05.12.2011
Search Engine Optimization
I knew this time would come – that I would have to give my own insight on this age-old comparison. This is not a 100% representation of what an in-house or agency SEO is but it’s a reflection and comparison of my experience.
It’s not a battle per se but it’s worth noticing what it looks like when you’re behind both fences.
In-House SEO Jedi
For 4 consecutive years, I’ve been working on the client side. I’ve built, trained, and led a couple of teams of junior SEO’s, link builders, copywriters and web designers in the ultimate goal of optimizing client sites. Being an in-house SEO seemed like nurturing a baby from birth to adulthood. The close familiarity with your projects in house definitely helps you in learning how it behaves in every aspect of digital marketing – performance in search results, gaining traffic from different channels, acquisition of goals, and seasonal lifecycles.
Planning and execution of campaigns were also quite flexible (well depending on how many steps up the ladder you need to climb for approvals) when you’re in-house because you’re directly connected with the stakeholders of the project. In terms of reporting, it is quite straightforward. Once you’ve established your KPI’s (and enhance them over the period of time), then building a monthly template would be fluid enough. This is where you can see the fruits of your effort (and mistakes) come to life. Being able to monitor KPI’s on a regular basis for a single client gives you that confidence in generating projections and action plans for the next proceeding months.If there’s one word that I can attribute to being an in-house SEO, it would be FOCUS. It’s that focus that gives an in-house SEO his core strength vs. an SEO agency. I was fortunate enough that my bosses were patient and generous enough to let me experiment, innovate, and develop my processes for their websites for their success. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes but I always made a point to correct them for twice the gain. An inevitable weakness which is inherited by in-house SEO jedi’s is the disease of being “nearsightedness”. They will become so immersed with the company and industry that sometimes he loses touch of what’s happening in the industry as a whole specially if they stick to process which works and never have the courage or the time to experiment and think out of the corporate box.
Continue Reading Agency vs. In-House SEO Battle
11.10.2010
Web Analytics
When I started working with Nurture3, my previous role was that of a team leader which meant only executing the plan and strategies set by my manager or the client. Then I had the opportunity (and the challenge) of doing everything as an SEO manager.
When you’re heading an SEO department from the beginning, your major roles will include establishing procedures from keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and analysis.
Building the benchmark, a.k.a. KPI’s, for your SEO campaign is a process you should not miss. You can’t improve what you can’t measure – that’s a constant reminder by the analytics experts in the industry. With the onset of personalized search and now Google Instant, search engine rankings alone are not effective KPI’s anymore.
There are a number of KPI’s you can establish to measure your SEO campaign. We’ll start with organic traffic and conversions.
Luckily Google Analytics allows you to create custom reports according to your data needs. Let’s go through creating one step by step.
Custom Reporting can be accessed through the left side panel once you log into Google Analytics.
You can create / edit custom reports in this interface. Continue Reading Measuring SEO Through Google Analytics Custom Reports
04.10.2010
Conversion Optimization
Ever since I started working on conversion optimization last January 2010, I knew I found my new love. An increase of 20% in conversions after 2 months of optimizing message to landing page to registration flow, is a great figure to present to your boss.
For those who are not familiar yet with conversion optimization or conversion rate optimization (CRO), I would recommend reading one of my conversion superheroes, Bryan Eisenberg’s Blog.
An essential element of CRO is the landing page. It’s the customers’ entry point into your business and it’s your marketing pitch for them to purchase, register or whatever conversion you would like them to do.
I have been examining and evaluating landing pages for my clients’ projects and I have found that landing page holy grail at SEOMoz.Org. It’s neat, complete, and functional.
I would have written a top 10 strategy post for landing page structure but I think this demonstration will point out the important elements in landing page optimization.
Don’t take my word for it, let me who show you 7 reasons why SEOMoz has the perfect landing page:
1. Value Proposition (Enough Said!) – According to Bryan Eisenberg, there is one secret of top converting websites that is so simple, so obvious, yet so many people forget to use – Value Proposition. Tell your customers why they should buy your products, why they should choose you instead of your competitors.
