Whether you’re looking for the best search engine for research or simply checking the weather forecast in your area, it’s a widely held belief that there are few (if any) search engines better than Google.
From the first time it appeared to the public, Google has had its grip on internet users worldwide. After reading this blog, you’ll understand why Google is the best search engine as well as how your business can leverage its many benefits.
When Did Google Come Out?
In 1996, two graduate students attending Stanford University wondered if there was a new (and better) way to search the World Wide Web. Together, they decided the answer was yes.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page would go on to invent one of the most popular search engines in the world. Working out of their dorm room, they created “Backrub”, a project that used backlinks to determine the importance of individual pages on the internet.
By the time 1998 came around, Brin and Page founded Google. The name change was meant to play off the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. They believed this name reflected their mission of organizing the world’s information in a way that was accessible and useful to everyone, everywhere.
What began as a small online search firm would turn into a search engine with more than 50 internet services and products that can be used by businesses, developers, and anyone else looking for information.
Why is Google so Popular?
“Google it”.
It’s a familiar phrase to hear someone say or even think to yourself. For years, Google has been the go-to search engine for internet users across the globe.
While other search engines have continued to grow and become more efficient in many ways, Google remains the majority’s choice. As simple as it is to tell someone to “Google it”, the process behind the scenes is far more complex.
Search Engine Algorithms
One of Google’s central claims to fame can be attributed to its search engine algorithm. These algorithms make the user’s experience a top priority.
Search engines collect formulas that will help them determine the quality and relevance of a particular ad or web page. A large result of Google’s popularity came from their creation of complex algorithms which improve an individual’s search process.
Google has reported that its algorithm changes hundreds of times a year, making its results more timely and accurate than any other search engine. In addition, Google uses more than 200 ranking factors when determining which results to show to a viewer and in what order.
The precision of a search engine algorithm works to ensure that users are getting the information that they need immediately, rather than having to scroll through pages of search results.
Search Engine Features
Another substantial reason why Google is the best search engine is its various features. Search engine features are the additional elements an individual will see on the result page.
Search engine features don’t only make the user’s experience better, they can also be beneficial to the business or website. In order for businesses to get their site content to appear in search results, they should follow a few key practices:
Also known as SERP features, Google offers an assortment of characteristics that provide the user with a more efficient and comprehensive search experience.
Search Engine Trends
When weighing search engine pros and cons, it’s important to mention Google Trends. These trends are search terms that are popular on Google. Businesses can benefit from search engine trends for a variety of reasons, including:
Businesses can research popular topics and see how they are currently or will be trending in the future. This allows them the opportunity to create content that will drive traffic to their site.
Businesses are able to watch the pattern of trends which gives them the advantage of knowing when to expect certain volume drops.
Businesses can also use trend patterns to anticipate and leverage a surge in specific search activities.
Google offers both basic and advanced trends, which vary depending on the precision of the data and analytics shown.
Closing Thoughts: Why Google is the Best Search Engine
While Google has successfully mastered many unique characteristics to make its search engine the most popular, it hasn’t forgotten about the basics.
At the end of the day, a reliable and efficient search engine has 3 things:
Significance. Google is known to crawl more web pages than any other competitor, leading them to gather a more relevant set of results. Its search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size.
Simplicity. Throughout the years, Google has kept a single-minded focus on its goals: search and the user experience. Through building A/B testing frameworks to investing in data center technology, Google has managed to keep its site clear, concise, and convenient.
Interested in improving your site’s rank in Google SERPs? Our SEO specialists know everything when it comes to optimizing websites.
This blog was originally published on June 15, 2020, and updated on July 18, 2023.
The big countdown to GA4 is finally coming to a close, and it brings a lot of changes, which include user engagement metrics. We’ve outlined the 8 key GA4 differences you can expect, but now we’ll explore how to use the engagement metrics in Google Analytics 4 to your advantage.
Once you become familiar with user engagement in Google Analytics 4, you’ll be able to use these metrics to better define your marketing strategies and ultimately gain an extensive understanding of your audience.
What User Engagement Metrics Should You Track?
