HOW TO GO ABOUT DOING KEYWORD RESEARCH
by Alicia Kan
Everyone always asks a digital agency about their keyword research process. The truth is that there are as many techniques as there are ways to take your coffee: Literally hundreds, and no way is right or wrong.
At Globe Runner, we’ve got a keyword research framework that everyone has customized with their favorite tools and resources. Use it to build your own process for your own purposes, and keep it flexible enough to accommodate any new keyword research developments that come along.
Why conduct keyword research at all?
Because skillfully incorporating search terms your target audience is using to find your products or services increases the likelihood of their finding you. Whether you’re launching a new website, aiming to grow your blog readership or wanting to increase your social media followers, doing keyword research helps to make your activity more focused and strategic.
Step 1: Do baseline and gap analyses
If you are working on improving your website, what does the current situation look like and where would you want it to be? Start with how many keywords the site is actually ranking for. Create a spreadsheet to keep track of all the terms, and to give you a firm idea of how close/far you are to your goal.
Each section of the site should have a tab in your spreadsheet. For example, if you have a fashion e-commerce site, have a tab for each category of clothing, e.g. tops, bottoms and shoes. Each tab will have multiple types/variations of keywords. Tops might have t-shirts, tank tops, blouses and so on.
Keeping a spreadsheet not only organizes your activity but allows you to break down the job in manageable chunks. It also gives you a sense of progress as you complete each section.
Step 2: See how you stack up against the competition
After you’ve assessed where you are and where you want to be, it’s time to look at the competition. What keywords are they ranking for?
Use SEM Rush to plug in your site as well as those of a few worthy competitors. With SEM Rush you get a better idea of what your site and those of your competitors are ranking for and how they’ve been affected by Google’s algorithm updates over the years.
Under the ‘Organic Research’ tab, find the ‘Positions’ menu (see red arrow in our example using Inbound.org). You’ll see a list of keywords as well as a graphic showing historical data. Export the organic positions data (where the other red arrow points to). This way you get the ‘money terms’ only.
Once you’ve exported the list, delete all columns except for these:
- Keyword
- Position
- Search Volume
- URL
- Competition
- Number of Results
Sort by Search Volume – Largest to Smallest.
Step 3: Get creative — find suggestions
Use the keywords you gathered and plug them into Google for it to auto-suggest related terms. You’ll see several recommendations that users might be more apt to choose over their original search term. We’re using one of the terms that Inbound.org is ranking for on page 1, and that’s ‘hubspot certification’.
Pull terms you don’t have in your spreadsheet and add them to the relevant tab. You’ll also see a similar list of suggestions at the bottom of the search page.
Rather interesting how ‘exam answers’ and ‘cheat sheet’ are popular related searches 🙂
Google’s auto-suggest feature is just one tool to use in digging up other related keywords but there are more choices out there, such as:
Google Keyword Planner. Obviously where everyone starts. ‘It allows you to easily organize keywords and download them in a format that can be imported into Adwords Editor.’ – Katy
Keywordtool.io. ‘It lets you see what kind of questions people are asking.’ – Jenna
Hashtagify. ‘Great for finding popular terms on social.’ – Lauren
Keyword Shitter (yes, it exists). ‘Easy to use; no fluff.’ – Zain
As for myself, I like using different tools depending on the situation. Moz’s relaunched Keyword Explorer has at least two billion keywords to nerd out to — this Reddit thread is a great conversation between Russ, the developer who worked on it, and members of the SEO subreddit. Google Trends is particularly useful for determining seasonal content — enter a search term and it’ll show search trends over time and related terms at the bottom of the page. Spyfu is worth its weight in gold when it comes to PPC and beyond. I’ve used competitors’ best performing ads to extract keywords for web copy for instance.
Don’t forget too that sometimes you can find gems closer to home. If you’ve got Google Search Console all set up, head over to the ‘Search Traffic’ tab and down to ‘Search Analytics’. You can filter Queries by ‘how’, ‘why’ and other qualifiers in order to see what questions people are typing into the browser.
Step 4: Test your terms
By now, you should have a dizzying abundance of keywords. It’s time to narrow them down to the best ones.
Enter the keywords you’ve gathered into Google’s Keyword Planner — click the ‘Keyword Ideas’ tab below the bar graph to find exact search volumes for the terms you entered. Below it you will see several keywords similar to what you entered that would be good candidates as well. Look for keyword opportunities with high search volumes and low to medium competition that may not have been targeted previously.
