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Successful businesses use Google Analytics to super-charge their marketing

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Google Analytics is the Ferrari of analytics platforms. It’s fast, sexy, and can super-charge your marketing.

However, most entrepreneurs and small business owners are just sitting in the car, afraid to leave first gear.

A recently released white paper from Formstack pulls together some interesting stats about how marketers are really using (or not using) Google Analytics. One that stood out to me is that only 33% of marketers track ROI via Google Analytics. Perhaps that’s because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of tracking only the surface, vanity metrics.

Want to know how many unique visitors we got last week? Sure!
Want to know which page on our website leads to the most conversions? Uh…hang on a second…

If you actually have goals set up in your Google Analytics account, congratulations, you’re in the 40% minority!

It’s time to dive deeper into those numbers and turn them into useful, actionable information.

The infographic below offers a path to improve your use of Google Analytics. One crucial step is knowing how to A/B test your landing pages and take advantage of tools like Google’s Content Experiments to see what’s working.

Try testing different versions of your headline, main content, design, call to action, and forms (like your sign up, subscribe, or purchase forms). Sometimes a small shift can make all the difference when it comes to conversions.

Are you using the free tools at your disposal to step up your marketing?

infographic - landing page ROI
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

How Will Google’s Hummingbird Update Affect Small Businesses?

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By Michelle Rebecca

When Google issued its most recent update (named Hummingbird) to the company’s 15-year-old search algorithm, it raised a number of concerns for small business owners. The update has two primary objectives: using so-called conversational searches to find results, as opposed to the traditional keywords, and displaying search content on the far right side of search pages.

Many small businesses rely on search engine optimization to gain the notice of potential customers. As with any algorithm update, this one will impact SEO in a big way. Here’s what small businesses can expect, and what measures they can implement to ensure that their rankings don’t take a hit.

Google's hummingbird algorithm change

Think Like Your Customer

The Hummingbird shift to conversational searches is based in part on the impact that mobile phones are having on search. These days people can vocally ask their tablet or smartphone a question, like “where’s the best Chinese restaurant within 5 miles of here,” instead of simply searching “Chinese restaurant” with the keypad. Google’s goal has always been to think like its users, therefore bringing back the most relevant and helpful results. And so it’s changing its search to anticipate questions.

Small businesses must do the same thing. Any SEO company should now advise their clients it’s time to rethink search. You must expand beyond keywords and instead think about conversational search terms that could lead people to your site. Try to anticipate what sort of phrases people might use to search out your wares. For example, if you provide plumbing services, a good place to start would be “where can I find the best plumber?”

More Focused Results

In the past small businesses were often fighting with bigger ones, with bigger budgets, over choice keywords. But with the greater focus on phrases, which tend to be more precise, small businesses will gain an edge. Geo-targeting, or targeting by location, becomes increasingly important with these Hummingbird updates.

Small businesses should increasingly focus on searches confined to a specific area, where they stand to benefit most, rather than broader search terms. Hummingbird will take the location of a search into account whenever possible, and a small business with a very narrow focus is more likely to come up in results than a big one with locations across the country.

Dealing with the Drawbacks

Of course, for every up there is a down, and the down for small business owners is the other Hummingbird adjustment, which is designed to give users answers to their questions without ever leaving the Google page. Displaying search content on the search pages means in essence that Google will try to anticipate the information people are searching and highlight the answer in special boxes on the right-side column that offer small glimpses into web pages without making the searcher click on the result.

For example, if you’re looking for the date that the song “My Girl” was released, Google might display a few lines from the “My Girl” Wikipedia entry that answer the question on the right side of the search results page, eliminating the need for further searching.

The end result is less web traffic for your business’s web site. The dilemma is how to get people to click to your site anyway. Small business owners will need to come up with some innovative answers. One is to offer something of value on the site that can’t be “scraped” onto the right side by the Google bots, such as a coupon or voucher for a free sample. You might try offering contests on your site that you can advertise on the homepage but require clicking on the site to actually enter. The smartest businesses will play around with different approaches to see what delivers the most traffic, at least until Google offers another update.

Will you be making any changes to your SEO strategy because of the Hummingbird update?