There are a lot of metrics for you in GA4, and trying to track all of them would be very overwhelming. On the other hand, if you’re not tracking the right ones, you might become more confused about what’s successful for your company and what needs work.
As you consider what metrics to track, you should align this with the purpose of your website and your company’s marketing goals. For example, if you’re looking to sell your products or services online, your KPIs are going to look slightly different than a company looking to provide thought leadership to its audience.
Below, we’ll outline some of the most influential user engagement metrics you can track to know the effect of your marketing strategies.
In appropriate sections, we’ll highlight an industry average or target range. This may vary depending on what type of industry you’re in, so you can always use Google’s benchmarking tool to find specific averages on user engagement.
Users
There are three different types of users that you should be aware of in Google Analytics 4. Each is similar but tells you a slightly different story about what your audience is doing on your website.
New Users. In Universal Analytics, each device counted as a new user. However, GA4 will use cross-device tracking to recognize the same user on different devices.
Total Users. Similar to what you’ve seen before, total users let you know the number of users that had an event on your website during a specific period of time.
Active Users. Active users are a new metric you can track within Google Analytics 4. These are engaged users, or someone who stayed on the page for longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event or visited more than 2 pages on your website. Ideally, a good benchmark for active users is 60% – 70% of your total users.
*Note that in Google Analytics 4, active users will be labeled as just “users”.
Why is this metric important for understanding user engagement? Increasing new users is a really great indicator that your brand awareness is growing. If you want to take this a step further, you can also see how many of these users are engaging with your website, viewing multiple pages, and spending more time on your site.
If you’re noticing that you have a lot of new users but not as many active users, it may be because your site needs some UX improvements so visitors are given a great first impression of your website.
Engaged Sessions
The engaged session metric will also be something new with Google Analytics 4. Just like with an active user, an engaged session is when someone spends more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than 2 pages, or completed a conversion.
An additional, new metric in Google Analytics 4 is engaged sessions per user. This number can be found by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the number of total users. So, if you have 683 engaged sessions and 1,100 total users, your engaged sessions per user is 0.62, or 62%.
Why is this metric important? What we provided above highlights your entire website’s engagement. But you can also narrow this down to specific pages. By finding specific pages that have higher engaged sessions, you can continue to promote that product/service/insight on multiple platforms.
On the other hand, you can find pages that aren’t performing as well and have lower engaged sessions. This could be a great indication to rework those pages, rewrite the blog, or to better promote the page across different mediums, like social media and email blasts.
Bounce Rate
Since engaged sessions are now an engagement metric in Google Analytics 4, you can use it to get a better idea of what your bounce rate percentage is. Simply inverse the percentage of engaged sessions to get your bounce rate.
This bounce rate will tell you how many users stayed less than 10 seconds on your site. So, continuing with the example above, if the engagement rate is 62% that means that 38% of total users went to your site and then immediately left.
Average Engagement Time
This is an important metric to show you how long your active users are spending on your website. If you’re noticing that people aren’t spending a lot of time on your page, and aren’t converting, it’s likely that something needs to be adjusted.
Again, use this metric to see where users are spending the most time on your site. If you’re noticing that your blog posts, case studies, landing pages, or other online materials are getting little engagement time, try creating evergreen, engaging, and authentic content.
Events
Now the main difference you’ll see in UA vs GA4 engagement metrics is it’s now tracking events rather than goals. Ultimately, this is going to help you see a more well-rounded view of your users and their engagement.
Make sure the events you are tracking are the most important for measuring your marketing strategies. So, if you’re an eCommerce website, you probably want to be tracking when users are browsing the inventory, adding products to their carts, and eventually checking out.
If your website’s main objective is to disperse information and show yourself as an industry expert, you should be tracking events that occur on your blog posts or case study pages. Events like page scroll depth, video progress (if relevant), and clicks.
Conversions
In Universal Analytics, you had to set up goals that would then track your conversions. It’s going to look a bit different in Google Analytics 4. All goals have turned into events, and you can mark your most important events as conversions.
Simply toggle the switch to indicate which events you’d like to mark as conversions. We recommend marking events like form submissions and phone calls as conversions.
Why is this metric important? No matter the purpose of your website, you’re going to want users to take action. Conversions are one of the best ways to track user engagement in Google Analytics 4.
