Guessing at Keywords

Reply

Most SEO efforts start with a list of keywords that you think will get you to the top of Page One of Google.  But how do you know they’re the right keywords?

Think about it – what if you spend days or weeks optimizing your site, then wait months for your site to be re-indexed and slotted on Page One – then the phone doesn’t ring?

What happened?

Typically, you either picked search terms / keywords that:

  • Don’t get searched for often enough to drive significant traffic to your website, or
  • Aren’t something a person looking for your products or services wouldn’t normally enter, or
  • Did not include geographic references for your local business, or
  • Would be entered by someone during the “Research Phase” of the Buying Process (not the Buying Phase).

In other words, you guessed wrong.

Now you’re back to square one again and you lost time, money and opportunities for new customers.

Consider this – Pay-per-Click is one of the best keyword research tools.  Not only will it tell you the number of searches in your target geography, but it also tells you which keywords get you the most clicks – a great indicator of which keywords are entered in to the search engines by BUYERS, not tire-kickers.

We hope this helps.

Third Marble Marketing – Richmond Top Companies

1

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR THIRD MARBLE CUSTOMERS!

Third Marble Marketing made the list of Richmond’s Top Privately Held Companies.

We’ve been growing since we started almost 4 years ago and continue to grow each month – almost entirely on referrals.  It’s amazing what you can do when your service helps other businesses grow.

An extra special thanks to all the Third Marble Marketing customers that have been with us since the beginning.  We hope we’ve help you get one step closer to your dreams and goals.

Chris Fawcett

SEO Company Tricks – The Missing Location

Reply

A customer was called by an SEO company with what he thought was a very compelling offer to get his web site up on Page One of Google with their $500 to $1000 a month SEO service.  They said that his website was not on Page One.  Meanwhile, most of his business comes from being on Page One of Google.  Suspecting foul play, he told the sales rep to call me, telling the sales rep that I was in charge of his internet marketing.

The sales rep called me.  I talked to the person briefly.

He said “You’re not on page one of Google and you need to be.”

So I simply replied “What keywords am I not on Page One of Google for?”

He said “I don’t know, I’ll have to send you a report.”

So I said, “Well you must have a report in front of you, otherwise how would you know I’m not on Page One?”

“Our reports tell us.”

“Well send me the report then.”

He agreed to send me the report.  A few days later, I get this generic report that, not surprisingly, did not list any keywords, but had 20 pages of general stats and re-generated cliches from the Google website.  I email back, “This doesn’t tell me what keywords you think I’m not on page one.”

A few days later, I get a data dump from a Google Keyword Tool with 30 keywords on it showing that my customer’s website is not showing up on Page One of Google for 27 of the 30 terms.  It looked bad.

However, 26 of the 30 keywords did not include any city names.  Assuming the computer that ran this report was not located in the same city as my customer, it’s not a surprise that a Charleston, SC company isn’t showing up on a computer in California, or Washington DC.  

“Why would I want to be on Page One of Google on a computer in a city 2000 miles away?” I asked.  I haven’t heard back.

Moral of this story – know you keyword phrases that you want to be on Page One of Google. If someone calls and says you’re not on Page One, ask them to search for YOUR phrases.

I hope this helps – if so, please “+1″ us.

Networking Event Richmond, VA – 3/27/2013

Reply

Search Engines for Small Businesses.

Please join Third Marble and dozens of other business owners as Third Marble’s own Chris Fawcett will de-mystify the process of getting more customers from Google.

What – Networking Event, Educational Seminar and Lunch

Where – Richmond Country Club (map)

When – Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 11:30.

How Much?  The session is free, lunch is $15. (or the lunch is free and the session is $15.)

Register at BOIVA.com – Register Here.

Topic: The Small Business Owner’s Secret Sauce for Getting on Google

Details:

Ever wonder why your small business website doesn’t help your phone ring?  It’s probably because people that are searching for your products and services can’t find your website.  Since most people use Google to search for local information, shouldn’t you know a little about how the search engine giant decides who gets top billing?  This session will de-mystify Google for your small business and give you a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization, how it works and how it can help your business grow – and how to avoid wasting money on the SEO scams.  We’ll also discuss how “being on Page One of Google” doesn’t always mean more phone calls, and how it takes a complete Google strategy to turn your website into a marketing magnet.

