The Marketing Wave
-
Upload
joe-chandler -
Category
Documents
-
view
215 -
download
0
description
Transcript of The Marketing Wave
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 1
Marketing Wave
I n a u g u r a l
I s s u e 2 014
In this Issue
Why Do You Need a Business Website?
Google Panda 4.0
SEO: Website vs Mobile
M Volume 1 / Issue 1
COVER STORY: SEO: Website vs Mobile - is there a difference?
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 2
Yo
ur
Busin
ess
Proven
Results
Ou
r
Exper
tis
e
As a global leader in Digital and Traditional Marketing, Internet Marketing Images deploys a full compliment
of custom services designed to accommodate all business types and strategies. We create, design, and imple-
ment custom marketing strategies for our customers. To see how our strategies and services have helped oth-
er companies grow their businesses and how we can give you the same personal and honest service, visit us at
www.4imi.com
Your Digital Image is Our Business!
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 3
Contents:
Why You Need a
New Website
Google Panda 4.0
SEO: Website vs
Mobile
Letter from Vice President:
It’s the dawn of a new day at Internet Marketing Images, with
the launch of the Marketing Wave. We are proud to begin bring-
ing you a new magazine built on delivering quality information
and ideas to grow your business. I am very honored to be part of
a great team and look forward to this endeavor. We promise to
find the most current information and deliver it with integrity
and accuracy. We will look for new and unique ideas to reach
your customers. We understand marketing is the blood that flows
through the veins of your company and supports many facets of
your business. From here the sky is the limit.
Cheers,
Joe Chandler, VP, Internet Marketing Images
Internet Marketing Images
2150 S. Central Expressway, Suite 200
McKinney, TX 75070
Phone: (214)504-1919
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.4imi.com
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 4
Website 101
(Why you need a Website)
Why Do You Need A Business Website?
Business has undergone a huge shift and there is no lingering
indecision that a website is an essential need. Websites are the
new business cards. The Yellow Pages are a thing of the past,
along with many pre-internet methods of finding businesses.
Potential Customers use the internet to find what they need.
Search engines are the “Yellow Pages” of today! Additionally, an
ever increasing number of these customers are making buying
decision via their mobile or smart phones, bypassing the brick
and mortar stores altogether.
Reasons Why:
One. First Impression – for most potential customers,
your website is the first impression of your
business they will receive. The lack of one already
puts you behind in the race.
Two. Doing Something – Your website must Do
Something to contribute to the bottom-line. Even if
it is just to collect names and email addresses of
leads.
Three. Provide Information – to provide information about
your business, the who, what, and how your
product or services benefits them individually.
Four. Competition – Your competition has one and now
is a step ahead. You need to get back in the ball
game.
Five. Levels the Playing Field – puts your business on
level with large businesses in your field.
With these five reasons, there are many more, why would you
not want a website?
One. Building a Website is Too Expensive – Surprisingly,
a gorgeous, fast, and easy to use website is very
cost affordable and even easy to use on the
backend. A couple of thousand and a custom
website is yours.
Two. I will not be able to update my website – The new
content management systems is very intuitive and
easy to use. If you know Microsoft Word, then you
are already ahead.
Three. I Only need a One Page Website - Not it you want
to be found. Google is all about fresh, new content.
A static one page website will not gain much
traction in todays search world.
Four. Once I build the website I am done – What if the
Yellow Pages of old were not in alphabetical order,
would you have been found? No, the next step is to
optimize your site for the search engines.
“Build it and they will come!”
That worked in the movies but not in the new age of the
internet. Once you build your site you must be found.
In society today and the speed of business, your website is the
first point of contact for you business for the majority of
potential customers. Not only must you have a website but it
must be asthecially pleasing.
So what are you waiting for?
Many small business owners are still not adopting modern technology and marketing approaches. Although
just over one in two SMB owners (51%) use technology to help with accounting operations, this dwarfs
technology utilization for appointment booking and scheduling (39%), customer relationship management
(34%), point-of-sale systems (25%), and acquisition marketing (14%). Additionally, more than half of SMB
owners do not have a website (52%) or even measure the results of their marketing programs (56%). -
Forbes
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 5
Ingredients for a Custom Marketing
Blend:
3 scoops Website Design
8 T Search Engine Optimization
4 t Social Media
2 t Branding
2 t PPC Advertising
Sprinkled with New and Unique Ideas
Order Y
ours
Today!
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 6
Google Panda 4.0
What Can You Expect?
