How does SEO work?

If you have ever found yourself wondering how seo works and why you should be using it, you are not alone. SEO is one of the most misunderstood forms of marketing in used today. This video does a nice job of explaining what seo is and how it can help your business. You can learn even more about seo and marketing over at http://stellarseo.com

3 Local SEO Marketing Mistakes You're Making

Local SEO marketing is a great way for you to connect with local customers who are looking to purchase a product or service. As a matter of fact, local search accounts for up to 90% of all searches conducted on Google, meaning you will most certainly want to have a presence in local search results.Avoiding the following common mistakes can help you to better capitalize on search traffic.

1. Not listing your business in key local directories
 Major directories such as Yelp are a great way to start building local citations to your website, but it is not the only place you should list your business. A quick search will turn up hundreds of local directories, one of the best being your local chamber of commerce. Aside from directories specific to only your town, you need to add your business to the top large local directories. You can visit https://getlisted.org/ to see how you are currently listed and it will also show you were you are not listed. This is a free tool from Moz and I suggest you start by using it to find and correct listings.

2. Not providing accurate NAP (name, address, phone,) 
Your name, address, and phone number are very important in determining where you are located. Include these items on each page of your website. You should also try to use the exact same data every time you make a local listing for your site. Ensuring consistent NAP data will help you avoid duplicate listings and it will make the listings you have more powerful. It will also ensure customers who stumble across your listing on directories can contact your business, the real end goal of any marketing.

3. Focusing on Google + Local Listings Only
Some people believe that making a Google + Local page is the only way to rank locally or the only step you need to take. This is not the case.  A local listing is only one of 100+ factors that effect how you will rank in local results. I do suggest creating a G+ page but use it as part of your overall local strategy, not the end all, be all of local marketing.

By avoiding the 3 very common and simple mistakes above you will be able to capture more of the 90% of local searchers online each day. Remember to be consistent with your data and to spread the word about your business to the local community, you may end up with some amazing links from local news sites in doing so.

Good luck and happy optimizing!

15 Ways to Improve Your PPC Campaign Today

Success does not always come very easily in the business field, the competition getting stronger and stronger as a result of an increasing number of complex marketing techniques being constantly perfected. Most online marketing campaigns today are built around the PPC advertising  or local seo techniques despite their sometimes expensive and time-consuming nature, so here are a few hints on improving the performance of such a campaign.

1.  Choose to sell the right products or services – A businessman’s success is partly determined by their reinvestment skills and their ability to differentiate between the products and services that sell and those that do not.

2. Target the advertisements – The idea behind ad targeting is to identify those categories of customers interested in certain products and services rather than to increase the click-through rates as is the case with optimization.  

3. Set goals and understand the business – The knowledge about potential customers should be complemented by knowledge about competitors, business partners and their operation mode. However, this knowledge is useless unless goals are set according to the type of PPC campaign run.

4. Always scale up – A small PPC campaign is the best way to start off because it gives the advertiser the opportunity to test various brands, keywords and metrics so that they can identify the best performing ones and focus their bidding on them.

5. Maximize the CPA target – The CPA target is the amount of money an advertiser can afford to spend on a conversion. This target should always be set in relation to the overall budget in order for the profit to be maximized.

6. Structure the AdWords account properly – Structure is equivalent to easy monitoring and management. A PPC campaign should never target more than one product and neither should an ad group, the maximum number of ads an ad group should contain being four.

7. Check the Google Quality Score regularly – This score is an indicator of the overall ranking of the AdWords account as well as an indicator of the potential position of the advertisements on the search page.

8. Timing is important – Only the intervals associated with the highest conversion rates count in PPC so there is no point in wasting time and effort on supporting ads that do not lead to an increase in the sales numbers.

9. Track the conversions – Conversion tracking gives the advertiser a long-term perspective over their business by revealing the average conversion rates and sales as well as the potential of keyword bids.

10. Optimize the campaign settings – These settings, which include locations, devices or ad scheduling among others, must be made in accordance with the goals set toward the beginning of the campaign in order for the budget to be kept afloat.

11. Switch from CPC bidding to CPA bidding if possible – CPC bidding may be the default solution offered by Google, but it is only recommended for businesses which hit less than fifteen conversions a month. Should this threshold be exceeded, then CPA bidding is the better option.

12. Track negative keywords – Social media monitoring services serve for identifying the irrelevant keywords associated with brands and top keywords, thus enabling the advertiser to block them.

13. Automate the monitoring – Manual monitoring is highly demanding both financially and physically, which is why automatic alert systems and rules are recommended with a PPC advertising campaign.

14. Use keyword generators, but not excessively – Keyword generators such as Google AdWords Keyword Tools or Market Samurai are a good start off point in PPC advertising. However, the campaign can only benefit from a limited use of these tools as they cannot anticipate all the moves of human searchers.

15. Optimize the landing pages and ad copies – Tools like MANOVA and A/B tests or Website Optimizer can provide significant insight into the changes that need to be made in terms of ad copies and their supporting landing pages for the performance of a PPC campaign to improve.