The Anatomy of True SEO ROI

Return on Investment:

         ROI is what every client wants from a search marketing agency. It’s an easy thing to calculate if you’re doing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. If your revenue is higher than your spend, PPC management fees and cost of goods, then your client is getting a return on their investment. Although it’s simple to figure out ROI for PPC, the same cannot be said for search engine optimization (SEO).
The Anatomy of True SEO ROI
True SEO ROI involves driving targeted traffic from SERPs, regardless of how long or short the keyword tail is. It also includes targeted referral traffic. Targeted traffic means traffic that accomplishes the purpose and goals of the website. That could be any of the following:
· Subscriptions
· Repeat Traffic
· Community Involvement
· Registrations
· Newsletter Signups
· Purchases
What’s tricky about reporting SEO ROI is that you have to connect the links that have been built with referral traffic from websites and search engines, and then connect that data with conversion results. Although Google Analytics can help connect the dots, it’s still difficult to sync, analyze and report on that data. This is something that Raven has spent a great deal of time on — creating a relationship between Link Manager data, Analytics and our conversion tracking code. The result is what we call true SEO ROI.
True SEO ROI can show you the effectiveness of any SEOcampaign. For example, if a campaign is focused on building links in forums that link to widgets on the client’s online store, then an SEO ROI report would show the success of that campaign. That report might include a list of inbound links that resulted in purchases, including details from related organic search engine traffic (matching or similar keywords used in the anchor text or within the context of the pages the links were built on) that resulted in purchases.
Each SEO ROI report should focus on and report the following key elements:
Conversions related to the campaign
Overall increase in conversions over time
Conversions related to search engine traffic
Overall increase in search engine traffic
Overall increase in unique users and traffic

Known facts on SEO

SEO is an ever-changing industry . Some of the necessary rules for SEO work are:

1. Web Design – Producing a visually attractive page.
2. HTML coding – Developing search engine-friendly coding that sits behind the web design.
3. Copy writing – Producing the actual readable text on the page.
4. Marketing – What are the actual searches that are being used, what key words actually get more business for your company?
5. An eye for detail — Even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.
6. Patience — There is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.
7. IT skills — An appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms actually work.

Before worrying about bringing people to your site, you need to get the spiderbots to like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to crawl the Internet looking at all the websites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Optimizing a website to be Google-friendly is often a compromise between a visually attractive site and an easy-to-find site. The second skill is that of optimizing the actual HTML code to be spiderbot-friendly. Thirdly, I suggested that copy writing is a skill in its own right. This is the writing of the actual text that people coming to your site will read. The Googlebot and other spiderbots love text – but only when written well in properly constructed English. Some people try to stuff their site with keywords, while others put white writing on white space (so spiderbots can see it but humans cannot).
The fourth skill is marketing. After all, this is what we are doing – marketing you site and hence company and products/services on the Web. The key here is to set the site up to be accessible to the searches that will provide most business to you. Some people seem to want to make daily changes and then think they can track the web page ranking results the next day. Unfortunately, it can take a week for absolutely correct changes to take effect, in which time you have made six other changes. Add to this Google’s reticence to allow new sites straight on to its listings by adding a waiting factor of, maybe, three months for new sites, and you have a totally uncontrollable situation.
 The final and seventh skill is an appreciation of how search engines and algorithms work, for this where both IT and math experience is useful. People who have programmed at a detailed systems level have a natural feeling for how spiderbots will read a page, what they will search for, what tables they will set up, what weightings they may give to different elements. All of this builds a picture of the database that will be created and how it will be accessed when a search is undertaken. Unfortunately, this skill is the most difficult one to learn because it relies on many years experience of systems programming. 

Tips on Metadata to boost up SEO Performance

Use figures in your metadata

Numbers can be utilised for their eye-catching properties to draw users in and grab their attention. As they tend to stand out against text, adding numerical values to your metadata – as a date, price, percentage or as part of a phrase – can make a big difference to your click-through rates.

A good example of how you can do this is by using promotions and offers, as they usually contain numerical data. 

Include a clear call-to-action in yourmetadata 

A call-to-action is exactly what it says it is: a prompt to get the user to act in a certain way – usually to make a purchase. Without a call to action in your metadata, encouraging users to click through to your site can be hard, and you’re likely to lose out to competitors who have action-focused metadata. 

As a general rule, your call to action should contain a simple, focussed verb. The simplicity of this can be doubly beneficial, as not only can it significantly increase your click through rate (and all the bonuses that this can bring), but it won’t take up a lot of space.

Usually, a call to action will be structured in the following way, with adjustments made to your brand’s industry and product: VERB for RESULT

Here are a few examples: 

·         Buy Today For 20% Off

·         Shop Today For Free Next Day Delivery

Sometimes, however, the call to action doesn’t have to be explicitly focused on a result. Instead, the result is implied, as in these examples:

·         Speak To Us About Your Claim Today

·         Call Our Specialist Advisors Today

Create a sense of urgency in your metadata and site-wide content

As with calls to action, if you don’t actively try and prompt users to interact with you and your product, you’re likely to fall by the wayside. Using focused, urgent copy instead of passive language can determine whether a user makes an immediate purchase or decides to leave it for another day. 

