One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that there’s often real-time analytics and results. In any given moment you can track how your efforts are paying off and make any necessary tweaks in that same moment to maximize value. You can turn on a Google AdWords campaign and within minutes start to see a measurable return on investment. With these types of visible returns, it’s easy to sell the C-suite on additional investments.

There are other areas of digital marketing that aren’t as fortunate. They hold the same amount of value, if not more. But, it takes a much longer view to see it. Read through the following examples of upfront investments that create long-term value and how you can clearly explain that value to your decision makers—and get the investment and buy-in you need to be successful.

UX Discovery and Content Mapping

A typical website development project contains, at a minimum, two distinct steps: the client identifying a need for a website and an agency launching that website. What happens in-between can vary greatly from agency to agency—and can add substantial cost to the overall project in the process. At Spyder Trap, we advise our clients to invest in upfront user experience (UX) research and deliverables before entering the design and development phases. Skipping this step seems appealing because cutting hours will also cut the cost of the project. Except that UX discovery will actually save you time and money in the long term in three ways:

• Provides a clear roadmap for all phases of the project, cutting down on the need for extra design rounds and development changes
• Discovers valuable insights about your users that can be leveraged across the business, beyond the initial project
• Documents the goals and the “why” of your project to cut down on future decision-making time

When pitching UX to your leadership team, focus on the decrease in future pain points. The upfront UX process will decrease headaches during development, which will keep the project off of their plates. Most importantly, making changes to a project after it’s already in development (or post-launch) costs much more than during the planning phase. UX means happier users for you and less dollars spent for your business. Apart from cost savings, good UX leads to higher search rankings, better user engagement and more conversions. That all adds to your bottom line.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is a process. There’s keyword and competitive research, audits, analytics, and user flows all before any implementation begins. If your SEO partner has quick “tips and tricks” to increase your rankings on Google or Bing, chances are they’re cutting corners and aren’t focused on finding you the right audience. But, because it’s a process, SEO takes time to generate real results. An implementation of optimized title tags, meta descriptions, and URL redirects have to be indexed by Google and then have enough users interact with the site to inform Google’s algorithm before any page rankings are affected. SEO doesn’t result in real-time success, but it’s well worth the wait so that you can:

• Capture a greater share of the market that is already searching for the product or service you offer—taking directly from competitors
• Use your SEO analysis to inform your content decisions; creating only the optimized content your audience finds relevant
• Have lasting results that aren’t tied to the availability of an advertising spend

Selling a SEO investment to your leadership requires setting expectations. You can’t pitch overnight success. Instead, pitch how SEO efforts today continue to impact revenue long after implementation. If you buy a billboard ad, it will help build brand awareness but as soon as you stop paying for it, the ad comes down. With SEO, once its implemented, it continues working for you. Your upfront investment can continue to pay dividends months or years down the road—especially with regular monitoring for new SEO opportunities. Since SEO legwork can help inform content strategy, it also cuts down on the time needed to create new content; time saved is money saved.

Agency Relationships

I won’t use this space to try and sell you on Spyder Trap’s value, though if you would like to hear why we’re a top digital marketing firm—let’s connect. Instead, before you start your search for the perfect agency partner, it’s important to understand the value an agency relationship can provide versus keeping work in-house. In general, agencies exist to provide services outside of their client’s core competencies. If you work at a company that sells ice cream, it’s unlikely that the ice cream company has a team of developers and designers. But, it is likely that your ice cream company has a need for a website, mobile app or other digital marketing service. The ice cream company could hire resources, but an agency’s value can be found in a few different areas:

• Saving leadership the time, effort, and money it takes to interview, hire, and create processes for a non-core function
• Providing consulting and deep expertise without having to spend top dollar to recruit experts
• Offering the flexibility to deliver myriad technical and creative solutions (mobile, SEO, Social, etc.) without the need of finding and hiring additional employees or partners

The selling point for a digital agency falls on the following: it’s expensive to hire, retain, and train employees. It’s especially expensive when the new hire’s job function falls outside of the company’s expertise. Unlike full-time employees, you don’t have to provide health and retirements benefits or sift through hundreds of resumes for each new project. The long-term value of an agency partner doesn’t just lie in the execution of project deliverables, but in the freedom it provides leadership to focus on core business functions.

Sometimes hiring an agency makes sense even when in-house resources already exist. For these scenarios, the selling point of an agency is manpower and the expertise to leverage those existing resources. Instead of hiring additional bodies, an agency can collaborate with existing resources to amplify their efforts—and free them up to provide strategic company direction rather than spend time on implementation (or vice versa).

While we often look at a dollar spent in one month against the results that same month, there is incredible value in taking a longer view. The more you can plan ahead of time, the less risk of costly updates and changes during a project. They say you have to spend money to make money, but you can also spend money to save money—which can be an easier sell.

The post Selling the Long-Term Value of an Upfront Investment to your Leadership Team appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

This past spring my wife and I planted our very first garden together. Neither of us is what you might consider, “good at gardening” or “knowledgeable about plants.” But there’s only one way to learn, right? So we dove in, hands and knees first, and started planting.

