How to Optimize Press Releases for Search Engines

February 21, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Part of your website optimization lies not only in the page’s content, but rather, in your assets. While your pages give a great deal of relevance to Search Engines, people often forget about assets such as images, videos, podcasts, PDFs, and press releases.

An optimized press release gives you the upper hand in the search engines, before a visitor even comes to your page. Here are 7 ways to optimize your press releases for the search engines:

1. Target keyphrases. If you have optimized your website, you have identified a list of targeted keyphases that you believe your customers will search in order to be found in the results pages and come to your site. You then defined authority pages for these phrases throughout your site.

Just like web pages, your press release should have a message that ties to one or more of your targeted keyphrases. It helps to have the phrases handy in a document you can refer to when writing any content, be it blog post, web page, or press release.

The target keyphrase should appear in your press release headline, sub headline and around 2-3 times in the body of a standard length press release.

Targeted keyphrases should be in your headline, subheadline and in the body of your press release.

Targeted keyphrases should be in your headline, subheadline and in the body of your press release.

 

2. Anchor text. Within your website, you have links to either other pages within you website, to assets on your website, or else links to external sources on the Internet. The words used in the actual link are called “anchor text”. Similarly, you should be using your targeted keyphrases in your press release as anchor text to send people to the most relevant pages for that keyphrase on your website. Keep the anchor text links in the body of the press release, and try not use the same keyphrase more than twice as anchor text.

3. Backlinks to website. As previously mentioned, you should be utilizing your targeted keyphrases as anchor text to the relevant page on your website. This link is known as a backlink. Other backlinks in your press release can include a link in your “About [My Company]” section going back to your home page, or to other relevant pages as reflected in your description.

An example of targeted keyphrases in the anchor text backlinking to the website.

An example of targeted keyphrases in the anchor text backlinking to the website.

 

4. Multimedia components. Make your press release stand apart (and be highly sticky in your social media outlets) by adding multimedia components. These can include basic images, video, slides, or a podcast. Additionally, each multimedia component can be optimized with your targeted keyphrases as well, adding even more relevance.

5. Tracking codes. A step that is often missed in optimizing a press release is to create trackable links back to your website. These tracking codes can be created using Google’s URL builder tool . A full description of the advantage of this tool can be found in one of our previous posts on measuring your social media ROI with Google Analytics: Campaign Tagging.

Using tracking codes allow you to see how people are arriving at your site, and which campaigns (or press releases in this instance) are successful.

6. Wire Service Distribution. Once you have completed all the optimization techniques above, an inexpensive and effective way to drive traffic to your website is to submit your press release to one of the press release online distribution networks, like PR Newswire or PR Web. These services can, for a nominal fee, give you tremendous reach with your press releases.

7. Press Release as a web page. Finally, your hard work on your press release deserves being seen right on your website. By placing your optimized press release on your website, you gain a tremendous amount of volume in relevance and cross-linking power.

I would suggest, however, removing the about us section of the press release, as it can be somewhat redundant to your visitors. They are on your site, so they should know who you are, right?

Lee Schwartz, Online Marketing Strategist

What other techniques do you use to optimize your press releases?

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Search Engine Marketing, Traffic Generation ·

Long web pages are okay! 4 ways to convince your visitor to scroll down the page

February 14, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

SEO experts have long been saying your ideal web or blog page length should be between 200-250 words, and if you have more to say, break it up into several pages of 200-250 words. This statement has confounded companies who had a lot to say about a subject and preferred to say it all on one page.

Several established authorities have published studies of their audiences, both for Pay Per Click (PPC) landing pages, and for organic web pages. Marketing Experiments found that long copy outperformed short copy by 40.54%, and traffic to the page with longer copy produced an ROI of 21%.

The company 37 Signals tested a client’s page format and found the long form page had a 37.5% increase in net signups compared to the short form.

Conversion Rate Experts create a new, longer version of a landing page for SEOmoz, one of the largest providers of SEO tools, and generated a 52% improvement in sales.

Other companies are finding similar results. But the key to successful conversions on these pages is to make your visitor aware the page is long, and to use techniques to convince them to continue to scroll.

Here are 4 ways to get your visitors to scroll through long pages:

1. Create a design that delineates the four corners of your web page. Creating a defined “border” not only allows the eye to determine the parameters of left and right, but also top and bottom. Consider a contrasting color from your background for added effect.

 

2. Vary your page elements (pictures, columns, heights, etc) to avoid a horizontal line at the page fold. In a previous blog post about making your landing pages convert, we discussed the benefits of being above the fold. Problem is, when you create something eye-catching that creates a horizontal eye-line right at the fold line, users may think that is the end of your page.

By creating varying eye-level page elements around the fold, you show your visitor that there is more information available to them by scrolling down the page.

3. Use call outs in your text and your graphics, to encourage scrolling. Just like a clear call to action (CTA) increases conversions, so too does a CTA for scrolling. You can do this with a textual or graphical element right at the fold lines.

4. Create “anchors” throughout the page that jump to the various sections in the body. Your page often has various links to other pages, both on your website and to other sites. You can also include links in the body of your page to other parts of the page. This practice is most often seen in FAQ pages, with a bulleted list at the top of the page for the questions, and when you click on the question, you “jump” to the answer further down the page.

Conversely, you can also incorporate “back to the top” links throughout the body of the page to bring you back to the top of the page. While these anchors may seem old school, they are familiar page element to your visitor, and will encourage movement throughout the page.

In the end, the best rule of thumb is to have have both long and short pages on your site, and, of course, test test test. You may find that some longer pages outperform their shorter counterparts, and vice-versa. The point is, feel free to generate longer pages without fear of negative conversion rates.

For more information on conversion techniques, take a look at our blog post on 6 ways to make your landing pages convert.

Lee Schwartz, Online Marketing Strategist

Do you have long pages on your website or blog? What techniques have you used to entice your visitor to scroll down the page?

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement ·

Measure Your Social Media ROI with Google Analytics Part 3: Advanced Segments

February 6, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

In the first two parts to this series, we looked at how Campaign Tagging and Advanced Segments help to measure the ROI of your Social Media Campaigns. This week we look at Profile  Filters.

Profile Filters

Traffic Filters let you to refine your social traffic data before it even reaches your reports. Filters change how Google Analytics gathers its data before it is even processed. This allows us to specify exactly what and how we see our reports.

A standard filter, for example, would be to exclude traffic to your site from your own IP, or the IP of your agencies, to monitor true visitor traffic to your site.

Likewise, for Social Media, you can create a filter for referrer traffic that excludes organic, direct, paid and other traffic. You can also create advanced filters to included specific social media mediums by campaign source.

The benefit of profile filters are multi-fold:
- Filters work in page view level and funnel view
- Filters are easy to share across accounts
- A new filter creates 20 new goals for your website, which should be utilized to help determine your visitor engagement level.

A word of warning: it is advisable to create a profile with no filters befor adding filters to a new profile, as there is no way to retrieve the filtered data after the filter has been put in place. For our clients, we create a standard “no filters” profile, allowing us to do testing on various aspects of the site, without skewing the results in your filtered profile.

What other features do you use Google Analytics for to measure Social Media ROI?

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Google Analytics ·

Measure Your Social Media ROI with Google Analytics Part 2: Advanced Segments

January 31, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

In our first post of the Social Media ROI series, we looked at campaign tagging, and how we can measure campaign performance, compare campaigns or social mediums, and even group campaigns together.

This week, we’ll look at another way to measure Social Media ROI with Google Analytics – Advanced Segments.

Advanced Segments

Advanced segments allow you to view and compare reports for traffic from social channels.

What is an Advanced Segment?

Google Analytics allows us to segment our traffic by many different dimensions and metrics. Without segmentation our analysis is focused on unrecognizable blobs of traffic (Total Visits. Average Page Views Per Visitor. Overall Conversion Rate). Using this tool, we can can focus on groups of people and visitors in such categories as who is referred to us via Social Media. That helps us understand data & performance better.

How do you create an Advanced Segment? Rather than bore you with knowledge that is better explained by my peers, you can learn to build an Advanced Segment and create a Segmented Report in this blog post by my colleagues at SEO Moz.

The benefits of Advanced Segments can be broken down into three areas:
1. You can now segment your traffic by more meaningful metrics, such as engagement goals, traffic source, campaign, keywords, etc
2. You can compare engagement metrics against other traffic sources, especially social media to non-social media, thereby displaying the value of your social media pursuits
3. You can now easily break down the metrics to measure social traffic share

Once you’ve mastered the basic creation of Advanced Segments, you can try these tips and tricks:

  • Compare segment goals and conversion rates against other traffic
  • View visitor loyalty reports to measure the quality of social traffic
  • Focus on the social channels which drive the most traffic
  • Identify potential advertising opportunities by geography

How have you used Advanced Segments in your reporting for Social Media ROI? For other metrics?

In our final part of this series, we will be looking into Profile Filters, and how they can help measure the ROI of your Social Media efforts.

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Google Analytics ·

Measure Your Social Media ROI with Google Analytics Part 1: Campaign Tagging

January 25, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Google’s induction of “Google Search Plus Your World” has made B2B marketers everywhere feel compelled (and rightly so) to incorporate social media into their marketing. The question from the corner office often becomes “how do I measure my ROI from social media activity?”

Believe it or not, it can actually be done, and with Google Analytics. In this three-part series, we’ll be looking at three ways to do just that:

  • Campaign Tagging
  • Advanced Segments
  • Profile Filters

Campaign Tagging

Not strictly for social media, campaign tagging allows you to track the performance of individual campaigns. This is done by adding a code to your marketing URLs. This small piece of code tells Google Analytics when someone clicks on a link, even if the link is not on your website.

The tool used to generate this code is called URL builder. This tool is not easily found, as it is buried in Analytics help, but can be accessed either by using the link in this blog, or by doing a Google search for “URL builder” and finding the link.

While this URL builder is extremely useful for creating links for things like banner ads and email links, it is also useful in Social Media use to measure specific campaign performance, compare campaigns or social mediums, and to group campaigns together.