What makes you stand out? What makes you better than the competitors? Answer that and deliver that message in a few seconds!For SEOMoz, there’s nothing simpler than “Get Started with SEOMoz Pro, risk free, now.” Apart from the brand that they have, they also give you that money back guarantee. Sweet! Right? Continue Reading Why SEOMoz has the Perfect Landing Page
16.07.2010
Interview Fridays
It’s been a while since I’ve had someone on Interview Fridays. Ever since I’ve re-branded my site (previously on Click-Dubai.Com), it’s been hectic making things right this time and keeping up with good content to deliver to the readers.
I have a special treat for you social media aficionados in today’s Interview Friday. I consider her the darling of Dubai’s social media industry, especially on Twitter (and she looks prettier in person).
She’s the founder of Socialize, UAE’s first dedicated social media agency, headquatered in Dubai. She’s also an actives peaker for marketing trainings across Asia and the Middle East. Without further ado, please help me welcome Ms. Akanksha Goel.
Thank you for this opportunity Akanksha. For the benefit of SaktoSEO readers, can you please tell us more about yourself and your work?
Thanks Dave. The short of it is that I was invited to Dubai almost 2 years ago as the Marketing Director for the Sherazade group, which specializes in loyalty marketing solutions. Before that, I’d worked on special projects with the TATA group in India, marketing with the TAJ group of hotels and finally getting involved with the Singapore media circuit as the Editor of STUFF Magazine. Social media is a subject close to my heart and I’ve had many adventures with it, like co-organizing Asia’s first podcamp a few years ago and researching the subject with Professor Michael Netzley, in Singapore. Plausibly, after coming to Dubai, I couldn’t stay away from the subject so I started doing trainings with Murdoch University after which many more followed getting me in-sync with social media marketing in the Middle East.
What is Socialize? What do you specialize in?
The idea for Socialize was born when a team of social media enthusiasts came together as a result of the above-mentioned trainings and we saw the need to have an entity in UAE dedicated to educating the business community on social media marketing, helping them see through the clutter and successfully leverage it as a part of the marketing puzzle.
Continue Reading Interview Fridays – Akanksha Goel of Socialize.Ae
14.06.2010
Conversion Optimization
A few days ago, one of our business development managers emailed me to ask about other ideas to market one of our newly launched products. We’ve been working on this product for a month now including the process flow which customers will go through until the final conversion – registration.
We’re currently running SEM and email marketing campaigns to drive short term traffic to the site. Here’s the catch after 2-3 weeks of analytics data I’ve found out that we were only converting at around 4-5% out of more than 5 thousand visits from a single email campaign.
We can see there’s a huge drop in traffic in the middle of our registration process which needs to be addressed.
Although our BDM has insisted that we should look for other channels to drive even more traffic to the site, I say let’s fix our funnel conversion first and try to capture what we already have rather than chasing more prospects and waste the leads at the end of the funnel.
Photo Credit
Let me share six simple strategies for small businesses to optimize their conversion funnels:
1. Analyze Your Data Carefully – A common mistake is to act on a premature data. What is considered premature data will depend on the campaigns that you are running. For example, analyzing PPC campaigns with a 3-day data is not as reliable as comparing to 2-3 week figures.
Tip: Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT forget to establish your funnels on GA before launching any online marketing campaigns. Do your diligence of tagging your URL’s for Analytics to keep track of the performance of your campaigns. You’ve heard this before, but let me repeat: you cannot improve what you can’t measure. Continue Reading Six Funnel Conversion Optimization Tips for SMB’s
31.05.2010
Conversion Optimization
Lately we have been tasked to increase conversions (registration leads) in one of our project websites. While conversion rate optimization (CRO) is still a new skill for me, I love working towards achieving meaningful goal conversions.
One of the major phases for CRO is the landing page optimization.
Although I’m not a designer myself, part of my work is to come up with landing page sketches / ideas for the project. And it is always great to have powerful tools at your disposal.
Let me give you a rundown of my favorite tools that I’ve used in landing page design / wireframing:
- Unbounce – Unbounce.Com may be the best landing page solutions out there. They offer you optimization solutions in 4 major steps:
- Build a landing page
- Publish It
- Drive Traffic
- Test & Optimize
It seems that the guys behind Unbounce.Com have done their homework in identifying the right solutions for landing page optimization requirements. They’re main objective is for you to launch landing pages without the IT guys.