View Larger Map

Website Design Basics for Small Businesses

Reply

Yes, most small businesses should have a website – and there are a lot of website designers that will be happy to build a website for you.  At Third Marble, we talk to a lot of small business owners and ask them about their website designers.  What we’ve learned is MOST web designers fall in to one of these three categories:

  1. The guy that used to be a graphic artist.
  2. The guy that used to be a programmer.
  3. The guy that used to be in advertising.

For small businesses, you typically can’t hire a team of diverse professionals and a project manager to build a website, so you hire “a guy that builds websites”, right?

The problem is, none of the guys above can deliver a Business Generating Website.  Why not?

Well, the former graphic artist can deliver a website that looks very nice – but usually doesn’t have the Basic Search Engine Optimization.  You need basic SEO to even have a chance of anyone finding your website on Google.  They also tend to build websites that don’t convert very well – in other words, they’re great “ads” for your business, but they’ll often lack the strategies for “Direct Response” – ie. you want phone calls, but these sites will hide phone numbers on the “Contact Us” page instead of “cluttering up the site design” with information.  So – if your customers can’t find your website, and if they do, they have to hunt for your phone number, all you have is a pretty website.

The former programmer is the polar opposite – the site is written using custom code, so the aesthetics are poor and the design is frequently very boxy. Sometimes they may know a little about SEO, but again they rarely know anything about designing a website for converting visitors to phone calls.  The other negative we’ve seen with hiring a former programmer is they want to custom code everything – which means as new browsers, cell phones, tablets and other technologies emerge, your website may not render correctly on all these devices and you’ll have to re-build your site more frequently.

The former advertising guru can usually deliver a good looking website that converts well.  They usually don’t know much about technology or SEO, so you have the same basic problem – no traffic to the website.

To have a Business Generating Website, you need a few basic ingredients.  It’s rare to find a single person with all the needed skills to build you the complete package.

What are these basic ingredients?

  1. Nice, professional look to attract quality customers.
  2. Basic SEO in place to bring in Relevant Traffic.
  3. Basic traffic converting elements – phone number, call to action, reason to contact you.
  4. Good technology that will render your site on all the current browsers and devices (in easy to navigate and read formats).
  5. Quality copy that inspires readers to contact you.

If you found this helpful, please take a moment and click the “+1″ button below.


Phony Phone Calls from Google – 503-457-1403

Reply

If you got a robot call from 503-457-1403 telling you your business is not listed on Google, this blog post tells you how to report them to the FTC.

The call states that your business is not currently listed on Google Plus Local or Google Places, and it’s a telemarketing call.  I have received the same phone call three times this week from 503-457-1403.  It’s a “robot call”.  They are now illegal, unless you specifically request to receive robot calls in writing.  So I researched it a little more and found that you can easily file a complaint at the FTC.

  • Go to https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx
  • Click the “File a Complaint” button on the left side of the page.
  • Read the disclaimers and click “Continue”.
  • You will have to provide your phone number, the date and time of the call.
  • Make sure you check that the call was a recorded message and click “Continue”.
  • Fill-out the information about the call, including the phone number and the name of the company (if they gave it to you), and hit Submit.

It’s that simple.  If you’ve received a call from this same company or any other pre-recorded telemarketer call, do all your fellow business owners a favor and report these time-wasting calls.  I plan to do this for every robot call I receive in the future.

Thanks!

 

 

 

Groupon / Living Social Daily Deals – Small Business Owners be Prepared!

1

At Third Marble Marketing, we talk with numerous small business owners about their marketing plans, what they’ve tried, what works and what doesn’t.  Many of our customers have tried the daily deal coupons like Groupon and Living Social.  This article is a compilation of their stories, so that our other customers will know what they’re about to get into before they try it.

First, we need to understand the basics of the daily deal.  The concept makes sense on the surface – drive a ton of traffic to your business with deep discounts via a mass localized email.  You’ll breakeven (or perhaps lose a modest amount of money) on the deal, but the customers will return to buy again at full price.  You’ve increased your customer base and your profits in the long term.

Sounds logical, right?