Not only can you see specific actions being taken, but you can see where these conversions are coming from. You may see conversions come from an email campaign you sent out, a social advertisement, or a pay-per-click campaign.
Especially during a time when you need to reevaluate your strategies, being able to see where conversions are happening can help you focus your attention on those specific channels.
How to Improve Engagement Metrics in Google Analytics
With a little time, specific tools, and website testing, you can make changes that will benefit users navigating your site.
Explore the Why
In marketing, there isn’t usually a one-size-fits-all answer as to why things are happening. Here are a few tips you can explore to gain a more accurate depiction of ways to improve your engagement metrics.
Depending on your industry, there could be multiple reasons for a decrease in engagement. If you work in an economically dependent industry, this could play a huge factor in site engagement.
There will be similar effects if your business has a seasonality factor. If that’s the case, try comparing year-over-year data rather than month-over-month, so you can get a better view of what’s happening through each season of the year.
If you are seeing dips in engagement, don’t panic! What’s important is that you’re continuing your strategies and creating engaging, evergreen content that can be used across multiple platforms to engage more of your audience.
Encourage Engagement Across Multiple Channels
It’s important to reach your audience where they are. Cross-promotions allow for your message to spread to a wider audience, nudging them to visit your site and discover your content.
As we said, there sometimes isn’t a definitive answer to why engagement is increasing or decreasing. So, it’s never a bad idea to test what you think may be the reason for the fluctuation or try implementing a new strategy.
When you’re A/B testing, make sure you’re not changing everything at once. You should only change one element at a time, so you can accurately identify the most positive effects on your user engagement in Google Analytics 4.
Need help analyzing your current strategies and pinpointing areas of improvement on your website? Contact our specialists today!
This blog was originally published on September 25, 2019, and updated on June 28, 2023.
Blog writing seems deceptively easy. Some people think that all you need to do is write new and compelling content, publish it on a consistent schedule, and new traffic will be generated. While that is a necessary part of the process, experienced content marketers know there is more to it.
One way to drive traffic to your website is forum link-building. After reading this blog, you’ll learn why forum link-building is important, what forums you can use, and why it’s beneficial.
What is Link Building?
Link building refers to the variety of methods marketers use to increase the number of high-quality links that refer to your website. It often includes spending lots of time researching and reaching out to external sources.
If you use the correct link-building strategy, you can increase your website traffic, boost your brand awareness, and increase your domain authority.
What is Forum Link Building?
This type of link-building activity uses forums. By interacting on the forum and answering questions, you can establish backlinks to your website.
These backlinks increase your page’s ranking in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) because you have more links pointing back to your site. This becomes important when you’re trying to outrank competitors in your industry.
Why Should You Use It?
You want to be known as an authority in your industry and a brand people can trust. Every time you interact with a person is a chance to build a relationship with your audience. Creating quality content to share also demonstrates your brand’s expertise.
This content gives your audience something to refer to when checking your site. They might not have originally gone to your website for this topic, but they’ll remember you had a post on it. Since you’ve already built that trust with your audience, you’ve become a go-to resource for them, making it more likely that they will recommend your site to others or visit again.
What Forums Should I Use?
If people discuss a topic, then there is a forum for it. There are forums for cars, travel, cooking, computer programming, and everything in between. But are all forums created equal? Below we’ll explore which ones are going to best benefit your website.
Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer forum. It covers over 400,000 topics and is used by 300 million people per month.
Why Should You Use It?
While anyone can use Quora for advice on any issue, it can be more professional than other forums. Part of that is because the site is heavily moderated and any topics or answers that don’t adhere to the guidelines are removed.
Since Quora is only for questions and answers, your answers are less likely to get lost in conversation threads.
Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow
Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow are online communities that allow users to ask and answer questions, mostly on technology and software. Stack Exchange is the overarching network and Stack Overflow is a specific community hosted in that network.
Why Should You Use It?
Stack is one of the largest and most active programming Q&A communities on the internet, with a large community of users who provide help and support to other developers around the world. It is a well-known resource for programmers and software developers. If you’re a part of that industry, being involved with Stack is a good way to get your brand out there.