Author’s Bio: Michelle is a freelancer who currently works for a top SEO company. She has a passion for the Internet, specifically social media and blogging. She loves how social media connects people across the globe, and appreciates that blogging gives her the opportunity to voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience. Follow her on Google+.

Making Google+ Work for Your Business

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By Brittany Thorley

Google+ is fast becoming a vital part of social media marketing for businesses of all sizes, yet still many professionals are unsure about what the social platform can do for their company and how they can get started with a business-focused profile that gets their name and ethos out there.

Despite launching in 2011, Google+ has surpassed the active user numbers of Twitter making it the second largest social networking site in the world. Back in May 2013, Google+ reported a total of 500 million registered users worldwide and with 235 million of those users actively updating their circles and looking for interesting information on a personal and professional level, businesses that aren’t utilising this platform are inevitably missing out!

But for those unfamiliar with this platform, how can you get started? We have compiled the essential steps for getting started with Google+, plus a few more top tips on how to make the most out of the platform to boost business, extend your customer reach, and get your company noticed by the people who matter.

Getting Started

Setting up your business page with Google+ couldn’t be easier! But before you begin you must create a personal profile; from here you can create a page for your business by simply clicking ‘create a page’ in the right hand corner of your profile. Setting up a personal profile will also enable you to claim authorship to enable you to gain influence and build authority.

Google+ will take you through the process of setting up a business page step-by-step. You can add your business type, tagline, profile photo or logo, website URL, social links and company details to personalise your business profile and make it identifiable to your target audience.

Posting on Google+

Once you have completed your profile, you can start adding existing contacts and posting to your profile. Like Facebook, you can share pictures, videos and links to let potential customers and clients get to know your business. When posting always think about what you want to achieve and how you want your brand to be portrayed in the public domain and your specific industry. Ensure all posts are as engaging as possible and convey your business’ unique selling propositions (either directly or indirectly) as well as occasionally promoting your products or services. In addition to this, keep posts personal and authentic.

Know Your Customer

When it comes to launching any social media marketing campaign, how well you know your customer can make or break your efforts, so make sure you are prepared and incorporate your customers’ wants and needs into your social media objectives. Before you start posting, devise a few ideas about what images, videos and links will be of interest to your customers and what offers and information will get them talking about your business.

Get Your Timing Right

It’s not just what you post that can affect your campaign’s success, it’s also when you post to your Google+ account. The peak times for sharing on Google+ are from 11am to 2pm and 7pm to 10pm Eastern US time, so focus your efforts on posting at these particular periods.

Use #Hashtags

Like Twitter, Google+ supports the use of hashtags to give you the exposure you need to the right followers. Insert simple and relevant hashtags in every post to ensure your social media interactions are targeted and sharable – who knows you may be trending very soon!

Author’s Bio: Brittany Thorley handles the social media and marketing activities for a range of businesses, including the Personal Statement Service, a student-focused company that provides writing advice and personal statement examples.

Thank you Brittany! Those are some great tips.
I’d add that the Google+ community, in particular, tends to reward exclusive content and well-thought-out articles, rather than simply posting a link to your blog posts or other social media updates.

Rosemary

What Google Added To The Link Schemes Document Found In Webmaster Tools

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By Matthew Schmoldt

Recently, Google updated the “Link schemes” informational document found in Webmaster Tools. The change was easy to miss. There were no large scale announcements.

Unlike a Wikipedia document, there is no easy way to see what was changed. Thankfully, the Internet has the wayback machine for such matters. The tool shows that two records have been kept this year for the page in question. One archive is from June 28th, the other is from August 5th.

As you can see, there seem to be significant changes. The June 28th version of the link schemes page had an opening paragraph that explained why external links were important and why Google uses them as a key influencer in search results. Now the document begins with a stern warning:

“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank 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.”

To many, this paragraph is not only troubling but troublingly ambiguous. You will notice the use of the word “intended” in the paragraph. How does Google determine if a link is intended to manipulate PageRank? In the second sentence, is Google saying any link building efforts will be considered manipulation?

On July 10th, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, was interviewed and said the following:

“No, not all link building is bad. The philosophy that we’ve always had is if you make something that’s compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write about it and to link to it.”

