SEO St Louis

Posts Tagged ‘search engine marketing’

When it comes to soccer, in theory it is pretty simple– you need to put the ball in the back of the net. When this happens it is usually the goal scorer who gets the most credit, but what about the defense who got the play rolling? In reality there is far more to a team’s scoring strategy than the person who gets the ball into the back of the net, in fact Paul Tomkins has devised a system to track the contribution of each individual player. This system creates a value of how they contribute to the team over a number of games.

“When turning soccer into numbers, there will always be problems. And when it comes to ‘assists’, this is especially true. How can you reward someone who rolls the ball eight inches from an indirect free-kick as highly as someone who beats seven men and puts the ball in the striker’s path in the six-yard box?”

Those in the Internet marketing industry may want to take the time to read Tomkins’ strategy in order to relate it to the website conversion attribution debate. When it comes to website conversion, each keyword searched or direct visit – which ultimately results in a conversion–is in most cases a hit from a repeat visitor, or from a visitor who is familiar with the brand name, and each step of your search engine marketing strategy can be seen as an assist that led that conversion goal to your website.
With the highly-anticipated World Cup right around the corner, here is an analogy of how the steps to scoring a goal in a soccer game are similar to making a visitor react a desired way on your website.

 Website Conversion = Goal
You’ve done the hard work, you’ve found a potential customer who is interested enough in your website that they return via a keyword (or direct visit) and complete a sale, give you a call or whatever your call to action may be. This is the same as giving a player a free shot with just the keeper to beat. You won’t always get a 100% conversion rate – but in both cases there’s a very good chance it will end up with a goal.

Second to Last Visit = Assist
Some players don’t always score enough goals (David Beckham for example) but if you take him away from taking freekicks, corners and crossing the ball into the box then you’re likely to see a noticeable drop in chances created and goals scored. This could be exactly the same with your complete online strategy, which is why it is so important to find those advertising channels and keywords which are contributing to the end goal.

Mid-Level Visit = Midfield Pass
If Liverpool scored a goal last season, there’s a good chance Xabi Alonso (player known for his high number of assist) was involved at some point during that move. This may not have a huge importance to the overall outcome, but if involved more often than not, then he is clearly having a positive impact to the team. This could relate to an email marketing campaign, social media campaign or a keyword which may rarely convert, but is often involved in an assist. Take it away and those conversion chances may start to dry up.

First Visit = Defensive Build Up
What got the ball rolling in the first place? In the case of a soccer game, it may start with a key pass by the goalkeeper. When online, perhaps it was a search at the early stage of the searching process, as far back as typing your search words into Google. After this happens there is still a huge amount of work to do in order to grab that conversion, but you need to start somewhere!

So in which stage does the importance lie? In tracking the performance at all stages you can really get a strong idea about how every aspect of an online marketing campaign (or professional soccer team) is performing. With this valuable feedback from web analytics, you can make informative decision (whether that decision be to change up your keywords or to trade your center midfielder) based on the actual facts and figures. All in all looking at every step of your marketing strategy, rather than just the end result, will tell you which components of your overall efforts are effective, and which ones could use some help.

They sound pretty similiar – SEO and SEM, but they actually refer to two different parts of the same Internet marketing strategy. Obtaining website traffic through search engines falls into two major categories — search engine optimization (SEO or organic search) and search engine marketing (SEM or paid search). SEM is a much broader term than SEO, and actually includes SEO as one of its techniques. SEM is all that a company can do to advertise itself on a search engine, including pay per click and other online advertising techniques.

While both techniques result in an influx of website visitors, the methods and goals are radically different, especially when considering where your site visitor came from and what page they see when they arrive to your website. SEO, is the key to making content rank highly in natural or organic search results. And while these “free listings” in a search-results page are technically, well, completley free, most companies pay an SEO company  to keep their content at the top of the search engines.

 

But remember - both SEO and SEM are essential for optimal website conversion. It is the strategic combination of both that brings traffic to your site but it is the exclusive domain of SEM to get people to purchase products or contact you for a chance for you to sell them something. For example, you invent something new and the SEO of your website helps search engines find your site when customers become aware of your new product or service. Once the potential customer finds your site, they then need to be guided to make a sale – this comes back to basic marketing principles which is where SEM comes in.