Well, here is a summary of some of the experiences Third Marble customers have had with the Groupon and Living Social daily deal coupons:

  1. Coupon clippers only buy when there’s a discount.  What we’re hearing is that very few of these ‘cheapskates’ actually have any loyalty to a company that offers a 50% off or better deal, then wants them to pay full-price on their next visit.  Shocker.  As a seasoned direct marketer, I used to measure and study the effect of the “life time value” of someone whose first purchase was at a discount vs. full price.  Guess what?  The full price shopper is almost always more loyal – they find value in your company – not your coupons.
  2. You may bite off more than you can chew.  Yes, you will get an increase in your business – perhaps more than you can handle.  If you don’t make any money on the coupon transactions, you better make sure you don’t have to hire additional staff or resources to handle the increased volume.  That adds to your costs, which decrease your profits.
  3. Are you ready to re-connect? Make sure you have the processes in place to re-connect with your Groupon / Living Social buyers.  In other words, if your profits from this deal are going to come from future purchases, make sure you have a method or process in place to communicate with them in the future – like getting their email address, mailing address, phone number and / or Facebook like.  If you can afford it, you may want to send coupons to these buyers that don’t repeat purchase in X number of weeks to encourage them to return.
  4. Do Not Alienate Your Existing Customers!  This is the hidden cost that most do not think about.  If you get so busy taking care of your Groupon / Living Social buyers that you don’t make time for your long time, profitable customers, you may LOSE BUSINESS!  Example: Let’s say you take appointments (like a barber shop or optometrist) and you can handle 100 appointments per week.  If you sell 200 coupons, you may fill your appointment book for the next month or so.  What happens when your most profitable customers call to book an appointment and can’t get one for a month?  They’ll probably Google your competitors and take their business elsewhere.  Make sure you reserve time and resources for your existing, full-price paying, profitable customers.  No business can afford to lose their best customers.

I’m not trying to talk you out of trying Groupon or Living Social.  I’m simply trying to prepare you.  Really think through the process you’re going to need when the coupons start to hit.  Will you need additional phone support?  Additional staff?  Extra business cards, brochures, supplies, products?  Is your website ready?  How will you get them to buy from you again?

We’ve heard everything from horror stories to success stories with the daily deals.  In general, those that were prepared found success.  Those that were not did not.

We hope this helps!

 Other Articles:
7 Reasons to Pass on Groupon.
Groupon’s Business Model.
Pros and Cons of Groupon.

 

The “Increase your Revenue from Google” Equation

Reply

Increasing your business’s revenue from Google is really a numbers game.  (I hate to do this, but it looks like you may need to dust off your old high school algebra book for this article.)

Here are the basic variables:

  1. Someone sees your listing on Google (like a Google AdWords Ad, a Google Places listing or a natural listing on Google).  Let’s call the Number of times your ad is visible each month “N” – ie. the number of impressions your listings get on Google each month.
  2. The Click Thru Rate (“CTR%”) is the percentage of times your listing is clicked for every time it is displayed.  So if your CTR% is 5%, then you get 5 visitors to your website for every 100 times your listing is visible.
  3. The next step in the equation is the Conversion Rate (“Conv%”)  – The percentage of people that contact you once they’ve seen your website.
  4. Then there is your Closing Rate (“Close%”) – the percentage of time you close business with the people that call you.
  5. And lastly, we’ll need the average revenue you get from each customer (“$”).

So here’s the final equation:

Monthly Revenue from Google    =   

N   x   CTR%   x   Conv%   x   Close%   x   $

Here’s an example:  Let’s assume your listings display 10,000 each month on Google (N = 10,000).  You have a 2% Click Thru Rate on your ads (CTR% = 2%).  1 out of every 20 visitors to your website call you (Conv% = 5%).  2 out of every 5 people that call you become a customer (Close% = 40%). The average amount a customer spends with you is $1000 ($ = $1000).  Your Revenue from Google should be about $4000 per month. (10,000  x  .02  x  .05  x  .40  x  $1000  =   $4000)

So how do you make more money on Google?

Increase N – Get more impressions by increasing your visibility on Google.

Increase CTR% – Make sure your keywords are relevant and your listings are compelling.

Increase Conv% – Make sure your website gives a visitor a good reason to call you.

Increase Close% – Do you have a consistent closing process once someone calls you?

Increase $ – Do have strategies to increase your average revenue per customer?

