Online Marketing Strategies to Make Your Business Shine in 2017 | Part 3

(Video Transcription. See video below.)
Stephan: Great let’s plug them in. So now we are talking about signals. And so, they are doing a certain set of things and you guys are going to figure out how to do that.

So, your competitors are sitting right there. You are not going to our website, you are going to start with this first keyword tool. By the way we lock this down because we have noticed that we have other SEO companies literally going and do this and use it to their own benefit so we password protect it. There is a PIN code to get in to that tool, it is 2444. You guys need to write that down otherwise you won’t get in.

You are going to look at this keyword tool and here is a nice screenshot of it. And we are using it as an example. Home Health Care Orlando. Okay so it is a home health care agency. Principal it all works the same. And it tells me right here that for this particular keyword term there is a search volume of 70, by the way those are monthly figures. And the keyword difficulty score is 64.94%. 64.94% that is fine I am cool with that. Say anything that is under 70, local businesses rank really well if they pick keyword that are in the fifty and sixty percent range.
So, in this particular case I would say that is cool we will go ahead and use this keyword term. And then over here on the right-hand side our system kind of came up with some other ideas on some other keywords that may make sense to you. In this particular example though the keyword difficulty score all goes in to the 80% range and I would say no.

Now why am I telling you all this? Pick up your worksheets, we are going to dig in to these guys now.
So, that is your marketing plan and if you guy’s kind of flip it over you guys see this. Now I know it looks daunting but trust me it’s very simple. And what I am going to do is I am going to toggle back and forth because what we did is we took a search engine results page and we just kind of broke it apart and kind of color coded it a little bit. I apologize for the yellow on your printouts I notice that you can barely read it so you guys may want to notate on there what it actually is.

But on the right-hand side as you will see through this entire worksheet there are examples of what kind of data you are looking for. So, at the top we’ve got keyword information then we have what is called local pack information. Then we are going to be looking at organic competitors and then we are also going to be looking at organic directories. Now, this right here we go to a Google search engine results page. And so, this is what we talked about earlier. You have got your ads at the top and then you have got your map pack, then you have got your organic section and then it’s got your ads again on the bottom.

So, what you want to do is you want to start at the very top and you want to go down to our keyword research tool and you want to pick your five keywords that you want to go after and you enter them in at the top. You just write them down. Then below that you are going to write in the average monthly search volume for that particular keyword, tells you in our tool. After that you are going to plug in the keyword difficulty score. What is the percentage we want to stay under?

Multiple speakers: 70.

Stephan: 70 that is right. So, you are going to enter all that in and that essentially completes the top three rows. That is kind of your demand side of things. That kind of focuses you on what you want to go after. It’s very easy to lose focus on the web. This right here holds you accountable, it says, “Nope this is what I want to go after. This is my frame of reference.”

Alright next. We are going to start looking at your local pack and there are little guys we want to take out. This is war, did you guys ever see 300? Yes great. Because we are in the battle prime 300 that is like us getting out of marketing meetings. So, when we see this and we see that our client isn’t there and when you guys see that you are not there, you should be really angry. And you should be very motivated to get there. So, what you are going to do is, and again I am talking back and forth here, for each one of these keyword terms you are going to go and you are going to bring up that search engine result and then you are going to go and you are going to see who the competitors are.

And what are you going to do? You are going to go ahead and plug them in right here. Now we are actually looking not only for their names but we are also looking for the Google category that Google is placing them under. It’s very important. We want to know what Google thinks they are. Sometimes you would be surprised. In this particular case the guys that are in here are all in the home health care service industry. So, what are we going to do? We are going to take that information and we are going to write that in here. You are going to go ahead and put your competitor’s names in to these columns and you are going to go ahead and put the category Google lists them in right in here. Any questions about that?

Now, next what we are going to do is we are going to look at this yellow section. This yellow section looks at your organic side. Let me explain something on the organic side and how it relates to maps. Nine times out of ten if somebody ranks high organically they should also be ranking high in the maps. It is Googles job to put the most relevant business in front of searchers eyes. What you do on your website will determine where on the maps you are. Maps looks at things beyond just the website, for example, they look at where the searcher is located. They look at how many Google reviews you have. They look at whether you have put pictures on your Google my business page. Whether you are responding to reviews.

If you have positive reviews or negative reviews and you have not responded to them, you need to do that. That is a signal. That is a very important signal that Google looks at.

But what we want to do is we want to look at this section right in here, this organic section, and we are going to break it up in to two parts. We are going to break it up in to competitors and directories. And so, we are going to enter them in right here. So first you are going to list all your competitors that show up for each individual keyword and then you are going to do the same with directories.