What is Google Panda? The easiest answer is what it is not. It is not a warm fuzzy black and white bear that hangs out in treetops. It
does not have a nice little sign outside its zoo environment that reads “Don’t feed the Animals!” It will however bite you if you do not
learn and follow the rules it has laid forth in Googles convoluted secret algorithm that only a few select individuals are privy to.
What we do know! The Facts
Google Panda is a change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was originally released in February, 2011.
Updates for Panda were originally implemented every month.
Major updates are in versions and this is version 4.0
There is a purpose and method to the Google madness. Panda is designed to target the lower quality sites. The sites containing thin
content will have their ranks lowered in exchange for higher-quality sites, who will be near the top of the search results. Original,
fresh, and frequently updated content are rewarded versus copied material. Therefore, original authorship is a must. Not only does
content have to be original and unique, it must be of high quality. No more keyword stuffing. Google Panda affects the ranking of an
entire site or a specific section rather than just the individual pages on a site.
What is the effect of Google Panda on businesses?
Lowering the rankings of copied, plagiarized, and low-quality websites, Google’s Panda is aiding the websites that have proved to be
authoritative high-quality, useful resource to consumers. Websites whose content is original and regular, more visitors will be driven
to the website via organic search results. Large sites such as eBay and ask.com have seen a vast decrease in site traffic after the
update. Surprisingly, press releases and press release websites are taking a huge hit. PRNewsWire.com seems to have shown a
significant drop in SEO visibility, dropping around 63% after the Panda 4.0 release.
The Good News: Google is focused on spam prevention and black hat punishment. Thus, White Hat tactics will allow businesses to
climb the internet search engine ranking ladder.
What you need to do:
Make sure no content is copied from other
sources
Make sure content is not duplicated within your
site.
Check the quality of your content
Verify content on all pages.
Remember, it only takes a few pages that violate the
Panda rules to hurt website traffic and rankings. At worst,
pages may be removed or blocked from being indexed by
Google.
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 7
Stop Sending “Email Blasts” Hitting everyone on your list with the same, blanket email won’t cut it in 2014.
Instead, segment your list according to behaviors/preferences and send
personalized emails.
Let Inbound Spread Throughout Your Company Attracting customers through creating content and adding value isn’t only for
marketers. Let this be the year you spread the inbound love to other
departments (like sales).
Stop Running Campaigns The traditional marketing campaign -- with its established start and stop dates -- is on its way out. The new model? Real-time marketing based on the consumer’s schedule, not yours!
Invest in Content to Improve SEO Google can now recognize full-question searches (instead of just specific
keywords). To take advantage, answer the questions your customers are
asking with compelling content.
Boost Your SEO with Social Social signals and recommendations are now among the most important
ranking factors in Google results. So, to give your SEO a boost, focus on
getting those “+1s” and “likes.”
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 8
Be a Good (Social) Listener “Social listening” means more than simply trolling networks for
keywords and trigger events. The best listeners develop lists of
prospects and engage with them human-to-human.
Close the Loop Being able to track visitors to leads to customers is a magic bullet for
inbound marketers. Armed with this closed-loop reporting, you can
truly see what’s working and what isn’t.
Encourage Audience Participation While audiences were once passive listeners, they now regularly
create and share media via social. The next step? Encouraging
audiences to help with product planning and creation.
Be a Holistic Marketer Consumers have all the power, and they research and buy across
many platforms and screens. Instead of focusing on a specific
channel, focus on delivering a holistic experience.
Have Doubts, Question Everything!!!
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 9
SEO
Website vs Mobile
Both Website and Mobile SEO are basically focused on
user interface, functionality, and content. With the onset
of new and improved algorithms, the need for a more
concise and strategic SEO strategy has arisen. SEO is
not about machines, it’s about people. Search engines
want to deliver the site that is the most relevant and
best-equipped to answer the mobile searcher’s query.
Search engine spiders – the robots that patrol the Web
indexing sites and content – are designed to emulate
human visitors. The secret to good SEO, in many cases,
is to making sure your site serves the mobile us-
er/searcher better. The good news: if your website SEO
is already in good shape, then you’re ahead of the
game. There are a few differences that must be taken
into consideration and implemented if needed.
How Google Ranks Pages Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines construct
an index of the web by crawling website pages. They
check each page for signals that define the context of
the page — so they can better match it to different
search queries.
Typical signals include:
1. What are the keywords on this page?
2. Do other pages on the same topic link to this page?
3. Is it linked to through social media or review sites?
4. Is this page more relevant for a particular locale?
5. Is this page mobile optimized (as per Google's rec-
ommendations)?
Additional considered signals for mobile searches in-
clude:
1. Does this page have an equivalent page on desk-
top?
2. Are both desktop and mobile versions of this page
properly linked to one another?
