Google Page Experience Update is Coming in May

We’re sure you’ve heard about Google’s announcement this summer. Yes, they’ve made another one. In brief, they said that they’re going to update their algorithm in 2021 to include a factor called Page Experience. This is going to be an important element that has an impact on rankings.

As part of this initiative, they’ve launched Web Vitals – a series of benchmarks essential to measuring and enhancing the user experience on the web.

Hold on. What is Page Experience, anyway? And do you really need to add to your overflowing to-do list? Let’s take a closer look.

The page experience in a nutshell

This includes existing Google Search signals: mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

It also includes metrics in Google’s Web Vitals. Currently, the focus is on three facets: loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

  1. Loading, in this context, measures perceived load speed. That’s the point in the page load timeline when the main content is likely to have loaded.
  2. Interactivity is the time from when a user first interacts with a page – a click or a tap, for example — to the time when the browser begins processing that interaction.
  3. Visual stability has to do with preventing annoying and unexpected movement of page content.

Visual indicators of page experience

Google has also stated that by next year, they will introduce a visual indicator to designate those search results that meet all of their page experience specifications.

They’ve done something like this in the past, too. You must have observed, for example, AMP icons as well as slow and mobile-friendly labels.

If this indicator is displayed prominently in search results, there are good chances that users will prefer these sites over others.

While Google is yet to announce the shape, size, and position of such indicators, it’s a mark of how seriously they’re taking their forthcoming page experience guidelines.

This means that all of us should start planning from now itself.

Hold on. Page experience isn’t everything.

Now, you may have read this far and decided that the most important thing is to fix all of the above parameters. And you’ll see your traffic zoom.

That won’t necessarily be the case. (Although we hope it is!) You see, content is still king. Everything starts with that.

However, you can rest assured that when there are many pages that are similar in relevance, your improved page experience will make all the difference in search results.

Why you should pay attention to this algorithm update 

The fact remains that the new page experience metrics should be taken seriously by developers and all those involved in optimization strategies to improve search rankings.

To begin with, if your user experience is seen as being in the top bracket, visual cues will guide consumers and browsers to your page over the others.

Google itself is pretty clear about the increased weightage they’re going to give to page experience. After all, a terrific page experience lets people get more done and increases engagement.

It seems evident that those pages which fall below the new benchmarks are going to be left behind in the rankings. This means a significant drop in traffic.

Google already considers hundreds of aspects to determine rankings. The inclusion of page experience lets them guide people, so they can access information more easily and enjoyably.

For site owners and others, understanding these signals and making the necessary changes should be a priority.

Otherwise, you run the risk of your page being ignored. You wouldn’t want that now, would you?

Top 10 Reasons You Should Be Using Business Call Tracking

call tracking

For any business to succeed, you need a great website — and great tools to gauge its success. They are many tools you can use; however, measuring online traffic and data is only one small part of the bigger picture. Call tracking is the most important tool you can use to get a full understanding of your online or offline marketing efforts. Below, you’ll find the top reasons why your business needs call tracking and why tracking incoming calls can help you optimize your business to get the most out of your marketing. Call tracking can help you gather and analyze customer data to increase and improve sales.

#1 Attribute phone calls to digital marketing efforts

Without call tracking, you can’t accurately measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. Sure, with Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and Analytics, you can measure online conversions and goal completions. But what if someone decides to call you instead of filling out an online form? With call tracking, phone calls will no longer be lost in translation. By tracking phone calls as conversions, you’ll be able to get a full picture of your online success.

#2 Dynamic number insertion

Dynamic number insertion is the bread and butter of online call tracking. This feature automatically assigns specific phone numbers to visitors based on their source, allowing you to accurately attribute where your calls are coming from. Even when your visitor leaves your website and comes back at a later date, they’ll continue to see that same phone number. Whether it’s a PPC ad or an organic search, you’ll always know which sources are driving phone calls.

