I often hear our team speaking with our clients about tips and tools, I thought we would put together our highest recommendations!
Local Optimization
Many companies have multiple locations and struggle because the local business only ranks for the main terms. With Google’s ever-changing environment, this can become increasingly complicated. Create Unique and USEFUL Content. As is the case with all Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content is King. Creating unique content for your brick and mortar locations is critical to increasing your organization’s reach in Google. The recent post by Search Engine Land gives four unique ways of creating unique content for each location including:
- Using Testimonials
- Add Store Specific Photos
- Create Store Specific Employee Biographies
- Creating Location Specific Driving Directions (Our Favorite)
These tips are useful for any number of locations and even more important when you operate multiple.
Offline Campaigns
Our clients are frequently pitched services to boost their conversions and we enjoy evaluating them all. 5th Gear Mareting has always believed in the power of getting in front of your target audience in as many ways as possible. The most important thing to consider when doing so is; Can I track return on investment (ROI)?
To help measure your off-line specific marketing efforts, 5th Gear recommends the following:
- Create a campaign specific landing page – Even if you’re using radio to advertise, providing a specific page where listeners can claim or redeem the discount will help track the traffic.
- Notate for Analysis – Even if you create the perfect campaign, many visitors may visit your website directly or may search Google for your URL. It’s helpful to notate within your Analytics the start and end dates and can evaluate any increases in traffic during the campaign dates.
- Notate the landing page URL and where that URL is being used – The goal is to be able to track your new landing page(s) online, the last thing you want to do is create a lot pages and forget which one goes with which campaign.
- Add a “noindex” meta tag – While a bit more technical to do, using a noindex meta tag will help prevent the campaign unique landing page(s) from being visited by those who were not targeted within the campaign.
- Use Unique Phone Numbers – Requiring a bit more effort to integrate into your campaign, use unique phone numbers to track which calls are being generated by the new campaign. Many dynamic call tracking tools will have their own unique tracking systems. But like the unique URLs noted above, be sure to write down where each number is being used.
Usability
Finally, we believe everyone should see how your website is being viewed. To do so we suggest seeing is believing.
Screen Resolution
After you have collected at least 30 days of traffic with Google Analytics, log into your analytics and navigate to learn what technology your visitors use. In the search bar, query “Browser & OS” and select the top result. Then update your Primary Dimension to “Screen Resolution” from the menu just below the Summary Graph. Here you are able to view screen resolutions of your audience. Regardless of the (not set) data, you are able to see the top screen sizes of visitors to your site as well as a relative margin between those resolutions.
While informative, this information alone is little help, so using the Firefox Browser, swing over to the free tool Resize My Browser. While limited in size to your actual monitor dimensions, selecting your most frequently viewed resolution and entering your website url. Now you can see from the varying sizes what your website looks like. Are you able to tell what your company does? Can you see an eye catching graphic? Is there an obvious next step you want a visitor to take? Look for these and make adjustments as your traffic evolves.
[They are] expert in the field of SEO and SEM … able to quickly train our team and provide the advice we needed for a successful campaign.
Brandie Smith, COO – The Christian Alliance for Orphans