As the season progressed we watched, fascinated and hopeful, as our plants grew and spread and sprouted and blossomed. We made our share of mistakes*, but we did our best to adapt our approach.

The whole project got me thinking, how do we build healthy digital ecosystems that support business growth? Can we identify parallels with the natural world that might help us become more effective marketers?

And so, I hereby present to you the 5 Steps to a Healthy Digital Ecosystem:

 Step 1: Set a Goal

Let’s say you work for a small but growing service provider. Revenues are climbing, the team is expanding, life is good. But maybe this growth has also brought new challenges. Perhaps you’ve won some bigger clients and you would really like to go deeper with these blue chippers. Sell them more, strengthen the partnership, become a trusted consulting partner.

You’ve planted the seeds. Now it’s time to maximize the yield. Sounds like a worthy goal to me.

 Step 2: Assess Your Assets

Before we dive headlong into new digital strategies it’s important to take stock. When was the last time you conducted a thorough audit of your content marketing or SEO? This might be the time. Make a list of any active campaigns and ask yourself, how are these initiatives supporting our goal?

Some questions our growing firm may want to ask themselves include:

• Are we connected with our client contacts on LinkedIn? How often do we interact with them?
• Do we follow their company page? Subscribe to their blog? Share their content?
• Do we email them regular progress reports? What kind of feedback do we get?

In the case of my gardening experiment our assets consisted of directions to the nearest garden center and a credit card. Hopefully, you are already in a stronger position with your digital marketing.

 Step 3: Strategize Primary Solutions

Your assessments in the previous step should reveal some areas of opportunity. Are there initiatives that you can accelerate or amplify? What strengths can you build on? Are there any clear gaps in your approach?

If you aren’t comfortable identifying these opportunities, then finding a strategic partner might be your best bet. One way or another, use all of your available resources to select a primary strategic solution.

Our case study company has decided that building a personalized digital dashboard for their most valuable clients is the approach that will best serve their goals. Doing so will allow them to streamline communication, anticipate issues before they arise and generally reinforce the importance of the relationship to both companies. Also, delivering an outstanding experience to their current contacts within the client organization should open the door to new business. People talk.

The primary strategy in our garden was building an almost-rabbit-proof fence. Point being, feed and protect the plants that bear the most fruit (or peppers, or cucumbers).

 Step 4: Enhance and Supplement

The entire basis of the web is connection, right? The best digital strategies find ways to leverage connections to drive results in creative ways. Find the connections your competitors haven’t.

Our aim here is to use secondary strategies to improve the likelihood of success of the primary solution. Planning a new website? Build your outreach plan first and bake it into the bones of the site. Let email support web. Web support application. Application support push notifications. Push notifications support calls to action. You get the idea.

The example company has decided to build a series of case studies around their new client dashboards. They will use the case studies in a content funnel to drive new leads within their blue chip accounts.

Symbiosis is everywhere. Just ask the spider mites who made a home on our pepper plants. Make good and interesting connections between your various efforts and be ready to…

 Step 5: Analyze. Report. Repeat.

The beauty of digital anything lies in its nearly limitless ability to iterate on itself. Understand from the beginning that you don’t have all the answers, and be ready to find new insights along the way. Experiment, test, and analyze and iterate. Find the metrics that have meaning to your business and focus on them relentlessly.

The dashboard was a hit with the client, and the campaign to drive awareness to the case studies led to several new opportunities for our case study company.

My wife and I will have to wait until next spring to take another crack at becoming master gardeners. Fortunately for all of us, cultivating a healthy digital ecosystem is a year round task.

*No, marigolds will not keep rabbits away from your kale.

The post 5 Steps to a Healthy Digital Ecosystem appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

Every month we host the MnSearch crew in our office and they fill the place with search marketing experts looking to swap ideas and knowledge. It’s the perfect monthly event for our space, but once a year we let them leave to hold their annual search summit elsewhere. Though it’s not in our space, we still made sure to send a handful of Spyder Trappers to soak in the insights from the 15+ speakers from across the country. From the hypothetical (but based on data) look at Google’s near-sentient algorithmic future to in-the-weeds tactical approaches to remarketing, our team came away from the event with lots to share about what successful search marketing in 2016 looks like.

Storytelling Is A Key Skill

Lexi Mills had the difficult job of presenting the ins and outs of public relations to a room full of technical SEOs and search marketers. While she was presenting her case studies and providing PR tips and tricks, a crucial takeaway for even the most technical SEO became clear: storytelling.

Little known content/PR resource from @leximills: Aesop’s Fables. #mnsummit

— Chris M Todd (@IamChrisTodd) June 24, 2016

Search marketing is often viewed as more technical and data-driven than other areas of marketing. But, data is nothing without context. Your boss or client doesn’t want to see a spreadsheet with numbers, they want to see what the numbers mean for their business. Mike King put it succinctly in the quote below.