#3 Improve customer service with call recording

Call recording allows you to gather valuable feedback about your callers and employees. For one, recording conversations enables you to better qualify leads and spend more time with the ones who are more likely to convert to sales. Secondly, recording phone calls allows you to listen in on conversations between callers and your customer service or sales team to provide tailored feedback to your employees. With call recording, you will know exactly what happens when customers call your business and you can use this information to better optimize training, marketing campaigns, the customer experience, and more.

Another bonus of call recording? You can use customer feedback to create content for your website.

#4 Measure the success of online and offline
campaigns

Web analytics makes it easy to see how your online efforts are paying off. But how do you accurately measure your offline efforts? With call tracking, you’ll have a reliable way to track your offline marketing campaigns thanks to campaign level call tracking. You can place tracking numbers in commercials, billboards, flyers and other traditional advertising outlets to accurately track the success of your efforts. By measuring this data alongside your online marketing data, you’ll have a better idea of which campaigns are yielding the greatest ROI for your business.

#5 Determine which keywords are driving calls

Call tracking enhances the power of your paid online efforts by giving you insight into which keywords are driving calls and conversions. With visitor level call tracking, Call tracking will assign a unique phone number from your number pool to each individual visitor, allowing the system to know who is calling you and how they found you online. After each visitor is done browsing your website, their phone number is freed up for another person to use. This feature allows you to effectively track your PPC visitors and which keywords they use to discover your business.

When a visitor decides to call your business, their data is fed into Google Analytics and Ads, allowing you to track phone calls as conversions. Pair this with other data you gather from Google Ads and Analytics and you’ll have a full understanding of which keywords are the most advantageous for your business.

#6 Multichannel attribution

The ability to track your customer’s entire journey is revolutionary, to say the least. With multi-channel attribution, you can see every touchpoint that leads to a phone call, allowing you to gain a better understanding of your customer.

Before multi-channel attribution, you could only see the first source a visitor used to get to your website. But now, you have the ability to gain a better understanding of your customers’ online behavior, allowing you to better attribute credits to the right marketing channels optimize your marketing campaigns in the future.

#7 Call management

An intuitive yet powerful dashboard allows you to manage calls like never before. Some key features include:

  • Call scheduling: Schedule calls to be forwarded to your cell phone or another employee during designated hours.
  • Custom interactive menus: Create your own menus for callers to help them reach the right person quickly.
  • Keypad Scoring: Using the keypad of your phone, you can score any call as a good lead and add tags to the call to immediately categorize it and view how they became a caller.
  • Select a user to receive calls from a designated tracking number to take ownership of calls.
    Building custom call flows ensures each call is answered by the right person every single time.

#8 Tie data together seamlessly with hundreds of integrations

Integrating phone call data with your sales, marketing and analytics programs of choice is possible thanks to call tracking. With more than 300 integrations available, data about your phone calls can feed right into programs such as Google Analytics and Ads, Salesforce, HubSpot and more for powerful customer insights and seamless reporting. No more having to jump back and forth with different logins and passwords — all of your data will be right in front of you on your existing accounts.

#9 Get real-time data with advanced reporting

CallRail’s call tracking platform allows you to see calls in real time to take your reporting to the next level. As soon as the phone starts ringing, you’ll be able to see which source drove the call, as well as in-depth information about your caller, including but not limited to:

  • Call and text history
  • Web activity, including previous email correspondence
  • Previous call recordings
  • Detailed caller ID information
  • It’s easy to sort and analyze your reports by source and keyword to get a better analysis of your data. When you’re ready to share your data, you can easily export your reports as CSV files.

#10 Outbound call tracking

Inbound call tracking is great, but outbound call tracking is just as valuable. This useful feature allows you use to one of your tracking numbers to place calls to customers, enabling you to track and record outbound calls. With outbound call tracking, you’ll be able to see which sales team members are following up on phone leads and quickly follow up on missed calls for a faster lead response time.

Businesses that should invest in call tracking

Phone calls are a critical part of the customer journey and a key component in gaining any business new customers. If your business falls into any industry below, consider what call tracking could do your growth.

