realizing that the type of readers who are likely to become customers down the road want deep and meaningful articles.

In “Ogilvy on Advertising”, legendary advertising man, David Ogilvy wrote,

“All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short … advertisements with long copy convey the impression that you have something important to say, whether people read the copy or not.”

The former dean of the Graduate School of Retailing at New York University, Dr. Charles Edwards, once said, “The more facts you tell, the more you sell. An advertisement’s chance for success invariably increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases.”

And finally, in “Tested Advertising Methods,” renowned copywriter, John Caples wrote, “Advertisers who can trace the direct sales results from their ads use long copy because it pulls better than short copy… Brief, reminder-style copy consisting of a few words or a slogan does not pull inquiries as well as long copy packed with facts and reader benefits about your product or service.”

Also, Kevin Delaney, the editor-in-chief of Quartz, reports that articles between 500 and 800 words have the hardest time with being ranked. They are too long for being short and snappy and too short for being deep and detailed. So, in most cases, they get ignored.

Optimizing the home page

According to SEO copywriter, Heather Lloyd-Martin, a page with only 250 words is regarded as thin content, that is, something dodgy. In Longer Is Better for Blog Content: Truth Or Myth?, Julia McCoy, CEO of Express Writers, confirms Julia’s point.

• Does your homepage have at least 500 words?
• Are keywords properly placed in the content?

Optimized landing pages

• At least five paragraphs and 500 words. It enough for search engines but may not be enough for visitors.
• The content has been uniquely writing especially this specific page.

Appropriate keyword usage

• Is there a good match between they pages’ content and keywords?
• Does the page use words and phrases that are semantically similar to the keywords and relevant to the topic on the page?
• Does the page use short-, mid-, and long-tail keywords?
• Do a Google site search for your main keywords and note where they show up?

Available visitor educational content

• Besides search engine-friendly content, do you have enough visitor-friendly content to inform and educate your website visitors about who you are and what you do?

Formatting content

• Content formatted both for easy skimming and reading.
• Content is properly paragraphed.
• Proper H tags are used throughout the content.
• Only one H1 tag on every page.
• H2 and H3 tags are used to make content easier to read.
• Images support the message of the content.

Page headlines and subheads

• Headlines and subheads include keyword phrases
• Skimming headlines gives the gist of the page

Amount of content versus ads

• In B2B, on-page advertising like Google AdSense can undermine the website’s credibility
• Google frowns on on-page advertising
• If you run on-page ads, make sure you have good content too or Google can penalize your page.

Duplicate Content

You can use Copyscape to find whether or not there is a duplicate version of the content that you’re about to publish. This is important because if your content is already on another web page with good SEO and more and better links, your content has as much chance of survival as a mouse at a healthy diet conference for cats.

• Every URL on your website has its dedicated content
• Do searches for random content snippets (Put the snippet between quotation marks)
• Note the pages where each snippet shows up.
• Is there any content duplication on sub-domains?
• Note that printer friendly versions of pages can cause content duplication. The impact of this is not a concern if it’s on your own domain, but some embedded content plugins or widgets can sometimes be hosted on unique URLs outside of your website. This is a scenario you will want to avoid.

Accessibility

• Check the robots.txt. Varvy has bot the tool and a tutorial to help you check your pages. The robots.txt files specifies which web pages the search engines have access to and which pages hey are barred from. Since this is a rather advanced setting, if you’re not experienced in web coding, seek some help.

Check website without JavaScript, cookies, and CSS

• Use the Web Developer Toolbar (a free Firefox add-on)
• Is the content there?
• Are the navigational links operational?

Now change your user agent to Googlebot

• Use the User Agent (a free Firefox add-on)
• Are they cloaking?
• Does it look the same as before?
• Check for 4xx (client) errors and 5xx (internal server) errors.