Reddit
Like Quora, Reddit is a social news and discussion website where users can submit content, such as links, text posts, and images, and engage in discussions with other users. It has 430 million monthly users. Where it differs from Quora is that Reddit shows the latest news as well.
Why Should You Use It?
Since more people use Reddit, you can reach a larger audience. Reddit also allows you to discuss recent news stories and see what issues your audience is interacting with.
There are questions on a variety of topics and different subcategories for more information/discussion to go more in-depth on an issue.
However, something to keep in mind when you’re using Reddit is to do some research before you start using this platform. Discussions can get contentious fairly quickly on Reddit so it’s a good idea to do some research and understand your community before you start posting.
Medium
Medium differs from the other platforms we’ve discussed as it’s a blogging platform. Once you create an account you can go on and either write blogs or you can repost ones already on your website. You can also determine if your articles are behind a paywall or not.
Medium is free to everyone; however, non-members are limited to three free articles per month. To gain unlimited access, you can get a membership to the site.
Why Should You Use It?
While there isn’t as much interaction on Medium, you can still create content that links back to your website and help you become an authority within your industry. You can also still reach portions of your target audience and see what content matters to them. While not instantaneous, it can still be a good research tool.
Which One is the Best?
Deciding which forum is best isn’t easy. It depends on several factors including your overall content marketing strategy, your audience demographics, the industry you’re in, and what you want to achieve.
For example, if you are a clothing designer, you might not use a forum like Stack Exchange that focuses on programming and software development. You might want to go somewhere like Reddit or Quora because you are more likely to find your target audience there.
What Can You Accomplish With Forum Link Building?
Before you start on any project, you must establish what the benefits are for your business—what potential outcomes you would expect. When you start on your forum link-building journey, here are some of the potential benefits you can experience.
Establish Your EAT
The acronym EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It’s a marketing theory that helps websites rank better in Google SERPs. However, it can be applied to just about any type of marketing, including forum link-building.
Expertise
Being a go-to expert in your field will not go unnoticed on whichever forum you select. By answering many questions with useful and relevant information, you will gain followers who will recognize your knowledge of the topic or industry.
Authority
In this case, authority goes hand-in-hand with your expertise. Answering questions gives you the ability to position yourself or your company over your competition.
Trust
By being a beneficial resource for users, you’ll work on gaining trust. That can then turn into loyalty, which means users will be more willing to use you or your company’s products and/or services over others.
Generate New Content Ideas
When you’re creating new content for your website, forums are an overlooked place to find content. Thanks to the vast amount of users using the platform each day, you’re bound to come across various patterns in the topics you see.
You’re likely to see questions surrounding your industry that you haven’t thought of. You can then use this information to create new, unique content for your website.
Gain Insight Into Your Audience
As you’re looking through posts on the forum, you can get an idea of what topics your target audience is interested in or have questions about. The forum lets you speak directly with your audience and gain valuable targeting data.
Drive Traffic To Your Website
The goal of using link building is to drive quality traffic to your website. If you have great content but no one’s seeing it, then you have a problem.
Getting your brand out in front of your audience and answering their questions helps show them that you’re knowledgeable and should be taken seriously as a resource.
How to Get Started Building Forum Backlinks
Now that we’ve gone over all the benefits of using forums for link building, the real work begins—using the forum. However, by using these simple steps, you can get started sooner than you think.
1. Create Your Forum Profile
Once you’ve created your content, the next step is to create a profile on your forums of choice. You can create an individual profile or you can create a profile on behalf of your company. It all depends on if this is for a personal project or for a business.
2. Find Questions to Answer
Go through the forum and collect different questions you can confidently answer. When you’re searching for topics, you can bookmark topics so it will be easy to find them the next time you log in.
Look for questions that speak directly to your brand and messaging. Don’t try to make questions fit what you’re saying—your audience can tell when you’re being disingenuous and that will lead to you losing credibility with them.
3. Carefully Craft Your Answers
When you’re ready to begin answering questions, make sure your answers stand out from others. Don’t rush through your answers—take your time to think out your response and make sure that it’s beneficial.
Using the suggestions below, your answers will be concise, clear, and useful for users.