A good way to create a sense of urgency is by suggesting that the product or service you’re trying to sell is running out, and that waiting to purchase would likely mean the user ends up missing out. Using short timeframes or suggesting limited stock levels is a great way of implementing this.

One thing to remember however is to keep tabs on whether the copy and metadata is up-to-date – there’s no point prompting people to act quickly for a limited time offer if that offer still exists a month later. 

A few good examples of urgent language are:

·         Limited Stock Remaining

·         Register Before [Date] For A Free Gift 

·         Winter Sale Ends Soon

Mindset Segmentation

Organizations need tools for listening. #Mindset personas bring customers to life and enable employees to anticipate customers’ emotional needs.

While marketing segmentation distinguishes people according to their buying behaviors, mindset segmentation identifies people based on their emotional desires and expectations. These psychological personas or archetypes reveal how customers perceive a company’s brand; whether their values are reflected in the company’s values; and how the company’s products fulfill their personal needs for self-esteem or security. 

#Mindset segmentation illuminates the heart and mind of a customer. Communicators then craft messages that are rooted in understanding, as if derived from a personal conversation. It is a process of building rapport, which begins with listening; it is not a process of telling or showing.

Benefits of migrating and fully adopting Universal Analytics

Google has been rolling out Universal Analytics steadily since its launch in 2012 and this year, it announced that the transfer of properties from Classic to Universal Analytics was complete.

But with Google announcing that the next stage would be its retiring of classic GA, if your sites and apps are still using old and outdated tracking codes and libraries (ga.js), you’re going to be missing out on a whole host of features and developments that are only compatible with Universal Analytics.

Highlight of Universal Analytics –

•     The  analytics.jscode snippet is used to collect data from your website. This biggest advantage of JavaScript is that it is more flexible than its predecessor—Google Analytics ga.js JavaScript.
•      The tracking code offered allows you to collect data using any digital device. Taking this further –
•     Track websites – analytics.js JavaScript library
•     Track Mobile Apps – Google Analytics SDKs (v2.x or higher)
•     Track other digital devices such as game consoles & information kiosks – the Measurement Protocol
•     Easy to set up and customize tracking code which assists in cross domain tracking in the most accurate manner.
•     Through the account Admin page, you can control organic search parameters, referral exclusions and even search time exclusions.

Other advanced features include:

User IDs
These allow you to associate multiple sessions (including any activity within those sessions) with the same user by a unique ID

CRM data and Measurement Protocol
Universal Analytics allows for GA Measurement Protocol on external digital devices, such as game consoles and point of sale terminals. Which means developers can send raw user interaction data directly to Google Analytics servers, enabling brands to link and analyse both online and offline behaviour.

Search Term Exclusions
Any traffic that uses pre-defined excluded search terms will be classified as direct traffic, and not organic search traffic. This can be used to block branded or irrelevant keywords from being attributed to organic search channels, resulting in more accurate search engine metrics.

Google Drops Change Location Search Filter From Search Results

Google has quietly dropped the ability to filter your search results by changing your location. In the past, you would be able to click on the “Search Tools” option and set a location. This would give you search results as if you were in that location.

RankBrain: How Google Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Rank Web Pages

The days of a hand-crafted human search algorithm may soon be over. Google has announced RankBrain, a new artificial intelligence that is now processing a “very large fraction” of searches each day. This new system was reported to Bloomberg and has been implemented, in part, to help Google better understand deal with the amount of ambiguous queries that they receive each day.

RankBrain isn’t replacing the current Google Algorithm (currently nicknamed Hummingbird), but instead RankBrain is one of the “hundreds” of signals according to Bloomberg. Previously Google has claimed up to 10,000 signals & sub-signals. It turns out that the RankBrain signal is pretty important too. Greg Corrado, Google senior research scientist, stated that RankBrain is now the 3rd most important signal in matching results to a search query. When asked about the other two Google declined to comment.

The artificial intelligence of RankBrain comes in the form of mathematical entities called vectors that can be understood by computers. When presented with an unfamiliar word, RankBrain will help formulate a guess at what the query was about and filter accordingly. At Search Engine Land we took a deep dive into RankBrain and were given the following Google authored post on machine learning with some examples for those looking to learn more on the topic.

So now you may be asking yourself, When will I see this RankBrain in my results? The answer is that you most likely have already. The given example of a search query that leverages RankBrain is “What’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain”.

On Search Engine Land it was pointed out that the lengthy queries may be simplifying the search and making more manageable.

At first glance, RankBrain doesn’t appear as much as a signal as it does a refinement. Google confirmed that RankBrain is a signal, but it is also important to understand the complexity that a signal can be. Things like links or words on a page can be signals and signals can be associated with users as well. There are many possibilities as to how RankBrain could work into being a signal, especially if it takes a variety of additional elements into account to help classify the right content for users.