  • Digital marketing agencies
  • Multi-locational businesses
  • Home services
  • B2B/SaaS
  • Legal
  • Healthcare
  • Automotive
  • Financial
  • Real Estate
  • Education

Call tracking’s powerful features allow businesses to truly get to know their customers and understand their behavior. From small business owners to large corporations, call tracking can help you dig deeper into you customer insights to measure and improve your business’ success.

If you need help with your Orange County website design or Orange County Search Engine Optimization, call us and we can help. 

9 Signs You Need a Website Redesign In 2019

is it time for a website redesign?

Many businesses have trouble determining when it is time for a few changes and when it is time for a complete overhaul.

Here are some things to consider.

  • Is your website visually appealing?
  • Does your website perform for you?
  • Is your website built on the correct platform?
  • Is your website technically sound?
  • Is your website user friendly?
  • Is your website compatible with the latest technologies?

If your site has outdated content, you will never achieve the rankings you may be looking for.

A new website is well worth the time, effort and investment when you see how you can make your website can work for your business!

IF YOUR SITE LOOKS DATED, IT’S TIME FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN

We hate to break it to you, but when it comes to websites looks are everything!

We have all seen those boring, bland, non-scrollable sites filled with never-ending text that is easy to forget. By creating a visually appealing website you are inviting customers to visit your site time and time again.

Generally, your website should have the following criteria:

  • Good visual design – Visually pleasing is what we aim for
  • Relevant content – Relevant content should always be catered to your customer. Be sure to tell your viewers, clearly, what you are selling and what separates you from your competition.
  • Easy navigation – You should have clear and easy navigation. Users should never have to hunt for relevant pages.
  • A call-to-action – Many users depend upon the call-to-action at the end of the page to take the next step. Call-to-action buttons make it easy for customers to do what you want them to do which is good for them and good for your business!

IF YOUR SITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Mobile first marketing has been the norm for years. To market your business successfully it is a MUST for your website to be mobile friendly.

Why you ask? Because users spend on average 69% of their time on a mobile device. As a business, you need to be able to reach your audience where they naturally spend most of their time.

Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. Not only are you losing business, you’re handing it over to a competitor!

IF YOUR WEBSITE SPEED IS SLOW, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Nothing kills a user’s experience faster than a slow load time. If you operate an e-commerce store on your website, it worsens that load time and usually users don’t stick around long enough to even have an experience. In fact, 79% of online shoppers who have had trouble with a website’s performance admit they would not return to the site to purchase again.

YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR BOUNCE RATE IS HIGH

Your websites bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who visit your website but leave without visiting any other pages. For example, if you have a bounce rate of 75%, that means 75% of visitors are leaving after landing on just one page.

IF YOUR INDUSTRY HAS EVOLVED, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Industries are constantly evolving, make sure your website reflects that change.

IT IS TIME FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOU CANNOT EASILY UPDATE YOUR CONTENT

Consistent and relevant content is one of the surest ways to rank higher on Google and keep the traffic heading to your website. If you are not able to keep your updates consistent you will fall behind your competitors.

Because SEO (search engine optimization) is constantly changing, it is important to be able to easily get in and tweak, add to and optimize pages as necessary.

One of the best ways to make sure you can easily update all content is through a content management system (CMS). Many popular website platforms like WordPress and Drupal double as a CMS. If you do not have one in place, it’s time to consider a platform that will support your content needs.

YOUR WEBSITE STILL USES FLASH

In the late 90’s, Flash was the “it” platform for stunning websites.

In 2010, Steve Jobs banished flash from iPhone, and it was all downhill from there.

These days, using Flash is an SEO sin, and most modern browsers no longer support it. Because of that, it can cause websites to load extremely slow, and due to lack of support often times the flash doesn’t work at all.

YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR CONVERSION RATES ARE LOW

One of the biggest signs a website does not perform well is the absence of; or low conversions.

There can be many reasons for low conversions, not all of them mean a full redesign is necessary. However, similar to bounce rate, we often find the cause of low conversion rate stems from negative user experience.

YOUR NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR WEBSITE IS INCONSISTENT

By consistent, I am talking about consistency in design. It is very important to make sure the tone and voice of your businesses brand is consistent. If your website does not match your brand such as an inconsistent color or logo, it could be enough to throw viewers off and confuse them on what your brand actually is. The look, feel, and function should remain the same across all pages of your site.