“A screenshot of a Google tool is not a deliverable.” – @iPullRank. Context and goals are 100% needed in reporting. #mnsummit — Spyder Trap (@spyder_trap) June 24, 2016

Marketing to User’s Brains

The use of neuromarketing sounds like it could be an inciting moment in a sci-fi film, but it’s actually just a scientific approach to marketing based on the brain’s decision-making process. Roger Dooley describes our brains as being “lazy” and trained to make energy-efficient, easy decisions. What does a marketer do with that? They make the buying process as hassle-free as possible, from beginning to end.

“In the absence of story, I’m going with ease” Wil Reynolds.

This “persuasion slide” is a visual representation of the pieces of the buyer’s journey that marketers need to be aware of. You must use your tools to get a user from the top of the slide to the bottom as efficiently as possible. Build interest, provide a nudge (clear calls to action), and motivate users with benefits and emotional connections.

Click-Through Rate Is King

While neuromarketing sounded like a sci-fi premise, Larry Kim took the sci-fi theme to the next level—placing himself as a time traveler from the future who has come back to warn us about robots taking over. In this fantasy, Kim’s robots represent Google’s machine learning tool, RankBrain.

With machine learning, Kim’s data points to a theory that click-through rates are a big determiner of page rank on Google. Optimizing your click-through rate will be the quickest path to higher rankings and heavier website traffic. He notes that to get the best results, big changes are needed, especially in writing and testing headlines.

To get better than average results, simple AB testing can get you there. But to reach the top 10% of your industry, truly innovative change needs to take place. Take big swings, founded in data, to chase top-tier click-through and conversions.

The Relationship Between Agency and Client

Probably the closest you get to celebrities in the search industry. #mnsummit pic.twitter.com/2ogYsVZ97n

— Chris M Todd (@IamChrisTodd) June 24, 2016

The highlight of the summit was the “debate” between search marketing rock stars Rand Fishkin of Moz fame, and Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive. The insights were nearly endless from these two, but an important piece touched on was the relationship between clients and agency teams. One point they both agreed on was that the best client relationship occurs when there is an internal (client-side) team that works in collaboration with the agency. The internal team can focus on advocating strategy to leadership while the agency team executes. They also touched on the importance of reporting on value to clients. Paid search marketing often has dollar values attached to show value to leadership, but organic search engine optimization often does not. Just like assigning a dollar value to conversions, a dollar value can be given to earned visitors in collaboration with the client.

“If it’s easy to prove ROI, it’ll be easy for your competitors too” Rand Fishkin

Proving return on investment is a key ask from almost all client relationships, and the best partners will find a way to accurately reflect ROI.

The Art of Remarketing

One under-utilized digital marketing tool is remarketing. Elizabeth Marsten described the overall benefits of remarketing, such as lower CPC/CPA regardless of industry vertical. It’s also crucial in nurturing users through the buyer’s journey because it often takes much more than one touch point to convert.

When calculating your remarketing CPA, remember it’s probably the 2nd time you’ve paid to reach the customer. @ebkendo #mnsummit — Spyder Trap (@spyder_trap) June 24, 2016

The best part of remarketing is that you know you’re advertising to someone who has already taken action on your site. The knowledge of what they were looking for provides the marketer with insight to tailor messaging for that kind of user—and those with similar characteristics. You can get very detailed and creative with your segmentation; Marsten used an example of not just segmenting by users who abandoned their cart, but by the dollar amount abandoned. This type of detail will help ads be more specific to each user, and therefore more effective.

You can see all of the speakers’ presentations over at MnSearch’s website, but even better than that, you can partner with Spyder Trap’s expert search marketing team to see these insights put to use for your own company.

The post FIVE LESSONS FROM THE MNSEARCH SUMMIT FOR SUCCESSFUL SEARCH MARKETING IN 2016 appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

Another week has gone by and like technology seems to do, it created more news to keep up with. We know that it can sometimes be hard to stay on top of every algorithm shift and app update, and attempt to guess which are relevant to your own strategy planning. We’ve taken care of sifting through the noise to bring you the top 5 we felt are worth noting. If you or your company are using social media or want to keep your data safe, this list is for you.

1. Facebook announces a change in its newsfeed

Facebook announced that it would be changing its newsfeed to show more of your family and friends and less publishers. It’s a big pill to swallow for media outlets that rely on Facebook as a main traffic generator. The hope behind the change is that it will encourage people to share more often knowing their posts will be seen more frequently. There is some hope for publishers in that if you’ve built a loyal following, when your advocates share your content, their networks are likely to see and notice. Brand content shared by friends and family will be bumped to the top of the feed along with all the overshared baby and dog photos.

2. Twitter wants you to be followed more

Twitter rolled out a new dashboard app to easily keep track of real-time analytics and feeds. Along with the dashboard comes a way for you to gain more followers and some other cool features. Focused mainly at small businesses and new users, the app will now tell you what is trending and provide a prompt with what kind of  tweet to publish that will help grow your account. It’s an attempt to make Twitter’s best-practices more readily available to users unfamiliar with the platform. Another cool feature of the dashboard is the ability to create custom feeds that pertain to you business’ sector so that your feed isn’t bogged down with things that don’t directly affect your brand. It’s easy to set up and makes managing your account much easier at a low level.

