Fathom Blog

News & analysis on digital marketing & analytics

Category Archives: Search Engine Marketing

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Meta Keywords for SEO

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The meta data variables of a web page are arguably some of the most important pieces of your website. The meta data variables include the Page Title(<title>), Meta Description (<meta name=”description”…) and Meta Keywords (<meta name=”keywords”). For years, search insiders have been saying that the only two of these variables are still relevant – Page Title and Meta Description.

The Page Title (1) is a critical part of your page. It is the content that the crawlers read when they crawl your page and determine the theme of your content for that page. The Page Title is also your organic search Title that is displayed to users when they to a search query. The Meta Description (2) is the 150 character piece of content that describes your page content.  The meta description as it is defined will also be used for the organic search ad content as shown in section 2 below.

Meta Keywords for SEO

But what about the Meta Keywords section? Most site CMS’s still have a field that is used for keywords, so why keep the fields if the industry insiders are saying that it is not important any more?

The Meta Keywords field sits behind the browser and can be used to support the keyword themes found in the Page Title and Meta Description.  At Webbed Marketing, we advise our clients to use the field if possible, but to limit the number of keywords you use to 3-5 keywords.

This week, Search Engine Land published an article stating that Bing still evaluates the Meta Keywords field – to catch spammers! They look for pages that have an excessive number of keywords (keyword stuffing), featuring keywords that do not match the page content theme.  A comment from Bing insider, Duane Forrester stated:

“The main thing people need to keep in mind if they decide to use the tag is to follow the known best practices. Ultimately, it’s the overt keyword stuffing that gets noticed and makes us want to look a little closer. If you’re willing to stuff pointless keywords into the meta keywords tag, what else might you be inclined to do?”

Translation: Use the field, but limit the number of keywords and keep the keywords relevant to your page theme. If you are keyword stuffing your meta and content zone, the Meta Keywords field is a tipoff to BING to take a closer look at your page content as well.

If I were writing the Meta Variables for the page above, for the keyword ‘baseball card dealer”, here is what the three fields would look like:

<title>Baseball Card Dealer | Shop Sports Cards, Memorabilia, and More</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Shop Dave & Adam’s Baseball Card World and find sports cards, memorabilia, and more from a reputable baseball card dealer. Free Shipping on $150+ orders.” />
<meta name=”description” content=”baseball card dealer, baseball cards, sports cards, baseball memorabilia” />

 

 

Posted in Google, Keyword Research, Local SEO, Search Engine Marketing, SEO | Tagged , , ,

 

Fathom Online Marketing Announces Acquisition of Webbed Marketing

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Cleveland-based Fathom Online Marketing, one of the 25 largest search engine optimization and online marketing firms in the country, today announced the acquisition of Webbed Marketing.

Webbed Marketing, based in Columbus, Ohio, has experienced double-digit annual growth since its founding in 2006, and today serves more than 60 clients regionally, nationally and internationally.

“Webbed Marketing is a highly visible company in the online marketing space, and has done a great job earning a reputation as experts in search and social media,” Scot Lowry, CEO of Fathom Online Marketing said. He explained that the acquisition allows Fathom to expand its social media offerings and cited Webbed Marketing’s expertise in healthcare, government and information technology as key reasons for the acquisition.

“In addition, this acquisition allows us to offer online social media research, planning and analysis to large organizations through Webbed Marketing’s VisiOne service” Lowry said.

Lowry said that Webbed Marketing’s office will remain in Columbus. “The Columbus region has been very supportive of Webbed Marketing and our plans are to not only continue to operate the Columbus office, but to continue to grow the Columbus presence.”

“Today’s announcement comes as a result of all the support we’ve received from our employees, clients, partners, and the Columbus community during the last five years,” Bill Balderaz, Webbed Marketing’s founder, said.

“We’re grateful to everyone who has played a role in our success,” Amy Marshall, COO of Webbed Marketing, said. “This move allows us to serve all those around us even better than before.” Marshall, who leads the company’s VisiOne group, added that she is looking forward to introducing in-depth audience research through social media analysis to Fathom’s clients.

