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Sep 11 / kdolan

The Chair 10 Marketing Guide to Online Review Strategy

The world of word of mouth advertising has moved to the internet.  According to Search Engine Land’s Study “79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.” Reviews have become an important piece of the internet marketing puzzle.  It’s important to understand how they work, what you can do as a business, and how to win the online word of mouth advertising game.

 

The Magic Numbers To Get Visibility

Take a look at this search engine results page from the query “Mexican food Seattle”

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Aug 29 / kdolan

After the Click: Building Landing Pages with STAYing Power

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You’ve organized your campaign, carefully crafted your ad, and made sure your ad ranks well when people search for your service or product. Soon your ad is appearing when customers search. They read your ad and then decide, yes, this warrants a click.

Your ad has done its job and now it’s up to your landing page to deliver.

So, what’s the magic recipe for a good landing page? To better help you understand what makes a customer explore your landing page and what sends them running for the “Back” button, we’ve devised two helpful acronyms: STAY and FLEE.

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May 19 / Mark Kelly

Losing A Co-Worker And A Friend

Brandon

Back in 2010, Chair 10 was just starting to grow as an agency. I had moved out of the basement office in our home and rented our first real office space, a small suite that could fit two, maybe three people.

 

It was time to hire our first full-time employee.

 

So I started interviewing. Hiring your first employee can be a bit scary. Then I found Brandon. We clicked immediately. It was obvious he loved technology. He loved to be immersed in it constantly, think about it critically, talk to others about it, and work in it. Yet despite this love of all things tech, he was also clearly a people person. Someone who could quickly relate to others and build fast, long-lasting bonds.

 

So Brandon signed on and we started to work together. Looking back, I underestimated how tough it could be stepping into a situation where it was just you and the boss in a small office all day working away. But that didn’t bother Brandon at all. He dove in, and off we went.

 

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Apr 25 / eliotdo

Getty Images’ Gamble: Will It Affect Internet Marketing Agencies?

Back in March, Getty Images made some serious waves among those who surf the net by announcing that their vast photo library, stretching back over 100 years, would be made available free to use without a watermark. In exchange for this watermark-free image, customers will simply have to embed the photo (a process that will add a footer with proper accreditation and a link to licensing information). This move may not provide free high-quality stock photos for all, but at first glance it seems pretty close.

 

Why Did Getty Do This?

The rationale behind the decision was that Getty’s images were already all over the web, and by making it easier for people to legally use them, they could potentially begin to curb the rampant illegal use that has become commonplace. This new strategy is a big gamble for Getty Images, but they claim that with their content already available everywhere online, something radical needed to be done. This new approach is similar to the music industry’s embrace of streaming services like Spotify & Rdio in order to curb music piracy (a move some consider to be nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic), except Getty is hoping to embrace new technology before piracy can cripple their business model.

 

Can Anyone Embed Photos Under The New Getty System?  read more…

Feb 13 / Mark Kelly

SEO Priorities for Local Businesses

At Chair 10 Marketing we’ve come up with a set of top priorities for our local business SEO clients. Today we’d like to share some of our top priorities.

Getting Started: As a first step, it’s crucial to understand a client’s geo-targeting, or, in other words, from what cities or zip codes does the business want to get clients?  Because that geo-targeting is one of the most important inputs for Local SEO work, if not the most important input, it should be evaluated at the get-go. Depending on a business of course, geo-targeting can very widely. Whatever the size, it’s critical to understand your geo-targeting as soon as possible.

Google Places: A cornerstone of SEO for local businesses is Google Places, also known as Google+ Local (or sometimes known as Google Maps Listings). While this may not come as a gigantic surprise, it’s key to keep in mind. Properly claiming a Google Places page should be a priority for a local business’s SEO efforts.

Verified Directory Listings: In addition to claiming a Google Places page, it’s essential to claim listings on other trusted directories.  Some trusted sites we claim listings on include Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Yellowbook.com, Yellowpages.com, MerchantCircle, and many more. Having these verified listings is so important because consistency for local business information is key. That is, having your business name, address, and phone number consistent and in the right places will help strengthen your online presence and your trust and authority with the search engines.