Don’t worry, we can help

If your businesses website can relate to any of the above, it’s time for an upgrade and we can help! We offer full website redesign and marketing services to help increase your sales and help drive customers to your business! Contact us today!

Fill out the below form or call (714) 332-0015 for a free consultation and marketing review.

How to Calculate Social Media ROI

Social media ROI

In the year 2019, you’ve probably heard all the hype about social media marketing and how it can benefit you as a business owner. However, one of the drawbacks about social media is that calculating ROI can be an elusive task. In this article, you’re going to explore social media marketing return on investment. you’re going to take a look at the challenges of calculating ROI, before taking a look at the native analytics offered by the big four (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram). The main takeaway: take it back to basics, and focus on the measurements that matter.

In conclusion, you’ll be looking at some calculations and realizing the financial and non-financial benefits of social media. 

Why Social Media?

There are many benefits to social media marketing, some nonfinancial. Firstly, social media is excellent for generating and maintaining brand awareness. This can be achieved organically and through paid use of social media. Customer insight is the social media benefit that is most fascinating. The platforms provide an amazing insight into what your audience is thinking, feeling, and doing, and you can really harness this for the benefit of growing our business. Market intelligence takes customer insight a step further.

Social media allows you to observe what’s going on inside your industry and amongst your competitors. The most measurable benefit is lead generation, customer acquisition, and retention. You may not always be able to totally attribute social media to this, but it’s a huge benefit. By knowing what journey our customers take on their path to purchase, we can track our performance and use of social media. Finally, unlike any other marketing channel, social media provides real-time conversation, the ability to talk to your customers, your colleagues, and your peers in real-time.

There’s so much value to be had, and that’s what social media is all about.

Social Media and Business Strategy

A social media marketing strategy needs to be able to tie into your overall business strategy. In order to make the most of social media as a business owner, you need to understand the big picture to know where your heading with your tactics. When you understand the big picture, you’ll know which social media platforms will be most appropriate for your business needs, and you’ll also know what you’re aiming to achieve for that individual social media posts.

It’s not just about the words, images, and videos you post online. It’s about the impact the content has on your audience, and it’s about the impact it has on your business sales. You also need to know what you’re spending on your business and marketing activity. Put all of those numbers together, and that’s the return on investment, a measurement that really does matter.

Setting S.M.A.R.T. Objectives

You may remember this from school but you’re going to be talking about setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives. S.M.A.R.T. is a simple acronym used to set good solid objectives. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Related. Objectives provide you with the ability to track and measure success, which is what this course is all about. Objectives translate the business strategy into plans and actions. To sell more widgets is not a smart objective. To sell 10% more widgets in the next six months by running an advertising campaign on Facebook, now that’s smart!

Defining ROI

Before you look at the details of social media marketing ROI, let’s take a brief look at what you mean by return on investment. It’s the value that an organization receives from investing in a project or a piece of marketing activity. ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment, and it’s also a measure of the profit earned from each investment. They give us insight and will tell us what actions you may need to take.

Calculating Social Media Marketing ROI 

You can calculate social media marketing ROI if you have set goals in line with your business strategy. If you’re using the right social media platform, that means the right platform for your target audience, and business strategy, and achieving your objectives. And you can measure what matters, that is against those objectives, that is about achieving that business strategy. So, let’s have a look at the calculation. To calculate social media ROI, you’d need to know the revenue from social media and the cost of your social media activity.

you subtract the cost from the revenue and then divide by the cost. At its simplest, a social media ROI calculation could be completed using Google Analytics and sales data. For example, 1,000 clicks from 10 social media campaign posts on Twitter, of those 1,000 clicks, 500 converted to a lead by filling in a form on a landing page. Of those 500 leads, 100 ended up making a purchase. This means that your traffic to lead conversion ratio is 50%, and your lead to sale conversion ratio is 20%.

you know each purchase generates 100 dollars of revenue and 500 dollars of resources was allocated to the 10 campaign posts. The campaign generated 10,000 dollars of revenue, and so the ROI is 19 to one. For every one dollar spent, 19 dollars of profit was generated.

