SEO and Marketing

What does a 1961 experiment have to do with boosting website conversions? You’ll find out as you read this article. First, it is important to establish some facts: For every $92 spent on advertising, the average business spends just $1 on conversion — this explains the abysmal conversion rates most businesses have. 99 percent of people who visit your website will not make a purchase on their first visit. The average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.81 percent — yet a whopping 73 percent of companies do not have an idea as to why people abandon their shopping carts. If conversion optimization has always been a mystery to you, it shouldn’t be anymore. Below, I’…

Brand advertisers and their agencies only want to pay for mobile ads that are seen by a person. They do not want to pay for ads that are not ‘viewable’ i.e. they don’t render or are displayed where they are invisible; or for insufficient time to register the message. With brand advertising a mobile ad does not count as an impression and the advertiser thus should not be charged if: The ad is not seen by a real person; Because it fails to render or is displayed where it is unseen, e.g. below the fold, when the visitor doesn’t scroll; or If there is insufficient time for the visitor to digest its message. • The first factor is an invalid impression, often caused…

How have the events of 2016 affected your advertising spend? Take our 10-minute survey to benchmark your performance against competitors – and enter our prize draw to win an iPad mini. With the huge range of different marketing channels available to marketers today, it’s more critical than ever to have a marketing strategy that covers a variety of different channels. A 2013 study by Multichannel Merchant and Neustar found that 35% of companies already market on multiple channels, and a further 27% had plans to implement a multi-channel strategy in the near future. Among the customer touchpoints that the study’s respondents considered most critical to their organi…

It’s around this time that we resolve to do things just a little bit better than the year before. By mid-January, most of these resolutions have fallen to the wayside as they are too hard to consistently do. Often, the smartest resolutions aren’t those major changes, but small tweaks, replacing bad habits with good and introducing new ways of thinking about our routines. Once the holiday rush is over and sites are no longer on lockdown, its time to focus on the little things adjustments, but together can produce measurable local SEO gains. Here’s how to get started: 1. Adapt Your SEO Strategy for Voice Search Earlier this year, we learned that an estimated …

Brands have been upping their investments in new ad products from popular social media services, but are they getting their money’s worth? Some are reportedly starting to ask that very question in the face of metrics that raise questions about their potential efficacy. Take Snapchat and its ad offerings, for instance. Snapchat is one of the most popular social platforms in the world, and brands have been eager to take advantage of the opportunities Snapchat is increasingly giving them to advertise to Snapchat users. But as detailed by AdAge’s Garett Sloane, “one top advertiser” using Snapchat video ads has revealed that the ads generate less than 3 seconds of vi…

Influencer marketing involves a lot of listening, planning and experimenting. These tools will help you set up a social media campaign allowing to better find, monitor and approach influencers. One important word of caution though: Social media influencers should be tackled with huge care. Remember each of those people has a dedicated online audience: If you appear too spammy, they have eager ears to describe their bad experience to. An influencer media campaign can thus turn into an online reputation crisis. Always think twice before pitching the influencers anything: Brainstorm together with your team before taking any action. 1. Start listening: Brand24 The f…

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. This week, we’ve got key trends in content marketing for 2017; why social media is the preferred channel for product launches; and how to use an Exact Match Domain (EMD) without being penalised for spam by Google. And in probably unsurprising news, John Lewis’ annual heartwarming Christmas ad is this year’s best performing yet. The eight most important content marketing trends in 2017 It’s December already, and you know what that means – every publication you follow will be winding down for the end of the year by reviewing the highlights of 2016, while …

It is common knowledge that the amount of information available in the digital ecosystem is exploding. By 2020 it is expected to have grown from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes. Digital (and in our case search and content) data holds the keys to marketing success. It contains the critical patterns on consumer intent and behavior, preferences, and content/topics that brands need to provide customers with that critically personal, one-to-one experience that people today want to see. The problem, however, is that the human brain is only capable of processing 1m gigabytes of memory. In other words, the amount of information available far exceeds the processing ability …

Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Planking? Tebowing? At one time, these memes crossed the line from obscurity to mainstream. Even though Facebook and Twitter play a huge role in amplifying a challenge or helping memes go viral, the origins of that meme can usually be traced to anonymous social networks, like Reddit and 4chan. Viral content tends to start in smaller, closed networks (that often don’t use real names or identities). Vine and Snapchat – even Facebook Groups – are other places that bring together smaller, more tightly-knit communities with shared and interests and identity that tends to help incite participation. The meme or challenge takes off …

When it comes time to launch a new product, the majority of marketers in the US, the UK, and Australia are now turning to social media. Five by Five, a marketing communications firm that specializes in product launches, polled more than 700 marketers in these countries and found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of them consider social media to be the highest-priority medium to promote new products. Sales promotions and email were the second and third most popular launch marketing medium, respectively. According to Five by Five creative director Martin Flavin: “Social media has become the most important way to generate buzz for new products and services bef…