Website Content: Another key component of Local SEO is relevant, local-oriented content on your website. Having local content helps search engine crawlers recognize where you do business – and that local content also makes that same thing clear to potential clients visiting your site. This local-oriented content on your site typically comes in different forms. It can involve taking existing pages on your Website and inserting the cities your business targets into the right places. It can also involve having a blog on your site and posting to it regularly about topics related to your business and related to the local community.

Reviews Strategy: In many ways, we now live in a reviews economy. Reviews help potential clients determine where to spend their hard-earned dollars; so having a strategy to obtain reviews for your business is key. Countless websites can collect reviews for your business but its crucial to know which of these sites are worth sending past clients to. Additionally, it’s vital to continually monitor new reviews as they come in and address any negative reviews.

Following these priorities will help get your Local SEO efforts off to a solid start. Then work to get your business listed on more and more local directory Websites over time, continually add unique and relevant content to your Website, encourage your customers to give you online reviews, and monitor those reviews on an ongoing basis. Being disciplined and steady with your Local SEO work will pay big dividends over time with more local visitors coming to your site and more local business generated.

Jan 15 / bgribin

Pay-Per-Click No-No’s

For this latest post, we want to take a close look at some of the most common problems we see across the board within pay-per click advertising. Let’s call them Chair 10 Marketing’s Pay Per Click No-No’s.

Pay-per-click advertising can be very effective if your company is going about it the right way. But if your company isn’t bringing its ‘A-Game’ to PPC, results can falter. Avoid these no-no’s, and you stand a much stronger chance of succeeding.

No Conversion Tracking

Far too often, PPC campaigns are set-up quickly without any consideration for ROI analysis down the road. In order to track what revenue results from PPC ads, full conversion tracking needs to be set up. Conversion tracking can consist of both form completion tracking as well as phone call tracking. With the right code on your website, you’ll be able to know what leads have resulted from PPC ads – and you’ll be able to track ROI for PPC, giving you a full picture of how effective your ads really are.

All Broad Match Keywords

By default, keywords entered into AdWords, for example, are broad match. While broad match keywords can be effective under the right circumstances, by and large other types of keywords, including broad match modifier, phrase match, and exact match make an account more effective. If a campaign is filled exclusively with broad match keywords, chances are you’re overreaching and overspending.

No Negative Keywords

In addition to having a good mix of keyword types, it’s important to have a strong set of negative keywords. Negative keywords are often forgotten because their importance may not seem readily apparent.  Negative keywords provide an ability to advertise on the right terms while not getting caught up with tangential keywords that aren’t totally on target.

No Geo-Targeting

By default, Google targets ads to all countries and territories around the world. If you disregard adjusting your geo-targeting settings when your ads go live, they’ll be running all around the world. Sure, that may seem fine in some cases but the fact is that you’ll see more success with PPC ads if you refine that targeting. Under the Chair 10 Marketing roof, there isn’t a single campaign we manage targeting all countries and all territories around the world. Most commonly, a given campaign targets one or two metro areas. Campaigns with a wider scope could benefit from targeting more territory, say a country or two. Having said that, rarely will targeting everything Google has to offer at once make sense.

No Ad Copy Variety

Having good variety with ad copy allows you to determine what ad copy resonates most. Surprisingly often, campaigns only have one or two ad copy variants, leaving little room to determine what works and what doesn’t. Experimenting with ad copy gives you room to refine ad copy over time and ultimately provide an ad that will lead to more clicks and more conversions.

No Regular, Ongoing Optimization

Out of everything listed here, this is probably the most damaging item often forgotten. While it may be tempting to approach PPC with a ‘set it and forget it’ attitude, the most important work is done once the account has been put live and data’s available for analysis. This is where you beat out your competitors and achieve a solid ROI by continuous analysis, testing and improvement.

