X SEO

I love benchmarking. I measure the progress of my diet (not going well), the MPG of my car, how my stock portfolio is doing against the market, whether my favorite football team is better than it was last year, and so forth. And, since everyone reading this is a search engine marketer, you are…



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Image from: Game of Thrones Season 3 / TVrage.com

Season 3 of Game of Thrones kicked off on this past Sunday, March 31st, on HBO, after much anticipation from fans. HBO reported 4.4 million viewers tuned in for the premiere, and another one million pirated the episode within 24 hours–not surprising considering it was the most illegally downloaded television show in 2012. How much attention is the new season getting online?

What websites did people visit from searching “Game of Thrones” online? Compete PRO shows HBO.com was the top destination, as I expected. Looking further down the list of top 10 destinations, its interesting that Bing, Facebook and Amazon bid on some combination of keywords with the show’s title. Amazon, who received the most paid search referrals, is likely advertising the season DVDs and the original book series. I suspect HBO is has a paid search campaign tied to the Game of Thrones Facebook page which has over 5.5 million likes (up from just 2.8 million a year ago.) The page was updated multiple times a day leading up to the new season.

Looking at HBO.com’s Daily Reach and Daily Attention over the past three months, it’s clear how important Game of Thrones is to HBO. The site’s traffic remained nearly flat until the day of the season premiere when both metrics spiked tremendously. Daily Reach, the measure of how many people visited the website as a percentage of all U.S. Internet users online, grew from .04% to .21% in just one day. Daily Attention, what percentage of the time we collectively spend online was spent on a given site, followed a similar trend showing visitors to HBO.com were more engaged on the site than usual. The smaller spike in both metrics on February 17th corresponds with the premiere of the Beyonce documentry, Life Is But a Dream.

Let’s dive a little deeper into how people are spending time on HBO.com. “Game of Thrones” was the second highest referring keyword for the past three months, accounting for 10% of the incoming search traffic. 99% of that was organic, non-paid search referrals. People who searched for “Game of Thrones” were the second most engaged group of visitors, with a Total Time Index of 65. The metric Total Time Index is indexed to 100, with 100 representing the keyword term that resulted in the most total time spent on the site for all visits. People searching for Game of Thrones Season 3 were the third most engaged visitors to HBO.com–even though the show was off-air. On average they spent 30 seconds less than visitors searching for HBO boxing and Real Time with Bill Maher, a weekly talk show.

How will online behavior change as Game of Thrones Season 3 continues? Will traffic to HBO.com increase up until the season finale like it did last year? Will new sites bid for traffic from the popular television show? Will any of the pirating sites break into the list of top destinations? My guess is that the show’s popularity will continue to grow.

Image from: Tug of War / Shutterstock

Getting found online is one of the major challenges every marketer faces, and it’s a problem that can have any number of solutions. One channel that digital marketers rely on to serve this need is search. Whether it’s bidding on the right keywords in your paid search efforts or creating keyword-rich content to attract the right customers, doing a bit of competitive research before you dive into search can pay dividends for you.

By knowing which keywords work (or don’t work) for your competitors, you can more thoroughly inform your own bidding strategy. Competitive intelligence tools like Compete PRO can show you which keywords are driving traffic to the sites of your competitors and even provide a breakdown of paid versus organic traffic.

By first focusing on the organic keywords, you can see which keywords are driving your potential customers to your competitors and develop a content strategy to improve your site’s natural search ranking for those terms. Taking organic traffic away from your competitors, especially your larger competitors, with customer-focused content is no easy feat. If your competitors are well established industry leaders for a particular keyword set, it may be worth investing your time and efforts in creating content for longer tail keywords instead.

With your paid search, choosing your keyword battles carefully becomes even more important. Checking the average time index, the measure of which keyword resulted in the most average time per visit being spent on the site, for your competitors’ top keywords is an excellent way to discern the most effective keywords in terms of engagement. For keywords with a high average time index, you’ll need to decide whether or not it is worth it to compete for those keywords or to focus your efforts on owning more unleveraged, long tail keywords.

You might also consider using those highly competitive keywords, but advertising on a different search engine. If your competitors are focusing most of their efforts on Google, try advertising on Bing or Yahoo!. By experimenting with multiple search engines, you’ll be able to figure out how to minimize your ad spend and maximize your ROI. Understanding your market and what your competitors are doing with search is almost as important as thinking carefully about your own strategies.

The above advice is just one small component of optimizing your search marketing, and search is just one (large) piece of your marketing mix. For even more actionable tips on ways you can improve all of your most important online marketing channels, download out our free ebook, 4 Proven Strategies for Digital Marketing Optimization.

