Understanding Searches Better Than Ever Before

Google is understanding natural language in searches better than ever before, so well, that it represents “the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search …
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning [1 in 10 searches], Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

Key SEO Elements to Have in Place Before You Hit “Publish”

When creating online content, be it a webpage, blog post or video, you’ve likely set high expectations for performance in search engine rankings. To that end, it’s important to consider how you can optimize your content for SEO before you even begin. Doing so can boost your ranking in search results and also allow possible leads to find you organically. Many people know that using relevant keywords can help you rank well, but that isn’t all there is to it. Knowing how to use keywords correctly to avoid appearing as spam, optimizing images, and employing strong meta descriptions are just a few elements to consider when creating your content. Don’t wait until the next time you create some content to use these tips – start applying them to the pages and articles you’ve already created and help send them to the top of the search results page, too.

Video SEO: 5 Ways to Optimize Your Videos for Search Engines

Video marketing has been steadily on the rise among businesses as videos are typically met with a large number of views, conversions and are shared more frequently. They have proven to be a beneficial way to help consumers understand brands, products and services in a more personal way. However, before spending time and resources on creating a video, it’s important to be aware of how you can optimize it to be indexed and outrank your competitors for the target keywords on search engines.

Best of Growth Spurts – Focus on Customer Feedback and Reviews

In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on the many different ways businesses use customer feedback and reviews in their day-to-day marketing and business development. Reviews can be used to boost your online, local presence via SEO. Through reviews, your fans can help do your marketing for you. Survey feedback can be used as a source of ideas for your content marketing plan. Feedback can be used for product development and changes, and also to retain customers by making them feel valued, respected, listened to.

Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at getting the most from customer feedback and reviews.

Three Customer Feedback Myths That Deserve Busting, marketingprofs.com – Surveys are invaluable tools for making sure you’re meeting customer expectations. Learn why simplicity is probably the best route to go. Read the full article here.

Maximize Your Local Listings Presence with Online Reviews, yext.com – In today’s mobile-first world, reviews drive awareness and consumer decisions. Businesses need a comprehensive review strategy to beat the competition. Read the full article here.

How User Reviews Can Drive Your Business – A The New York Times article looking at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions. Read more about the study here.

Creating Magnetic Marketing Content with Surveys, surveygizmo.com – One of the many uses of surveys is to generate content for your blog. You can ask for feedback, report on findings, create a “top questions asked” series, and much more. Read more here.

How Successful Companies Engage Customers During the New-Product Development Process, marketingprofs.com – From large-scale intelligence gathering, like crowdsourcing or social listening, to a narrower, targeted approach, like focus groups and advisory councils, successful B2B businesses use customer feedback to ensure they are on track with product development. Read more here.

Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from February

We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:

On Product Marketing

Psychological Pricing Is Your Golden Ticket to Selling More – You want to make money. That’s why you run a business. Whether you’re selling a product or a service-you’ll have to put a price on what you’re selling at some point. This article introduces the concept of creating an effective pricing strategy by using psychological pricing tactics. Simply put, it’s a strategic way to price your products or services to influence people when making a buying decision. Continue reading…

On Exit Planning

Are You on Track to Hit Your Exit Revenue Goal? How to know if you’re likely to hit your number and how Agile, Integrated Marketing can help – Most business owners have a sales price in mind when they contemplate selling their business. Because businesses are typically valued at a multiple of revenue (or revenue derivatives such as EBITDA) this sales price is directly dependent on the company’s annual revenue at the time of the exit.

If you are considering selling your business in 2 to 7 years and would like to increase the odds that you will achieve your exit revenue goals, read on to learn how better and more cost-effective marketing will propel you to success. Read the article.

On SEO

Google: SEOs Need 4 Months to a Year for SEO Changes & Ranking Improvement – We’ve said it time and again, but it’s worth repeating. SEO is a long-term strategy. Anyone who promises something different is not the right SEO firm for your business. In fact, in the recently released “How to Hire an SEO” video, Google explicitly mentions how long it takes for a site to see improvements due to SEO changes. Read more and watch the video here.

On PPC Advertising

Google AdWords Benchmarks for YOUR Industry – Whether you’re getting in to PPC advertising for the first time or it’s time for an account review, it can be daunting to know whether or not you’re doing a good job. Sure, we all want to create ads that have highest CTRs and the best conversion rates, but what’s a good metric for one industry isn’t necessarily good for another. So what numbers should you be looking to beat in your industry? This post was updated on 3 Jan 2017 and is chock full of useful online advertising benchmarks:

• Average Click-Through Rate (CTR) by industry
• Average Cost per Click (CPC) by industry
• Average Conversion Rate (CVR) by industry
• Average Cost per Action (CPA) by industry

See all the benchmarks here.

On Website Security

The Benefits of Installing SSL on Your Website – For several years now Google search results have shown more preference to websites that use HTTPS. (HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to.) While Google claims that this is currently a “mild” ranking signal, there are indications that this is becoming increasingly important. So important that Sales Renewal is in the process of rolling this out to all our clients by purchasing and installing an SSL certificate on their websites and forcing HTTPS. Questions? Please contact us here.

Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from January

We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:

On Content Marketing

10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing – Content marketing – your blog, downloads, white papers – is quite often one of the biggest marketing expenses, and one of the most difficult to measure.

Adwords and email gives the satisfaction of seeing immediate, measurable results. But your investment in “content”? It’s often a big unknown.

The goals in this article help put that investment in context: Invest in content, and you invest in your business. Consider: building trust and rapport with your audience; attracting new prospects; deepening loyalty with existing customers; helping with SEO; and even attracting strategic partners.

And to help you develop your 2017 Content Marketing plan, this article – B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – gathers 25 content marketing stats all in one place … dive in, explore and learn.

On Email Marketing

13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017 – Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey. Understanding the points made in this article will ensure that your email marketing is 2017-ready.

On Exit Planning

First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give? – For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website. Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our alliance partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.

On SEO

8 SEO Trends You Need to Pay Attention to in 2017 – SEO is a constantly changing landscape. This article highlights eight trends to be aware of as we start 2017, including:

• HTTPS is no longer just an option. Security issues aside, Google has confirmed it’s a ranking signal.
• Social media will be an even larger referral traffic goldmine.
• Mobile-first strategies have become a necessity.
• Links will continue to be important, but they should be a by-product of excellent content.

Continue reading for details on these and 4 more SEO trends for 2017.

The Most Effective SEO Tactics – According to recent research from Ascend2, marketers say creating relevant content is the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactic. Results also show that it’s the most difficult to execute. Read the article.

On Analytics

How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing – Strategy => Content => Channel. This article reinforces the need for all marketers to understand the difference between a marketing strategy (what message are you trying to convey) and a marketing channel (what’s the best method for conveying that message).

It also reinforces one of Sales Renewal’s key beliefs that “there is no ‘digital marketing’ and ‘traditional marketing.'” Sure, there are digital channels and traditional channels, but they all should be used to support the marketing strategy. Read the article.