Dec 27 / bgribin

PPC Best Practices for Franchises

At Chair 10 Marketing when we set up and manage a franchise pay-per-click account, there’s a process we follow that helps us succeed in getting a new account off to a strong start. We’d like to step you through key parts of that process to help you understand what our priorities are.

Budget: When doing work across a franchise network, we have a solid understanding of what a new client’s monthly PPC budget should be. Naturally, budgets can and do differ by geography because no two cities are the same, but we tend to have an acceptable monthly budget range for a given franchise network. As a side note, it’s important not to underfund a new PPC campaign. If a campaign doesn’t have enough monthly spend to utilize within Google, it often sputters.

Geo-targeting: Setting the right geo-targeting for a new franchise client is crucial – and fortunately, doing that is one of the very first things we prioritize when setting up an account. Because most franchise clients typically have target geographies that don’t span more than a few cities, we’re able to precisely nail down the right area to target after reviewing priorities with a client. We also appreciate the synergy among a franchise network as we’re able to compare and contrast geographies across the network.

Ad Copy: With a franchise network, we’re really able to nail down the right ad copy. We typically test ad copy variations across a network but then implement the best-performing copy across the board. Having said that, it’s still very important to have targeted parts of the ad copy from franchise to franchise. Specifically, we’ve seen huge success when calling out a city’s name or listing a phone number in an ad. While it may seem obvious, we’ve seen key parts left out a number of times in competing franchise ads.

Tracking: Fortunately, PPC is very trackable when you know what you’re doing. Typically with franchise pay-per-click management, we track website conversions and phone calls from PPC. A website conversion could be when someone fills out an Appointment Request form on your website after clicking on an ad. A phone call is when someone calls your business after clicking an ad. Tracking leads enables us to know the cost per lead and helps inform how to further optimize an account, which includes monitoring the pulse of competitors and remaining competitive.

Call Recordings: Not only do we track the number of calls from PPC but we can also provide call recordings. That is, if someone clicks an ad and then calls in, we have that call recorded and emailed to the client upon completion. This is great for franchise clients because often franchises use call centers. Having the call recordings enables a franchise owner to know exactly what leads have come in and when.

Client Communication: Finally, throughout the entire PPC setup and management process, we’re in constant communication with franchise owners. Everything from discussing budgets and geos to regularly reporting on an account’s performance, we’re in constant communication. Having open communication is key because it allows both us and the owner to be on the same page.

We hope this overview helps you understand our best practices for franchise PPC.

Jul 17 / pwright

The “Innovative” Google Carousel

Google recently renovated the look of their results page. When there is a search that returns mostly local results, like restaurants, bars, or parks, Google displays the local results across the top of the page over a dark horizontal strip. The new display provides similar information to the old look, with the most notable differences being that there is now a photo and a different way to interact with the results. Other than the change of scenery, though, what is innovative about the Google Carousel?

There are some aspects to the new display that are improvements over the previous version. The photos really stand out on the page and catch the eye.  Mike Blumenthal points out here that the images are probably going to attract higher click through rates. Similar to before, there is the name of the result, its Zagat score, and review count for each result. A price range or address is also given, depending on the type of search query. The two Google searches below show one result for ‘Seattle restaurants’ with the Carousel and the other result for ‘Seattle news’ without the Carousel.

 

 

Clicking on any of the results in the carousel alters your original search query to be the name of the location clicked. This changes all the results that appear below the carousel to be more relevant to the newly clicked result from the initial query. A handy information box appears on the right hand side with the address, phone number, hours, and other background information about the location. This appears to be another example of self-directed links by Google, as commented on by Blumenthal, that requires an extra click from the user to find the information they are looking for.

There are a few aspects of the carousel where improvements could be made. The graphic at the top shows a photo, a Zagat score, and the number of reviews. Regardless, though, of which part is clicked, the only event that can happen is a change of your original query. Why not go straight to the locations webpage, their reviews or score page if that is what the user clicks on?