3. Is location relevant to this search?
Each signal is only part of the sum that makes up a
page’s overall ranking for a particular search term.
Key Point: Achieving top search results won’t simply
happen because you address one or two of these sig-
nals — for example, putting lots of keywords in your
page, or building a mobile-optimized website. Making
your website easily accessible across all devices is defi-
nitely becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle for Google,
but in order to rank well, you need to consider a bigger
picture.
Your website has got to be filled with relevant content
that people want to interact with, and it must be opti-
mized in a user-friendly and future-friendly way. And
don’t forget, user-friendly also means fast; Matt Cutts,
the head of Google’s Webspam team, recently stated
that mobile page speed has been added to the list of
search engine signals.
Why Does Mobile SEO Matter?
Customers “Google” Everything
Forrester Research recently reported that web-
influenced offline sales and online sales combined ac-
count for more than half of the $3.3 trillion total retail
spent in the US. As search is the #1 mobile browser ac-
tivity, businesses with websites that are primed for mo-
bile SEO gain more opportunities to:
1. get brand exposure from mobile searches
2. increase mobile traffic and conversions
(Continued on page 10)
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 10
3. convert visitors into loyal customers online and
offline
4. ultimately drive revenue across all channels
Customers Buy When They Want To
90% of people move between devices to accomplish
a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets
or TV. The three most common ways users move
between devices are:
1. searching again on the second device
2. navigating directly to the destination site
3. sending themselves a link to revisit later
It doesn't matter whether a consumer completes a sale online
or offline, most purchases begin with, or at least include, a
search.
Google Says So
Now that global mobile traffic accounts for 15% of all
internet traffic (and up to 30% for retailers) Google is
taking a clear stance on mobile SEO best practices.
Google’s new recommendations for building mobile-
and tablet- optimized sites are driven by a vision to
make better user experiences on mobile devices, as
well as to improve mobile web development practic-
es. To encourage global compliance, Google has
made changes to its mobile SEO rank algorithm to
rank websites that follow its recommendations higher
than websites that do not.
Businesses that adopt Google’s recommendations in
their mobile strategies are poised for greater returns
and long-term success.
What is Mobile Search? Definition of mobile search: using a web-enabled mobile de-
vice – feature phone, smartphone or media tablet – to query a
search engine, using a relevant word or phrase – e.g.
“emergency plumber in Manhattan” – known as a search
term.
Most commonly, this search will occur on Internet search en-
gines, such as Google (the dominant global player in mobile
as in desktop search), Yahoo, Microsoft Bing, Baidu (Chinese
search engine); Yandex (Russian search engine) or on nu-
merous directory, review or price-comparison sites/apps in-
cluding Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Places, YP, Yelp
(US directories), Thompson Local or Yell (UK directories), or
Tripadvisor (travel reviews), but can occur on any Website or
app with a search facility.
The search provider responds with links to relevant third-
party Websites of two types:
A. Organic results – the Websites are organized by relevan-
cy, which is likely to be a mixture of subject nature, popu-
larity, locality and mobile-friendliness. This can be en-
hanced with SEO.
B. Paid results – the advertiser has paid for their site to be
prioritized.
Important Parts of Mobile Search 1. Location of search
2. More local intent
3. Time sensitive
4. Context
5. The device – capabilities
6. The device – limitations
7. Voice search
8. Search by image and visual search
9. Mobile apps
10. Attribution and measurement
(Continued on page 11)
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 11
Mobile SEO Best Practices 1. MAKE IT MOBILE – mobile optimization and
search optimization go hand-in-hand.
Features of mobile-optimized sites, as used
by US retailers:
Click to Call
Mobile Coupons
Store Locator
2. MAKE THE MOST OF MOBILE – use mobile de-
vices’ unique capabilities to serve your visitors
better.
3. MOBILE IS DIFFERENT – mobile and PC users
search for different things.
4. GOOD HOUSEKEEPING – apply the basic rules
of Web design and SEO will follow.
Understanding the mobile context of the user,
and what they are likely to be looking for will
place you in a better position to define the
purpose of the mobile site and the content
therein. Make sure that site sections, naviga-
tion and pages are all given titles and URLs
that accurately describe the site and what is
on the page, using common terminology e.g.
“contacts”. Take into account what will appeal
to the mobile searcher and what language
they are likely to use when they search.
Start each page with a descriptive introducto-
ry sentence, use logical heading and sub-
headings (humans and search-engine spi-
ders, alike, scan pages to find out what’s
there). Make Web links obvious and label
them accurately so they describe the page to
which you are linking – avoid 'read more' or
'click here'.