Once you’ve narrowed down the list, enter them into the Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool to determine how competitive the terms are. The difficulty will be expressed as a percentage; the higher the percentage, the more competitive the term will be.
Have thoughts on Grep Words, Top Visor and other new(er) keyword research tools? Know of any other resources? Add them to the comments below.
Photo of antique keys by Sergio K via Flickr
VIDEO: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP, NOT JUST CONTENT MARKETING
Hi, this is Eric, CEO of Globe Runner. I want to talk to you today about content marketing – but I’d really like to change the way we talk about content marketing.
I have a lot of customers that come in and say ‘shouldn’t I be blogging and doing stuff on social media?’ And the answer is yes, you probably should. But how you do that is important.
So, let’s use a different word. Instead of content marketing, let’s call it thought leadership. Thought leadership is actually much more important than content marketing.
There’s a couple things that thought leadership does for your business that just writing content doesn’t do.
1. When somebody does read your content, they’re compelled to stay with your business and interact with you, maybe get more. Even better, they might give you their email for downloading a white paper or a case study or getting further involved in your sales process. This allows you to take advantage of the traffic you’re bringing in. It’s one thing for somebody to visit your website, but to convince them to take an action is so much more powerful.
2. The next thing that thought leadership can do that content marketing by itself could never do is generate links to your site – generate other influencers in your space to link back to your site as a relevant source that contributes interesting thought leadership to their ideas. Those links are the number one signal that Google is looking for to determine whether or not your site has relevant information to a potential searcher.
So, just two compelling reasons to put a little more energy into your blogging than just blogging or just being on social.
Instead, approach it as a thought leader and try to bring something new to the table.
If you’d like to share this video on your blog or website, use the following embed code: <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/GcvXmt7D6ZQ” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
4 TIPS TO GET THE MOST OUT OF REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
In a world where smart phones and wireless internet exists, people are finding more and more avenues to share their ideas, experiences, and opinions. Whether it’s through social media, on your website review form, or any other of the various business pages where you brand is represented, people have ample opportunity to talk about their experience with your products or services. Of course, no one gets upset when something good is being said, but when it comes to maintaining the integrity of your brand and reputation of your business, it’s important to know how to address and manage anything negative that might be said.
Negative feedback is never easy to swallow, but you want to stay involved in the conversations that are going on about your business. Here are 4 tips for managing the online reputation of your business.
Tip 1: Claim Your Business Listings and Pages
By claiming your business listings and business pages, you can keep your business and contact information accurate, consistent, and up to date. You also will stay notified on when a review has been posted. Another important reason to claim your business listings and pages is to make sure that you are in control at all times of how your business and brand is being represented.
Tip 2: Listen
Nothing is perfect, and there is always room for improvement. Whether the feedback is good or bad, listening to the feedback will help you better understand, and meet, the needs and expectations of your ideal customer.
Tip 3: Represent Your Brand
Remember your reviewers are customers talking about your business. Don’t take it personally–be kind, say thank you, and, most importantly, apologize! After all, we aren’t trying to drive them away! Make sure you are prompt when you answer any inquiries or address any negative feedback. Responding quickly and appropriately will increase the likelihood that the reviewer will either take down their bad review and end up leaving a good one.
Even if they don’t take down their negative review, you still are given the opportunity to show others who are researching your business products that you care about your customers and are willing to go the extra mile to make sure that your customers are satisfied and right any wrong that might have left someone upset.
Tip 4: Invest in Reputation Management and Social Media Marketing
Doing it yourself can be overwhelming and time consuming. After all, there are so many different places where your business name could be mentioned and talked about. Even more so, you spend all day running your business—now you have to defend it and represent it online? There just simply isn’t enough time in the day.
Hiring a company that provides reputation management services will alleviate this time consuming, but vital, task. Companies like Accelerate Online Marketing can work on your behalf to respond and stay involved in the conversations that are happening about your business. For more information, contact the digital marketing experts at Accelerate Online Marketing Today!
A LAWYER MOVED HIS WEBSITE TO A .ATTORNEY DOMAIN NAME. HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED.