Sitemaps

• txt file includes XML sitemaps. An essential tool to use is Google Webmaster Tools.
• XML sitemaps are submitted to Google/Bing Webmaster Tools

Check meta robots noindex tag on each page

• Check for accidental noindex tagging using SeeRobots for both Firefox and Chrome.
• Are noindex tags applied to the right pages?
• Check your site with Moz or Screaming Frog

Site Architecture And Internal Linking

Page linking

• How many outgoing links does each page have?
• Are links under 100 per page?

Over 100 links per page, the SEO value of the page can get seriously compromised.

Specific vertical and horizontal linking logic

• Landing on the homepage systematically leads visitors on a pre-planned journey.
• Category and product pages are linked to other relevant category and product pages.

Additional reading:

Importance of Internal Linking and Internal Linking Tactics

Technical Considerations

301 redirects used the right way

• 301 redirects are used consistently.
• 301 and Not 302 is used to redirect root to a landing.
• Check your 301 redirects with the Live HTTP Headers Firefox plugin.
• No 302, 307 or JavaScript redirects. Use Screaming Frog to check them.
• Direct redirects and no redirect chains.

JavaScript, iFrames and Flash usage

• Is there any hidden (by Javascript) text on the page? See Google’s cloaking guidelines.
• Are there any JavaScript based content on the page?
• Are there any JavaScript based links on the page?
• Is it deliberate page rank sculpting or an error?
• Is any part of the page’s content in iFrames?
• How wide-spread is Flash usage on the page? Does it prevent the page from being indexed?

XML Sitemaps

• The site has an XML sitemap.
• XML sitemaps show indexation problems.
• XML sitemaps follow the established protocols?

Canonical

• 301s are set up for canonical sites
• Google Webmaster Tools contains the Canonical version of the site
• “Rel canonical” tags are set up throughout the site

Mobile Compliance

Observe mobile behaviour

• How mobile friendly is the website?
• How well does it work on mobile devices?
• Are your analytics ready for mobile?
• In case of separate mobile site, does the desktop site refer to it with a rel=”alternate” tag?
• Does the mobile version canonical to the desktop version?
• Here you can see some examples of the “alternate” tag.

International Usage

Check all international version of your website

• In Webmaster Tools, make sure that country-based targeting is enabled
• Are your website targeting intentions in synch with your Webmaster Tools settings?
• If you have several versions of the same website, make sure the content is unique on each of them.
• Implement hreflang and rel alternate if necessary as per this documentation.
• Make sure every URL is in the same language as the content is written,

Analytics Considerations

Analytics codes

• Analytics codes are inserted on every page. Make sure there is only one code. Google Tag Manager is an excellent tool to do it.
• To avoid self-referrals, make sure your own IP address is blocked from analytics. See details here.
• Internal searches register in analytics
• Analytics is set up for geographics tracking.
• Both Google Adwords and AdSense codes are linked to analytics.
• Event tracking is set up for key user interactions

Summary

As we discussed at the beginning of the article, this is a SEO mini audit. I emphasise “mini” because the real SEO audit is much more comprehensive.

Yes, instructions are available by the truckload, but, just like a financial audit, the SEO audit has to be done by someone who is not emotionally entangled with the company. After all, we can often have a bias towards our own content as this is a particular area of subjective opinions.

One of the greatest benefits of an audit is its objectivity because the auditor has nothing to gain or lose by giving you certain good or bad news.

Nevertheless, now you know where your website stands and what needs to be done. And even if you decide to forego a full audit with a reputable agency, I bet you have a massive list of tasks the mini audit has surfaced for you. Even just some implementation of fixes to the areas you audited over time can have meaningful returns to your bottom line. The list may be daunting, but chip away at it over time… you’ll be glad you did.

The post How To Run An Effective B2B SEO Audit appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

Producing great content for the healthcare industry can be a bit like getting lost in the woods; easy to deal with if you know how to handle yourself in the bush, but straight up panic-inducing, if not.

The stigma in writing and tailoring great content to the healthcare industry is that most writers think they have to be doctors or nurses to do it well – or that they have to elevate their vocabularies to speak directly to doctors and nurses – and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a competitive, complex topic that holds issues of legality and compliance.