We hope you found that helpful and hope to grow with you soon on your social media strategy!

Email Marketing Basics [+5 Easy Steps to Get Started]

email marketing

As a business owner, you have probably heard of email marketing as a viable way to increase revenue and even gain new customers. But what is email marketing actually?

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is essentially sending promotional materials and messages via email to a list of leads. Some of the more common uses include offering coupons or special offers to customers for a limited time, create relationships with potential customers and updating subscribers to the products or services you provide.  

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing and over the years has proven to be a lucrative way of growing your business and brand. Since emails are paperless, email blasts are flexible and inexpensive compared to letters, mailers, and flyers. Along with local SEO, email marketing is one of the many forms of digital marketing to grow a profitable business.

At this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “I typically never open marketing emails, isn’t that outdated?” Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is more effective than ever before. 95% of retailers say email marketing is one of the most effective means of customer acquisition methods out there!

 

Why do Email Marketing?

Consider some of the following information to prove how effective email marketing can be:

  • 94% of consumers check their email every day.
  • 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI
  • Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue.

As you can see, crafting email campaigns to reach out to your customers can be a profitable way of growing your business.

Benefits of Email Marketing

So what are the actual benefits of email marketing as opposed to other forms of marketing? When you take in to account the actual number of people who are on their email every day, email marketing can allow you to reach a wider audience than social media or other traditional advertising channels. Not to say that there are no advantages to utilizing other marketing methods, but there is more than enough evidence to prove that email marketing is a must among the different platforms.

One of the best benefits to initiating email campaigns is that it is unbelievably easy to track your ROI. Especially with the rise of email marketing software, it has become easier and more effective to track and analyze revenue than ever before!

With email marketing, your ROI tends to be high because your messages are already in front of people who have voluntarily given you their email address. You may already be spending money on ad platforms like Google and Facebook, so the relative cost of delivering promotional content to your customers makes email marketing one of the cheapest forms of advertising available.

Another stark difference between email blasts and advertising is that most of the people signed up for emails typically want to see promotions and updates for your business which usually converts to more sales.

Email Marketing Guidelines and Ethics

No one likes spam. Spamming and other forms of email abuse can not only prove to be ineffective but also negatively impact your company’s reputation. On top that there are laws in place that make it easy for email providers to spot and filter spam. There are also options for the recipient to unsubscribe if they feel they are being spammed. Keep these factors in mind when you are writing subject lines or considering increasing the frequency of your emails. By not adhering to these guidelines, you may actually lose subscribers which is not something you want.

Getting started with Email Marketing

Now that you equipped with the basics of email marketing it is time to get started! Here are the 5 steps to implementing an effective email strategy.

  • Define your audience

You need to tailor your emails to your buyers’ needs. Take the time to understand their wants and desires. You can also create subgroups within your email list to send more specific types of content to the customer who will get the most value from it.

  • Establish your goals

Gather information and context for your industry by doing a little research on typical email marketing success and then create the appropriate benchmarks.

  • Make it easy to sign up

Building an email list takes time and you are going to need a few processes for acquiring new subscribers. By treating every new lead like gold you are going to grow your list organically, with people racing to signup for your newsletters and promotions.

  • Choose a campaign type

As discussed before, there are different types of email campaigns that serve unique purposes to achieve the desired objective. By creating sublists you can begin to identify which emails are best for which audience.  

  • Make a schedule

Make a schedule for consistency, for this cultivates trust with your audience and doesn’t allow them to forget you!

You’re All Set!

Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals of email marketing you are ready to reap the rewards of the most affordable means of marketing to your customers. One of the only potential cons to email marketing is the time it takes to craft effective email campaigns. You may have to hire someone or take the time out of your schedule to do so yourself. As a business owner, you may want to consider hiring a digital marketing agency to take care of all your email marketing campaigns.

Sources

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-guide

https://blog.aweber.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-101-6-ways-it-can-boost-your-business.htm

https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/what-is-email-marketing/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats