Archive for the 'Google' Category

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Prosthodontist Does What?

Published on May 12, 2010 by iClick Solutions. View Comments

Prosthodontist In PhoenixRecently we met with a Prosthodontist in Phoenix who was looking for help with his website search engine rankings.

His site has been live for over 2 years and his search traffic was extremely low.  He let us know he paid another Phoenix search engine marketing (SEM) firm a good size budget but was really frustrated how poor the ROI was.

With his approval we wanted to share this story as it will be helpful to other business owners who are either just getting started with search engine marketing or are scratching their heads wondering why their search traffic is so low.  We hope this story will prevent this same issue from happening to you.

An important part of the story is answering the blog post question. We knew that a prosthodontist was some kind of dentist but thought it would be smart to understand exact definition before we headed into our initial meeting to help this client. We are brilliant, huh?

Anyway, a Prosthodontist (per wikipedia) specializes in the cosmetic restoration and replacement of teeth that have been lost or damaged due to disease or injury. A prosthodontist can cosmetically restore the look and function of these damaged or missing teeth.

Pretty Smile TeethNow that we understood what kind of services this Prosthodontist in Phoenix offered to his dental clients creating the strategy around how to optimize his site made the process much easier.  We started out with a high level search engine optimization (SEO) audit of his prosthodontist website. When considering hiring an SEO firm make sure the first step they propose is an SEO audit of your website.  This should uncover any obstacles preventing your site from achieving search engine rankings and what opportunities you have for connecting with prospective customers and beating out the competition.   Our team had to spend only 45 minutes looking at his website and reviewing his search traffic and keywords from his website analytic tool to figure out what his issues were and what needed to be fixed.

The prior SEO firm did what he asked and did an okay job with their on-site search engine optimization. This prosthodontist wanted to be found online with search engines for his business name and that is exactly what they did.  This is where we uncovered the problem and where the story got interesting (so hopefully you are still with us).

The prior SEO firm did not think about the customer and optimized the website for his business name, his own name, and phrases such as Prosthodontist in Phoenix.  The ranking positions were very good (as they should be) for his business name and his own name and ok for the word Prosthodontist (3rd page out of 245,000 results).  Not many people go past page 1 so 3rd page results is not ideal; however, it is not horrible either. So you are probably scratching your head wondering what the issue is if he was getting some ranking positions.  Well let us tell you what his SEO firm should have done with these 2 search engine optimization critical steps when optimizing your website:

1) Wear Your Customer Shoes – When optimizing your website for search engines make sure you think about your customer, what words they would use to describe your service, and how they search online.  The problem we ran into with not understanding the definition of a Prosthodontist is probably a similar problem other prospective patients would have.  Ask your customers to define your business and the types of search phrases they would use online.

2) Keyword Research – There are so many amazing free tools online to research, such as Google Keyword Suggestion Tool, to determine what keywords are smart to optimize for.  After completing step 1 and creating your search engine keyword list review that list against the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. Let us know if we can assist you with this step.  Our team found that many more people were searching online for cosmetic dentist not Prosthodontist.

For this client we thought showing him some high level keyword research during our 1st meeting would help demonstrate his issue:

Prosthodontist Keyword ResearchAs you can see in the above example, if we were to focus on the customer who searches for words, such as cosmetic dentist, when optimizing his website his opportunity significantly increases with search volume.  As above shows only 22,000 searches a month for the search phrase “Prosthodontist” where “Cosmetic Dentist” has over 300,000 searches a month.  At this point in the meeting the light bulb went off and he was practically jumping out of his seat and wanting to turn over the website to our team.  We then took the education to the next level and made him understand our strategy.  Yes, cosmetic dentist phrase would be awesome to get results for; however, it is a very competitive national phrase.

We explained what long tail search is and showed him geo modified phrases such as cosmetic dentist in phoenix or find cosmetic dentist phoenix examples.  Yes, these phrases had lower search volume; however, they were less competitive to go after, collectively they generated more search volume, and the conversion rate would be much higher since they were so geographically targeted.  Because most people want to use services locally unless it is for a very specialized service such as heart transplant surgery make sure your keyword list includes local search.

So either you landed on this post because you were searching online trying to find the definition for what a Prosthodontist does or even better you were looking for assistance with your website search engine optimization.  Either way we hope you found this helpful.  Please share below any other ideas or questions you have.

If you need any assistance with your search engine optimization services please don’t hesitate to contact us.  Hopefully with our next client we will understand what your business does without needing to rely on Wikipedia.

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Best Internet Marketing News Of The Week May 3 2010

Published on May 8, 2010 by iClick Solutions. View Comments

Best Internet MarketingThe internet marketing team at iClick Solutions spend countless hours reading internet marketing news, updates and using all this knowledge to create innovative ideas for our clients.