The new IgnitionOne Digital Marketing Report for Q1 finds that overall paid search spend in the U.S. was flat for the quarter, while mobile and tablet growth remained strong. Tablet spending rose 112% and smartphone spending jumped 113%. The study suggests that the growth in tablet and mobile is…



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There’s been a lot of confusion among paid search marketers upset about the lack of device targeting in Enhanced Campaigns. This article will tell you how to advertise your mobile app using AdWords while checking out the new app promotion ad format in AdWords. One of the most common hypothetical…



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There’s been some grumbling among PPC marketers over the last few weeks about a few specific changes in Enhanced Campaigns – in particular, the loss of tablet vs. desktop segmentation, which was previously a best practice for mobile advertising strategy. One of my well-respected colleagues put it…



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Image from: search engine optimization / Shutterstock

Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. As a marketer or entrepreneur optimizing your site, it’s important to know where to focus your energy to get the best returns. Each of these techniques plays an important role in your SEO strategy, and they work synergistically to give you the best chance of hitting the first page of Google. Here’s a guide to understanding the difference between on-site and offsite SEO and tips for putting each of them to work for you today.

What’s the difference between on-site and offsite SEO?

On-site SEO refers to the steps you take on your actual web page to lay the foundation for a good search strategy. At the structural level, these include your site’s titles, meta tags, URL structure, and XML sitemap. As you develop your content, it takes into account each page’s title tags, URLs, alt tags used for images, and the keywords used in each article or section of copy.

Off site SEO refers to the activities that you do to create a network of links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines currently look to links for signals of authority and significance. Examples of offsite SEO include article marketing, linkbuilding, linkbait pieces designed to be shared on sites like Reddit, inbound marketing, and social media campaigns.

What can you do in each area to improve your site’s performance in the next 30 days?

The quality of your content is by far the most important factor in your SEO plan. If your content is high quality and worthy of being linked to and shared, this goes a long way to support all the other efforts that you put in place. If the quality of your content is poor, the strongest SEO campaigns will have limited effects in the long-term. Make sure you’re taking the time to put out the best quality material.

Top 3 On-site SEO Action Points

1. Install a good SEO Plug-in: If you use WordPress for a content management system, consider installing an SEO Plug-in like Yoast. This Plug-in will quickly evaluate your SEO situation and give you actionable tips that you can implement right away to improve your site. Features also include an easy analysis tool that gives you pointers on each new piece of content before you publish. This single step can have a dramatic impact on your rankings if you take action on the tool’s recommendations.
2. Review your pages’ title tags: Title tags are used to tell search engines what a piece of online content is about. SEOMoz suggests that title tags are the second most important piece of website real estate after your actual content. You can view a page’s title tags across the top of your internet browser. The best title tags are descriptive and include your keywords, but should never be “stuffed” with them. A good structure to consider is [Primary Keyword] – [Site Name] – [Secondary Keyword]. So for example, if your site is about landscaping, the title of an article might be “How To Get a Green Lawn – The Happy Landscaper – How Often to Water and Mow Your Grass.”
3. Ensure you have descriptive URLs: The default structure on many websites is something like www.website.com/01012012/782323084/. Instead, it’s important to have descriptive URLs that include your keyword. In our landscaping example, your URL might be www.website.com/landscaping/how-to-get-a-green-lawn/.

Top 3 Offsite SEO Action Points

1. Identify a list of influencers in your niche: Develop a list of the top blogs and influencers in your niche. This list will become pure gold. Spend time daily or weekly reading content on these blogs and interacting thoughtfully through comments. The goal is to create real value in your discussions, and become a known entity to the writers and organizations behind these blogs. In addition to the link you may receive when you comment, over time this can open opportunities for you to guest post, for them to link to your content, or to promote your products and services. Don’t focus on this end goal though; instead, be committed to highly valuable interaction and establishing meaningful relationships.
2. Guest posting: One of the best ways to get highly valuable and relevant links to your site is to guest post on other blogs in your space. You can find opportunities by looking at the blogs you typically read, or searching for keywords in your niche along with terms like “guest post” and “become a contributor.” When approaching a blog about guest posting, make sure that you focus on providing high quality content that’s specifically geared toward a blog’s audience.
3.  Effectively promote your content: If your content is high quality and highly linkable, this strategy can yield tremendous returns. It’s one thing to write great content; it’s another thing to write great content that’s never seen. Once you’ve focused on creating amazing material, do the legwork to get it out there. Be sure to share it on social media. Then focus your efforts on smart outreach to key influencers in your field whose readers would find it interesting. Craft a simple letter explaining why your work is a good fit for their readers, and then send it. Your goal is that they’ll take action by linking to your piece on their blog or referencing it in a newsletter or on social media.

 
Navigating SEO in 2013 can be a challenge. Knowing where to invest your efforts is key to seeing both short-term and long-term results. Use the three-pronged strategy of creating excellent high-quality content, developing the structural foundation of your site with on-site SEO, and building links through promotion and outreach. You’ll be well on your way to getting your site found.

Google is now rolling out Offer Extensions, their latest ad extension that lets AdWords advertisers post deal offers underneath a normal Google Search ad. If your AdWords account has been upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns, then you’ll see the new Offer Extension in your account right now, in the…



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Bing Ads announced that the new reporting user interface released in October is now the default. Users will no longer see the option to switch to the old reporting version. The updated reporting UI includes: A new, Wunderbar-style navigation for faster access to reports Report creation in half the…



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Bing has announced updates to its Bing Ads Accredited Professional Program for search marketers looking to get certified as “Pro Bingers”.  Among the changes, Bing transitioned the training segments from video based to text based content. Users can now view the training on the Bing Ads website or…



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