If you are involved in SEO, Social Media Marketing or any form of Internet (or traditional) Marketing whatsoever, you are probably always trying to calculate the Return on Investment for your efforts and expenses. In fact there are many sources out there like Computer World, Blog Tyrant, and Hubspot (just to name a few) that have attempted to do just that for Social Media and for the most part, they do a great job. This article however is simply going to talk about Twitter and what we have seen before, during and after 10,000 Tweets. Is it an actual ROI…you decide!
So how did we do that? 10,000 Tweets. Well it certainly did not happen overnight and it certainly was not consistent. We had good months on Twitter and bad months on Twitter. Just like anything else. Here is a small sampling of how we tweeted over the past 18 months:
So what kind of ROI (Return on Investment) have we had on our Twitter account? Great question. Here just a few stats:
46.63% of all Tweets were RT’s or @ Replies – Not as good as we would have liked…but hey, we’re still learning!
30 confirmed sales leads came in from Twitter – I don’t care who you…that’s GOOD !
At least 5 new business relationships that have benefited click-finders have been developed, nurtured and cultivated 100% on Twitter. – Again, I don’t care who you are…that’s GOOD !
Our home page has been RT’d over 7K times! – Gotta love the exposure on this stat!
One of our blog posts has been RT’d over 100K times! – Still wonderfully surprised and astounded by this stat! It was a guest post by our good friend and colleague Mr. Scott Kindred of Safehouseweb. See how #3 above works?
What else has Twitter done for us?
Added real value and measureable attributes to our Social Media presence and marketing strategy. Everyone knows by now (or least they should) that ALL of the major search engines are using social media signals (likes, +’s and yes…TWEETS) as ranking factors. If you are not active on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, you are most likely losing ground in the SERP’s. The Hubspot chart below shows a marketing score of 90 for our website, and look at what one of the ranking factors are…that’s right, our Twitter presence!
Twitter has also helped build our visibility in ways we NEVER thought were possible!
This mention on the Home Page of Socialstage is not only very much unexpected, it’s greatly appreciated. It’s one of the little hidden benefits of Twitter and other Social Media outlets. They did this mention without me even knowing about it, yet it was out of appreciation for my tweet regarding there Blog post. Hey, it was great content and we love to share great content!
A final word about this accomplishment, blog post and Twitter overall. We don’t do Twitter as well as could. We are still learning. The point of this post is show the average small business owner that anyone can positively impact their business with Twitter. It just takes a little elbow grease, a little ingenuity and creative thinking and you can make a difference to your business as well.
If you found this article helpful and you enjoyed it, please take a minute and share it through any of the social media share buttons located throughout the site. We love our social media friends and the shares we get and we certainly will return the favor when and where possible. You can also comment in the comments section below and regular commenters receive “Do-Follow” link status to help you with your SEO program!
As with most Google Algorithm updates, the flurry of the “SEO is dead” posts, articles, tweets and rants have begun on Twitter, Facebook and 1,000’s of Blogs all over the Internet. And as usual, they are dead wrong. Although the fact remains that SEO (search engine optimization) is an ever moving and fluid entity, it is for all intents and purposes alive and well. The latest Google Algorithm has indeed changed the landscape of SEO and honestly, maybe even more than any other single update in the history of Google. But that’s okay. Relax, take a deep breath and know that SEO is alive and well.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Over optimization happened. Google has touted for years, “Build good content and you WILL rank well on your own”. Guess what? That was not necessarily true. In late 2011 and early 2012, several key SEO industry executives took a look at a couple of websites, both of which were on the same topic and about the same domain age and size. One site ranked in the top three on Google and the other was on Page 5 for the same keyword. The problem is that the first website was about 20 pages deep and was NOT developing and promoting content on their website on a regular basis. The second site was in fact developing great content on a regular basis, promoting that content via social media and yet they still ranked on page 5. So the SEO execs drilled down a little deeper and did a link profile for both the sites. Guess what they found? That’s right; site #1 had a whole bunch of suspect links running back to their site. In other words, it was obvious that the site had been “over optimized” and the links coming to it were of low quality. This goes against everything that Google has promised webmasters for years.
Okay…so what happened next? We are not 100% sure, but the indication is that these high level SEO’s took this data directly to Google and showed them the results of the study. Regardless of how this happened, there is no doubt that it DID affect the last round of Algorithm updates. Sites that had a lot of backlinks but no content generation and promotion tools were dropped (in fact are still dropping) in the rankings. Sites that had good SEO links, a content generation method and good content marketing efforts did not suffer at all, in fact some climbed in the rankings.
