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jackbsearcy · 6 years

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How to Quickly Calculate the ROI of SEO

We often get asked how we can quantify ROI from an SEO campaign. And, here’s the thing, a lot of digital agencies who run SEO programmes don’t really want to tell you, for obvious reasons I guess. Putting a monetary value against something which, to the uninitiated customer, is like the dark arts frames any SEO activity in fairly binary terms; does it work or doesn’t it? We take a slightly different view. Our focus is on making a customer more money online be that through their eCommerce store or leads to a service, and if we can’t do that, we’re doing something wrong, so we always want to make sure we do things right.

Back to brass tacks – why bother with SEO?

As we’re immersed in what we do (its fine, we enjoy it), we sometimes lose sight of the fact that some people might not really see the benefit of optimising their website for natural search. There are two very compelling reasons 1) Many organisations suggest that around only 30% of users click on ads and 70% prefer to click on organic or natural listings. This number varies by demographic and campaign vertical. 2) Google ads can be very expensive especially in competitive markets like financial services, so an organic presence will reduce the amount of money you will ultimately need to spend.

So how do I calculate the bang for my SEO buck?

These metrics are quite crude but hopefully are indicative. Firstly let’s look at the paid versus natural search split. If it costs you £2 to acquire a user from PPC, and only 30% of people click on ads the chart below may be eye opening.

In the fictional scenario above to acquire the number one term in a paid ad would require a monthly budget of £11,800. The organic listings would generate significantly more traffic and be extremely more cost effective (even at the upper end of an SEO agency or consultants fees).

To put things extremely crudely you could say that the value of SEO activity (that works of course and ranks your site highly in organic listings) is at least 70% more effective than PPC and that is WITHOUT any advertising budget being taken into account.

Why bother with PPC then?

There are many reasons why you should run PPC campaigns. Firstly, if say, financial services are competitive for PPC – they’re going to be competitive for SEO. Good quality, white-hat SEO takes time as ranking a site highly in organic search and is based on a myriad of factors.

Secondly, the 70/30 split is a blended average and in some industries and demographics the numbers could skew the other way in terms of organic or paid traffic being the predominant driver of traffic.

Thirdly, PPC is not just text ads. For eCommerce stores, Google Shopping is becoming a key way to display products in the new digital shop window. Similarly, the Google Display Network can allow you to target customers via display ads; all using the Google AdWords infrastructure and their cookie based targeting.

One size doesn’t fit all

We, as an agency go to market on the fact that each client is different and one approach won’t work for all. As we have talked about at length before a digital strategy never really ends but is a constant process of refinement that is predicated on constant iteration. This is why we wouldn’t recommend any particular type of digital engagement mechanism until we have got to know you and your business first.

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jackbsearcy · 6 years

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We read the 2018 Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report so you don’t have to…

via Recode / Vox Media

The Mary Meeker slide deck is one of the most hotly anticipated documents in digital. Meeker is widely know as somewhat of a soothsayer for digital trends, she was the one who predicted a mobile vs. desktop tipping point as far back as 2008 to be reached in 2015 and, guess what? She was right. It’s very interesting reading but it is around 300 slides so we thought we would highlight some of the points we found to be particularly interesting.

Smartphone shipments have now flat-lined. Yes, that’s right, 0% growth in smartphone shipments. As the news from Dixons Carphone Warehouse has illustrated, there seems to have been a change in the consumer’s views and people are generally hanging on to their phones longer.

In parallel the cost of smartphones is coming down (perhaps with the exception of the iPhone X) with lots of Android-based brands coming on to the market. Unsurprisingly, the computing power contained within these handsets is increasing.

49% of people in the world now have access to the Internet. This, interestingly, is slowing in terms of growth, 5% vs. 7% in 2016.

Easy to use products are now firmly baked into the consumer mobile mind-set with payments, music and messaging as 3rd party installed apps are all part of the mobile users daily life.

There is now a massive data paradox. The use of data improves a user’s experience but users are more cautious than ever when sharing data — not least, we would assume because of the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal.

eCommerce is rising by 2% each year in terms of the volume of transactions.

The cost of cloud computing is declining by around 1% per year as competition increases. The large players in Cloud computing are also opening up their infrastructure to spawn a new eco-system of cloud application providers.

AI, unsurprisingly, takes up a large section of Meeker’s deck. She explores the growth in education courses with an AI slant as well as the investments being put into things like Machine Learning by the big players.

Interestingly, the top five tech giants globally (GAFA + Microsoft) are in the same order as five years ago. Though Chinese challengers are rising up the charts.

China is rising faster than anyone – Mobile Payments alone are up 209% on last year.