What do I mean with competitors? Competitors I mean Griffin Pools and directories I mean stuff like Angies . You are literally just on a fact-finding mission and you are going to put it all on that sheet. I promise you when that sheet is filled out you are going to see a pattern. You are going to see who the companies are that show up again and again. You are also going to see a pattern on the directories. Any directory that you guys see that they are more than two times that you are not part of, you need to be part of.

You need to go ahead and be part of those particular directories, Why? Because Google thinks they are important for the search terms you want to go after. And I am sure you guys get plenty of phone calls on a weekly basis about all these different businesses telling you need to join this directory you need to do that marketing and you do this marketing or some Indian guys calling you that are telling you I’m Google so on and so forth. Just go after what really matters, and it is those directories. And by the way, the quality ones will cost you. But it is a well worth investment.

Any questions about this sheet and how to fill it out? No? Cool. Do you guys have any questions about the search engine results page kind of how things come together. Anything you guys have ever wondered about that before I move on? Yes, I see a hand back there.

Female speaker: So Google Places isn’t part of your actual distance from the searcher?

Stephan: Yes absolutely. So, Google monitors the IP address that your device is on and it will display the most relevant businesses in relation to you. That is why actually I will tell you one great way to optimize your websites, a little bit of cheating but that is what I’m for to tell you guys this, is have optimization in there for the words near me. Because lots of people will search something like pool contractor near me or restaurant near me or something along those lines and so you may actually may want to consider if you really want to push forward with this to actually use the terminology ‘near me’.

Male speaker 1: Can I ask a question?

Stephan: I’m sorry, sure.

Male speaker 1: What percentage these days of the people that are searching that are going in to paid ads versus organic? It has shifted over time.

Stephan: It depends on the industry. Google makes about 96% of its money from pay per click. There was a game changer when they came out with that. The other 4% is in their apps stores and some of the other stuff. Google wants you to click on the ads, naturally. So, they are doing everything they possibly can to make people click on the ads. When the ads were on the right-hand side, right in the little boxes, you could be the number four the number five guy and still be kind of far up. Well they changed that, they yanked that out. Now if you are the number five guy you are definitely way at the bottom.

So, if a search is for a quality contractor they are going to go beyond the ads that conversion will be very low for ads. I’ve seen them as low as three to four percent. Meaning 97% of the traffic will move beyond the ads and actually go in to the organic. If you are, as we were talking earlier, emergency based. So, if you guys were an AC contractor or a water irrigation company or a DUI attorney, a lot of times people will just click. They will click on the ads they will look at the promotion and they will go ahead and go.

There is a wonderful opportunity with the ads. If the system sees there is a great company out there called SEMrush, write it down. It’s actually semrush.com, I think they have got free trials. What you can do in your particular case, you can go in there and you can plug in any of your competitors and it will actually tell you what ads they are running, how effective the ads are. They will tell you how long the ads have been running, that is a really good indication whether they are effective or not. And you can go ahead and actually see if it makes sense from a conversion standpoint.

So, if you are emergency based the conversion rates sometimes jump over 50 plus percent. If it is quality based that you are going after skip the ads and move on. Now the ads there are actually different platforms for the ads. There is something called AdWords, there is something called AdWords Express. If you are using AdWords Express, you are completely wasting your money. If you are going to go pay to go AdWords but really hone it in and dial it in and they even have call only versus display only campaigns. So, there is a lot of different types of ads that are out there, some work a lot better for some industries than others.

Male speaker 2: A couple of comments if you can just give me your view on this. One of the approaches that I see is that there is a percentage obviously, that go to organic search. The challenge I have sometimes when I am searching is the first five things are Yelp Super Pages Yellow Pages and I have to go down to the eight page to find the actual company. So, for me my approach often is if I am looking for something I assume that if a company is prepared to be positioned that they are professional enough to actually pay for the ad. So, for me sometimes it’s easier for me to just click on the ad, have a look, make my assessment and say, “Okay I am going to go with that company” instead of trying to search through the organic to try and find something other than super pages that gives me 12 companies and really doesn’t give me anything. So, comment?

Stephan: I have a comment, I would love to hear what anybody else has to say about that. Do you guys agree with that or I see head shaking in the back?

Male speaker 3: I like your comment because-

Male speaker 2: I am not sure. I don’t do a lot of search-

Male speaker 3: As business owners we know those ads are paid, so we know they are bias. But what your typical consumer– I don’t think they pay that much attention to it. But I don’t know the logic the psyche on the part of the consumer– You know they are paid, so you know that and you still click on the top. I don’t click on the top because I don’t support that, but that is just my– What is the psyche of a consumer? Do buy in to research, is there research that shows the psyche of the consumer? Do they process that ad?

Stephan: There is certainly to be said that some people don’t pay attention. Again, it actually boils down to whether they are in a hurry or not which is one of the reasons why-

[00:16:11] [END OF AUDIO]