3. Twitter stickers, kind of like Snapchat

If you’ve ever used Snapchat you get what I’m talking about with the stickers. But for those who don’t know here’s what it is: icons for decorating your digital pictures to add more context (or just fun) to the image. Twitter announced it’s making a run at its own sticker fun. The app unveiled the emoji-like stickers for users to place on their pictures to make it more fun, in hopes of getting people to share more often and stay active. Twitter isn’t just copycatting the sticker revolution however, it’s come up with its unique ways to use the stickers. It will allow you to tap a sticker to see other users’ recent photos involving that same sticker. This search function could come in handy for brands wanting to learn more about their users or track a creative campaign. The plan is to also have stickers for big events like games and concerts to encourage real-time sharing; a core of Twitter’s functionality.

4. Two-factor authentication is good, not great

Hackers are pretty good at what they do, which is evidenced with the regular appearance of stories of hacked CEOs and companies in the news. Two- factor authentication is supposed to help with that, but there may be better ways, especially if the two-factor authentication includes the use of a text. Hackers can now easily access the text that generates the authentication codes. Potential solutions to  two-factor authentication are things like Google Authenticator or an RSA token. These precautions are not the fastest ways to do the job, which may explain why they aren’t as popular

5. Amazon jumps Google

In a recent survey it was concluded that Amazon now beats Google as the starting point for product research. 38% of shoppers used Amazon over Google (35%) and retailer sites (21%). This may not seem like a big deal, but for companies who deal in products, they’ll need to really review their SEO and search marketing strategies to effectively capture their audience outside of Google.

The post Digital Roundup: 5 Updates to Note in Your Strategy Planning appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

You know having a website and online presence is important but that might be as far as you’ve gotten. That’s a great start, but it’s only the beginning. Understanding why a good website and active online presence are important comes next. As you dive into blogs and tech articles to do some good ol’ fashioned learnin’ about digital marketing it can become overwhelming.

“But, I’m not a website developer! What are all these terms? SEO, SEM, UX, CMS, CSS, PHP…I give up!” you exclaim.

Have no fear! Not that long ago I was also a digital beginner. When I entered this industry I possessed a defensive shield against masses of acronyms: Ten years of military experience. As a result, I had experience with understanding acronyms in that context, but I had no idea what any of the ones mentioned in my first paragraph stood for. Fortunately for me, I’m now deep in the digital marketing industry and get to talk about and execute these ideas on a daily basis. But, as a former digital novice, I wanted to write this beginner’s guide to digital marketing to ease you into the fast-moving world of digital.

This abbreviated guide will get you started while helping you avoid the pitfall of being overwhelmed by acronyms and jargon. To start you out, I’ll focus on three major areas that will help kick off your journey to digital success without getting lost in the details.

1. The Digital Hub: Website

Have you ever been to a website that is frustrating to use? A variety of symptoms can cause this frustration. Small text, images that won’t load, poor load times, broken graphics, confusing layout, link…LINKS EVERYWHERE! Problems like these can cause users to leave websites without having found what they came for—which means lost business and revenue for you. One of the most effective solutions to this problem is improving your user experience (UX). Responsive design is Google’s recommended best practice for treating your site’s visitors to an engaging and helpful experience. The most basic definition of responsive design is that it describes a website that will work well and similarly on any platform. You’ll get the same information efficiently and quickly on a desktop (Mac or Windows), an iPhone, Android phone or tablet. Having a well designed experience will keep users on your site longer, help them find what they need, and indirectly help you rank higher on search engines like Google.

2. Directing People to the Hub: Search Engine Optimization

The best analogy for search engine optimization (SEO) is the old real estate adage: “Location, location, LOCATION!” Similar to how constructing your new storefront or headquarters in a busy area or just off the highway with easy access is much preferred to placing it on a country road in the middle of nowhere, the same applies to your website. If your site is a digital storefront and the Internet is the world, then Google and the other major search engines are the roads, highways, and intersections. It is important to make sure that your website is reachable without a lengthy search because on a long enough timeline anyone will give up looking for you no matter how important it is they find you. The goal of search engine optimization is to upgrade you from sitting in the middle of a barren wasteland absent any customers, to being right along the superhighway with a huge sign that says, “shop here!” This effort builds upon the user experience, as without it you’ll be driving customers to a storefront that looks run down and abandoned. Both are mutually necessary and beneficial at the same time.

3. Amplifying The Hub’s Content: Social, Email and Search Engine Marketing

SEO will help users find your website, but you don’t want to just sit back and wait. Social media, email marketing and search marketing are active ways to find your target audience. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat…social networks are everywhere! Is it a requirement to have a presence on all of them? Probably not. It will be dependent on your target audience. However, the more social media presence your business has the better. It would be prudent to at least cover the major ones such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin as a baseline. The beauty of Social media is that the average person often times is perusing it with no actual goals in mind, and a good presence there can bring these users to you completely on accident on their part. It is a great way to funnel aimless news feed scrollers to your site, bringing in revenue that you might never have attracted otherwise. In addition to this, a strong email marketing campaign that keeps current customers in the loop, as well as reaching out to potential ones can have a multiplication effect paired with a good Social Media presence. These are free (or almost free) activities that lead to revenue for the business—and can be paired with paid advertising to amplify your reach even further.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing, From a Former Beginner appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

In our first of the 2016 trends, we looked at the year ahead for social media. Social media is a quickly evolving segment due to heavy competition and a constant influx of new entrants. This week we’re going to look at the top search marketing trends; another segment that’s constantly evolving but for different reasons. There aren’t a lot of competitors. We’re usually just talking about Google while everyone else is along for the ride. Change in search is driven by maximizing profits for Google through relevant search results and providing value to advertisers. Those are two of the overarching influencers for the top search marketing trends for 2016 below.