“This is another great success story for Central Ohio,” Tim Haynes, Vice President of Member Services and Marketing for TechColumbus said. “It reflects the growth and the strength of our region’s interactive marketing, web development and digital community.”

Susan Merryman, Vice President of Marketing and Communication for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce agreed, “We have a long standing relationship with Webbed Marketing and welcome Fathom to Columbus. This is another great indicator of the economic growth of Columbus.”

Lowry agreed, “This is a case where everyone truly wins. Fathom’s clients now have access to Webbed Marketing’s research, analysis, social media and healthcare experience. While Webbed Marketing’s clients have access to Fathom’s performance based email marketing services and additional SEO and online advertising resources. Employees of both firms have even broader career paths. And the economies of Columbus, Cleveland and all of Ohio benefit by having one of the powerhouses of online marketing based locally.”

About Fathom Online Marketing
Fathom Online Marketing is an online marketing firm located in Valley View, Ohio, specializing in organic search-engine optimization, opt-in email marketing, online public relations, Internet video products, and pay-per-click advertising. Fathom can be found on Twitter: @fathomseo.

About Webbed Marketing
Webbed Marketing’s goal is to help organizations grow by using the power of online marketing, advertising and public relations. The firm specializes in search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media, mobile marketing and research and planning. Visit http://www.webbedmarketing.com for more information.

Posted in Fathom Company News, Paid Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , ,

 

Web Conversions – New Google Analytics Tracking

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Event Tracking as a Goal in the New Version of Google Analytics

Previously, there were three options for goals in Google Analytics: a pageview, the time a visitor spent on the site, and the number of pages a visitor viewed.  With the new version of Google Analytics, you can now track events as web conversions or “Goals”.  This opens up your goal tracking to many more possibilities.  Here are a few:

  • Watch a video
  • Listen to a recording
  • Share content via social media
  • Download a PDF
  • Comment on a blog post
  • Rate a product
  • Track links to another website
  • Fill out a form
  • Interact with an application

What is the benefit of this?

For PPC campaigns in Adwords, these new event goals can be imported as conversions in AdWords.  Now you can see which campaigns and keywords are engaging your audience and refine it down to the ad group level for your search engine marketing campaigns.  Previously, to track a form submission as a goal, the form would need a unique “thank you” page. Now, we can track the click of the submit button as an event goal even if there is not a unique thank you page URL.

For search engine optimization clients, this goal tracking provides even more insight into how users are interacting with your site and increasing the view into engagement for the site variables (downloads, video views, etc). For example, you can track when a visitor views a video, and you can specify the amount of time that a person needs to watch the video in order for it to count as a goal completion.

On the social media side, you will be able to determine how users are interacting with your via social media networks. Learn how often they are sharing your content and which pages are most relevant to social media users.

Setting up the Goal

There are four event components that can be set up as a goal condition: a category, action, label, and value.  At least one of these components must be defined but you have the option of defining all four.  Think about all of the event goals you would like to set up before starting.  It’ll make it easier to organize your goals into categories, actions, and/or labels that make sense and are consistent across your site.  Then, choose a goal value, either the value you assigned to the event when you set it up or set a constant value.

Keep in mind that setting up events as goals requires you to add code to the website element you want to track.  So, either you or an IT person will need access to edit the website code in order to benefit from the new event goal tracking.



Google Analytics Goal tracking

 

Posted in Google, Online Marketing, Online PR, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

 

Google Adwords To Launch New Privacy Rules

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Sony hacked.
The Yankees accidentally email out personally identifiable information of their season ticket holders.
A Texas security breach exposes 3.5M records by accidentally placing information on a public server.

These are some of the most recent examples of data security breaches in the news. With remote workers, cloud computing, your iPhone tracking your every move, how a company and a person keep their information safe is gaining attention. Think about the websites you visit and the information floating out there in cyberspace about you. When is the last time you entered your name, address, email address, phone number, or credit card number on a website? Now, what did that company do to keep your information safe? Don’t know? Honestly, neither do I.

