SEM FAQs

The HyperLocalSearch Blog posted this blog recently about the 5 Most Frequently Asked Questions about SEM. Here are the questions:

1. What exactly is SEM?

2. How does SEM differ from SEO?

3. Do I need an SEM program if my business appears on Google Maps/Local Business Listings?

4. What makes an effective SEM program?

5. How can I measure the effectiveness of an SEM program?

Do you know the answers? If not, you should read the blog and you may discover why your business is not getting the online search results you've been hoping for.

Click here to go to the blog: http://hyperlocalsearchblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/top-5-most-frequently-asked-questions.html

Improve CTR & Increase Conversions Using Negative Keywords

Professionals in the search marketing field know that negative keywords are just as important and sometimes more important than the terms primarily targeted in a campaign. However, there are many that fail to understand that a negative keyword list can be just as dynamic as the list of keywords they are bidding on. Discovering new opportunities for refining both a keyword and negative keyword list can easily be found in a search query report.

When used properly, a search query report can help you take the guess work out of what is on the other side of a visit to your site. The data will reveal the actual term or terms used when searching for your products or services. This information can be matched up to the terms in a campaign and can assist in either proving the value of particular keywords or guide you along the process of choosing those keywords that you should "put to rest".

Refine Your Paid Search Strategy

Your keyword strategy is one of the most crucial components of a paid search program. You should regularly evaluate your keyword lists and identify the keywords for which you have received impressions but have a low CTR. After you have identified areas for improvement, pull a search query report. Match terms from the search query report to the list of keywords you have outlined and begin to take note of the queries which are irrelevant to your focus. Clicks leading from an irrelevant search query can result in wasteful spending and have a negative impact on ROI. There are many universal negative keywords lists available that other search marketers have generated. You can use these lists as a starting point to begin building your "dynamic" negative keyword list.

Location Targeting

Many advertisers struggle with wasting money on paid search programs that are either delivering clicks from searches that are irrelevant to their products or services or they advertising in locations outside of their service areas. You can also use a negative keyword list in conjunction with your geo-targeting strategy to restrict the target areas in which your ads will appear. The goal of most marketers is to compete in more places and in the neighborhoods that matter the most. We at The Local Search Agency call this "Hyper Local Targeting". Use negative keywords to help prevent your ads from being eligible to appear in markets just outside of your reach or even in markets that are no longer profitable.

Target Audience by Searchers Intent
As said before, when used properly, a search query report can help you take the guess work out of what is on the other side of a visit to your site. Knowing what terms searchers use to find your products or services will give you a competitive edge and assist you in determining precisely what your focus should be for that particular campaign. Optimize your campaign to deliver clicks that will result in an increase in conversions. Use negative keywords to filter out visitors to your site for which you will not be able to fulfill a need. For example, you may be a company offering a training course for $100 less than a competitor and you are using paid search to target searchers looking for your particular offer and increase sales. Your ads should focus on the value of your program and and the fact that you can save the searcher $100. Your ads probably shouldn't appear for search queries looking for the same training program for Free. You should use the negative keyword of "Free" to prevent your ads from appearing relevant to this type of search.

Strategy is key to the success of any online marketing program. Include detailed negative keyword lists in any and all of your search marketing campaigns and update the lists as often as you update the list of terms you are bidding on.

How Highly Targeted Display Ads Benefit You...

Remember the "old days" where pop up ads and banner ads ruled the internet? You couldn't visit a site without having 2 maybe 3 pop up windows appear in front of the page content you so searched so hard to find. It ended up getting to the point where many of us were so annoyed by these ads that we started using pop-up-blockers. With the use of pop-up-blockers, the use of these ads diminished and their existence slowly faded.

Over the last few years, there has been a resurgence of these banner ads which are now called "Display Advertising".  However, these ads are very different from the ads in the "old days". Back in the day, ads were rarely relevant to the content on the page you had navigated to and thereby garnered hardly any attention from the people seeing the ads. Now, display ads are much more advanced and highly targeted even to the point where 2 simultaneous visits to a site could be served two categorically different ads.