Fighting for space in results

Rank first and win the day. That’s all it took in the past for organic search result success. But, several factors will make it tougher to get search engine results page (SERP) visibility in 2016.

• Rich answers – If you’ve asked Google a question lately, you’ve probably seen a box pop up at the top of results with the exact answer you were looking for. That’s the rich answer. Instead of giving you the best page to look at, Google is using its machine learning to provide you with an answer. The number of rich answers has been growing, and 2016 isn’t likely to see a slowdown. Want your page to drive the rich answers? Find a way to answer the questions your customers are asking—and structure it in a way Google can easily grab.
• Mobile – Obviously mobile searches aren’t going away. They’re thriving and will continue to drive search trends in 2016. The nature of a mobile phone is that it’s smaller. No matter how big Samsung decides to make their screens, they’re going to be smaller than a desktop screen and smaller screens mean less space for results. Not in the first couple results? Make sure to optimize for local search and consider PPC in 2016.
• Increased ad presence – If mobile devices and increased rich answers in organic search weren’t making things crowded enough, Google’s been testing increased numbers of paid ads. More ads up top are obviously good for advertisers. It’s less beneficial to those trying to rank organically. The top result would be under 4 ads, a rich answer, and potential local results. SERPs could be incredibly crowded moving forward.

The further rise of apps

Apps have taken over how we consume data on our smartphones. Rather than go to a website, we’ll just open up their branded app and easily grab whatever information we’re looking for. Search engines like Google are realizing this as a valuable path to relevant results for searchers. So naturally apps are getting indexed. Search Engine Watch called it the “new SEO generation” back in March. While Google has long been taking steps to index apps, 2016 could be the year we see widespread adoption of app SEO. App structure and content should be designed with search engine optimization in mind. Apps in search could fuel downloads, which is a key performance indicator for a lot of  mobile applications.

Algorithms becoming more human

In Google’s effort to provide relevant results to users, it’s increasingly trying to learn how users think. Search algorithms have always been incredibly complex, but there are tons of new and future additions.

• Real-time updates – The Google Pandas and Penguins of the world crawl the Internet to find sites that aren’t providing users the experience Google believes they should be. The punishment is decreased web traffic. Previously these updates have been run at regular increments. But, the goal is to have them run constantly. This means two things for the future: bad SEO will get caught faster and recovery can happen faster.
• Semantic search – Semantic is all about providing context to what users are looking for. SEO at one point was synonymous with keywords. Keywords were how websites told Google what the page was about. Now a single keyword is useless without providing quality content and meaning around it—along with proper markup. Google wants to give users the best answer to their inquiry. Part of that is providing the best user experience. Semantic search might have headlined in 2015, but 2016 will see Google get better and better at understanding people.

Voice and social search

Type a question in a box (likely Google). That’s been search since the beginning. With the rise of smartphones, and now wearbles and virtual assistants, search is evolving. Users will increasingly be using their voices to search for answers. Does the method of search matter to SEOs and marketers? Of course. A user is going to interact with Siri much differently than a search box. Your content will have to attempt to answer detailed questions and not just exist around a keyword or two. We’ve also mentioned previously that social media networks are getting into the search game (and search is getting more social). Optimizing your pages for search in 2016 is going to mean much more than just keywords. You’ll need to understand where your users are searching for information and also how.

These are just some of our thoughts on the upcoming year in search. Let us know in the comments how you think search marketing might change in 2016!

The post The Top Search Marketing Trends to Watch in 2016: The Ever-changing SEO and PPC Landscape appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

Running a business results in having to make lot of tough choices. There’s only so much time in a day or dollars in a budget. Trade-offs have to be made. Should you hire a new employee or invest that money into a new marketing strategy? Manage your social media in-house or bring in an agency? At every level, there seems to be a balancing act of priorities and opportunity. When it comes to writing content, the apparent tug-of-war is between content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). On the surface, one has a user focus while the other aims to please the search engine robots. But are content marketing and SEO strategies really at odds?

The content marketing and SEO Venn diagram

It’s true that these are two separate disciplines. SEO includes technical and behind the scenes considerations not needed in external facing content marketing. Not everything is separate though, as both have the same ultimate goal: to attract the right eyeballs to the brand and its website.

Content marketing accomplishes its task by delivering the information users are looking for. Its created based on a robust strategy that focuses on things like buyer personas and brand discovery. It doesn’t stop at bringing a user onto your site, it directs users through it and encourages action. Good content also earns links as it gets shared across the Internet which can lead directly to higher search engine rankings—which sounds a lot like SEO!