OK – the math lesson is over, put your algebra book away and start thinking about this.  The easiest thing to do first is work on the variable that is the weakest, or has the most potential for improvement.  Here are some suggestions for finding the weakest variable:

If you aren’t getting many visitors to your website, there are two main things to look at:

Are you visible on Page One of Google?  If you don’t know, request a Free Google Visibility Analysis and find out.  If you need more visibility (ie. need to increase “N”), then try Pay per Click (PPC) with our One Month Trial, get on (or optimize) your Google Places account and do more SEO.  Low visibility = low website visitors.

If you are getting lots of impressions (ie. your “N” is good), then your CTR% is too low.  This is usually from either poorly written ads, or more commonly, your keywords aren’t very relevant to your business.  The keywords may be too broad, or too narrow in focus.  Re-evaluate your targeted keywords.  Off-target keywords = low CTR%.

If you are getting lots of visitors to your website (ie. “ N   x   CTR% “ is good), but the phone never seems to ring, then look at:

Your website – does it give the visitor a compelling reason to call you? Is there a clear call-to-action like “call us for a free estimate”?  Is your phone number clear and bold at the top of every page?  Is your address at the top of every page (very important for local companies)?  Does the look of your website match the qualities of your company?  (In other words, if you are the low-cost leader, does it look inexpensive?  If you are the high quality company, does you website look like a high quality site?)  Bad website = low Conv%.

Your Keywords - Are they correctly targeted?  Are they locally targeted?  Are they targeted to the right geography?  Are they exactly what someone would search for if they wanted exactly what you sell (ie. are they relevant)?  Off-target keywords = off-target visitors = low Conv%.

If you are getting lots of phone calls, but never seem to close the calls, or if your average revenue from a customer is low, then take a good look at your closing process.  Do you have a well-optimized closing process?  Is it consistent and repeatable?  Have you experimented with your closing process?  Poor closing process = fewer customers and lower average revenue per customer.

Once you identify the weakest area, fix it.  In the example above, the conversion rate (Conv%) was only 5%.  If you fixed it and increased it to 10%, your revenue would jump to $8000 per month.

Continuing the process, if you then increased your monthly impressions from 10,000 to 20,000, your monthly revenue would climb to $16,000.  If you were able to improve your Close Rate (Close%) from 40% to 60%, then your monthly revenue jumps to $24,000.  Let’s say you then increased your average revenue from each customer ($) from $1000 to $1200.  Now your monthly revenue is $28,800.  Finally, if your Click Thru Rate were to increase from 2% to 2.5%, your monthly revenue would become $36,000.

Please remember, this is an academic exercise, and no one can guarantee such results.  But you get the idea.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply, or click the “Like” button below.

Chris

Relevant Google Advertising – the Pyramid

Reply

What makes a good Google Advertising campaign? In a word, “Relevance”: Are the visitors to your website from your Google Ads likely to buy your product or service?  The idea is to get the people to your website that are looking to buy exactly what you are selling.

More “Traffic” to your website will not always bring you more business.  More “Relevant Traffic” will bring you more business.  As an example, if I were to drive 10,000 people to your website interested in winning $1000, you would get 10,000 visitors looking for free money.  I doubt many of them would be interested in anything else on your website.  However, if I were to drive 100 visitors to a website for a store in Anytown, VA that sold American flags, and all 100 of them lived within 10 miles of the store and they just searched Google for the phrase “American flag store in Anytown, VA”, you might expect to get a few phone calls.

To further illustrate the idea and importance of “Relevant Traffic”, I like to use the pyramid model:

Local Google Advertising Pyramid for Pay per Click Ads

The Google Advertising Pyramid

At the top of the pyramid, the search phrases are very targeted to a business.   Using my typical pizza restaurant example, the search terms at the top of the pyramid might be something like “Italian Restaurant Pizza Delivery Coupons in Anytown, VA”.  This term is very specific and there aren’t very many websites that would want to be found for that phrase.  The person that enters this phrase is looking for something very specific.  If you owned an Italian restaurant in Anytown that delivered pizza and you had delivery coupons on your website, then this search phrase would be highly likely to get you a phone call.  In other words, that visitor would be very “Relevant” to your business.  On the other hand, this phrase isn’t searched for very frequently, probably only once or twice a month.

At the bottom of the pyramid, there are the phrases that are very broad in nature.  As an example, the search phrase “restaurant” would be near the bottom of the pyramid.  The person that enters “restaurant” as a search term could be looking for a job in a restaurant, a sub shop, hamburgers, breakfast, Chinese food, a restaurant that takes reservations for a client dinner, McDonalds, or even for a restaurant that’s for sale – in any city in the country also.  So for the pizza restaurant mentioned previously, most of the people searching for “restaurant” would probably be “Irrelevant” and unlikely to convert to a customer.