Good writers have to interact with, and research topics of authority – there’s no avoiding it. Plus, doctors and the entire world of healthcare deserves our respect; so it feels nearly disrespectful to write about the importance of the healthcare community in layman’s terms. At the same time, generating great content means addressing the fact that most people won’t understand the Latin names for conditions, or the in’s and outs of molecular biology.

So, generating the right content for healthcare-based clients is like a delicate dance – on one hand, there’s a level of seriousness and authority that needs to be addressed, but in such a way that’s engaging for a broad audience to read.

If watching reruns of House M.D has taught us anything, it’s to embrace the seriousness of healthcare with a free-spirited attitude… and that rocking a blazer with jeans and running shoes is legit, but that’s another post.

Reimagine your Perspective

Producing content for healthcare is really no different from any other industry. It’s about sourcing credible references, doing good research, and showing the topic respect – just as any professional content writer will show a topic about law, retail or manufacturing. The difference, perhaps, lies in the singular perception of healthcare – it’s strictness, or rigor. The mark of content regarding healthcare is one of unwavering importance.

Remember that, and tailor your perspective to that of your readers. With healthcare, your reader is likely someone who is seeking the best physician, surgeon, or facility available to them. They’re probably searching for solutions, information, or even treatments for a list of specific symptoms or emotions associated with health – so put yourself in their shoes.

As you’re writing, ask yourself a few key questions:

• Can you easily interpret the information you’re writing?
• Are your definitions and terms understandable to younger readers?
• Is your clinical content accurate without being confusing or overwhelming?
• Are you offering actionable explanations?
• Have you addressed the questions of your readers?

A great way to discover more about your potential readers is to employ the use of a well executed buyer persona. These are structured processes that critically map out ideal target buyers, demographics, and psycho-graphic analysis to more effectively target your content.

The purpose of a buyer persona is to clearly define the goals, pain points, and challenges that your potential buyer faces as they go about their decision making process, also known as the buyer journey. This process serves to ensure that you are speaking to your audience in a way that caters to their needs in self educating about the problem or solution they are researching. The buyer persona leans heavily on the modern day shopper, because they prefer to self-serve and self-educate on their own terms; this puts them in control of where and how to buy solutions to their problems.

Identify Your Target

The beautiful thing about an inbound marketing content strategy is acknowledging out of the gate that you’re aware your ideal prospect is already looking for answers to their questions. This means that your biggest hurdle is finding out what those questions are and using this insight to formulate specific and tailored content made specifically for the audience that’s going to find it most useful.

Step 1 in any content marketing campaign is accurately and confidently identifying your target. In healthcare content, you can assess the niche business you or your client is in, and tailor your buyer personas and audience demographic analysis to create the perfect content calendar for attracting the right people.

However, “healthcare” doesn’t have to mean doctor or hospital-centric content either, there are a plethora of health-related topics that can act as great jump-off points for attracting a broader demographic whose interest is on health, wellness and event training. Plus, in terms of numbers and traffic generation, there are many more people who are not medical professionals who are looking for advice and resources on health. For example:

• Weight loss/diet blogs – giving information on tips and tricks for losing that last 5 pounds, or highlighting weight loss journeys.

• Training blogs – more of a wellness sub-topic, but training, weight-lifting, or running blogs are an attractive platform for those who primarily use exercise and physical activity to improve their health.

• Nutrition blogs – Blogs that are focused on healthy, organic food options that promote health and even suggest relief from health-related ailments like diabetes, iron deficiencies, high cholesterol, tooth decay, etc – all beneficial answers for those researching for alternative health treatments or changes to their lives that put health first.

• Healthy living blogs – more open ended in scope, but healthy living blogs can support healthcare related topics by insisting that a new, healthy outlook on life and the activities that you find solace in can actually help to improve your mood, spirit and overall health in time. Niche topics like hiking, canoeing, yoga, gardening, jogging, etc – all aspects of healthy lifestyles that can be used to combat certain medical or healthcare related topics.