What we found notable by its absence however was the lack of reference to Blockchain related applications using smart-contracts. Meeker does reference the growth of Crypto-currencies, but there is quite a lot of noise in the market around how Smart Contracts can revolutionise the wider tech world and, we would have thought, would have got more of a mention in her deck.

If you’d like to check out all the slides, here they are:

Internet Trends Report 2018 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

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jackbsearcy · 6 years

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Email Outreach Tips for Link Building

Link building is alive and more important than ever!

Before, building any kind of link was sure to give you SEO benefits.

But now, only the best links get recognition in Google’s eyes.

Great links give your site authority and a lot of traffic.

The only catch is that you’ll need to really work on building high quality links instead of making junk ones.

A hundred links may only contain a few, really good ones. Most marketers tend to give up building links via outreach because they’re used to using shady methods to get more links in less time and getting more instant gratification. This leads them to believe it’s not really worth the effort to do it properly, because good link building takes time…

Smart marketers tend to optimise their link building tactics and as a result, get better conversion rates.

Want to know the secret to improving and optimising your outreach for link building to get awesome conversion rates?

You’ve come to the right place. Keep reading and I’ll show you.

#1 Don’t ask for a link straight away

Let’s start with writing up a really great outreach email.

Maybe you’ve just created an epic blog post and you’re looking to get links for it. An email outreach campaign can get the job done as long as you follow the rulebook:

Use a polite tone

Don’t be too pushy

Don’t make it seem like you just want to get a link

Back in the day, you could potentially acquire 10, maybe 20 links for every 100 emails sent as long as you asked nicely and didn’t have any misspellings or bad grammar.

Today, you’d be lucky to get a dozen response. What happened?

Lazy marketers are to blame…

They started copying and pasting templates that were meant to be used as guidelines. Here’s an example from our link building guide:

Hi [NAME],

I came across your incredible [INDUSTRY/NICHE] resource page (LINK) and wanted to give you a quick pitch for inclusion.

I’ve created a new piece of content about [TOPIC] that I think would be great for your readers.

If interested, you can check it out here (LINK).

Have a great day!

The result? Blog owners and businesses start getting spammed with similar-looking emails asking for links.

What do these bloggers do? Understandably, they treat it as spam and delete it right away.

Now, let me ask you this: Would you read an outreach email if the first few sentences contain a link right away?

Probably not. It’s an obvious sign that the email sender wants something from you.

People don’t like being used. This is a fact of life. More often than not, these people will delete your email as soon as they get suspicious.

So what do you do in these cases? The opposite. If bloggers are sending links right from the start, then do things a bit different. Don’t insert any links at all in your first email!

Here’s an example. Instead of “Hey, I’ve got a great dog training guide that will knock your socks off! [LINK]”

Why not this? “Hi, I noticed that most of your posts are about dogs. I did some research and found an obscure training technique that really worked well. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to know what you think about it. Can I send you the link?”

This gets the person to think that you’re sending something that actually benefits them, which in turn gets a response of something like, “Sure, why not. Send it over.”

While this does not guarantee a link, you’re more than likely to get a conversion if you have great content.

#2 Keep it short

Remember the lazy marketers who copy email templates?

Forget them. The person I want to talk about are the marketers who go the extra mile.

Good marketers are awesome because they put their effort in everything they do.

But sometimes this attitude presents a certain disadvantage when it comes to creating emails.

More specifically, sometimes the email can be too long.

Think about it for a second. A typical reader won’t have 10 minutes to spare reading a thousand-word email.

They’ll likely look at it, see the length and promptly press the “delete” button.

The bottom line here is you shouldn’t try hard to make a connection.

Keep it simple and straight to the point. Save the story for when you get a reply.

A good email outreach would be around 4 to 6 sentences, or under 200 words. Try to keep this in mind when crafting your next email.

Too long, didn’t read!

#3 Don’t ask them to do too much

Would you refuse a person who asks you to take a picture while you’re out in the streets?

Probably not. But you would certainly say no when that very same person who asks you to do a photo session that lasts for an hour.

My point is that the more you ask of your target, the less they’re likely to agree.

Sure, you’ll need to insert the link somewhere in the conversation, but how do you do it?

Would you send this “Hey there. Here’s a link to my content. I’d appreciate it if you could put this up anywhere in your website.” and expect a positive response?

Probably not. It’s too much work, really.

The blogger will have to do a lot of things.

They will have to read your content, do some digging in their old blog posts AND find a suitable spot from where they could insert your link.

Sad to say, but this is the reason why you have a low conversion rate. The only way to get a chance is to make it easy for them to link to your content.

Here’s a few ideas for you:

Find content within the blogger’s website that will make a perfect fit for your link. Write up some additional text to make the link fit in their content naturally.