Eric Block is a personal injury attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. While he’s handled many cases and clients expertly, he was having trouble getting the word out about his law practice. The market for legal services in Northeast Florida is highly competitive; other attorneys and firms were spending millions of dollars a year in ads. How would he compete without massive radio and television spends? Eric decided to take an innovative online marketing approach by relaunching his website under www.Jacksonville.Attorney, which led to impressive returns at a fraction of the cost of a major advertising campaign.
Globe Runner was hired by Rightside, the registry behind the new gTLD domain extension .ATTORNEY, to review Mr. Block’s website migration from his former website and domain name, www.EricBlockLaw.com, to his new website and domain name, www.Jacksonville.Attorney. We reviewed the results, and reported it all in a case study. You can learn more about it on Rightside’s blog titled Domains vs. pay per click: Do new TLDs work?, or download the PDF file at the end of this post.
Marketing legal services is extremely competitive, and costs are often high as a result. An October 2015 U.S. Chamber Institute of Legal Reform report on trial lawyer marketing stated that:
“[l]egal advertising and marketing communications are a multi-prong, highly sophisticated undertaking by trial lawyers that spans broadcast and digital venues. This is not a resource-starved, grassroots effort but a very much well-funded and coordinated endeavor.” They went on to say that “online legal key word advertising is among the most expensive in America.”
Nine of the top 10 and 23 of the top 25 most expensive Google keywords are related to legal services. Furthermore, most of the search terms are tied to lawyers in specific states. An attorney might use Google AdWords to bid on keywords such as “accident” and “personal injury” along with a combination of state names, state abbreviations, and specific city names.
Rather than spend thousands every month to drive traffic to his website via PPC, Mr. Block listed his services on FindLaw and Avvo, popular attorney-listing websites. He worked with New York-based Momentum Names, a reseller of Rightside’s new generic Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .LAWYER and .ATTORNEY.
Eric decided to move to www.Jacksonville.Attorney, and launched the new website in March of 2015. As you can see from the Google Analytics’ graph show above, the move to the .ATTORNEY domain name was a success.
While no data can serve as 100-percent proof that moving from EricBlockLaw.com to Jacksonville.Attorney caused Eric’s website to go to in the top of the search results, the uptick in organic traffic is certainly striking. Jacksonville.Attorney is now ranked for more than 300 keyword phrases according to SEMrush.com. Within one month of launching, the new website showed up on the first page of search results for “Jacksonville Attorney.” Jacksonville.Attorney appears higher than other competitors despite lower-quality in-bound links (Majestic.com Trust Flow) and a shorter history, both of which are key search engine ranking factors.
WHAT IS CALL MEASUREMENT AND HOW CAN IT BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS?
Your advertising efforts, whether on social media, Paid Search, in the newspaper, on television, or through other media, all represent a large investment on your part. You hope this investment will pay off—after all, advertising is pointless if you don’t get people coming to you—but how can you measure that? There are a number of ways to measure the success of your advertising efforts, and one of those is through call measurement.
Definition of Call Measurement
Call measurement is the process of tracking phone calls to determine the success of specific advertising efforts. This starts with obtaining a separate phone number for each type of advertising you use. For example, suppose you have a Paid Ad online, a commercial on television, and a social media marketing campaign on Facebook. Each of these will have a unique phone number that is linked to your main business number so that you are able to identify which advertisement drove the call.
As people call in, you are able to track which advertising strategy brought them in by the phone number they use, and, with Paid Ads online, you are able to see which keywords drove the phone calls. This data is recorded and then used to determine which methods are worth their investment and which ones might do with some scaling back.
Advantages for Your Business
Call measurement can provide a significant return on your investment by providing valuable insight into your advertising strategies. Specifically, it can help in the following three ways:
- Measure what works: The main advantage of using call measurement is it provides you with a detailed map of how your various advertising investments are paying off. Going back to our example, if you find that your social media campaign is bringing in twice as many calls as your commercials, you will want to alter your expenditures to reflect that.
- Know your audience: Not only can you gain valuable insight from the volume of calls generated by each strategy you use, you are also able to track other information as well. If you are getting more calls from one specific geographical region than others, for example, you may want to focus your efforts on that area. Also, you may wish to alter your efforts in other areas to expand your audience.
- Call recording and Listening: call measurement also enables you to record calls and score them as valid business opportunities. When determining ROI, it’s not about how many calls were received, but, rather, the quality of those calls and how many qualified leads came from them.