Your reporting on campaign tagging is found in the campaigns report, sorted by Medium.

Further information on campaign tagging can be found in Google’s Analytics Help . I also recommend a great blog post from Bit Cadet that goes into more detail about Campaign Tagging, and the meaning behind each of the facets of the query string.

Have you used campaign tagging for your social media effort? What have been the benefits?

Next time: An in-depth look at Advanced Segments and measuring Social Media ROI

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Google Analytics ·

New Facebook Insights are Meaningful for Business (well, most are anyway)

January 17, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

There has been a great deal of grumbling among the users of Facebook at the new changes to its look and feel, most notably the roll-out of the Timeline onto everyone’s personal page.  There have also been mixed reviews to the new Facebook Insights provided to Page owners.  While I agree some of the new metrics are balderdash there are some that will benefit business owners with a Facebook presence.

 

“People talking About This” and “weekly total reach” are measurements that allow you to understand the impact and stickiness your messages have to your fans. This can help us gauge which messages are working…and which are not. You can view this as either numbers or graphically, as there is an audience for both visualizations of data. The important thing to remember when viewing these metrics in graphical format is that it’s not the quantity but the value of the information that should be reviewed.

The “Page posts” metric is the meat and potatoes of metrics. Here you can sort on exactly which posts engaged the most people, as well as the likelihood that the content will be shared in the virality column (love this). This is my favorite of the new metrics. Much like Hootsuite‘s metrics for Twitter and your most popular tweets, this metric can tell you whether accompanying media (photos, videos) are more impactful than simple, textual posts (which we already know to be the case according to a white paper from Vitrue)

“People talking about your page” is a vast improvement from basic demographics of people who are exposed to your messaging. This takes it one step further to breakout the statistics of people actually engaged in your brand, not simply that one-time “like” which we now know is only the tip of the iceberg, telling us nothing about who shares our content and what they want from our brand, and therefore, our Facebook page.

Now, on to what’s not so meaningful. The “Friends of Fans” metric – is akin to LinkedIn’s “new people in your network” link, showing you the total number of people to whom you could be connected. But what does this really measure? While a recent Hubspot post suggests it is a representation of the potentiality of the universe of prospects, I believe that is misleading. It’s like saying, “I work with 20 people, and therefore I potentially work with 29,366 people, given each company each person works with and the number of employees within.” It is neither a fair nor accurate number, and merely serves nothing more than to boost the ego of the page owner, or CEO of the business. But there are some metrics that are worth noting.

All of the new “insights” material allows marketers to present more actionable metrics to management. But more importantly, it is data we can use to improve our tactics in the realm of Social Media that closes the gap between actions and leads.

What’s your take on the new Insights for Facebook? How to you see the benefit for your business?

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media ·

6 Ways to Make Your Landing Pages Convert

January 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

As a web design and online marketing firm, eMagine knows the value of a good web site design (and if you want to see a great infographic on the anatomy of an ideal landing page, read this post). Once the fanfare from management has quieted down, you will be asked how your website is performing. The best indicator of this is your conversion rate:  in this case, the number of leads you get by collecting a visitor’s data. Here are 6 ways to consider improving your landing page conversion:

Minimal Reading involved – web visitors are scanners, not readers. The larger the block of text to read, the lower the likelihood is that your page will convert. Consider modifying clunky paragraphs into simple bullet points. Bullets also force you to consider the benefits of your product and service in the customer’s mind, as opposed to the myopic explanation companies so commonly sink into when discussing features.

The Button Beckons – it may seem like a statistically insignificant part of your landing page, but subtle changes to the call to action button can make monumental changes to your conversion rate. Color, size and placement are only part of this equation. Make sure people understand the consequences of clicking the button, and what the benefit of clicking will be, using either text on the button itself (best case) or using a qualifier near the button.

What a Difference above the fold makes – a user is more likely to click on your call to action if it resides above the fold. With myriads of eye-tracking studies on the subject, placing a call to action button in the upper right of a visitor’s vision seems to be best.

Killing them with the minutiae – while your sales staff may want to capture every bit of information on your form, less is more for the purpose of conversion. Take a look at the form fields one by one and ask yourself: is it helpful to collect this data? Is it necessary? If there is a moment’s hesitation, leave the question for the sales person to qualify after the lead has come in.

Get rid of secondary CTAs – while you think it’s helpful to give people another option to convert, adding an alternative Call to Action on your landing page distracts your visitor from the task at hand, and could potentially prevent conversions altogether.

Post conversion conversions – If you want to offer another CTA, add it to the thank you page AFTER they fill out the form. Sure, you’ve gotten what you wanted, but why not take the opportunity to engage your prospect with your brand in a more consistent way? Add a newsletter subscription link, or links to follow your Social Media outlets. Another great soft CTA would be to share the offer they just completed with someone else.

While nothing compares to A/B testing and your analytics package to truly know the value of your landing pages, making these subtle changes can positively impact the conversion rate of your website, providing you with ample ammunition to quantify the value of your website.

Do you have any other recommendations to improving conversions? Share them with us in our comments.

Filed Under: Conversion Metrics ·
« Older Posts