Each week we are going to highlight the best internet marketing news that we have seen you will not want to miss.  Makes sure to subscribe to iClick Solutions RSS, via email on the right sidebar and / or connect with us on Facebook so you don’t miss out on these weekly updates and learn how to leverage internet marketing and social media to connect with your customer online.

For the week of Monday, May 3, 2010 here are iClick Solutions Best Internet Marketing winners that you want to make sure you read:

1. Which is Better for Online Marketing? Facebook or Twitter? – Well, according to SearchEngineJournal.com, it’s Facebook. Some other experts disagree. According to a Chadwick Martin Bailey, Twitter was more hip back in 2008, when it was smaller. In fact, a chart shows that the microblogging network actually stagnated in the second half of 2009. Comparing keyphrases like “Twitter marketing” and “Facebook marketing,” it’s plain to see that there is much more interest in the latter than the former, despite the fact that most corporate discourse with regards to online marketing is focused on Twitter, and not Facebook.

2. Google Search Gets a Major Overhaul – After months of testing and speculation, Google is finally releasing the next edition of Google search to the public, complete with a left-hand menu bar and even an update to the well-known Google logo.

3. Facebook Chat Down for Maintenance Following Privacy Lapse – The feature was presumably disabled following a report that exposed a Facebook security bug that allowed users to access and view friends’ live chats, friend requests and friends in common.

4. McDonald’s to Use Facebook’s Upcoming Location Feature – Facebook is preparing to launch location-based status updates for its users. But the social network is also planning to offer it to marketers, including McDonald’s.

5. When to Respond to Negative Buzz – Denise Zimmerman, President and Chief Strategy Officer of NetPlus Marketing Inc. is a 25-year marketing veteran. Denise Zimmerman has spent the past 18 years focusing on the digital landscape and best-practice applications in marketing, advertising and communications. She spoke with eMarketer Senior Analyst Jeffrey Grau about the options retailers have in responding to negative buzz on social media sites.

6. Apple Has Sold 1 Million iPads – Apple has officially confirmed it has sold 1 million iPads. The company sold its one millionth iPad on Friday, April 30, just 28 days after the device’s release.

7. Website Speed Now A Ranking Factor - Last year, Google had mentioned that eventually site speed would become a factor in how they rank sites in their algorithm. Well the time is here because Google officially announced it. However be smart, don’t sacrifice relevance and quality for speed because even Google says it will have little impact.

If you have any thoughts regarding above articles please share below.  Also, if you have a suggestion for next week’s best internet marketing tips please Contact Us.

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Install Google Analytics On Your Website Setup Guide

Published on May 4, 2010 by iClick Solutions. View Comments

Install Google Analytics Setup Google Analytics GuideGoogle Analytics is a powerful tool for monitoring your websites traffic, from referral’s to search engine activity.

Hopefully you have heard how powerful Google Analytics is and of course, you can’t beat the price of free.  For those that are not as familiar with Google Analytics let me give you a brief overview and how Google Analytics can benefit you.

Google Analytics tells you how visitors found your website and how they interact with it. You’ll be able to compare the behavior and profitability of visitors who were referred from each of your advertisements, keywords, search engines, and emails, and gain valuable insight into how to improve your site’s content and design.

However large or small your site, and however you drive traffic to it – whether it’s unpaid search, partner sites, AdWords, or other cost-per-click programs – Google Analytics tracks it, from click to conversion.

For those that are leveraging Google AdWords (Google’s Pay Per Click PPC program), Google Analytics will provide you with the actionable information that you can use to increase your ROI by tracking cost data for all of your campaigns and combining that data with conversion information on a page-by-page basis.

Google Analytics automatically imports Google AdWords cost data so that you can track the effectiveness of your AdWords campaigns, and automatically tags your AdWords destination URLs to track keyword and campaign conversion rates with no effort on your part! To find out more about AdWords, please visit the AdWords home page.

Recently a client asked for help on how to install Google Analytics on their website and because Google Analytics can be intimidating at first we wanted to provide Google Analytics setup instructions for others to learn from.

This blog post is designed to ease you into the Google Analytics application and teach you how to use Google Analytics. We will provide advanced Google Analytics tips in future blog posts so make sure you subscribe to iClick Solutions RSS, join us on Facebook or Twitter.