SEO experts refer to the words commonly
used in searches (relevant to your site), as
keywords or search phrases – allowing these
to influence these naming conventions and
your copy-writing is known as on-page opti-
mization. If you are a “Hotel in Times Square”
or if you make “mobile games” make this the
focus of your Webpage(s). The key rule is to
design the site and write the copy for the us-
er, while making sure you have ticked the
boxes for the search engines, never the other
way round.
Keywords helps humans and search-engine
spiders understand what is contained on a
Webpage. Use them where they would natu-
rally occur, but don’t force keywords in or
needlessly repeat them for SEO purposes –
search engines take a dim view of such ma-
nipulation. For example The Manhattan Hotel
(N.B. this URL delivers an entirely different
site and experience on a mobile device to
PC) emphasizes its location in its brief copy
(and URL), with four logical links to sections:
(Continued on page 12)
Implementation URLs Content
Responsive design One URL for both
desktop and mobile
The page serves basically the same content to all users but detects the de-
vice and screen size and builds the layout accordingly. As the screen size
gets smaller, the page may show fewer images, less text, or a simplified
navigation.
Dynamic Serving One URL for both
desktop and mobile
The page serves different content to users of different devices.
Mobile URLs Different URLs for
desktop and mobile
The mobile and desktop experience might be completely different.
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 12
Click Here to Start Your SEO Adventure Today!!!
reservations, accommodations, directions (with
mapping), and contact us (with click-to-call/
email).
5. CONTENT IS KING – the three stages of compel-
ling content.
Content that promotes and sells your company
and its goods and services.
Content and services that add value to the sale,
including in-depth product information, advice
and reviews, and regularly updated offers that
drives opt-ins and increases loyalty.
Helpful articles and information, entertainment,
giveaways and competitions that are related to
the business/customer relationship, but may not
necessarily drive sales.
6. MOBILE FRIENDLY OR MOBILE OPTIMIZED? –
use the type of mobile site that suits your custom-
ers and your requirements.
7. MAKE IT LOCAL – locality and timeliness is more
important to mobile searchers than PC searchers.
8. MAKE IT SOCIAL – make it easy for people to rec-
ommend you.
9. MAKE IT FAST – your mobile site should load on a
smartphone in 1 second.
10. DON’T HIDE CONTENT IN APPS – Web search
engines can’t search in-app content.
11. GET DISCOVERED – it’s not just about search en-
gines, nor is it just about the Web.
There are plenty other ways of letting the world
know about your mobile site, or the new con-
tent, offers or features it contains – other than
search engines. Use your existing mobile chan-
nel, such as SMS and email. Add your mobile
site URL, or use a quick response (QR) code,
to marketing materials, books or brochures and
out-of-home or print advertisements. This is
likely to prove more effective where there is a
contextual relevance. Airlines are particularly
good at this, printing their mobile site address
directly on napkins, in-flight magazines and
banners in the airport.
Back in the digital world there are mobile direc-
tories such as YesWap, galleries that highlight
mobile excellence, such as Mobile Awesome-
ness, Media Queries for RWD sites, JQuery
Mobile Gallery for JQuery Mobile sites and
there are lots of different Mobile Awards where
a win could bring considerable kudos and pub-
licity.
Seek out referrals, free or through paid ads
(N.B. don’t buy links from irrelevant sites) from
the mobile sites of your business partners. The
planning tools from Google and other mobile
advertising networks can help discover the
most relevant sites.
(Continued on page 13)
GET STARTED
www.4IMI.com Inaugural Issue / Page 13
Specifics Responsive Design
Using responsive design that detects the device and adjusts the layout accordingly can be a great one-size fits all implementa-
tion. You just have one URL for any type of device and the layout adjusts. This works great for smartphones, tablets, laptops,
huge monitors, and the dashboard of your flying car. The crawl is efficient, users don’t experience the slowdowns that redirects
bring, and search engines have just one page to index and rank.
Users love it; Google loves it; everyone’s happy.
Dynamic Serving With this set up, the server detects the device before returning content and serves the response on a single URL (as above
with responsive design). The difference is that the content that’s loaded onto that URL may be totally different depending on
the device type.
This is a good option if loading the full content from the desktop version would slow the mobile page down, but it can be more
complicated to implement.
Mobile URLs Since Google sees different URLs as different pages, you can do several things to ensure that Google understands the rela-
tionship between your desktop and mobile pages so that your site is as visible to mobile searchers as it is to desktop search-
ers.
Google searches both desktop and smartphone users from a single index, and in cases where both a desktop and a mobile
page exist, clusters them together and serves the appropriate version.