A great way to build some background information on your ideal target demographic is to start with larger, more broad topics, and dial in on something tighter as time goes on. This funnel-style of target identification will help you to wean out the crowds that aren’t interested in your content, or typically like to find their info elsewhere. Further, it mimics the natural sales-funnel ideals of a success inbound campaign – as a balancing act that needs to be addressed at every stage.

For example, a sales/persona funnel needs to maintain a funnel shape, this means dictating where your energy goes as readers progress further down the rabbit hole. Our fearless leader, Todd Mumford, notes sales funnels should always be fat at the top – liken that to appealing to a large audience with broader content topics. Further down the line, the sales funnel is thinned by visitors entering and beginning to make their sales-related decisions – liken this stage to readers determining how specific or relatable – or not – your topics are for their research purposes.

At the end of the topic funnel, you’ll have gathered some invaluable information about your readers as you experiment with different topics, focus and voices. Similar to the way a sales funnel will inevitably thin to a point when customers are ready to make a purchasing decision; when you can help someone to make a buying decision, your content is always a deciding factor – know what content gets your reader to the end of the sales funnel, and you’ll know what type of health-related content is capable of attracting the right readers – and whether or not your content is able to answer their questions.

Tone & Voice

Voice is so, so critical in successful healthcare content. Writing is hard enough, but knowing when to use a friendly, upbeat tone, or a professional voice is paramount to break through to a considerable audience. This skill is all about practice – writing a lot will of course inevitably make you better at writing for specific sub genres of people; healthcare content and its related niche markets are unique in that different types of writing will generate a spark with a different audience.

ThoughtCo tells us that tone is a web of feelings stretched throughout an essay – so whatever you do, healthcare content should always offer a boost of some kind. Negative aspects to health are abundant, and important, but should never finish your content posts. Writing meaningful healthcare content is all about hearing and feeling the tone of your readers as well. Remember, marketing and content creation is all about building friendship, and meaningful relationships based on trust: give your readers something to grab onto, and don’t take advantage of their trust. It’s a precious commodity that needn’t be tampered with; health should never be tampered with.

Offer motivation when you need to. Offer sobering facts to encourage your readers to make beneficial changes in their approach to health. Exchange ideas and promote innovation to instill a sense of good tidings and good expectations.

Keyword Optimization

Discuss benefits, SEO implications

When writing for healthcare applications, content producers are fortunate in that readers are likely searching for symptoms and specific names of conditions or illnesses. Your inbound marketing team can help you to decipher which words and phrases produce the highest search numbers that can be implemented into your content as sub-headings and titles, and lightly implemented into the content itself. What SEO does, is improves your pages appeal to search engine results. It’s a technique that helps your site and therefore your content, to rank higher in organic search results. Search engines like Google are typically looking for title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure to build context upon, and inbound links.

What SEO is NOT about, is littering your content with transparent, ill-placed words as often as possible. Optimization is more of a dance; a masterful, crafty dance. In fact, more search engines will dock your site based on an obvious overabundance of keywords, known as keyword stuffing. Never push, or allow your keyword placement to feel unnatural.

Let’s imagine your client sells diabetic socks. A good idea would be to target a portion of your content towards those looking to better understand and self-educate on the benefits of keywords like ‘increased circulation,’ ‘blood flow,’ and ‘transmission of blood to the feet,’ resulting in reduced swelling, soreness, and inflammation.

See what we did there? We took a beneficial product that a reader may or may not be aware of, and marketed it as a benefit to specific problems that we can accurately perceive a broad readership may already be looking for answers to. Remember, the right people already have questions and need answers to those questions – your keyword research will be to hone in on and decipher which problems are questions are most-asked, and tailor your expertise to answering in the best, most comprehensive way to help build trust with your readers, and authority on the subject.

Build Structure

Content marketing is at a bit of a crossroads. As the discipline evolves, and readers develop new ways to engage with and interpret content, some writers and marketing outfits have lost their touch. Only 30% of B2B marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing, down from 38% in 2016. This means that content marketers need to re-dedicate their approach to content creation.