Today, display advertising relies on 3 main focus areas of targeting when serving ads. The first of these being Content Targeting. Most systems or ad servers will place ads on sites that are highly relevant to the category an advertiser might fall into. An example of this could be a large national pharmacy chain might want to create and place ads to build awareness around their current flu shot offering. They would want to place advertising on sites that would have large traffic volume and the content of the site could be health related or even focus on a particular season. This kind of targeting could potentially place ads in front of users who are looking for information pertaining to the Flu or treating symptoms of the Flu. This could also potentially target those people who stay informed about seasonal allergies and different strands of the Flu virus. Placing ads in such a relevant environment could be the equivalent of opening the box of a freshly made pizza in the middle of a conference room full of hungry people....You get the idea!

The second type of targeting in display advertising is Location Targeting. In keeping with the example mentioned before, that national pharmacy chain might want to localize some or most of their ads to appeal to a specific audience in a certain geography. This is called "Geo-Targeting". Such targeting can be effective to grow sales by market or even limit offers or discounts to certain areas. It can also be used to target an audience in an area affected more by a situation or circumstance. Lets say that Chicago, IL is currently experiencing an outbreak of the Flu that is increasingly becoming an epidemic. Our national pharmacy chain might want to focus a particular set of advertising and offers that would appeal to an audience of people in Chicago who are taking preventative measures to avoid catching the Flu. Combining geo-targeting with focusing on relevant content can increase the potential for conversions and may even generate sales that otherwise might not have occurred.

The third type of targeting is Behavioral Targeting. Today, ads can be served to users who exhibit a particular behavior either relevant to a category or specific service. A user's internet history is taken into consideration and can aid in determining if and when an ad should be served. Again, keeping with the same example of a national pharmacy chain. Our national pharmacy chain is still placing ads for Flu shots. Their goal is to target people who have the propensity to take action on a website, have an interest in health related topics, and have maybe recently searched or visited a site with information specific to a flu shot. Using cookies and other tracking mechanisms, display ads today can target at this granular level.

Imagine a campaign that would target users through each of the 3 methods mentioned above. A campaign like that could have the potential of being effective in targeting a user within driving distance of one of your locations, who has been researching products or services you offer, and is at the point where they are ready to connect or make a purchase.

In most cases, display advertising is used to build awareness and get searchers into the sales funnel. Other media such as Pay-per-Click ads and IYPs push a searcher farther along the process until they are on a site and ready to engage with the business they have learned so much about. If you aren't placing highly targeted display ads and you are only buying impressions on a slew of sites that get a high amount of daily traffic, you are probably wasting a lot of money. Using the targeting methods mentioned above will assist greatly in improving the ROI you are currently seeing from your display programs. With any display program, you should have an SEM pay-per-click campaign in place to compliment your efforts and build a strategy for Search Engine Optimization to be sure that you are visible to searchers as they move through the buying process.

For assistance with building an effective strategy, contact The Local Search Agency. We offer industry leading Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Local Listings Management services with tracking and reporting capabilities that are virtually unmatched in the market place.

Writing an Effective Landing Page

Writing a landing page that ranks well on search engines, speaks to the searchers intent, and yields a favorable conversion rate is something that many advertisers, web developers, and SEOs deal with on a daily basis. What is the trick to creating content that does all that you need it to do? The following best practices will ensure the content you are writing can be found, is relevant, and is effective in converting visitors into leads.

1. Do the Research -  find out what terms are used in searches related to your product or service and include those in your content in a way that makes sense to the reader. Evaluate the terms and find out how your competition or others in the industry use those terms and write original content around the terms that seem to have the highest success rate.

2. Follow Guidelines for Strong HTML Structure - HTML standards should be considered when writing content and created landing pages. If the page isn't formatted correctly, search engines will not be able to crawl and index pages to appear in search results.

3. Onsite and Offsite Optimization - it is important that you optimize your landing page using on-site and off-site SEO tactics so it will rank higher in search engine results. Relevant content, keywords, and links are the foundations of any successful SEO program. Using the right terms and reaching the right audience while expanding your connections, or sites linked in, will give your landing page a solid foundation and will allow your business to appear more relevant and depending on the connections, more reputable.

4. Track Everything You Can - Wouldn't it be nice to know what users are doing on your site? What pages do they go to after they hit your landing page? How long do they stay on the site? How did they even find your landing page? If you don't know how to answer these questions, you don't know about post-click tracking. Post-click tracking should be implement it on every page of your site. Use the data to measure the effectiveness of your landing pages and site.

