An Integrated Approach To Driving More Traffic To Your Website

@annstanley

An Integrated Approach to Driving More Traffic to Your Website

by

Ann Stanley

May 2012

@annstanley

@annstanley

Digital landscape

@annstanley Top UK sites by visits Source: Hitwise week ending 8/5/2012

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Part 1 – Top tips

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Part 1 - Top 10 Tips • Getting the basics right

– Customers and competitors

– Web Design and “Calls for action”

– Is your site mobile-ready?

– Measuring website performance with Google Analytics?

• Quick wins – Email marketing

– Local listings/Maps

– Google Merchant Centre for ecommerce sites

– Using Google AdWords or pay per click (PPC)

• Slow burns – Search engine optimisation (SEO)

– Social marketing - blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc

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Customers, competitors and objectives

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Understanding your customers? • Your website look and feel should be designed for your

target customers (especially age and demographics)

• All customers are consumers at heart – and they will judge you against the sites they like and use - rather than your competitors (the “John Lewis” effect)

• If you have more than one type of customer (eg consumers vs trade) make it easy for them to know where they need to go and what they can do on your site

• If you don’t meet your customers needs then your competitors will!

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Target audience - site aimed at parents and kids

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Target audience - site aimed at techies

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Branding – lifestyle & aspirations

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Who are your competitors? • Your competitors are not only the companies that

offer similar services to you, they include:

– Other companies that compete for your customers’ pounds

– Other companies that might appear for the same keyphrases in the search engines

• If you are redesigning your website make sure it has a better design and functionality than your competitors - as they may be building a new improved site right now!

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The key to getting the best website

We need to get a balance between these elements

Design first impressions counts

Functionality

what the site does for the user and your

business

Content what the site says to the user and search

engines

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Why is the design and first impression of your website so

important?

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Instant impression of your website!

SECONDS

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Example Britain’s Best Breaks – effect of design on web results

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Analytics results

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Examples of “calls for action”

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Is your site mobile ready?

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Device responsive design

• Same url for all devices rather than a separate mobile site or sub-domain • User detection agent (distinguishes device) • Liquid or responsive design suitable for each size device/operating system/browser • Mobile design often has a single column with most important content/features

moved to the top and in some cases some content hidden

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Amazon.co.uk responsive design or Amazon.co.uk App

Main site – with adaptive CSS Amazon App

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Google Analytics

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Using Google Analytics

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Traffic sources

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Ecommerce – differences in conversion rate by traffic source

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Analytics Conversion Attribution – top paths to a conversion

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Quick wins!

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Email marketing

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Use of email templates and reporting

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“MailChimp” email marketing tool

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Spike in traffic due to email

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Analytics URL builder

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How to get a local business listing - so you appear

next to the map?

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Local listings

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Getting listed in Google Places (Local Search)

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Add your company details

@annstanley Bing Map – listing through My118 Information

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Using Google AdWords or pay per click (PPC)

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Listings

dynamically

ordered by

bid price &

relevancy

2

User

submits

search

1

Pay Per Click in Action

User clicks

on paid link,

triggering

payment to

Google

3

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PPC Account Hierarchy

Keywords

3-30 per ad group

Ad Groups 20-100 per campaign (each has its own ad

copy and landing page)

Campaigns (<20)

(set a budget and targeting)

Timber

Timber Company

timber company

timber companies

Timber Merchant

timber merchants

builders merchants timber

Timber Supplies

timber supplies

timber supplier

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Typical PPC results

Glossary

Impressions = number of times your ad is seen

Clicks = number of times searcher clicked on your ad

CTR = click through rate clicks divided by impressions (>2% indicates a more

relevant keyphrase and ad combination)

Avg CPC = average cost per click (amount paid when users click on your ad)

Cost = total spent in period (clicks times average cost per click)

Avg Position = Average position achieved in results

Conversions = completed sales or completed registrations

Conversion rate = conversions divided by clicks

Cost per conversion = total cost divided by number of conversions

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Managing PPC – what’s important • Quality Score – Google’s measure of relevancy – it affects

your position and how much you pay (eg QS of 8/10 you pays half as compared with 4/10)

• Click through rate – pause phrases and ads with a CTR below<1%, otherwise this drags down your QS

• Position and bidding – you may have to bid lower (cost per click) and settle for position 3-6 to avoid the bidding war of position 1-3, where the CPC will be too high!