Healthcare lends itself well to this reinvestment of marketing prowess, because much like content marketing it requires consistency, measurable results and dedication. Marketers and content writers need to add consistency to their marketing efforts and stay true to the process. Just like an incorrect cut in surgery can cause massive hemorrhaging, unfocused marketing can do the same to an organization’s bottom line.

Content marketers also need to take the responsibility to comply with best practices. Content marketers and writers need to be careful when writing about sensitive topics like healthcare and refrain from offering medical advice outright when not properly vetted by a PHD for liability concerns. Some of these potential areas of consideration can significantly delay effective marketing from taking place. It takes a well oiled process with an intimate understanding of the industry to keep consistent marketing sustained.

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At its core, healthcare content creation is about insisting that readers acknowledge that optimism in their ability to help themselves is key to the success of the material itself. We’ve written at great length on the importance of writing with respect, and with humility – but writing to inspire confidence, trust, and camaraderie via healthcare and health-related content can represent much more.

Generating the right healthcare content, it would seem, revolves around a writer’s ability to identity with, and to develop strong, positive strategies with tone and voice, as much as SEO and keyword research. A content writer could spend months compiling the most factual and hard-nosed piece on the internet – but if it doesn’t speak to someone; help them identify in a positive light – there’s a good chance it’ll be skipped over.

Respect, friendship, accuracy, and trust always rule the day.

The post Healthcare Content Marketing: How To Generate The Right Content appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Nelson Phillips

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to enable your website to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. A study by Compete.com showed that 53% of clicks from users searching online go to the first result on the list.

Reaching the first page of results has always been challenging, but with the constant changes in the way Google indexes content it has become even more so. Bad SEO can harm your business and your online profile, so it’s imperative that your optimization is done both correctly and cost-effectively.

Here are 8 reasons why you should hire an expert in SEO to do it for you.

Time Saving

Attempting to do your own SEO is hugely time-consuming, especially if you or your Chief Marketing Officer is an SEO novice. One of the primary reasons why companies outsource various marketing functions is to save time, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2014 report on B2B benchmarks, budget and trends. Free up your time to focus on the core competencies that are critical to your business operations.

Knowledge and Expertise

Someone proficient in SEO has the knowledge and expertise to employ best practices for coding as well as optimizing the structure of your site. He (or she) will conduct an analysis of your website’s performance and do advanced keyword research on what users are searching for in your industry. They will evaluate the strategy of your competitors to see what is working for them, provide advice on additional content required and help you develop a plan for producing the content strategy and search engine-friendly content you need.

Keeping Up with Changes

Google updates its search algorithm several times a day, according to leading SEO consultancy Moz.com. That makes it fairly difficult for the busy marketing executive to focus on tracking and implementing changes as fast as necessary. For example, Google’s latest update—nicknamed “Mobilegeddon”—went live on April 21, 2015. Within a couple of days, those that were prepared were afforded a ranking increase in mobile search while less prepared websites watched their mobile web traffic declined. An SEO expert, however, makes it his business to know precisely when new updates are due to kick in and to ensure that they are implemented.

Delivering Cost Effective Operations

You can spend a lot of money on optimizing your website for organic search, and unless you have a reasonable degree of expertise you could be wasting your funds. For SEO to be cost-effective, it needs to be a continuous, consistent process. An expert treats every page of your website content as a potential campaign, optimizing it to target prospective customers in different stages of the buying cycle.

By delivering value-driven on-page SEO in conjunction with offsite optimization and strategic link building, your expert can help to build you an online profile that appears natural to the search engines.

Avoid Expensive Mistakes

It’s no secret that time is money, and this is particularly true when it comes to SEO. What might seem like an insignificant error can cause a massive problem with the search engines. For example, using your primary keyword a little too often or naming the images in your blog posts incorrectly can constitute over-optimization, even if it’s unintentional. This can cause your website to be penalized by search engines and possibly blacklisted, resulting in a loss of traffic, reduced number of sales leads, and the need to spend time and money regaining lost ground in search rankings.