Does the July 10th interview with Matt Cutts answer the questions of the August update to the link schemes document? My guess is, yes. Google seems to be preparing to take the webspam fight to the next level and has updated their official link schemes document with a hardcore and broad stance.

In the same interview, Matt Cutts said:

“I would concentrate on the stuff that people write, the utility that people find in it, and the amount of times that people link to it. All of those are ways that implicitly measure how relevant or important somebody is to someone else.

Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover that, and maybe over time social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.”

It is clear to me, that link building is quite appropriate and still legal. But, shift from thinking about link building to the idea of link earning. High quality links from high authority links should be the target. These sorts of links are earned and not built with a few clicks of the mouse.

What else was changed in the link schemes document?

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

The above paragraph seems to be fairly black and white. Google doesn’t want people to sell links for money or for products. But, what If you sign up for a Chamber of Commerce and pay a fee. Have you just purchased a link from their site? Should you request a nofollow of your link just in case?

Matt Cutts has said that you should only pursue a link if it is something you would have built or pursued if SEO did not exist.

Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking

The use of excessive and exclusively are ambiguous and troubling in this new entry in the document. It is impossible to know where the line is with this rule. But, remember, Google wants you to do things naturally. They want you to do things that make logical sense. If you are a flower shop, it makes sense to have a linking relationship with the local chocolate shop. It may make sense to link to the local cookie shop, to the local wedding dress store, etc.

Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links

The ambiguous word here is “large-scale.” To me, I refer back to my rule of link earning and not link building. If the link is too easy to get, it’s probably not the kind of link that is desirable. Removing the easy to get links removes most of the ability to create a large-scale link building operation. The hard links take time to get. Also remember, Google is targeting keyword-rich anchor links and not generic links in articles.

Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

This seems to be the one area where Google was decisive. Do not use automated means to build backlinks. If you are tempted to use automated programs, don’t. Google is constantly indexing the Internet and can detect a sudden and unnatural increase in backlinks.

Author’s Bio: Matthew Schmoldt is an Internet marketer who has been published at Yahoo and Moz. He has four years of SEO and social media experience. He is the owner of Cool Things To Buy Inc. His website features amazing gadgets other neat stuff.

Google Quality Score – The Ultimate Guide

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By Deepak Gupta

Recently, Google took it upon itself to be the bastion of quality in the world of internet marketing. Every website promotion company is well aware of the recent search algorithm updates. However, it’s not only organic search that is being assessed by Google in terms of quality. Pay per click advertising or paid searches are subjected to quality checkpoints as well and in the end, a Quality Score is assigned to every keyword of your ad campaign.
Google Quality Score Factors

According to the definition provided by Google itself: Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.
This definition may appear to be crystal clear, but very few marketers know how to deal with Quality Score. Here is a straightforward and simple guide that you can use in understanding Quality Score.

Understanding (not set) and (not provided) Keywords

Google Analytics (GA) is a tool that provides rich insights to a website promotion company as to how its paid search campaigns are doing. However, there are times that you cannot assess the quality of your campaigns because Google Analytics return (not set) or (not provided) keyword data when you extract a GA report. For a rookie website promotion company, this may be confusing and may even be used interchangeably although they are two very different concepts.

A (not set) keyword data occurs when something is missing between the GA tracking and the AdWords click. Typically, this happens with auto-tagging or when repetitive codes are found on pages or there are multiple GA accounts connected to your AdWords campaign.

Length of Display URL and CTR

An experienced website promotion company would know that a URL is not just a web address. In terms of PPC Quality Score, display URLs play a significant role, since one of the criteria used by Google to calculate for your Quality Score is the click through rates of your display URLs. Length and presentation of display URLs are critical factors as to whether searchers will click on your ad or not.

For one, Google will automatically add www to display URLs with fewer than 35 characters. Historical data will show that URLs without the www prefix get more clicks than those with the www prefix. Another not so known fact is that if you exceed the 35-character limit by two (37 characters) it is perfectly fine. Last, if you really can’t contain your URL within 35 characters, insert a few keywords so that when Google shortens it, your keywords are highlighted in the display URL. However, exercise extreme care as Google will decide how to shorten your URL. Basically, the rule of thumb is to target 35 characters without www.