HOW DO I MOVE FORWARD
Well if you have not picked up on it yet, you need to develop good quality content, and share it through social media and social bookmarking sites. That means blogging about your industry, products and services and your company. Next, you need to get the word out as far and long as you can for each and every post using social media. Social media is the best place to share this content because if you are developing great content others will share it with their friends. If you have good enough content it might even go “viral”, which is SEO gold! That combined with a good solid SEO program and good on-site SEO and you will find yourself ranking better in no time.
INFOGRAPHIC OF THE NEW SEO:
The New SEO
Note that the “sweet spot” to rank well is much smaller on the new way of ranking. Why is that? Because the formula to rank has added a much more complex ranking factor in addition to the other already complex ranking factors of social signals, on-page SEO and Link-Building. Now you have to do it all and do it all well in order to rank high in Google. Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds and we can help you!
If you found this article helpful and you enjoyed it, please take a minute and share it through any of the social media share buttons located throughout the site. We love our social media friends and the shares we get and we certainly will return the favor when and where possible. You can also comment in the comments section below and regular commenters receive “Do-Follow” link status to help you with your SEO program!
Not finding a mistake like this can really hurt...
I have wanted to write this article for quite some time. It just seems there’s not enough time in the day to get to all the little “want to do’s” lists that I have. However, I finally have a minute to sit down and bang this one out, so here it goes. It’s an important topic and one that is all too often overlooked by Internet Marketing professionals (both in-house marketers and agencies). It’s a serious problem that most often results in finger pointing once found. The in-house manager says the agency should have caught it and the agency will most likely state that the company reviewed and approved all keywords before launching a campaign. In the end, no matter how it happens, it’s still a BIG, expensive problem in some cases and one of my biggest pet peeves in the search engine marketing world. The truth is, they both (in-house management and professional SEO Services agency), have an obligation to prevent things like this from happening, even more so if it’s done entirely in-house! The issue is having Paid results come back for the same term that already ranks #1 organically, when results come back like this:
Note the results. The search term was “Zappos”. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a whole lot of respect for Tony Hsieh and his team over there at Zappos. They have truly built a wonderful thing with an innovative, unique and truly effective customer service business model. But to be honest, with all the brain power over there how was this missed? Look at the results again. The search term “Zappos” returned the “Top Organic” result and then the “Paid Search Box” also shows Zappos. Call me silly, but I’ll bet you anything this oversight is costing Zappos a pretty penny every month on their Google Adwords account. In fact, let’s look at a quick analysis from SPYFU.com on the term search term “Zappos”. SPYFU is a well-known and search industry recognized resource for internet marketers for SEO and Paid Search marketing data. Note the estimated daily clicks and cost for this term:
Now if we are to believe these numbers, and trust me when I say they can be deadly accurate, then the total monthly cost for this little over sight could be costing Zappos as much as $99,300.00 each month! Maybe Zappos can afford that considering annual revenues at just over a billion dollars at this point and further, some might say that having the top two spots on Google (i.e. more page one real estate) is worth the cost. Some people would also argue that certain users will ONLY click on paid search results for various reasons (trust, ignorance of the search results page, etc.). All of these might be viable arguments for a smaller company, but how many people that actually search for the term “Zappos” are not going to click on the top organic result just because a paid result is not shown? I’m guessing very little, if any, loss in traffic if this one term was dropped from the PPC campaign, yet the monies saved by this simple move could then be spent on other more effective terms that don’t show up as the first organic result and yield even more buying visitors to the site. I hope at some point, internet marketers wake up and realize that top paid and organic search results are not needed at the same time for MOST instances.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article please share it with any of the multiple social media share widgets on this blog (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking). Also, please feel free to comment below. I openly welcome any and all feedback, especially from other internet professionals!
Click-finders.com is a full service internet marketing company that offers a full range of services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Adword Campaigns, Social Media Marketing, Web Development and more! Contact us today for a FREE no obligation SEO Analysis of your website and find out today, what it’s going to take to rank high in the search engines!
You may or may not have seen an email, webpage, blog article or other news media source that Google itself is pushing out. The crux of the message is ”Virginia, Get Your Business Online!”. The message is a pretty simple one, Google wants all small businesses to get online and publish a website. According to Google it’s an easy, practical and FREE way to promote your business. Google has gone so far as to come into Virginia communities with a small team of Google representatives and met with business owners to give out this free advice. They even point you to ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) that Host a website for one year for FREE and provide free website templates that can have even the most non-tech savvy person configure and launch a website within a couple of minutes and start to be found by the throngs of searches that are looking for the small business product or service you provide. Everything they say is 100% true. Of course, truth can be a relative term.