Analysis of Results

Regardless of how well your website is optimized, SEO can only truly serve you if you’re analyzing your results on a regular basis and making adjustments accordingly. Metrics that require ongoing monitoring include:

• The number of visitors referred by the search engines
• Ranking of key terms and phrases in search
• Conversion rates associated with search queries

With continuous monitoring, any drop in your search traffic can be diagnosed and addressed immediately, according to SearchEngineWatch.com.

Easy-To-Understand Reports

It’s essential to generate and interpret reports on the performance of your SEO activities. By doing so, you’re able to evaluate whether your efforts are helping you to achieve your business goals, determine the impact of your marketing on operations and identify new opportunities or threats from competitors. An SEO expert understands the significance of the statistics provided in the reports and will convert them into usable business intelligence that you can easily digest.

Improves ROI

When you’re investing hard-earned money in an inbound marketing strategy, it’s essential to do it correctly if you want to realize the full benefit of your expenditure. By contracting an expert to deliver against specific, measurable goals you’ll boost your brand recognition, improve your ROI and reduce the amount of time and energy you’d have to expend if you attempted to do it yourself.

SEO does not equal DIY. Get an expert and do it right.

The post 8 Reasons You Need To Hire an SEO Expert appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford

It’s easy to assume that once you outsource your search engine optimization (SEO) to a company specializing in it, you’re going to see a surge in website traffic and inbound leads. It would be great if you get those, but the fact is that good SEO takes both time and regular monitoring, and you need to evaluate the deliverables from your SEO provider against more scientific benchmarks than just an upward spike (or two!).

Here are our top 10 methods of evaluating your SEO company logically and objectively, which you can start to apply even before you begin to see an increase in your bottom line.

#1: Examine the Quality of Communications

After approval of the SEO strategy and signing of the agreement, the communications with your provider is probably the most important aspect of the contract, according to Moz.com:

• Establish how often you will get updates about your account, what level of detail to expect and what format the reports will take.
• Find out who your contacts are and how to get hold of them, and schedule regular discussions well in advance.
• Ask for confirmation of the communications plan in writing if possible, so you can be sure your expectations are clearly understood.

It’s critical for you to know from the outset who your dedicated SEO account manager is, partly because it’s not likely to be the salesperson you dealt with to finalize the relationship.

#2: Assess the Keyword Strategy

A vital task for your SEO company is the implementation of a customer-centric keyword strategy. Even if the whole keyword thing seems like a foreign language to you, ask to see the strategy and evaluate it to make sure they are using these updated methods and practices:

1. The strategy should be based on keyword research and competitive analysis combined with your website’s Google Analytics data
2. It should include a list of keywords that apply to your various products and services
3. The list should also be relevant to your industry
4. Keywords must include less common terms with lower competition to reduce the amount of unqualified traffic and deliver a higher ROI from your SEO efforts.

Your company’s keyword strategy should also include “long-tail” keywords (phrases) that deliver more closely targeted traffic and often attract much faster conversions, according to SearchEngineLand.com.

#3: Evaluate Reporting and Analytics Quality

Regardless how competent your SEO company is at delivering the goods, unless you know what’s being delivered you’re still going to be in the dark. Often, service providers are excellent at doing their jobs but not quite so great at providing reports to clients. While part of this falls under the quality of communication, it’s not enough to simply receive the reports. You have to be getting the right information, and it needs to be presented in a format that your C-Suite can easily understand.

Some of the reports you should be getting regularly include the number of visitors to your site, the way your landing pages are performing and the speed with which users leave your site.

#4: Review Website Rankings

These days, SEO is largely about making your website more relevant to users, building its visibility and importance through your online profile and your position in search. Google ranks sites according to how well they meet these criteria, based on ranking factors such as:

• Quality of content
• Responsiveness/mobile adaptability
• Link building strategies
• Use of keywords
• Organic traffic versus paid traffic

Ultimately, what you want from your website are conversions that bring you qualified, actionable leads, but you aren’t likely to get those unless all these factors are in place. Reviewing your rankings will help you to identify that. Your SEO company can bring your site up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), but if you still aren’t getting leads then something is wrong.