What I like: WYSIWYG Landing Page Editor and Landing Page Templates. If you’re still new with landing page optimization, the templates at Unbounce.Com can give you a jumpstart. These templates have been formulated to come up with ready-made best practice templates including: simple lead generation templates, pre-launch lead generation template, and business consultant lead generation templates.
Continue Reading Landing Page Design / Wireframe Tools
31.05.2010
Web Analytics
Just like links, not all leads are created equal. Some leads are highly valuable to some companies while others are just secondary. Some leads convert easily into sales while some leads will remain as they are.
You need to determine which leads give you a better ROI of course. How do you do that? You need to understand your data / web metrics.
If you have successfully driven traffic to your website, it’s now time to gain knowledge of what percentage of those traffic give you conversions or which type of users give you a significant return on investment.
Enter Goal Funnels Stage Left
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. These customized reports are reflections of your online marketing efforts and will give you the right amount of data to help you decide which marketing efforts are worth investing more resources, which processes to drop, or which ones you can improve on.
- Goals by Keywords – If you’re running organic SEO campaigns, you would want to see which keywords have driven you traffic which ultimately lead to your conversions.What to Monitor: You may want to take a look at Visits and Unique Visits in combination with your conversion goals. This will tell you which keyword to optimize more according to the volume of traffic and number of conversions the particular keywords has contributed your site.
Continue Reading Customized Goal Reports in Google Analytics for SMB Websites
31.05.2010
Social Media
I’m not really a fan of pop stars. I’m more of an alternative-jazz-punk-fusion kind of guy, more like Incubus, Rage Against The Machine or Red Hot Chilli Peppers. But I couldn’t ignore the aura and the charisma of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta or popularly known as Lady Gaga!
Gaga’s talent, unique sense of style, and exceptional music has made her one of the hottest female artist of the decade. But what has this pop sensation have to do with social media?
Let me break it down to you with just a couple of her social media statistics (as of May 16, 2010):
- Facebook Fan Page – 7,132,043 Fans
- Official YouTube Channel – 122,233,383 Total Upload views (which also made her the first franchise to reach one billion views)
- Verified Twitter Account – 4,023,719 Followers
- Lady Gaga Alejandro Myspace Page – 1,298,665 Friends
- According to Adage.Com,
Since fall 2008, her digital-single sales have exceeded 20 million and her album sales hit 8 million…
*Photo Courtesy of SpreePix-Berlin
Fine, I know she’s a celebrity and is expected to have those digits on her social media space. But name me a celebrity who has achieved this kind of feat to this date? I didn’t think so.
The point is she was (and still is) smart enough to use social media in distributing her music across the globe, extending her brand name, and reaching out to her fans (which are ultimately her customers). So what are the take aways from these amazing achievements?
Well Just Dance a bit and let me break it down to you how an ordinary Poker Face can rock the social media Paparazzi:
Continue Reading Go Gaga Genius on Social Media Branding
31.05.2010
Search Engine Optimization
In my years of working with clients in their organic SEO efforts, I’ve been asked this question over and over again. As a business, I think it is imperative to capitalize on the time at which you can expect good returns from your investment. And SEO being part of your marketing strategy is no different.
Unfortunately, there is not yet a black and white answer to this question. Although your SEO consultants / vendors may have told you that it may take 3-6 months to a year to see results or maybe even more than that. Personally I’ve seen core keywords rank in as short as a month to a longer period of 18 months.
*Photo courtesy of Borkur.Net
Organic SEO results will depend on these following factors:
Continue Reading How Long before I See Results in SEO?
13.02.2010
Online Marketing
It’s a new year and I wasn’t able to greet you folks (better late than never). I’m hoping you’re having a great start for this new millenium.
It’s been more than 3 months since I’ve last posted in this blog. I’ve been focusing more on writing as guest writers in top SEO blogs in the community. It has been pretty exciting (and a drop dead challenge) to expand my portfolio, now I’m working on building strategies for Online Reputation Management for my clients and start on Conversion Optimization.
In a few weeks from now I will be featuring a few parts of Online Reputation (ORM) and Conversion Optimization. I have to admit, I’m learning as I master these new areas in my work but it will be interesting to see the developments and tests of what works and what doesn’t.
As for now, I’m going to leave you with a couple of my previous blog posts at SEODubai.Org and SearchEngineJournal.Com: Continue Reading Latest Guest Blog Posts