Ultimately, call measurement is a tool that helps you optimize your advertising efforts to zero in on what works. It can help you know the efficacy of various efforts, familiarize yourself with your audience, and develop strategies that will enhance your advertising success.
Research is key to developing online marketing strategies. Accelerate Online Marketing uses a variety of techniques to assess your place in the market and determine the best strategies for getting your name out. To learn more about our services, contact Accelerate today!
A CAR DEALERSHIP MOVED TO A .CARS DOMAIN. YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
When St. Louis Motorcars, a luxury automotive dealership in Missouri, decided to move their existing website from www.STLMotorcars.com to www.STL.CARS, no one knew what would happen. The website’s traffic would be redirected to the new web address, but when it came to the adoption of their new URL on the web, and how the search engines would treat it, was anyone’s guess. In an effort to understand how the internet search engines, such as Google, deals with the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .CARS, .CAR, and .AUTO, Globe Runner looked at several early adopters of the .CARS domain names. Specifically, we did a deep dive on one website in particular, St. Louis Motorcars. When we looked at the data before the move and after the move, you’ll never believe what had happened when they moved.
Since the beginning of the Internet, Americans have primarily used three main Top Level Domains (TLDs) for our websites: .COM, .NET, and .ORG. There are other TLDs that have been introduced that we’re all familiar with, such as .EDU and .GOV. It’s been fairly easy for us to register .COM, .NET, and .ORG domain names. You have to be associated with an educational institution or a government entity to secure a .EDU or a .GOV domain name. And then there’s the others that have been available for quite some time now, such as .INFO, .BIZ, and .TV. Most consumers in the USA are typically used to the top three, .COM, .NET, and .ORG.
In countries outside of the USA, the Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), are widely accepted and in fact often the default option. Country codes include .co.uk (United Kingdom), .es (Spain), .com.au (Australia), .ca (Canada), and .it (Italy), and are always two letters long. Depending on the location of your business, a ccTLD makes perfect sense as an alternative to .COM. However, since January 2014, there are literally hundreds of new Generic Top Level Domains (New gTLDs) becoming available, and many are already available for registration. A few of the automotive-related New gTLDs are .CARS, .CAR, and .AUTO. The .CARS TLD, for example, allows anyone to register a .CARS domain name, and many good domains are still available.
For domain names, shorter seems to be better. If the .COM version of the domain name you want isn’t available, then the equivalent .CARS domain name may be available. Recently, St. Louis Motorcars chose to move from STLMotorcars.com to STL.Cars, a shorter, “better” domain name, some would argue. If you are not going to be using your Trademark, company name, or Brand as a part of your domain name, a keyword rich domain name is a good choice.
With the recent launch of the .CARS TLD, we wanted to start digging right in and look at the data. We wanted to see if a .CARS domain name is worth the $3,000 purchase price. With the higher price tag, many could consider these domain names more “premium” than other TLDs. We want to know several things:
— Is a domain name on .CARS worth the cost?
— Are there any direct examples of where a business moved their domain name to a .CARS domain?
Being automotive enthusiasts and marketers ourselves, we wanted to know: should a car dealer move their website to a .CARS, .CAR, or .AUTO domain name? We chose .CARS and set to find out the answer.
Globe Runner chose to look in-depth at St. Louis Motorcars, who completely moved their dealership’s website from www.STLMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars. This was done during November 2015. By studying everything from the search engine rankings to the number of visitors on the website, we can determine whether or not a move from a .COM domain name to a .Cars domain name is recommended.
We looked to see if the move of the website was technically done properly, based on SEO best practices. Once we determined that St. Louis Motorcars had moved properly, and data was available from before the move to after the move, we started looking at the results. We certainly had questions about the move, and whether or not it was “worth” moving. Here’s a list of the questions we set out to answer:
– Was it worth the time and effort to move to a .CARS domain name?
– Did the move hurt or help website traffic?
– Were the visitors confused or troubled by the move?
– Was the move better or worse for visitors?
– How did the search engine respond to the move?
– How did Google, in particular, treat the website’s search engine rankings?
– Did the organic search traffic go up or down after the move?
– Was there a loss of traffic to the website during or after the move?
– If there was a loss of traffic to the website, did it recover?