What do I mean by that? I’m glad you asked. You see, Google has a vested interest in having every small business create and then maintain an online presence via a website. Have they spoke the truth though? Is it possible to put up a live, fully functional website within a few minutes for FREE? Yes, it absolutely is. So if it’s true, then what’s the problem with this scenario? Well from a distance nothing. Google has stated the unequivocal truth and they will undoubtedly stand behind their message with a “we just want to help small business harness the power of the internet” statement. If that’s true, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, as an internet professional who earns a living evaluating, fixing and promoting websites, I have some pretty serious concerns with this kind of message. There is no way a “non-tech savvy” business owner with zero internet marketing experience is going to be able to launch a website within an hour that is even remotely visible to the search engines, not to mention actually promote it.
“Google could be starting the next great thing by helping every small business get an inexpensive website, or they could be setting themselves up for a never ending stream of paid search dollars.”
So what is Google’s motivation for this push? Is it to share knowledge and promote the internet market place? You see, in order to answer that question, you have to understand exactly how Google earns its revenue. It does so by selling advertising and paid search results (the top three highlighted links returned on nearly every search). That’s right. If you want to be on TOP of Google, all you have to do is set up and Adwords account and be willing to pay XX amount of dollars per click that they get you on their ad and BOOM, you get your website listed at the TOP of Google.
Don’t get me wrong, paid search advertising has its place in this world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. However, I will take issue with Google (or anyone) who proclaims that any small business owner can get on line for little very little cost and then be at the top of the search engine results pages without an investment of some sort. In order to be at the top you must be willing to invest in one of the following:
#1 You Invest Your Time – Self education in internet and organic search engine marketing. Expect to spend about 3-6 months just learning what to do and how to do it the correct way. Once educated, then you can start marketing your site and you can expect to spend anywhere from 3 to 24 months on that full time effort, depending entirely on the competitiveness and difficulty of the keywords you are trying to rank for.
#2 Invest in Organic Search Engine Marketing – You can hire an SEO Services Company and you can invest in an SEO Services Package that will market your company and help you gain the trust and authority you need to rank well in the search engine results pages. This assures you actually get results, that you get those results in a timely manner and that you get them in an ethical and search engine friendly manner (very important, lest you be banned from the search engines altogether for doing it wrong). All this of course, is based on you hiring the right SEO agency to promote your site. The benefits of a properly optimized and promoted website can have lasting affects with minimal cost to maintain the rankings once you’re at the top of the search engines.
#3 Invest in Paid Search Results Advertising – Quite simply you just need to open a Google Adwords account (or Yahoo/Bing account), register your site,, give them your credit card, spending limits (daily, weekly or monthly), select and bid on your keywords, select your target market segments and then write your ads and publish them. If you have done everything correctly, you can have traffic at your site within a few hours. How much traffic and how much revenue can you get this way? That depends on your keywords, your bids and how good your website is.
So although it’s true, that Google can help you get online within minutes, the likelihood it will change your business that quickly is pretty slim. Just like anything else worth something in this world, if you want quality traffic that is going to affect your business, you will have to spend an investment (in time or money) marketing it. The question about the quality of the site, the quality of the traffic and how you market your site, is up to you.
We would love to hear what the professional web design and internet marketing community think of this Google initiative also. So if you are an internet professional, please feel free to chime below in the comments section. Also, if you are a small business owner and found your way here, please feel free to chime in your opinion as well. We would love to hear what you think.
click-finders is a full service Internet Marketing firm that offers Affordable SEO Services, PPC Management, Social Media Management, Web Design and Development, Reputation Management and more. Contact us today for a FREE, no obligation SEO analysis of your website and find out how we can help get to the top and stay at the top of Google!
If you are involved in SEO, Social Media Marketing or any form of Internet (or traditional) Marketing whatsoever, you are probably always trying to calculate the Return on Investment for your efforts and expenses. In fact there are many sources out there like Computer World, Blog Tyrant, and Hubspot (just to name a few) that have attempted to do just that for Social Media and for the most part, they do a great job. This article however is simply going to talk about Twitter and what we have seen before, during and after 10,000 Tweets. Is it an actual ROI…you decide!