Google Analytics LogoInstall Google Analytics With Google Analytics Setup Guide at iClick Solutions and learn about important website metrics and get insight into website visitors below:

Step 1 – Set up Google Analytics

  1. Go to Google Analytics and click “Sign Up Now” under the “Features” thumbnail.
  2. Enter the Google account name (e-mail address) and password and click “Sign Up” again.
  3. In the next window, provide Google with the URL website address of the website you wish to analyze with Google Analytics.
  4. Give the website an account name that is easy to remember. If you will be tracking multiple sites, this is especially important.
  5. Select the country your site is based in, or the country it is serving. Then select the appropriate time zone. Tip – If your site is based in Australia but all your users are in the United States you may want to select a U.S. time zone to figure out when in their day most choose to visit your website.
  6. Click Continue.
  7. In the next window, provide your contact information.
  8. Click Continue.
  9. In the next window, read the Google Analytics terms of service. If you agree with them, click the Yes box.
  10. Click Create New Account.
  11. Google will provide you with Google Analytics (GA) Javascript code.  This code is mostly the same for every website except for 1 critical difference – your account number that looks like UA-XXXXXXXX-1. Copy this – you’ll need to insert it into your web site just above the closing /body tag.

Step 2: Insert Google Analytics JavaScript Into Your Pages
You must insert the code into every page you want tracked. If you have a technical person who takes care of your pages, have them add the code for you. Contact iClick Solutions if you need help with this step.  Many websites that are on a content management system or eC0mmerce platform will have a module or single file you can edit that places the Google Analytics code on every page of your website.

Step 3: Analyze the Data

This is where it starts to get fun and somewhat addicting for those analytical types.  For example, if you want to find out whether your site has peaks during certain times of day or on certain days of the week, Google Analytics can tell you by following the steps below:

  1. In the menu to the left, click on the word Visitors.
  2. To the left beneath the main chart, you’ll see a number of different statistical breakouts.
  3. Click on any of the words to get a bar-chart breakout of the daily performance for that aspect of site traffic measurement.
  4. If you want to learn hour-by-hour trends, click on the word Hourly above the bar chart to see an hour by hour graph for the time period at hand.
  5. To compare two different time periods, click on the dates above the line graph. Select the first set of dates you want to work with, check the Compare to Past box, click on the second set of dates, and click the Apply Range button.

Here is a great video that walks you through some of the features inside Google Analytics:

After setting the tracking wait a few days so Google Analytics can start tracking some data as Google Analytics is not real time. We recommend you only check the statistics once a week and then analyze your traffic, top traffic pages, what keywords bring your traffic, what kind of visitors you get, and so on.

Here are a few other Google Analytics tips:

  • The process requires a Google account. If you don’t already have one, just sign up for a free account.
  • Once your account has been set up, you can add more than one Web site to your tracking options by adding the source code to all the Web pages that you want tracked.
  • The account name that you fill in during the Google Analytics setup process will be the name that appears in the Google Analytics reports.
  • You should consider excluding internal traffic by going to: Analytics Settings => Edit => “+Add Filter”: and put in your internal IP address.
  • Capture internal search stats if your website has a search tool on it. With this feature you can you see what a visitor put into your internal search box, what page they were on when they made the search and what page they chose in the search results. Any internal search will work as long as it passes the search variable through the URL.
  • On the account information page, the only required field is the Country/ Territory information; you needn’t divulge any other personal information.

I hope you found this Install Google Analytics post helpful, and if you have any questions, leave your comments below or contact us if you don’t want to ask your questions in public.

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Google replaces Local Business Center with Places Pages

Published on April 24, 2010 by iClick Solutions. View Comments

Google’s tool for local business owners, formerly called the Local Business Center (watch video below to learn more about Google Local Listing), is now Google Places.  This is where local business owners submit data about their business, in hopes of showing up in local Google searches. With most searches, a group of 10 local businesses usually show up at the top of the results.

The tool allows entrepreneurs to create a listing for their business containing their company’s address, a brief description of the markets in which it operates, their company’s website, hours of operation, photos, videos, and the newest addition coupons.  Places were launched to help searchers find local companies and for those local companies to attract customers through Google Search. Continue reading ‘Google replaces Local Business Center with Places Pages’

Check Google Page Speed And Improve Chance of Search Engine Rankings

Published on April 16, 2010 by iClick Solutions. View Comments

It is a well known fact that search engines such as Google want to provide a good experience to search users.  The better experience you have with a search engine the more likely you will continue to use that search engine.

One of the ways this is measured is through page speed and website pages that load very slow obviously cause user frustration.  Google has a tool that you can use to help you determine your page speed score and this tool is based off of Web Performance Best Practices such as optimize images files for faster download speeds.

Google Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. You can get Firebug here.  Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.

How does Page Speed work? – Page Speed performs several tests on a site’s web server configuration and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.

Why should you use Page Speed? – By using Page Speed, you can:

  • Make your site faster.
  • Keep Internet users engaged with your site.
  • Reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs.
  • Improve the web!

Install Page Speed Firefox Plugin at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html