Overall, we wanted to see hard, fast numbers in the data that indicated whether or not the move was good or bad for the business. If there were any indications that businesses should NOT be moving to another domain name, then we wanted to uncover that data. And, likewise, if there were any indications that a business should move to another domain name (such as an automotive dealer move to a .CARS domain), then we wanted to uncover that, too.
Did The Move Help Organic Search Engine Rankings?
We looked at a lot of keyword rankings of the website both when it was on the .COM domain and when after it was moved to the .CARS domain. We found 16 keyword phrases where the website ranked in the first few pages of search results. Of these 16 keyword phrases, 8 got better when it came to search engine rankings. Many of those keywords that didn’t move up in the search engine rankings stayed the same (i.e., the ranking was the same before and after the move).
Organic Search Engine Traffic
Other than actual search engine rankings, we also looked at several different sources that track organic search traffic to websites. We wanted to see, overall, if the data that these other sources have is different than the keyword rankings we reviewed.
Looking at the inbound clicks from Google on Spyfu, we saw an upward trend in organic search traffic. We also looked at several difference sources to verify the organic traffic from Google, including SearchMetrics. We then looked at the Google Analytics traffic, as well. Google Analytics was installed on the website before the website was moved from StlMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars. We compared the website traffic before and after the move:
Overall, the percentage of new sessions is up 7.51 percent over the previous domain name, StlMotorcars.com. After the St. Louis Motorcars moved their website from StlMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars, the site’s Social Media and Referral traffic went up. The referral traffic went up 33.67 percent, and the traffic from Social Media websites went up 20.09 percent. Another noteworthy point is that the conversions from organic search went up slightly when the site moved from StlMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars.
Conversion rates going up has been an interesting trend amongst websites that have moved from a .COM to a New gTLD domain name, based on Globe Runner’s data of tracking and watching other websites that have moved from a .COM to a New gTLD domain name.
Google Search Console Data
Another source of data we used to measure the effect of moving from StlMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars was the Google Search Console, formerly called Google Webmaster Tools. We looked at the Search Analytics data within the Google Search Console and compared the data before the move and after the move, as seen below:
Overall, we can see an upwards trend in total clicks and impressions on Desktop and Mobile, which is good. We don’t see any evidence that the move from the .COM to the .CARS domain has hurt traffic, impressions, or clicks.
Conclusion
Based on our thorough review of the keyword rankings, third party data, Google Analytics data, and Google Search Console data, we have concluded that the site did not suffer anything as a result of the move. We have observed direct evidence that the site’s overall search engine rankings have gone up. The website’s overall traffic is trending upwards since the website was moved from StlMotorcars.com to Stl.Cars. Globe Runner can independently verify that the move from STLMotorcars.com to STL.CARS was beneficial for St. Louis Motorcars as far as organic search traffic is concerned.
Please note: Globe Runner was compensated for their time to review the data collected and produce a report on the findings. In no way did this have an effect on the outcome of the study or Globe Runner’s opinions about the results.
NAVIGATING THE .WINE AND .VIN NEW GTLD DOMAIN NAMES
Since the beginning of the Internet, Americans have primarily used three main Top Level Domains (TLDs) for our websites: .COM, .NET, and .ORG. There are other TLDs that have been introduced that we’re all familiar with, such as .EDU and .GOV. It’s been fairly easy for us to register .COM, .NET, and .ORG domain names. You have to be associated with an educational institution or a government entity to secure a .EDU or a .GOV domain name. And then there’s the others that have been available for quite some time now, such as .INFO, .BIZ, and .TV. Most consumers in the USA are typically are used to the top three, .COM, .NET, and .ORG.
In countries outside of the USA, the Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), are widely accepted and in fact often the default option. Country codes include .co.uk (United Kingdom), .es (Spain), .com.au (Australia), .ca (Canada), and .it (Italy), and are always two letters long.
Depending on the location of your business, a ccTLD makes perfect sense as an alternative to .com. Since January 2014, there are literally hundreds of new Generic Top Level Domains (New gTLDs) becoming available, and many are already available for registration.
Keyword Rich Domain Names
It is widely thought that one way to potentially gain some search engine marketing advantage is to buy a keyword rich domain name that includes the TLD as one of the main keywords. This strategy has been said to not matter when it comes to search engine ranking advantages in Google, though. In March, 2012, Matt Cutts, a representative from Google, addressed a myth about the new gTLDs. Specifically, he said:
“Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”
So, buying a keyword-rich new gTLD domain name apparently does not carry any extra weight when it comes to actual search engine rankings, at least not in Google’s organic search results. However, at Globe Runner, as Search Engine Optimization experts, we have seen many cases where keyword rich domain names that include the keyword in the extension. They appear to help a website’s SEO and overall search engine visibility.