#5: Measure Revenue Shifts Against Traffic

We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the principle applies equally to your SEO strategy. Monitoring the various metrics is a great way of keeping on top of what your SEO company is doing, but ultimately it’s the bottom line that counts.

Unless you can draw a correlation between shifts in your revenue and the changes to your website traffic, you won’t be able to conclusively say whether your SEO tactics are working or not.

It takes a while for the majority of visitors to a site to convert, according to Google digital marketing evangelist Avinash Kaushik, so any evaluation needs to take an “end-to-end” view of the various important activities.

#6:Look At Local Optimization

Local is big at the moment. Scratch that—it’s HUGE. One of the biggest objections many newbie customers have to inbound marketing is that it uses a global medium and their business is local. Having realized this, Google introduced ways of optimizing online content so it targets specific geographical users, and an SEO company worth its salt will know that.

Evaluate your local SEO by:

• Conducting a quarterly business review
• Comparing your conversions and profits with traffic
• Taking a look at your mobile activity

Review your onsite and offsite SEO reports to make sure local features high in the implementation of your strategy.

#7: Check SEM Integration

Chances are good that your SEO company also handles your paid search activities or search engine marketing (SEM). If so, it’s useful to know whether they are integrating your SEM with organic SEO to maximize your returns. Google no longer provides the keyword data for organic SEO that marketers used to rely on, but if you’re investing in paid search then the information is available through your SEM reports. Review these periodically to make sure you aren’t bidding on keywords that are no longer converting your visitors, and that updates to your keyword strategy take cognizance of your SEM data.

#8: Rate Lead Generation Levels

As we mentioned earlier it’s all about profitability, so the overall purpose of your inbound marketing is to generate qualified leads. No matter how well you’re doing in all areas, and regardless of objectives such as increased awareness, in the long term it comes down to the results.

Unless you’re getting sales you aren’t making money, so the Litmus test of your SEO company’s value is the level of lead generation. Not the amount of money you make—because if your sales team is less than effective it’s hardly the fault of the SEO practitioner—but how much solid intel your sales people get to work with.

#9: Analyze Social Signals

Google recently turned up the heat on the importance of social signals in an SEO strategy, because the level of sharing is an obvious validation of a website’s quality. Review the reports from your SEO company for evidence of your visibility in social media.

According to Social Media Today, you can use social metrics to determine the numbers of social referrals, evaluate social conversions, measure the reach of your content, track your business’s social engagement levels, such as the reach of your social media activities and your business’s social engagement.

#10: Look at Link Building Tactics

It’s also useful to take a peek every now and again at the link building activities—both inbound and outbound. Link building is a critical aspect of a good SEO strategy, and the higher the number of authoritative sites that are linked to yours, the better you’re likely to fare in search.

This is an activity fraught with risk, however, and if your SEO company isn’t on top of this it could be dangerous for you according to SEO expert Neil Patel. Your SEO process should include “white hat” activities such as guest blogging, linking to quality sources and encouraging links from industry websites with a sound reputation. Sharing your content on social media is also an excellent way of building inbound links, because your profile (and any others who share your updates) link directly to your website. This not only counts for social signals but also for link building.

Spotting Red Flags

At the end of the day, the measure of an effective SEO company is whether or not your business is profitable. These methods are merely tools to help you evaluate in the interim between appointing a company and seeing final results. By using them, you should be able to spot any red flags early in the process. This will enable you to rectify them (or at least, tackle the SEO provider about doing so) or to move on to find a provider who knows what they are doing.

The great thing is that you don’t have to be an expert yourself to do this kind of evaluation; your SEO company should be providing a full set of regular reports and be prepared to review, explain and summarize them for you. If they aren’t doing that, it’s an immediate indication that you need to drill down deeper and find out what’s really going on with your money.

The post 10 Ways To Evaluate Your SEO Company appeared first on Riverbed Marketing. from author Todd Mumford