5. Set Achievable Goals - Establish goals for each of your landing pages that can be achieved quickly. Avoid stretching tests out longer than a quarter. Within the rapidly changing world of search, 1 quarter is about all it will take to learn what has worked for you and what may continue to work for at least 1 more quarter. In less than a year, you will probably be forced to change everything again just to stay competitive.

6. Keep a Record of all Changes You Make - the last thing you want to do is retrace your steps and do something you have already tried that didn't work. Keep plugging away at it and come up with new ideas. Search Engines reward sites who are updating pages regularly with fresh content.

In order to be found by potential customers, you will need to be found where they are looking. You should make sure your landing page contains specific information highly relevant to individual needs in your target market or geography. Knowing what those needs are and how people are searching for the information, will make writing an effective landing that much easier. Putting your information in front of the right people will open the doors for shared links, buzz on the the social networks, and traffic to your site which are all necessary components of an SEO strategy.

The Local Search Agency specializes in helping business do more and reach consumers in target markets all to help your business grow. To learn more about how The Local Search Agency can help  improve search engine rank and also help your business reach more clients, click here...

The Key To SEO for National and Regional Brands

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your web presence to maximize visibility, increase relevance, and establish or re-establish authority. Search Engines compile data from content found on your website, sites linked in, your influence in social media , and your general impact on your industry or market. Search Engines use this data to determine relevance and ultimately rank your website for keywords that pertain to information, products, or services you offer.

What is the key to really optimizing your web presence so that search engines will favorably list your site(s) in organic listings? The short answer is "Optimize Your Web Presence". What does that mean? If you truly wish to rank well for keywords or terms that pertain to information, products, or services you offer, you need to work for it. SEO should focus on all areas of a web presence including your website(s), social media pages, blogs, directory listings such as internet yellowpage directories and local directory sites, and partnerships with other organizations where links to and from other websites are made.

Here are a 4 things to keep in mind when optimizing your web presence:

1. Content is King - where ever you have a presence, make sure the content found in that listing, page, ad, article, or posting is fresh, original, targeted, and ultimately relevant to your offer.

2. Structure is VERY Important - don't just build your site for a Search Engine or just the User. Build your site to make sense to both a User and Search Engines. Make sure content is easy to read and follow, organized properly and the navigation is simple, linked where necessary, and written using proper coding methods. 

3. Don't Buy Links, Earn Links - partner with other sites, businesses, or organizations to build back-links  There are many reasons for this but the primary reason is it shows that other people trust you. Search Engines consider how trustworthy you are when ranking your site(s).

4. SHARE SHARE SHARE - don't expect people to find your site or stumble across your site. Share your work with friends, businesses, and organizations. If the content is good, they will share it within their network.

This may be something you will not be able to do alone. SEO Agencies and SEO Consultants can be an invaluable resource for you and your efforts. Choosing the right partner to build an SEO strategy will make a world of difference.

What should you look for in an SEO Agency? Here are a few questions you should be asking:

1. Are you looking for a long term partner or a system that will optimize your site for the short term?

2. Do they practice what they preach?

3. Localization, how do they do it?

4. Do they make promises they can't keep?

5. What level of detail is found in their reporting and how well do they interpret results?

Localization - some of you may have a good idea of what that truly means and what it can do for your business. The question is, do you know how to do it right and manage your campaigns effectively? Experts in localization and local targeting like The Local Search Agency have had many years of experience with local targeting across various types of media. If you are a company with a National reach or even a company with a more regional reach who would like to target customers at a local level, you will need help. Localization can be a very time consuming and complex task. Agencies who specialize in local search and local targeting can offer assistance with market selection, optimization tactics, advertising campaigns, research by target market and demographic as well as insight to performance based media that will be valuable tools capable of helping you grow your business.

The Local Search Agency knows first hand how localization tactics can improve any campaign targeting consumers or other businesses by location and or demographic. We also know from experience that not all businesses are created equal and what worked for one may not work for another. Instead of taking a cookie cutter approach to marketing, The Local Search Agency customizes each program to fit the needs of our clients and optimize each program to result in the best return on investment. If you are ready to optimize your web presence for maximum visibility contact The Local Search Agency today.