SEO gets users to your website through higher optimized rankings on Google, Bing, etc. It accomplishes its goal by making it easy for those search engines to understand what your pages are about and then matching users to the right pages. When it comes to writing content, this can include how keywords are used within copy, title tags, meta descriptions, and more.

The goals are the same, but when tactics conflict, which one should win out: the SEO or the content marketer?

Prioritizing for humans or algorithms?

What happens when your SEO specialist wants a specific keyword on your page and your content marketer wants something completely different? Which is more important? It’s not an easy question to answer. I participated in a Twitter chat from SEMrush not too long ago tackling that very issue. In my opinion these factors should go into making any of the tough choices:

• The goal – What’s the reason for this particular piece of content? If you’re creating a blog post to be shared out to a mailing list, let the content marketer take the lead. If you’re trying to rank for a keyword, go with the SEO.
• User experience – SEO will get users to your page, but you also want to keep them there and drive them to an action. Never sacrifice usability for more clicks. A frustrated user won’t come back.
• Data – Arguing over something like a headline? Don’t just trust your gut. Back it up with some data and testing. Follow the lead of whomever can justify their position with solid reasoning.
• Brand – Just because you can rank for a specific term, doesn’t mean you should. Both SEOs and content marketers should be experts in the brand’s target audience. Use that knowledge to help make decisions. Find the right audience, instead of chasing after everyone.

Partner with us

The user should come first, and search engines agree

The best rule of thumb for any business strategy is to give the user what they want. Fortunately SEO and content marketing can work in tandem on this effort. While search engines use bots and algorithms to inform rankings, they’re just trying to get the right information to the right user. Click-through rates, bounce rates, and link-building are all ranking influencers which are directly related to how users interact with content. Quality content marketing will always enhance SEO efforts. The more you serve your users, the more you’ll be rewarded in search.

The post Who are you writing for, the search engine or the user? The content marketing and SEO balance. appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

A Recap of the MNSearch Summit from the Spyder Trap Search Team

Written by Erin Greener, Chris Hamilton & Tom Sullivan

Online marketing leaders at the recent MNSearch Summit praised the new(ish) gospel of crafting handy, free thought leadership versus barely overt promos that savvy web users inoculated themselves against years ago. In other words, stop producing junk promotional content!

“Great content, in my opinion, wins hearts and minds — and it’s not trying to sell me some sh** in the first minute I’m reading it,” said Wil Reynolds, founder of Seer Interactive, and the afternoon keynote speaker for second-annual MNSearch event June 26 in St. Paul, Minn.

Still, he and other speakers said, many of us keep pumping out safe, but ultimately less-effective, content/advertising to mollify clients, hedge our bets and placate our fears over what many still consider risky, long-shot content strategies rather than the proven Best Practices they’ve become.

At least for now.

That was one recurring takeaway of many Spyder Trap’s Search Marketing team walked away with after industry experts shared their thoughts on where search marketing is today and what the future of search marketing will look like.

Speaker session topics ranged from high-level to granular strategies and tactics spread across Search disciplines, including SEO, PPC, social media, email, content strategy, video optimization and analytics.

Duane Forrester, senior product manager – Webmaster Outreach at Bing, kicked-off the conference by focusing on Millennials, another recurring theme in themselves for the all-day affair: Millennials and mobile.

They are the first generation that never experienced a time in their lives without the Internet, started entering the workforce during the recent financial crisis and in the next 10 to15 years will collectively control $7 trillion of the world’s wealth.

As a group, Millennials are massively important and have some interesting quirks that you need to understand if you want to succeed, Forrester said. Most importantly, “they value experiences over products,” he said.

They don’t want stuff, they want “offerings” that enhance their lives – and currently their lives are centered around their mobile devices.

Local = mobile = optimization

If you think mobile is still coming, you are already behind the curve, Forrester said. Mobile is here.

In order to gain real traction with Millennials, he explained, you need to focus on local search, mobile and optimization. Fail at one, you fail at all of them, he said.

“Usability will unlock the success for your business,” Forrester said. “Stop thinking about driving traffic — and start thinking about visitor task completion.”

One of the keys to optimization is marking up all of your content with schema, he said.

In this age of advanced machine learning technologies, use of schema increasingly allows search engines to deliver rich experiences by understanding the context for content (Context – and organization — for content was another driving Search future theme.), Forrester said.

Content markup will have more impact in the next 20 years than mobile, Forrester said. The primary driver behind this view is how machine learning employs the extra layer of contextual data with schema.

In essence, if you aren’t marking up all of your content now, get on it, he said.

Voice search = game changer

John Gagnon, Bing ads evangelist at Microsoft, shared his thoughts on how voice search is changing the search landscape.

Voice search is different from text search in that it’s more mobile, local and conversational.

Gagnon said that at Bing they are observing year-over-year growth for question-based voice search phrases that begin with words like “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and, perhaps most importantly, “how.”

More importantly, he said he doesn’t expect this trend to change.