Now that you’re thinking about data security, know you aren’t the only one. Google thinks about it, too. Yesterday, Google announced a change to their policy for AdWords advertisers’ websites that collect personally identifiable information to go into effect May 17, 2011. Their 3 new requirements:

1. Clear, accessible disclosure before visitors submit personal information
2. Option to discontinue direct communications
3. SSL when collecting payment and certain financial and personal information

What do these changes mean for pay per click advertisers?

  1. The first requirement for clear, accessible disclosure means that websites who collect what Google defines as personal information must now have a statement or a link to a privacy policy defining how that information will be used.
    Solution: To fulfill this requirement, post a privacy policy on your site that is easily accessible (i.e. footer nav, included in about us section).
  2. The second requirement is an opt-out policy from any direct communications, which covers emails, phone calls, text messages, direct mail or any other means of communication directly based on the information collected.
    Solution: Posting a clear link in your privacy policy or an opt out option in your data collection form should satisfy this requirement.
  3. Requirement three requires those collecting financial and certain personal information to use SSL when collecting that information.
    Solution: A secure environment (SSL) is pretty standard for eCommerce sites, but a must have to comply with these new rules.

To avoid a campaign suspension and ensure that your PPC campaigns continue running smoothly, make sure that you provide a privacy policy on your site.  Users will have the peace of mind that your site is safe and you’ll satisfy Google’s requirement at the same time.

Posted in Paid Search, Search Engine Marketing

 

How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

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So you design a beautiful site, and you’re getting a lot of traffic, but you still aren’t generating the sales or leads that it takes to justify the cost of the site. If you’re wondering why your conversion rate isn’t what it needs to be it’s probably for one of two reasons: 1) Your website doesn’t have clear calls to action that make it easy for your visitors to convert or 2) You’re driving the wrong type of visitor to your website. There’s a simple test to determine which issue is probably holding your conversion rate down:

  1. If you’re talking to your website design shop, it is probably that your SEO/online marketing firm is sending you lousy traffic.
  2. If you’re talking to your SEO/online marketing agency, it’s because of your crappy website design.

Okay, still now satisfied? Take a look at Google Analytics and let’s dig in.

  1. First, stop thinking about site wide conversions. It’s not that your site converts at 1%. It’s that search converts at 4% and direct traffic at .4% and referring sites at 1.2%. Then dig in deeper. Maybe search converts at 4% but some keywords convert at a whopping 20% and some have not driven a single conversion. And, you’ll be surprised which ones convert best. Now imagine if you put all your efforts into the 20% converting keywords and keywords closely related to those terms. Then look at that referring site traffic. Does Twitter convert at 9%? Do Tweets sent on Tuesdays convert even better, say 11%? Now what about Tweets sent on Tuesdays that are about diabetes treatment? Do those convert at 14%? Start thinking about conversion at the micro level. And if your PPC traffic as a whole is only converting at .02%, don’t give up. Just trim the fat on non- converting keywords and shift budget and attention to those that do convert. You may end up with 200 keywords in your campaigns. or 2000, or 20.
  2. Next start using Google Analytics to track conversion paths.  You can set up goal funnels  and examine what pages are most likely to lead someone to convert. You may find that visitors who view your “About” page are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Or that visitors who view your testimonial page never convert. You may find that certain page combinations raise conversions. You may find that you can convert visitors with one slick page and very little copy, or that you may need five pages with a lot of copy to convert a visitor.
  3. Now look at the relationships between one and two above. Maybe people who visit your site from a keyword search on your brand name just need that flashy, simple page to convert. Maybe your Facebook fans convert without ever looking at your “About” page. But visitors from PPC may need to look at five pages and educate themselves before converting.

All this should guide your marketing activity. You may decide to target Twitter visitors at 11 am on Tuesdays and drive them to the ‘Patient Information” page. Your PPC visitors may require a very different message, at a different time and a very different landing page. Stop thinking about a single conversion rate for your site and start thinking about improving a hundred very targeted conversion paths.

Posted in Online Marketing, Paid Search, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Social Media

 

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