Send an embed code if you’re promoting infographics.

Offer the blogger future content that can prove to be very useful, highly informative and engaging. Make sure your link fits in this content.

Offer to edit and improve past blog posts as leverage for posting your link. Send the finished text in a format for easier posting.

These are just a few examples you can try out. Make it easy for them to say yes!

#4 Make sure you’re emailing the right person

One surefire way to get zero conversions is to send your email to the wrong person.

This may sound stupid, but it does happen.

You could be sending dog training links to bloggers whose niche is home improvement.

Or, you could be making subtle mistakes with your targeting.

How does this happen? For one, you could be targeting the wrong bloggers when you use your marketing tools.

You’ve written an amazing guide on how to do social media marketing the right way.

Now, you’re doing a search for the appropriate sites to send your link to.

You type in “marketing” and get sales bloggers, paid advertising sites and SEO companies. The only problem is, these aren’t the best fit for your content.

Sure, you’ll get a few responses when you send 500 emails, but most of them will just delete your email.

Why? Because it’s clear that you don’t have an idea of what these bloggers do and what they write about.

While it’s true that this tactic may sometimes be used to get links in a niche that’s somewhat related to yours, you’ll have to explain why you’re doing this and how they can benefit from it.

To get a higher conversion rate you’ll need to target sites that are most likely to respond to your link request.

Take the time to weed out the irrelevant contacts and you’ll gain a higher conversion rate in terms of bloggers who will want to link to you.

Use tools like Hunter.io to find people’s emails.

#5 Read the guidelines

Think guidelines aren’t important?

Think again.

An outreach email that says something like, “Hey there. I’d love to brainstorm some ideas with you on how we can promote our products better.”

The recipients immediate thought will be, “Why would I want to help someone with their campaign idea? It’s their job.”

Simply put, it’s the incorrect approach. Come up with an idea before you actually start sending the emails – this could be anything from a guest post topic to a product review angle.

There will be times when the blogger will actually want to talk things out or share their ideas with you. In this case, it’s best to have an idea of what they’d want in order to convince them to participate. Think about what matters for them and start from there.

Keep in mind that what matters for them doesn’t always concern payment. Some bloggers are just looking for an opportunity to get some awesome content for their blog, while others will want a product they can review.

Focus on your target’s wants and you’ll have an easier time convincing them to participate.

#6 Make a phone call

In this age of instant communication and emails, will a phone call really work?

A cold call to a blogger before sending out any kind of email will most likely be a bad idea.

But a well-placed call after a few emails exchanged can really prove to be helpful.

Consider these situations:

A phone call can be the push you’re looking for if the blogger is undecided.

You can answer any questions or concerns in real time.

A call is much more personal compared to an email, which can build a trusting relationship early on.

You set yourself apart from the other marketers when you make a phone call.

Keep in mind that a phone call requires careful judgment and it should be done at the right time.

Granted, there are some bloggers who prefer to deal solely via email, but it can’t hurt to try. A phone call can be the deciding factor in convincing a blogger to work with you.

#7 Always. Be. Testing

There’s always room to improve your email outreach.

To see how well you’re doing, you should always be testing and measuring key metrics.

Email clients such as Mailshake allow you to track vital elements in your email campaign, i.e. opens, response rates, etc. and even enable you to do some split testing.

You wouldn’t want to go full automation though, because outreach still requires some sort of personalisation, or that “human touch”.

You can achieve better balance by testing out key factors such as opening sentences, sign offs and subjects. These elements can be replicated for all your email without affecting the human aspect, and yet they can be effective in improving open and response rates.

If you don’t want to use an email client, you can record your tests in a spreadsheet. The important thing is to make sure you’re keeping track of tests, whichever way you do it.

By keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, you’ll eventually get the winning formula.

Keep in mind that not all bloggers will respond to the same formula, so keep on working, tweaking and striving towards success!

Conclusion

Optimising your outreach for link building campaigns is important if you want to make the most of your time.

The higher the conversion rate, the more traffic your site gets and the more revenue it makes.

Now that you’ve read my tips for improving your email outreach for link building, it’s time to stop thinking and start improving!

It’s truly possible to get double or even triple your current conversion rate if you follow my advice. This alone can make a huge difference in both marketing performance and your site’s success.

The post Email Outreach Tips for Link Building appeared first on SearchUp.

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jackbsearcy · 6 years

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Mobile Moments – Are You Optimising Your Website for Mobile Conversions?