The Net Impact provides strategic services for companies wishing to market their business online. Our process is clearly focused on learning your business, marketplace and competitors. As your SEO firm, we are committed to providing you with the most up-to-date methods for optimizing your website. We are constantly researching new trends and techniques to keep pace with the ever changing search engine marketing industry. Contact The Net Impact to boost your company to the top of the search engines!

Social media is not limited to nurturing narcissistic tendencies. Despite the market research indicating that only 65 percent of American business professionals incorporate social media, it’s rapidly emerging as paramount component of the search engine marketing strategy. 

Amid Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, a new crop of social media networking sites mushrooms across a myriad of marketplaces. SEO-St. Louis compiled a shortlist of social media networks geared for vertical and horizontal markets. Here are the finding: 

Cofoundr is a community for entrepreneurs — designers, investors, and programmers, and other individuals, who are committed to developing partnerships for new start-up ventures.

Doctors HangOut.com is a social networking service for medical students, doctors and residents.

FastPitchNetworking is an international business social networking site.

Nexly is a business to business social media marketplace for small to mid-sized businesses to network. (Nexly’s URL is www.nexly.com)

ResearchGate is a professional social networking site designed to help scientists and researchers collaborate on new studies and trials. 

Ryze is another professional social media networking site, segmented into thousands of organizations to nurture new business relationships.

Select Minds is a corporate social networking platform designed to connect current employees, former employees and organizations with each other to procure new business.

Upspring is a social networking site designed to help vertical markets such as retailers, manufacturers and service providers to improve their local web presence. 

The microcosm of social media sites validates that corporations can no longer afford to ignore the potency of social media (Twitter, Facebook, et al).  And in terms of maintaining robust search engine optimization—as in online exposure, social media networking fortifies that visibility, affording an abundance of new professional and business relationships.

If your organization is considering Twitter, Facebook or any of the aforementioned social media networking pages to enhance new business, please click “contact The Net Impact” for a hassle-free consultation.

Small entities, renowned corporations, and search engine marketing firms converge in St. Louis for the second annual Midwest’s Premier Search Marketing Conference on April 1^st. With keynote topics covering the insider specs on using social media to create awareness about the online presence, quadrupling new business transactions, it’s a must attend expo. Some of the search engine marketing’s most renowned names in the industry will impart a wealth of intelligence about using social media and search engine optimization  (SEO) marketing to:

• Generate more leads
• Increase online productivity
• Nurture client or customer loyalty 

According to event planners, the purpose of the event is to help Saint Louis business owners realize how to maximize their online presence. Attending this expo provides the following incentives:

Develop an exacting strategy to drive search engine action from Google, BING and Yahoo Learn how to generate more sales and revenue from site traffic.

• Learn how to use Facebook and Twitter to maintain consumer loyalty and retention
• Search engine marketers and SEO programmers from around the country will provide a succinct overview.

President of an St-Louis SEO company, The Net Impact Steve Thomas will share the latest trends for incorporating search engine marketing in conjunction with a potent social media networking strategy.

Where Is My Business, a major sponsor of the Midwest’s Premier Search Marketing Conference spearheaded many of the conference’s ideas. They even conceptualized the giveaway. All attendants receive a complimentary Web analytics for improving their company’s Web site search engine visibility. The site analysis is a $279 value, but will be offered to any company that redeems the offer subsequent to the event.

Conveniently centered downtown St. Louis at the illustrious Lumiere Hotel and Casino, there is also a pre-conference networking social in the Cascade Lounge. Additional registration and discount information is available at the following link http://www.marketstl.com.

Recently, one of St. Louis’ most renowned SEO companies hosted a conference about using search engine marketing to heighten brand awareness. The seminar evaluated the pertinent elements of an effective search engine marketing campaign. The topics that were reviewed, included:

• The relevance of architecting a resilient link
• How link building influences site exposure and traffic
• Advanced business-to-business search engine marketing

The first segment Search engine optimization consultant, Lauren Williamson and president, Steve Thomas of The Net Impact shared valuable insight about the role linking plays in building the search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Think of your Web site as a popular portal, recognized for being a network that everyone relies on for industry specific information, news and data.  

 

 

During another segment, Web Account Manager, Sonya Sawall provided a pithy overview of how business decision-makers buyers are using search engines to find strategic partners and vendors. To review the presentation, click on “Advanced B2B Search Engine Marketing.”