Voice searches also are making search queries longer, with voice searches tending to be four-plus words, which should continue the emphasis on long-tail keywords or queries in search strategizing.

Gagnon said to adapt PPC for voice search you want to look at question phrases to determine intent and recognize the significant opportunity for these longer search terms.

Interestingly, voice searches also have shown a strong tendency to deliver clicks for brand names.

Gagnon recommended bidding on brand terms, even when you have a strong organic ranking, because in studies conducted by Bing, bidding on your own brand terms is a distinct competitive advantage for voice search. He said this tactic correlates to fewer clicks for your competitors.

PPC campaign managers should start thinking about how the ramifications of voice search can be leveraged in campaigns, so you can capitalize on this new opportunity to stay ahead of your competition, Gagnon said.

Query + useful content – forms = more leads

Another MNSearch Summit takeaway was that companies should offer valuable, useful content for visitor queries – free and without requiring form submissions.

While advertisers may initially balk at this, let’s look at the benefits and how to convert a user into a qualified lead.

While we as advertisers prefer our marketing efforts to return immediate ROI, there are gains to be had in offering free and ungated content. Ungated content promotes shareability, which in turn allows your brand to have further reach, at no cost to you.

Removing barriers will improve downloads while building trust in your brand.

Advertisers may ask, “How do we turn our visitors into lead generations, if we don’t require contact information?”

Retargeting visitors of your landing page will assist in nurturing prospective leads. By initially sharing only high-level, yet useful information, you allow your remarketing efforts to offer a landing page with additional, and applicable, but gated intelligence.

Utilizing targeted display ads that includes text pertaining to your relevant content entices users to come back to your site in search of a greater solution for their needs. Here is when you capture contact information among otherwise leery potential customers and get the visitor further into your lead cycle or sales funnel.

When you use forms, “put some real content upfront, so people can actually see what they are going to get,” Reynolds said.

Great content + context + organization + social targeting = rankings

Worthwhile content isn’t free or one-off, said Reynolds, who also discussed the concept of patient, quality “native advertising.”

“’Free’ traffic is a farce,” he said. “It takes talent and experience (to create). I don’t think that stuff is easy.”

When we do our job well, people are finding what they are looking for – when they need it – and we are not purely focused on great rankings. The traffic and rankings will come, he said.

“So when the dude next to you says, ‘Hey, I rank No.1 for my porn.’ Ask, ‘But is it good porn?’” Reynolds said in his bring-the-house-down presentation.

Oh, and link buying is passé, too, he said.

“I’ll take loyalty over links any day,” said Reynolds, who has 15 years experience as a Search leader and runs the “lab” at Seer.

Another takeaway: Look at what older content of yours is still ranking and who is sharing it, then update it and target those amplifiers on social networks using influencer tools such as BuzzSumo.

Why is that piece of content from 2013 still ranking, Reynolds asked. Because people still are sharing it, so let’s capitalize on that fact by giving them more of what we know they want and continue to build on those relationships.

Reynolds said to think of finding and executing great queries and keywords for your content as an opportunity, not just a goal.

Also in the vein of semantic search, or “optimizing for humans,” Cyrus Shepard, Moz Content Marketing team head, implored online marketers to go beyond keyword research.

Today, it’s about predicting what people will need next by applying Best Practices that provide extra context and is well organized.

“SEO success is answering questions that people haven’t asked yet,” Shepard said.

For more information on 2015 MNSearch Summit speaker presentations, many of them are available on SlideShare, @mnsummit or through individual profiles.

The post Future of Search: Open Content, Context, Mobile + Millennials appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

From a user standpoint, not all online experiences are created equal. But a bad experience can taint a business and hinder ROI. Every day, we’re contacted by potential clients who are looking for answers to one question: Why aren’t our online tactics making us money?

The good news for these businesses is that they know there’s a problem, and that Spyder Trap can provide a solution. Sometimes, unless customers are actively complaining, it can take a little bit more examination to figure out the shortcomings of a digital strategy. Here are four signs we look for that tell us it’s time for a strategy update.

Sign #1: Your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns aren’t converting

You’ve been spending money each month with Google AdWords, trying to convert sales. Each month you spend and each month is a disappointment. Something’s clearly gone wrong. There are two sides to look at to find the problem: the PPC campaign itself and the page the campaign sends users to.

PPC campaigns can be very easy to jump into without planning, but Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is all in the details. Are you targeting the right audience? Are you spending enough? Are you tracking the results? With even one part of this process missing, you could be leaving money on the table.

Even with the perfect strategy, a PPC campaign won’t succeed without pointing users to a quality landing page. All the clicks in the world can’t translate into sales if the landing page isn’t optimized for conversions. Effective calls to action and intuitive web design will make conversions a much easier task to accomplish. Take a look at both sides of your PPC efforts and see which areas might need some help.