Format answers
Use images
Create links
Make sure answers have value
4. Maintain Your Profile
Once you’ve started your profile, you’ll need to take time to maintain it. Some of the ways you can interact with your profile are:
Continue answering questions
Add content to your profile page
Interact with other members
Create questions for other users to answer
Is Forum Link-Building Right for You?
Having relevant, SEO-optimized content already created eases your workload as you try to link build and connect with your audience. You’ve done the hard work, now you just need to share it with your audience.
Remember, you want quality traffic over quantity. You are going straight to the source and talking directly to the audience you want to target. Since they’re searching for what you’re offering, they’re probably going to be interested in what you have to say.
Using forums provides the ability to spread brand awareness and speak directly with your audience, which helps you understand them better.
Want help reaching your target audience through forum link building? See how working with an experienced full-service agency can support your business.
Editor’s note: This blog was originally published on May 1, 2019. It was updated on June 9, 2023.
On July 31, 2019, Google announced a new way to unify both app and website measurement with their new platform Google Analytics 4 or GA4 with the plan to sunset Universal Analytics in the near future.
After the original announcement, there have been many delays in the official plan to sunset Universal Analytics (UA) after backlash from many businesses. But now, there is an official date of July 1, 2023, in which Universal Analytics will stop processing your business’ data.
The switch to GA4 has huge implications if you rely on Google Analytics for measuring your KPIs, but being prepared is the best way to combat the inevitable confusion and questions you have when the switch happens.
Our goal is to help you understand eight of the main differences between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics so you are prepared to start making those business decisions you rely on.
Main Difference #1: Google Analytics 4 Interface
The most striking difference you’ll immediately notice in GA4 is the new interface. The GA4 interface looks very different from UA.
Right off the bat in GA4, you’ll see more data in the home section that’s generated by Google’s “automated insights” feature. These insights are automatically created by Google using its new machine-learning capabilities. They’ll trigger automatically whenever GA4 detects spikes or falls in your data.
You’ll also notice there are new navigation features. In GA4, you will see on the left-hand side of the property “Home, Reports, Advertising, Exploration, and Configure.” When you compare this to Universal Analytics you will see “Home, Customization, Realtime, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions.”
When comparing Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics, all the navigation options on Universal Analytics are now under “reports” in Google Analytics 4. Under the reports function, you’ll be able to see where your users came from, what valuable actions they took on your site, and much more.
Most importantly, there are two new navigation options “Exploration” and “Advertising” which are brand new to Google Analytics 4.
Exploration Report
Out of all the changes to the platform, the most valuable to businesses is the new Exploration Reports.
With the exploration reports, you will be able to track your key business metrics in much more detail than in UA. These reports allow you to perform custom analysis and gain insights into your app and/or website’s performance.
The Exploration reports provide a variety of visualization options, such as charts, tables, and graphs, to help you understand the data more easily. Additionally, you can use the “Analysis” feature to apply machine learning algorithms to your data and uncover deeper insights.
The Exploration reports are particularly useful for identifying trends, tracking user behavior, and measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. We suggest learning Google Analytics 4 exploration reports as soon as you understand the basics of the new interface, as it yields the most powerful insights.
Advertising Report
The Google Analytics 4 advertising report provides insights into your paid media efforts with a focus on attribution modeling.
The GA4 advertising report allows you to track key metrics, such as impressions, clicks, and conversions, and analyze the data by dimensions like ad creative, campaign, or audience. You can also use the reports to monitor the cost and return on investment (ROI) of your advertising campaigns.
Most notably, the “conversion paths” allow you to see your performance across all inbound advertising campaigns including Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Google Ads, and more.
The advertising reports, if you use them properly, will help you optimize your advertising spend, refine your targeting, and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Main Difference #2: Event-Based
Besides the initial interface differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics, the next biggest difference is the use of events in GA4.
Every metric in Google Analytics 4 is an event while Universal Analytics is hit-based.
This means when you are analyzing your data in GA4, everything from a page view to a form fill is an event.
While Universal Analytics can record events as well as page views, GA4 provides a more comprehensive view of user behavior and engagement. Comparing this to Universal Analytics, which tracks and measures the number of times a page is viewed by the user.