Based on our ongoing research study, using a keyword rich new gTLD domain name in a Google AdWords Pay Per Click campaign has its benefits.
.WINE and .VIN New gTLDs
Two new domain name extensions that are becoming available to wine enthusiasts and the wine industry are the .WINE and .VIN TLDs. Domain names in these extensions will be available for registration by the public starting at the end of January 2016.
Important .WINE and .VIN Dates
Globe Runner has teamed up with the Wine Guy, Chris Campbell, and created the definitive guide to the .Wine and .Vin new gTLD domain names. Our guide, titled “Navigating the .WINE and .VIN New gTLD Domain Names”, includes everything you need to know about Early Access, What Trademark holders need to know, and what Brand owners need to know. We also cover issues like how to choose a .WINE or .VIN domain name, and include a checklist for moving your existing website to a .WINE or .VIN domain name.
Here is the table of contents of our guide to navigating the .WINE and .VIN new gTLD domain names:
What’s Inside
About the Authors
Introduction: New gTLD Domain Names
.WINE and .VIN
Keyword Rich Domain Names
Application Process and Key Dates
Important .WINE and .VIN Dates
.WINE and .VIN Early Access Program Registration Fees
Domain Pricing Examples
Brand Owners: What You Need to Know
ICANN and the Trademark Clearinghouse
The Central Registry
Contention Over .WINE and .VIN TLDs
Regulatory Climate
Intellectual Property
Uses of .WINE and .VIN
Choosing a .WINE or .VIN Domain Name
Google Analytics
Online Keyword Research Tools
Moving to a .WINE or .VIN Domain Name
Checklist for Moving to a New gTLD Domain Name
Pre-Move
Pre-Planning
On Moving Day:
After Moving Day
Conclusions
Resources
Whether you’re a brand owner, a trademark owner, a domain name investor, or simply someone who enjoys a great glass of wine, you’ll want to download this guide.
WHAT EVERYONE OUGHT TO KNOW ABOUT REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
by Jenna Yoder
Have any of the below happened to you?
- You or your business have scathing reviews on sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor
- Your business or product are the recipients of fake Amazon, Facebook or Google reviews
- When someone searches your name, all the links that come up on page 1 are from negative articles
These are just three instances where online reputation management (ORM) comes into play. You can think of ORM as a specialist subset of SEO that deals with the strategic handling of negative search results.
Not all agencies offer this service, so it’s critical that anyone shopping for it knows what’s involved. Below are some key facts about the process that everyone should be aware of:
1. Reputation management can’t remove negative links
What a good ORM program does is push negative content down to less frequented search pages by creating positive content optimized to rank higher than the negative links. Studies on search behavior, such as this one from GoFish Digital, show that 50% of searchers don’t go beyond page 1 of search engine result pages (SERPs) while only 36% venture onto page 2 or 3.
However just creating content, any content, and throwing it up on the Internet will not automatically push bad content to page 3 when someone searches. A good ORM partner will sit down with you, determine the extent of the damage, and design a campaign that incorporates the best types of content for your needs.
At the onset, your partner should create a spreadsheet of all links that turn up on SERPs. Highlighting these links green for positive, red for negative and neutral links yellow will ensure that you are on the same page about what should be pushed down, what should be retained and whether the links are moving week to week.
2. Reputation management takes time
Be ready to invest a significant amount of time in addressing reputation management issues. At a webinar on how to bury a Ripoff Report review, ORL old hands BrandYourself said it can take from 9 to 12 months to start seeing solid results, a time frame that Globe Runner finds accurate. Any vendor who tells you that it can be done faster is either overly optimistic or unfamiliar with the amount of work involved.
The content creation alone takes a lot of time. Most reputation management campaigns will require setting up strategic microsites, social media accounts and other properties that carry or link to positive content. The infrastructure and keyword strategy will need tweaking as links start showing movement. Like good SEO, there are no short cuts.
