digital and interactive marketing #DM

9

SEM and CRO

SEM and CRO

SEM …search engine marketing… has two key components…

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about organic search results

Pay Per Click (PPC) is about paid for or ‘sponsored’ results

CRO …conversion rate optimisation… relates to the experience and actions on the site that lead to the desired action

we can relate this to the RACE model…

SmartInsights, 2012

So let’s think about SEO and Reach…

Title

the first thing we need… a unique title in the HTML head

the title should accurately describe the page content

each page should have a unique title

<title> I Love Digital Marketing – it’s the best! </title>

there are many activities we as marketers can engage in to

improve SEO and maximise our organic SERP listing…

according to google it should be brief and informative…

don’t stuff it with keywords

next… make use of the description meta tag

this gives users and the Search Engine a summary of what the page is about

words in the description appear in bold if they are searched for… highlighting relevance

Google would use these if it cannot find a suitable ‘snippet’ of text on your page to

summarise the content

the description should be interesting and informative

each page should have its own description

improve your URLs

Keywords, simplicity and descriptive categories work well

The content of the URL is indexed and displayed

make your site easy to navigate

Identify the home or root page and build a simple structure linking form this…

Develop an XML sitemap file that can be submitted directly to google

Plan how it can be navigated… develop a site map and make this available

…have a good, useful 404 page!

optimise content…

offer compelling and useful content…

think of all those inbound or back links!

offer content that no one else does… be unique!

Make sure it’s easy to ready, organised, on topic, up to date…

…and for your users not for the search engine

mentions

social

backlinks

content

Optimise content for search…

think about the different levels of knowledge and understanding in relation to your site and content…What words might be used in relation to searching…

Try and anticipate the likely different responses to your offering and the different search terms

Use tools like google AdWords or bingAds…

http://seositecheckup.com/seo-audit/cieloblanco.co.uk

write better anchor text for linksformat your links so they’re easy to find

use the alt-text option to optimise images

Create an image directory, simplify and standardise file names and types and create a sitemap…

…just for images

optimise, optimise, optimise…

Use heading tags for key text and content…

You can set code to restrict content crawling by ‘robots’ so certain content isn’t found or shown on the SERP’s

You may also want to set a “nofollow” for comments made on the site to avoid the spammers…

…and those trying to piggy-back on your sites reputation

Control the indexing…

ensure the bot, robot or spider… whatever you fancy calling it… can access and index your mobile site

set re-directs for corresponding pages of the desktop site with those of the mobile site

make sure that the content delivered reflects the platform used to access

optimise for mobile

responsive design

increase backlinks to increase ‘value’ of your site

publicise content via blogs an social platforms, provide an RSS feed

Don’t forget the value of promoting offline as well!

Make sure you add the site to google places

Never spam link requests or new content… don’t buy backlinks

Backlinks…

…is a paid search platform…companies bid for advertising placement in the sponsored sections of the SERP

…highly relevant to what has been clicked on

a fee is paid for each click… hence the name!!

keywords are researched and identified to intelligently target potential customers

PPC

These adverts should link back to specially created landing pages…

…the research into keyword and search is ongoing…

https://www.google.co.uk/ads/displaynetwork/

…another way of generating traffic – moving from the reach stage to the act stage

…you only have a small number of words to work with…

…so being relevant, easy to understand and appealing is key

Google Adwords, BingAds and similar provide us with tools in order to conduct research…

PPC

…remarketing tag is added to relevant pages

…create remarketing lists for key categories

…cookie tracks what is viewed

…choose where to serve the remarketing ads

CRO… conversion rate optimisation

the third stage in the RACE model…

…think – what is the intended action here?

Is it cognitive, affective or conative…

or a combination?

So… when they land on the site… how can we stop them

bouncing, keep them there…

…and how can we get the desired action?

https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/clicks-to-website/links/?toggle0=Photo

Understand the online journey, the route taken to your ‘hub’ and what they see…

Know all of your traffic sources…

…we could use tools provided by KISSmetrics or google flow

There’s plenty of research and guidance out there

for maximising CRO…

…but we’ll keep it simple!

Pulling it together with google goal flow and funnels

conversion rate optimisation

You may have different types of visitors, not just

visiting for your identified purpose

…what problems do they face in terms of the online experience

Study the marketplace… what are competitors doing,

what are customers saying?

…what do they like and what do they dislike?

…do some research, speak to customers… and ask them why

they didn’t click, or convert

Start to develop web content, begin with layout and conduct research…

perform A/B tests… tweak and change just one variable at a time and measure the impact on conversions

…when you find content that works… words, images, instructions and so on – make the most of it in other media!

CRO is about the journey and experimentation

Some examples of A/B testing experiments for CRO

http://www.zippycart.com/infographics/how-sales-messaging-affects-conversion-rates.html 2012

Some examples of call to action best practice for CRO

http://www.zippycart.com/infographics/how-sales-messaging-affects-conversion-rates.html 2012

…but what should we test?

http://marketingland.com/wp-content/ml-loads/2012/01/concurrent_live_tests-1.png 2012

Make sure you know your conversion goals

So there’s the generic RACE funnel…

SmartInsights, 2012

…but we need to work on our own!

bibliography

http://marketingland.com/wp-content/ml-loads/2012/01/concurrent_live_tests-1.png 2012http://www.zippycart.com/infographics/how-sales-messaging-affects-conversion-rates.html 2012http://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-statistics, 2012http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.co.uk/en/uk/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf 2012www.smartinsights.com 2012

C. Li and J. Bernoff, 2011. Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.