With social media reach and engagement rates having dipped so precipitously over the last year or so, paying to play is the only option for most brands now. But what about businesses and brands that can’t afford to advertise on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like? Not everyone is willing, never mind able, to carve out the budget necessary to keep their content in front of a critical mass of relevant followers on a regular basis. Those organizations can be particularly creative or incredibly persistent, but the most effective strategy they can embrace may be to get all hands on deck in the form of an employee advocacy program. Of course, to go in this directi…

Small businesses struggle to build visibility online due to tight budgets and limited work force. These five marketing platforms offer small businesses affordable lead generation and sales tools to provide them with some competitive advantage. Small businesses need lots of support these days. With huge budgets being shifted online by large corporations, competing for the web presence has been harder and harder. Luckily there are tools that offer great solutions for small businesses making their lives much easier and allowing them to be seen online. 1. Leadfeeder http://annsmarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/leadfeeder.png One of the most pleasant discove…

It’s been said that there are no stupid questions. But are there stupid question headlines? People ask search engines questions all the time. People are seeking answers to all kinds of questions. They want to know the who, what, where, when, why, and how on a variety of topics. These types of pages also tend to rank well, get shared, and attract links. For example: Google kills Right Hand Side Ads: what does this mean for marketers and users? Search Engine Watch (3K shares, 226 links) Microsoft Wants Autistic Coders. Can It Find Them And Keep Them? – Fast Company (47K shares, 93 links) Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedl…

In which we describe what an exact match domain (EMD) looks like, how they can manipulate search rankings and why it might be best to avoid them. What is an exact match domain (EMD)? An EMD is a domain name that precisely matches a search query that will likely drive traffic to your website. For instance, if you call your website BuyCheapJeansOnline.com. The search query ‘buy cheap jeans’ is a lucrative search term, and if you call your website this then you might assume this is a short cut to the top of a search engine results page (SERP). But as you’ll learn, even if this works in the short term, you may want to avoid doing it. What’s the problem with EMDs?…

The regional press still carries great importance. Wrongly maligned in some quarters, the stats almost speak for themselves. The 1,000 local newspapers and 1,700 associated websites across the UK attract a whopping 97 million users every month. Studies show that regional news outlets are the most trusted and attract the most effective response to adverts too. Yet let’s not beat around the bush, the regional press is also facing up to huge challenges. The fall of classified advertising and the growth of online news – free and convenient to access – has resulted in a dangerous drop in revenues and a significant fall in the number of people reading print editions. …

Search and email are good marketing partners because they make each other more productive. Add a layer of “big data,” and you have a firm foundation for digital marketing success. Take email acquisition, for example. Instead of just going it alone, email and search teams should partner up on PPC ads to build email acquisition. “Email + search” not “email versus search” Why spend a few bucks on a PPC campaign to acquire new customers through email when your website has opt-in forms all over it? Because it can deliver a higher-quality stream of customers: people who are truly interested in your brands but might not discover them any other way. The email address…

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. Whether you’re taking a break from Black Friday shopping mania, recovering from a post-Thanksgiving food coma, or just getting on with your normal working day because you’re in one of those boring countries that doesn’t celebrate Turkey Day (*raises hand*), we’ve got all of the most up-to-the-minute search news for your reading pleasure. This week, Google has released some canny changes to AdWords ahead of Black Friday, introverts have a new best friend in the form of real-time Popular Times data, and we take a look at the steps Facebook has taken so far…

To all of our readers and anyone else who has swung by accidentally thinking that this is an actual search engine (you’ll be surprised at how often this happens; you won’t be surprised at their most popular search terms), a very happy thanksgiving from us all! We’ll publish a couple more things for Europe tomorrow morning if you do happen to swing by the site. We apologise in advance for the pyjamas and meat-sweats. In the meantime, have a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving. View the full article

Emotion can be very powerful when trying to reach an audience, and it can be boosted by linking it with the way memory affects human behaviour. How can all of this apply to the demanding mobile audience? It’s not easy to be effective with the ever-increasing mobile audience, but emotion along with memory can contribute to a more meaningful relationship between a brand and a target user. Heather Andrew, CEO of Neuro-Insight, talked to Integrated Live about the way neuroscience can boost marketing efforts towards a mobile audience, provided that there is the right understanding of what makes a successful connection. As people become more attached to their smartphon…

Last week Metro Bank became the first financial institution to offer a gender neutral option for both its staff and customers. The move was made in response to an interview with a Scottish teenager who couldn’t open a bank account because they didn’t identify as either male or female, which was a required question on the form. Image from Buzzfeed. Metro Bank now offer a title of ‘Mx’ and a gender option of ‘nonbinary’ in addition to the standard ‘male’ or ‘female’ options. While the response to the change has been polarised, these changes are something that will impact marketing data and how we use it going forward. We seem to have accepted that ethnicity,…