 

 

From social media networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and other microsites, Ms. Sawall evaluated how the mediums emblemize business-to-business search engine marketing. Moreover, the use of these Internet marketing tools bolsters the linking strategy and other search engine optimization objectives.

 

 

Towards the end of the seminar, Angela Cicerelli explained how social media networks, such as FlickR YouTube, are generating significicant sources of traffic and even appear in search engine query results.

Also, for those naysayers, who question the validity of the aforementioned search engine marketing mediums, Ms. Cicerelli and Steve Thomas, evaluated the efficacy of mixed search engine and social media.

 

 

For a web site analysis, click on SEO to read more.

To hear most search engine optimization gurus tell it, “There’s no such thing as a content management system (CMS)  that works in accordance with the search engine marketing (SEM) campaign.”  In fact, many contend that CMSs are prone to hinder a site’s search engine optimization features. But, that’s because most have not driven the power of Auctori ™.

 

Auctori is not your ordinary, content management system, bug-ridden with SEO limitations. Programmed with integrated search engine optimization, Auctori refines design into a user-friendly, fuss-free interface—that just happens to give the authors the ability to maintain all SEO features, without hindering a site’s marketing endeavors. That means that Auctori empowers companies to maintain the autonomy or managing their sites regular updates.

To understand how content management systems actually build on streamlining the search engine marketing (SEM) campaign, SEO St. Louis interviewed Steve Thomas president of The Net Impact, Auctori’s proprietary content management system’s creator.

Q:  Most SEO programmers contend that CMSs  are  apt to have glitches, detracting from measuring the paid search conversion rates. Is Auctori any different? 

Thomas: 

 Auctori is distinctive in that it works in confluence with paid search campaigns. Whether the landing page calls for a custom, limited or even a navigation-less interface, Auctori treats each design according to the requirements of your pay-per-click ad search campaign.

 All we have to do is create a variation of master pages. Depending on the purpose or to test the conversion rate of each page, landing pages are designed with Auctori to work in confluence with the secondary, tertiary or even no navigation parameters. Moreover, Auctori eases these design elements with a reusable content block module.

Q:  Does Auctori allow advertisers to track conversions?

 

Thomas:

Unlike other content management systems where Java Script and the CMS experience irreconcilable differences, inhibiting accurate conversion tracking. On the contrary, Auctori enables the user to embed any JavaScript or even other custom scripts. Not only is Auctori suitable for JavaScript site wide, we developed Auctori to let you track conversions on a page-by-page basis.

…to be continued

Click CMS to read more  about the power of  Auctori.

Email marketing is not only an eco-friendly means for promoting an organization’s products and services, but it is a cost effective search engine-marketing (SEM) tool. There are five areas to measure the efficacy of an email-marketing proposition. Refer to the following output metrics to glean the results of your email marketing campaign:

Bounce rate: measures how many emails are never making it to the recipient. A high volume of undeliverable messages is indicative of an outdated email list.

Click-through rate: details how compelling the email campaign is to the target market. Fewer click through-rates suggest that the content lacks relevance or is not engaging enough for the recipients to take action.

Forward/share rate: Viral marketing transpires when people share or pass email messages onto their associates.

Open rate: The percentage of opened email communications reflects the efficacy of your brand’s strength, subject line, and consumer loyalty.

Unsubscribe rate: If your email marketing campaign has a higher ratio of people opting out, then it is an indication that your email campaign is irrelevant to the consumer or not engaging enough to cultivate a relationship with the target audience.

Read more about initiating an effective email marketing campaign.
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Last week we talked about being clear about your company’s search engine marketing strategy. Once the sales, marketing department and new business development teams have refined the market strategy, the hard part begins: Hiring the right SEO company.

As with any vendor decision, there’s an extensive checklist of service offerings to review. To simplify these critical decisions, SEO St Louis compiled eight questions to ask or be clear on before signing over the terms of your search engine marketing (SEM) campaign:

•    What services with the SEO firm provide for our organization?

•    What is the annual cost?

•    How does the cost compare with other Web design companies?

•    Will the design firm create a site where internal updates can be made without any lag time?

•    Can the SEO company help our company vie in the marketplace? If so, how?

•    How does the SEO firm plan to design and build our online brand on the Internet, overtime?

•    Is a return on investment (ROI) built into the search engine marketing campaign?

•    What happens if your organization is discontent with the results?

Read more about hiring the right Web design, search engine marketing company.

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