It would also be more user-friendly if the items were sortable by their Zagat score or price range. Location can be changed by zooming in, zooming out, or relocating the map under the carousel, so that’s not a problem.  Other distinguishable characteristics, like ethnicity of food served at restaurants, can be included in the search query to only get results with specific desired attributes.

Comparing the carousel interface to what you see when you do a similar search in Google Maps shows that the new layout is not as informative upon your initial search.  For finding local locations, Google Maps still does a better job of offering the valuable information in an accessible and user-friendly way. While the pictures are slightly smaller and less aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the layout provides a few convenient features that are nonexistent in the new carousel format. Here are a few of the features that make Maps more dynamic:

  1. Clickable links – The results that show up in a search on Google Maps are the same as those in the Carousel, but the results on Maps have clickable links to get to the homepage of the result directly. Maps lists the number of reviews also as a clickable link. It brings you to the Google Plus page with reviews, images, address, and other background information.
  2. More initial information – A search in Maps provides more detailed information about the location immediately.  It includes the address and phone number, informational tags, and a short review.  This eliminates the need to click on individual locations to bring up their basic information and makes it easier to compare the first set of results side-by-side.
  3. Larger map – When you are searching the internet for local places, it is often important to consider exactly where those places are and how far you are from them. The larger map in Maps shows the exact location and allows more flexibility and interaction with the map itself.
  4. Easy access to directions – After you’ve chosen a destination, Maps makes it very easy to find a route to get there. This feature is available from the carousel as well, but requires switching to Maps to show it.

It seems that Google’s attempt to improve, or replace,the Maps feature for local queries doesn’t provide any innovative measures beyond the nice visual and larger photo display. It might not be a bad idea to include the carousel at the top of search results, but it is not as convenient or straightforward to use as the old design.

Mar 21 / Mark Kelly

5 Questions All Attorneys Must Ask About Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Our President & CEO, Mark Kelly, was recently asked by Avvo.com, the Web’s largest legal Q&A forum, directory and legal marketplace, to present tips to its community of 125,000 attorneys on how to optimize pay-per-click advertising.

This short video quickly gives attorneys the information and perspective they need on pay-per-click advertising, but also has great tips for any business doing or thinking about using pay-per-click advertising to drive leads and sales.

 

 

Here’s a summary of some of the key topics covered in the video:

How can attorneys quickly evaluate if pay-per-click advertising is working for their practice?

Top 5 Magic Questions Attorneys Should Ask About Their Pay-Per-Click Advertising:

1) How many leads is your pay-per-click advertising generating each month?

2) What is the average cost per pay-per-click lead?

3) What are the top 5 search engine search phrases people are typing into Google and then clicking your ads and visiting your Website? Do these phrases synch up with your key practice areas you want to be marketing most?

4) What are the top 10 cities those ad clickers are coming from? Do those cities match up with your marketing targets in terms of where you want to be attracting clients from?

5) Missed Opportunity – how many more leads could your practice have driven with pay-per-click if your daily ad click budget had been higher?

 

Chair 10 Marketing helps law firms and other businesses effectively drive leads through Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimization.

Contact Us today for a Free Consultation.

 

 

 

 

Dec 14 / Mark Kelly

Verizon Wireless Sales Chat Gone Wrong

So I need to upgrade our iPhones. We’re with AT&T now, but I like the network quality of Verizon in Seattle. So I’m close to switching to Verizon.

I was ready to buy, but just didn’t want to pay activation fees.

What struck me below as hilarious was how when I said I’d be staying with AT&T, the customer support person said “Wonderful!”  It seems like that is a standard keyboard shortcut she uses in her chats. I can think of worse responses, but “Wonderful!” just didn’t seem to fit.

From an Internet marketing standpoint, losing at least $3,750 in revenues from me over $70 in activation fees is not the right call (pun intended) for Verizon Wireless. They should give their online salespeople more latitude in order to close a sale.

Verizon-Wireless-Lost-Sale