Developing YOUR audience targeting strategy

Columnist Christi Olson digs into how remarketing can be used create, shape and target the most important online audience in the world: yours. The post Developing YOUR audience targeting strategy appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Analyst: Google’s default search deal worth $3 billion to frenemy Apple

Bernstein analyst says that payments by Google to Apple this year might be worth as much as $3 billion. The post Analyst: Google’s default search deal worth $3 billion to frenemy Apple appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, Google Search Console change & competitive analysis

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, Google Search Console change & competitive analysis appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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5 Tips to Help Show ROI from Local SEO

Posted by JoyHawkins

Earlier this year, when I was first writing my advanced local SEO training, I reached out to some users who work for local SEO agencies and asked them what they'd like more training on. The biggest topic I got as a result was related to tracking and reporting value to small business owners.

My clients will often forward me reports from their prior SEO company, expressing that they have no idea what they were getting for their money. Some of the most common complaints I see with these reports are:

• Too much use of marketing lingo ("Bounce Rate," "CTR," etc.)
• Way too much data
• No representation of what impact the work done had on the business itself (did it get them more customers?)

If a small business owner is giving you hundreds or thousands of dollars every month, how do you prove to them they're getting value from it? There's a lot to dig into with this topic — I included a full six pages on it in my training. Today I wanted to share some of the most successful tips that I use with my own clients.

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1. Stop sending automated Google Analytics reports

If the goal is to show the customer what they're getting from their investment, you probably won't achieve it by simply sending them an Analytics report each month. Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but it only looks awesome to you because you're a marketer. Over the past year, I've looked at many monthly reports that made my head spin — it's just too much data. The average SMB isn't going to be able to look at those reports and figure out how their bounce rate decreasing somehow means you’re doing a great job at SEO.

2. Make conversions the focus of your report

What does the business owner care about? Hint: it’s not how you increased the ranking for one of their 50 tracked keywords this month. No, what they care about is how much additional business you drove to their business. This should be the focus of the report you send them.

3. Use dynamic number insertion to track calls

If you’re not already doing this, you're really killing your ability to show value. I don’t have a single SEO or SEM client that isn’t using call tracking. I use Call Tracking Metrics, but CallRail is another one that works well, too. This allows you to see the sources of incoming calls. Unlike slapping a call tracking number on your website, dynamic number insertion won’t mess up NAP consistency.

The bonus here is that you can set up these calls as goals in Google Analytics. Using the Landing Page report, you can see which pages on the site were responsible for getting that call. Instead of saying, "Hey customer, a few months ago I created this awesome page of content for you," you can say "Hey customer, a few months ago, I added this page to your site and as a result, it’s got you 5 more calls."

4. Estimate revenue

I remember sitting in a session a couple years ago when Dev Basu from Powered by Search told me about this tactic. I had a lightbulb moment, wondering why the heck I didn’t think to do this before.

The concept is simple: Ask the client what the average lifetime value of their customer is. Next, ask them what their average closing ratio is on Internet leads. Take those numbers and, based on the number of conversions, you can calculate their estimated revenue.

Formula: Lifetime Value of a Customer x Closing Ratio (%) x Number of Conversions = Estimated Revenue

Bonus tip: Take this a step further and show them that for every dollar they pay you, you make them $X. Obviously, if the lifetime value of the customer is high, these numbers look a lot better. For example, an attorney could look like this:Whereas an insurance agent would look like this:

5. Show before/after screenshots, not a ranking tracker.

I seriously love ranking trackers. I spend a ton of time every week looking at reports in Bright Local for my clients. However, I really believe ranking trackers are best used for marketers, not business owners. How many times have you had a client call you freaking out because they noticed a drop in ranking for one keyword? I chose to help stop this trend by not including ranking reports in my monthly reporting and have never regretted that decision.

Instead, if I want to highlight a significant ranking increase that happened as a result of SEO, I can do that by showing the business owner a visual — something they will actually understand. This is where I use Bright Local's screenshots; I can see historically how a SERP used to look versus how it looks now.

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At the end of the day, to show ROI you need to think like a business owner, not a marketer. If your goals match the goals of the business owner (which is usually to increase calls), make sure that's what you’re conveying in your monthly reporting.

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Best Practices for Building an On-Demand Content Strategy

We are now in the age of the self-educated buyer. Two-thirds of buyers complete their decision-making before they contact a sales rep. They take in content in their own way, on their own time. To deal with this new reality, you must have an effective on-demand content strategy that puts your...

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Labels are coming to Bing Ads & Bing Ads Editor

As in AdWords, labels can be applied at various levels of campaigns to aid management and analysis. The post Labels are coming to Bing Ads & Bing Ads Editor appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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How to test and perfect nearly everything in PPC

Every successful advertiser knows that great headlines, powerful ad copy and compelling calls to action are the keys to conversion. But the only way to know that your ads are as effective as possible is to constantly test and refine them, to make sure they thoroughly resonate with your target...

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