3. Reputation management is not always about maintaining an open dialogue
We’ve all been taught to address negative comments the minute they surface. Social media is rife with examples of how businesses or individuals ignored unflattering remarks online only to face a veritable tsunami of bad publicity when they woke up the next day. Nipping a situation in the bud and engaging with complainers is generally a good social media policy.
In reputation management, exceptions are made for protracted dialogues with a party intent on destroying reputations, not resolving the issue. This is especially true for Ripoff Report complaints which are notoriously hard to remove. If you suspect that a competitor, disgruntled employee or the like are behind a Ripoff Report complaint that is patently untrue, avoid getting embroiled in an all-out flame war.
Instead, take the advice of Ripoff Report’s lawyer, Maria Crimi Speth: Consult your public relations and legal advisers before jumping into the fray. Aim for arbitration instead of a prolonged social media brawl. And don’t discount the benefits that a structured online reputation management campaign brings. As Speth said, “Redouble your efforts in legitimate and positive PR. Robust and favorable content about your business will be especially valuable when a bad issue strikes.”
Jenna Yoder is an account manager for Globe Runner specializing in online reputation management. Photo by Max Mayorov on Flickr.
SEARCH MARKETING STUDY: HOW NEW GTLDS ARE BEATING .COM
SEARCH MARKETING STUDY: HOW NEW GTLDS ARE BEATING .COM
Since May 2014, Globe Runner has been actively researching and studying the Search Engine Marketing (PPC) effects that the New gTLD domain name extensions are having on the industry. The results of our first initial deep dive into real-world data was released back in September 2014. We then provided an update 8 months later. Originally, the .COM beat out a new gTLD domain name when it came to quality traffic: but .COM traffic was more expensive. However, one year and four months later, the tide has changed.
New gTLDs convert much higher than .COM. Conversions on .COM continue to deteriorate.
Back in May 2014, we found that domains of new extensions were converting at about 34 percent, and .COMs were converting at about 52 percent. It cost more to advertise using a .COM than a new domain extension. However, over a year and a half later, that has all changed. New domain extensions are converting at about the same rate–but .COM domains are converting now at a record low, of nearly 20 percent. It still costs more to advertise using a .COM domain name than using a new domain extension. Here are some quick stats from our updated research:
Results: Average CPC
3Carat.Diamonds: $.77 Sept. 2015 vs $.69 in Jan 2015 vs. $.77 in May 2014
3CaratDiamonds.com: $.83 Sept 2015 vs $.82 (vs. $.81 in May 2014)
Conclusions:
23% Conversion Rate on .COM, 35% on .Diamonds in September 2015.
Previously, January 2015: 31.76% Conversion Rate on .COM, 29.11% on .Diamonds
Previously, May 2014: 52% Conversion Rate on .COM, 36% on .Diamonds
New gTLDs convert much higher than .COM. Conversions on .COM continue to deteriorate.
According to our re-running of the testing during January 2015, the conversion rate of the .COM was very close to what the conversion rate on the .diamonds was–only a 2 percent difference between the two. Back in May 2014 the .COM converted a lot better. But that wasn’t the case in January 2015. The New gTLD domain name was converting the same as a comparable .COM domain name.
In September 2015, however, the conversion rate of the .COM has continued to go down. It’s now at an all-time low. Yet the conversion rate on the .Diamonds domain name has remained about the same (it’s actually up 2 percent over May 2014’s data).
Our overall goal when setting up these tests was ultimately to determine whether using a .Com domain name or a new gTLD domain name is better when it comes to search engine marketing and Google AdWords. Back in January 2015 we were not totally convinced that one is necessarily “better” than the other. However, our view of this, after over a year and a half of looking at the data and running test, we have changed our tune.
Ultimately, if we had to decide whether to use a New gTLD domain name extension or a .COM domain name for our Google AdWords campaigns, we would choose to use a New gTLD domain. The prices for clicks (CPC) haven’t changed much over time. They remain fairly consistent. However, it appears that the overall relevance for the .Diamonds TLD has gotten better: we’re seeing a better Average Position than what we did back in May 2014: an 18 percent increase! This could be because Google has ‘tweaked’ something in the back-end that makes .Diamonds domains more relevant because the keyword is in the domain name extension, but we can only speculate.
Globe Runner’s goal is to be totally transparent with the results our Search Engine Marketing research, so we have included all of the data, as well as our detailed analysis, in a white paper. Use the form below to download the latest results of our testing.
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