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – most sites have a typical conversion rate of 1%. Your cost per sale or lead will be 100 x your cost per click – can you afford this?

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Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map) and new Product Listing ads

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Remarketing in AdWords (aka stalking)

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Remarketing results

Client 1

(from Aug 2011)

Client 2

(from Jan 2011)

Client 3(from July 2011)

Client 4

(from Jan 2011)

Campaign Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click) Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)

Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click) Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)

TOTAL 445 84 1.7% 2833 220 2.57% 559 118 2.44% 862 1716 1.06%

Brand 39 0 6.7% 413 0 8.99% 433 0 5.13% - - -

Remarketing 9 84 2.3%* 54 215 3.11%* 15 118 1.34% 179 1716 3.06%*

Competitors - - - 216 0 2.01% - - - 184 0 1.88%

Vouchers 29 0 15.26%

Product 1 133 0 2.3% 1 0 50.00% 109 0 0.96% 2 0 1.57%

Product 2 12 0 1.9% 1 0 14.29% 17 0 1.48%

Product 3 156 0 1.7% 6 0 11.76% 85 0 1.29%

Product 4 30 0 0.8% 1 0 11.11% 13 0 1.18%

Product 5 5 0 0.7% 1 0 11.11% 25 0 1.05%

Product 6 2 0 0.5% 3 0 8.33% 155 0 1.03%

Product 7 93 0 7.98% 2 0 0.62%

Product 8 16 0 6.35% 22 0 0.61%

Product 9 3 0 5.88% 31 0 0.59%

Product 10 1 0 5.56% 31 0 0.58%

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Google Merchant Centre for ecommerce sites

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Integration with Google Merchant Centre

New Product Listing ads

AdWords product extensions

Shopping results from Merchant Centre

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Summary of different shopping results in Google

Keywords =

Samsonite luggage

Organic shopping results

(Merchant Centre)

AdWords Products ad extension

Product Listing ads Map

and Places listings

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Increase in daily traffic due to Merchant Centre

Merchant Centre set-up

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Slow burn

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Search engine optimisation (SEO)

On-page optimisation

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Search engine results

Ads - paid

Display options

Organic or natural

results

Universal results –

news, shopping etc

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How to get into the Google results • Map – create a free Google Places listings (also in Bing)

• Shopping results – feed your ecommerce database into Google Merchant Centre

• Images & videos – make sure these have keyphrases in the file names and tags

• News, blogs and Twitter results – create ongoing blog content on your site or via Twitter and news feed sites (PR)

• Sponsored Links – set up an AdWords pay per click account – where you bid on relevant phrases and you pay if they click on your ad

• Organic or natural listings – search engine optimise your website ie SEO

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A search engine is made of three basic components:

A Spider or Robot An automated browser, it

searches the web for new

websites and changes to

websites then views the

web pages and strips out

the text content

A Storage System

or Database A record of all the pages

viewed by the Spider

A Matching Process or

Relevancy Algorithm The rules that tell the search

engine how to determine

what would be relevant to

your search

How Search Engines Work

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Check that your site is indexed?

Do you have

keyphrases in

your url, title

and

description?

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Google keyword research tool

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Determine the level of competition

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Page plan with levels of monthly searches vs competition (results in Google)

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• Title Tag

• Meta Tags (description, keyword etc)

• Content

• Heading content

• Frequency of phrases (how many times they are mentioned)

• Density of phrases (proportion of the text)

• Internal Link structure with anchor text)

• Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags)

• Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising

• Create new ongoing content on your site eg a blog

On-page factors

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On-Page Factors

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Keyphrase density (using SEOQuake)

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Checklist for optimising your website • Carryout keyphrase research • Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low

competition (use pay per click data if you have it?) • Produce a topic and a page plan (ie which pages are to be

optimised with which phrases) • Write new optimised content or existing and new pages,

(URL, title, description, headers, keyphrase density, anchor text, image optimisation)

• Upload your content through your CMS and add new links from the homepage for new pages eg in the footer (you may need to get your developer to do this)

• Add new optimised content every week via a blog • Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics

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Search engine optimisation

Off-page

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• Domain age • Domain name • Filename/full URL • Directory listings • External Link Structure • Anchor text of inbound links • Page quality of inbound links • Social bookmarks • Reviews and testimonials • Social indicators especially Google +1 and Facebook

“Shares”

Off-page factors

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Key to Google’s algorithm:

• Indicator of value: PageRank • Indicator of relevance: Anchor text

Best links from:

• Highly trusted sites (high PageRank) • Pages with relevant content • Your keywords as anchor text

Why are Links important?