Unfortunately, the easiest way to get a lot of traffic to a website is to target a few very broad terms – ie. target the irrelevant traffic at the bottom of the pyramid.  This is how some other Pay per Click companies operate, so you need to be a little careful when selecting a Pay per Click company.  Some of them tend to charge more since they will get you a ton of “traffic” to your website, but you may not get too many phone calls.

At Third Marble Marketing, we strive to make sure the traffic from our Local Google Advertising is Relevant Traffic from the top of the pyramid.  Yes, we have to spend more time setting up hundreds of phrases from the top of the pyramid, instead of just three or four from the bottom.  But whether you are spending $100 per month, or $1000 per month with Third Marble Marketing, we make sure you are getting the most relevant visitors for your money (so you can get the most customers for your money).

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply, or click the “Like” button below.

Where to Put KeyWords to get more Google Visibility (Part 2)

Reply

(If you haven’t read last month’s article on Where to Put KeyWords to get more Google Visibility (Part 1), please read that article first. )

Continuing our discussion, this month, I want to describe the next few places to put your keywords to help improve your rankings in the search engines like Google.  Last month we talked about the Title Tags, the Meta Description and the URL.  While those are the three most important places to put your keywords, this month, we will discuss the next most important places that will get you just a little higher in the rankings – Header Tags, Alt Tags and Copy.

Header Tags

Once you have selected your ideal keyword phrase for a page on your website, you should incorporate as many of those keywords into the “Headline” of that page.  In the image below, the phrase “Where to Put KeyWords to be on Page One of Google (Part 1)” is considered the Headline for the web page:

Page One of Google. Using Header tags to get on Page One of Google.

In the HTML for this web page, the Header Tags (sometimes called “H” Tags) define the Headline for a web page.  It simply looks like this in the code:

<h1>Where to Put KeyWords to be on Page One of Google (Part 1)</h1>

(Hint: If you want to see the HTML for your web page, right click in any blank area of your web page and select “View Source” or “View Page Source”.)

The Header Tags on a web page are a lot like the headlines for newspaper articles – they tell the reader what the articles (or in this case the web page) are about.  Google and the other search engines factor this thinking into their indexing algorithms, so it is important that your Header Tags (Headlines) contain keywords that people would search for to find your web site.

A great example of a bad headline is “Welcome to our Web Site”.  That could be anyone’s website.  For our pizza restaurant example, a better headline would be “ABC Pizza – A Pizza Restaurant in Anytown, VA”.

Alt Tags

Google and other search engines can’t understand images, so website images have “Alt Tags”.  These tags are designed to be description of the image.  Since “an image is worth a thousand words”, search engines often use the words in the Alt Tags in their search algorithms.  Make sure your images all have meaningful Alt Tags that contain your ideal keywords.  You can see the Alt Tag for an image by simply hovering your cursor over the image, like this:

Local Google Ads - an Example of an Alt Tag.

An Example of how to see an Alt Tag.

Your Website Copy

Writing your website copy is always a challenge.  Not only do you have to sell your customers on your product or service, you also have to make the copy search engine friendly.  There are a few things that you should try to do with your website copy, but not at the expense of losing a potential phone call or customer.  If you can, try to incorporate a few of these strategies in your copy writing:

  • Make your ideal keywords bold whenever possible, without looking ridiculous.
  • Do not repeat the same phrase over and over and over and over and over again.  The search engine will think you are spamming.  Make sure the copy reads like it is “normal” English and that it makes sense to the reader.
  • Try to make your hyper-links meaningful.  Instead of “Click Here“, use a hyper-link like “Learn more about Local Google Advertising“.  The words in the link make a small difference.
  • The words at the beginning of your web page carry more weight, so make sure your ideal keyword phrase is in the first sentence.

If you don’t know how to make any of these changes yourself, your web person should be able to do it.  These are easy changes to make, so don’t let your web person charge you too much either.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact us.  In the meantime, if you think you need help with selecting your ideal keyword phrase, check out our Pay-per-Click Test.  It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website AND research keywords for your business in you geographic area.

I hope this helps – if it does, please leave a reply below, or click the “Like” button below.