A user’s mobile behaviour can be made up of four distinct ‘mobile moments’:

I want to moments

I want to go to moments

I want to do moments

I want to buy moments

These micro-moments, well documented by Google are key to understanding how the behaviour of a user on a mobile device differs from that of a person rooted to their desktop machine. Is your website geared for these mobile micro-moments?

I want to moment:

How many people watch TV with their mobile device? According to a 2015 survey it’s 87%. Optimising for ‘second screening’ should be a key consideration for brands. The synergies are obvious, if a user is watching TV and want to know more they will reach for their mobile device. Outside of the TV analogy, a user may want to visit your business – are you visible on Google Maps?

I want to go moments:

This is where mobile visibility on Google is essential. With 82% of people using their phone to find a location, making sure your map pack uses your correct address is essential. In tandem with the “I want to” moment your website is the shop window to the mobile consumer and first impressions count.

I want to do moments:

As well as the map and first impressions the ‘I want to do’ moment should really convey to the mobile user the experience the consumer will enjoy should they choose your brand or business. If you’re a hotel, say, – sell the experience and make sure the experience your customers will receive is optimised for small screens as well as large.

I want to buy moments:

More and more people are using their phone, not only to browse products they like the look of they will also be using their mobile device to transact. Indeed, with the rise of subscription services like Amazon Prime the mobile experience has become embedded into the consumer buying cycle. Your eCommerce experience should be seamless, cross device and, where possible, even more optimised for mobile to make the experience truly frictionless.

Mobile offers the opportunity to influence purchasing behaviour across the consumer buying cycle from the Zero Moment of Truth (I want to) to the Ultimate Moment of Truth (buying or receiving a product). With more people using mobile devices to access websites now than fixed terminals your website’s design should truly be mobile first. So, if you have commissioned a new website and the web designers show you how it looks on a computer screen, they should probably think again and think more mobile.

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jackbsearcy · 6 years

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The Ultimate Guide to B2B Content Marketing

Digital has disrupted B2B sales and marketing completely over the last decade or so. Indeed, the old perception of a distinction between the roles that ‘marketing’ and ‘sales’ play in getting new clients has been completely blurred. Like B2C marketing the old, interruptive ways of reaching new customers are no longer as effective. Whilst there still may be a role for cold calling, trade shows and even show rooms, the web has democratised information and if a potential prospect wants to find out some information about a product or a service the first thing they’ll do is Google it. The benefits of being in mind when someone Google’s a product or service should be obvious. How you achieve this mindshare is a different story. We wanted to share our insight and experience as to how we do it in this ultimate guide to B2B content marketing.

You’re the expert… so tell people!

The eminent business executive, author and consultant Steuart Henderson Britt once said: “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.” In a content marketing context, if you’re in business you need to tell people about what you do as well as why and how. There are lots of ways you can do this and here’s what we would recommend as a starter for ten.

I blog, therefore I am

Every WordPress website comes with an easy to use, intuitive blogging feature – use it! The written word is a way for you to tell people exactly what you do and how you do it. It also gives you a chance to show off your credentials.

The importance of having up to date and fresh content on your site has been well documented. You’ll also be surprised at how much of an expert you are and how you can use this content across the web to get those all-important eyeballs on your site.

Case studies

If you’ve completed some work for a client and the methodology you employed to solve that client’s problem really worked, tell people. Expertise and Thought Leadership in an industry are great signals for a potential customer. Being special and different will make you stand out from the crowd and put you in a great position.

The accepted wisdom for a case study format is generally:

The problem or challenge

The solution

The results

Producing case studies will show how you have thought about and solved a problem and made a difference to a client’s business.

White papers

As an extension of the blog theme, white papers really give you the chance to show off your credentials. Whilst a blog post can be more overtly self-promotional, a white paper should be more of a technical and in-depth document and backed up with evidence.

In essence the white paper should pose a problem, explore and potentially solve it. It should have an inherent value to the reader — white papers are classic Thought Leadership pieces and should show your expertise. Given the nature of the medium they are also great lead magnets. In essence, you are offering to exchange your intellectual property for a prospect’s permission to be marketed to. Gathering opt-in email addresses is a great way to get qualified traffic to your website.

Email marketing

Permission based email communication is a great way to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. If you are producing great content, than sending out an email to tell people about it is a great way to syndicate it. The point about permission is a very important one, in light of the impending GDPR legislation – so always get an explicit opt-in. We would also recommend using a good Email Service Provider (ESP) to send these emails so you can manage un-subscribes and segment your lists. Here’s some more tips on effective email marketing.

The end of the start

Content Marketing for B2B businesses is a huge topic and there is admittedly a lot more to consider than the points we have addressed above. We shall be re-visiting this topic in a lot more detail where we shall delve a little deeper into the science behind producing content and the strategies involved in our next post.

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