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Off-page factors - Linking

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Off-page factors - Linking

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• Content that people will want to link to

• Free stuff

• Blog posts

• Useful documents/articles

• Online tools

• Video and audio

• Funny or entertaining content

• Your content on other sites

• Article syndication site

• Guest blogging

• Online PR

• Directories

Getting Links

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Integrating PPC and SEO

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Why use PPC data to determine the most effective keyphrases for SEO?

• It can take 6 -12 months to see the result of your SEO activities

• But you may have wasted your efforts on optimising for keyphrases with high volumes of searches but no conversions

• We recommend you use PPC data as part of your SEO strategy – Narrow down your list to the keyphrases that convert – Use as many months data as possible and use “See Search

Terms” to see the actual converting phrases – If you are not currently using PPC then you may want to run

a PPC campaign before starting your SEO, in order to understand your keyphrase profile

@annstanley Selecting keyphrases for SEO using PPC conversion data

Keyword Searches (phrase match)

Competition (Allintitle:

"keyphrase") Ratio

PPC data Conv. (1-per-

click)

See search terms

conversions Total

conversions

1 2900 14,200 0.20 307 307

2 27100 2,050,000 0.01 196 196

3 14800 598,000 0.02 185 185

4 2400 3,540 0.68 86 86

5 73 551 0.13 42 18 60

6 1600 472,000 0.01 29 29 58

7 590 82,400 0.01 49 49

8 58 168 0.35 48 48

9 4400 582,000 0.01 47 47

10 260 8,060 0.03 45 45

11 3600 516,000 0.01 44 44

12 880 210 4.19 43 43

13 16 366 0.04 25 11 36

14 260 28 9.29 16 18 34

15 140 10,500 0.01 29 29

16 210 8,270 0.03 16 12 28

17 3600 51,300 0.07 24 24

18 58 6 9.67 24 24

19 73 30 2.43 23 23

20 1600 205,000 0.01 22 22

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Increase in organic traffic and sales Jan 2011 – Dec 2012 – visits from organic (dark blue line) vs revenue (light blue line)

Visits from organic 2011 (dark blue line) vs 2010 (orange line)

SEO project started July 2011

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Social marketing - Blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc

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Importance of social • Direct sales e.g. Facebook commerce

• Direct traffic e.g. Brand pages (Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter)

• Community, loyalty and word of mouth (Facebook Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious) and social shopping sites e.g. Kaboodle

• Referrals, links and SEO benefit (Google Plus, Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)

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Building Communities • Why?

– Marketing to a specific target market that uses the platform

– Loyalty and referrals – viral marketing

– Link building benefits for SEO

• How? – Recommendations and Social book marking eg Delicious, Digg

– Social Networking for promoting discount codes, events & competitions

– LinkedIn, Facebook Group, Twitter profiles

– PPC on these platforms (paid social)

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Blogging

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Twitter account

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Google Plus

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Facebook

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Pinterest

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Part 2 – what’s new in Google?

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New Google layout

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Not logged-in

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Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”

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Universal results

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Local results

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Panda?

LSI – Latent semantic indexing http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-People-Baffled

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Google Panda update and need for ‘good quality content’

• In 2011, Google implemented a rolling algorithm update known as ‘Panda’, which ‘penalises’ sites that host poor quality content and/or provide a poor user experience

• The effect of the Panda update was widespread and, with every update, Google becomes more sophisticated at judging the quality of content on a site

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Optimise for the user – not search engines

• Making sure a site is optimised to provide a rich, relevant and rewarding experience for visitors is the best way to avoid Panda penalties, which means: – No duplicate content

– All pages to have unique, relevant and useful content (even the 1000s of product pages on ecommerce sites!)

– Good levels of interaction on site (low bounce rates, inbound links to ‘deep’ pages, social mentions etc…)

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Ecommerce optimisation – unique content on category pages

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Ongoing ‘Fresh’ content (blogging with social plug-ins)

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User-generated content • User-generated content, or UGC, is still a great way to add unique and

relevant content to web pages – especially product pages in the ‘post-Panda’ search environment:

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Video integrated with product pages

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Use of Schema.org and rich snippets

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Thank You

Ann Stanley

@annstanley

ann@anicca-solutions.com

www.anicca-solutions.com