The Surprise Perfect 10 and Pre-assigned Quality Scores

Getting a score of perfect 10 is every web promotion company’s dream. The excitement is equal to going viral in social media marketing services. But before you jump up and down, check for which keywords those perfect scores were given and most likely, you’ll find out that these keywords have zero impressions and zero clicks. Experts are now toying with and testing whether including “empty” keywords gets a perfect score of 10. Your ads won’t show up for these keywords. The goal is to increase the overall score for the entire campaign and raise an ad group’s eligibility for auctions.

Another crucial concept worth pointing out is that your ad groups and keywords have pre-assigned scores before you even launch your campaign and many experts have observed that most of these starting scores would be the end scores by the time a campaign is done. This particular information led PPC marketers to believe that you can actually modify your campaign’s architecture to boost your Google Quality Score even before you launch your ad campaign.

Multiple Groups for Keyword Match Type and Delaying the Use of Bid Management

Along with the campaign’s architecture, matching keyword types within ad groups can increase quality scores. To get the most impressions, it is encouraged that you use a number ad groups for all keyword match types that you want to target.

Finally, if your ad campaign is fresh and new, don’t use the automated bid management yet. Statistics will show that campaigns that were manually optimized during their early stages were more successful versus those that were introduced with the automated bid management system.

Google’s Definition of Quality Evolved

The Quality Score that every web promotion company is using today may not be the same a couple of years down the road. In fact, what Google considers as quality ad campaigns may not stand true in the near future. Who knows? Maybe social media marketing services will be closely tied into the PPC Quality Score. A lot of things can happen and the key is to always be on the lookout and satisfy whatever quality indicators there are.

Author’s Bio: The writer of this post is Deepak Gupta, who is an experienced internet marketing professional and active blogger. He is associated with a search engine optimization company in India that provides professional SEO services and takes care of the search engine marketing activities for clients.

Don’t Play Games with Your Online Reputation

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When you recently flipped the calendar over to a new year, what were some of your first thoughts?

Did you consider that checking out and potentially repairing your online reputation or that of your company would be top priorities in 2013? If so, do you know how to accomplish such a task?

For too many business owners, today’s Internet age can be both a boon and a bust. If it is the latter, the repercussions can be quite impactful.

Stop for a minute and review this last year, especially your interactions with both employees (where applicable) and customers. Did you have any run-ins with either? Is it possible they may have taken to the Internet to besmirch the reputation of you and/or your company? Has any of your personal information gotten online, now potentially putting you in a bad light with current and potential customers?

As you can see, there can be many bases to cover as a business owner. Most importantly, it just takes one slip up online for you and your business to suffer the consequences from.

With the New Year here, setting aside time to Google your name and that of your company just makes sense. In fact, it should be required as mandatory planning going forward from here on out.

When you research your name and your company’s, should you find negative comments related to one or both, there are some actions to take. They include:

* Decide how to manage problem – When you find negative online comments that can be cutting into your ability to do business, there are essentially two options, handle the matter yourself or seek outside help. For those who select the second option, know what you are getting in return for your money. There are various consultants and companies out there who will take the time to help in rebuilding your online reputation, but check them out first. Make sure the consultant or company has a proven track record, spells out all the details of what you will get for your money, and does not have any issues with groups such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB);

* Accentuate the positive – Whether you yourself or someone else takes on the challenge of improving your online reputation, be pro-active. T he reason you got into this situation in the first place is that negative details about you and/or your business rose up the search engine meter. As a result, consumers now may have a negative opinion of you or the company. In order to change that, you need to pump out things such as customer testimonials, blog posts, press releases, and anything else that speaks highly of you and the business. As you do that, the negative stuff will be relegated to a lower position on the search engines, meaning it will not be as easy to find;

* Clean up your act – Finally, make sure any personal data about you or your business is properly suited for the Internet. Keep in mind that there are people search databases out there that can tell the world an awful lot about you. Such material can provide individuals with things like your home address and phone number, court records, income and more. In order to get that information removed from sites such as Intelius, you need to deploy Intelius removal. By monitoring such information, you can make sure it does not show up on other venues, potentially putting you or your business in a bad position.

As you go forward in 2013, keep in mind the importance of monitoring and controlling your online information.

In the event you do not, your reputation could come out on the losing end in this game.

Photo credit: marketingpilgrim.com

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers small business topics for various websites.