Sign #2: Your mobile presence isn’t a priority

Mobile is everywhere. In fact the odds are good that you’re reading this on a mobile device right now. If a mobile user doesn’t get a good experience from your site, that user will leave. No business wants users leaving—not until a purchase is made at least. If losing users who actually find your site isn’t enough to encourage you to become mobile friendly, maybe this will: Google will start giving ranking preference to mobile-friendly sites in April. It will become harder and harder to attract potential customers to your business without optimizing for mobile. A good responsive website will solve these problems with just one set of code. Picture this: your website optimized for every device, every time. Looks good, doesn’t it?

 Sign #3: Your search engine rank is unknown

Not having a mobile friendly site isn’t the only way to lose out when it comes to search engine rankings. If you’re not ranking high in searches, it might be time to adjust for search engine optimization (SEO). Don’t just go online and Google SEO “tricks.” There are plenty of them out there, but almost all of them lack substance. Effective SEO requires extensive research of keywords, competition, and website structure. Building quality links takes time and effort making connections with real people. Easy SEO is ineffective SEO, and possibly even harmful. With so many customers starting the purchasing process with search engines, an investment in quality SEO can really pay off.

Sign #4: You have no digital strategy—or it’s been awhile

The last sign that you might need to update your digital strategy is also the simplest. If you don’t have a strategy, it’s time to get one! Without a goal and a roadmap to reach that goal, your efforts are going to fail. Maybe you do have a strategy, but you haven’t revisited it in some time. Same rules apply. The digital space moves much too fast to have a “set it and forget it” attitude for strategies. Digital trends in 2015 already look different than in 2014, and are unrecognizable compared to in 2010. If your strategy is more than a year old, it’s time to get back to the drawing board. Maintaining an up-to-date strategy will help your business keep its competitive advantage. Ignoring it will just open things up for your competitors and slow down growth.

The good news is that Spyder Trap can help in any of the areas in which your business might fall short. Connect with us to start putting your business back on track for growth.

Contact Us

The post Top Four Signs Your Digital Strategy Needs an Update appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.

3 Takeaways From LocalUp Event Marketers Can’t Ignore

Seattle-based online marketing giant Moz and Local University partnered last weekend on the first ever LocalUp Advanced event. The event was a convergence of the top minds in local search and local online marketing, and attracted hundreds of expert practitioners, agencies and businesses looking to beef up their local SEO game.

Spyder Trap’s COO Aaron Weiche presented at the event, bringing his expertise on mobile design and mobile search. Aaron spoke on how to thrive in today’s complex mobile ecosystem. After getting the full event download via Aaron, we’ve compiled a brief list of takeaways not to be ignored!

1) Keep an eye on Google Maps
When Google Maps first arrived on the digital scene, it barely survived. But, as Mike Blumenthal (aka Professor Maps) pointed out in his presentation on the history of Google Maps, the possibilities for the future are endless.

Each year Google’s technologies continue to evolve and improve, and now they are a vital component of local search strategies. Google Maps ain’t going away. In fact, there’s more to Google Maps than meets the eye.

Learn more about how Google Maps affects your business and how to future proof for what’s coming here.

2) Yelp! Can Be An Advertising ROI Bust
According to David Mihm’s presentation, Yelp advertising is a rip-off for small advertisers. He cited a study of one client, who after spending $3,000 in six months only gleaned 450 impressions and 36 clicks. That put the cost per thousand impressions at $6,600 and the cost per click at $83 — a steep price for online advertising. What’s a better tool to utilize? Google Display Network ads with the Yelp website, which under the same campaign garnered a cost per thousand impressions of $1.58 and a cost per click of $4.32.

Numbers don’t always tell the full story, but the disparity here is something to consider if Yelp is in your digital marketing strategy and budget.

3) Build an ecosystem that will make your mobile efforts grow
Of course, we’re partial to Aaron’s presentation. But, from an objective standpoint it was right on target. While local search is highly granular and tactical, sound methodology and design are crucial to a great mobile web experience. The elements needed to thrive in a mobile ecosystem are Land (Website), Aquatics (Content & Usability) and Air (Google Search).

To be successful, the landscape of your website should be responsive for all devices; the content should involve deep experiences that are highly functional and do the work for the user; and the search strategy should be targeted and frequently analyzed for performance.

“If you only have one of these components in place, the mobile ecosystem will not be sustainable,” Weiche says. “If you have all these marketing pieces in place however, you have a much stronger environment that gives you reliability, longevity and growth.”

The bottom line? If you are missing water, land or air, you won’t have a complete mobile ecosystem — you’ll only have an element of it.

Tweet Highlights:
@Amitch5903: “Mobile content doesn’t mean less content” @AaronWeiche at #localup

@butchgle: People like to exercise their free will ~ “Give users a choice” in terms of options with where to leave a review #localup thnx @mblumenthal

@GregGifford: Make your website a topical authority in your industry AND your location @marybowling #localup

@paramaya: Google has control of local map data that no one else in the world has. @mblumenthal #LocalUp

@m_j_gregory: “The next 5 years will be some of the most exciting in local search.” – @mblumenthal #localup

Want to Read More?
Check out all the slide decks from Moz’s LocalUp Advanced event here.

The post Local Search History, Present and Future Represented at LocalUp appeared first on Spyder Trap Digital Marketing Blog.