Main Difference #3: Session Scope
If you are comparing your Google Analytics 4 vs Google Universal metrics, you may notice, they are not the same. Why? There are a couple of different answers, but the most notable is the way GA4 defines sessions.
Firstly, GA4 defines sessions as “when a user opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no sessions are currently active”. Whereas in Universal Analytics, a session is “ a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame.”
The main difference between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics sessions is that GA4 uses sessions as a period of user activity whereas Universal Analytics sessions are a period of time.
Google has also said sessions in your GA4 property may be lower than your Universal Analytics property because “Google Analytics 4 does not create a new session when the campaign source changes mid-session, while Universal Analytics does create a new session under that circumstance.”
Secondly, GA4 sessions are based on events, rather than page views. A session in UA is calculated as the time between the first and last hit. Whereas GA4 is calculated as the time between the first and last event.
Lastly, a single session in GA4 can be across multiple traffic sources where a UA session stops when the original campaign source is stopped.
One last note about sessions in GA4 is the metrics associated with them. Since GA4 is based on events, there are new session metrics within GA4.
These include:
Engaged Sessions
An engaged session in GA4 is a session that spent 10 seconds or more on the site/app or viewed 2 or more screens/pages or had a conversion event.
Engaged Sessions Per User
Engaged sessions per user is the number of engaged sessions divided by the total users on your site and mobile apps.
Main Difference #4: User Scope
Another distinction between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics is the way the users on your site are measured.
In Universal Analytics there are two user metrics: total users and new users. In Google Analytics 4, there are now three user metrics:total users, new users, and active users.
As mentioned above, since everything in GA4 is based on events, the user metrics are also based on events.
These new metrics mean:
Total Users: Number of users who had an event
New Users: Number of users who had an event occur for the first time
Active Users: Number of users that had an engaged session
In Google Analytics 4, the primary metric is active users, whereas in UA it is total users.
Main Difference #5: Pageviews
Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics differ in their pageviews measurement methodology, making it difficult to make an accurate one-to-one comparison between the two platforms.
Page views are defined in two specific ways between the two platforms:
Universal Analytics: Total number of pages viewed
GA4: Total number of app screens and/or web pages the user saw
Please note, the metric of unique pageviews which is measured in UA is not measured in GA4.
Main Difference #6: Conversions
When you switch to GA4, you’ll notice a disparity in conversion tracking. GA4 uses an event-based system, meaning that each site conversion is treated as an event, rather than a pageview. This results in each user action on the site being tracked as an event.
With the addition of events, comes more advanced methods of conversion tracking in GA4. Most notably, conversion modeling.
Conversion modeling uses the machine learning capabilities of GA4 to estimate the number of conversions that may have been missed due to data gaps or incomplete data.
The machine learning model uses data from users who did convert on your custom conversions and those who did not convert. This allows you to identify patterns and correlations that may indicate which user behaviors are most likely to learn to convert.
Alongside the conversion modeling comes the addition of cross-device tracking. This means you can track how your users are converting whether they are on your website or on your mobile app. This makes tracking GA4 conversions much easier than Universal Analytics.
A great example of how GA4 has led to more conversions is McDonald’s in the Hong Kong Market. They were able to successfully increase in-app conversions by 550% while utilizing the various machine-learning algorithms in which GA4 operates.
Main Difference #7: Bounce Rate & Engagement Rate
One of the more popular metrics you could gain valuable insights from in Universal Analytics is bounce rate. This is the percentage of sessions that contain a single page view on your website.
However, in GA4 since everything is event-based, the definition changes. The GA4 bounce rate definition is the “percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions.”
When using Google Analytics 4, it’s preferable to examine the engagement rate rather than bounce rates, which is a significant factor that sets it apart from Universal Analytics.
The engagement rate in GA4 is the percentage of engaged sessions. This can be more helpful than bounce rate as you can analyze and decide which pages have low engagement rates and strategize how to increase the engagement rate on those pages.
Main Difference #8: Filters
In Universal Analytics, it was industry standard to create multiple views within each property. Usually, this was to segment and filter out data that wasn’t valuable to your business.
When you migrate to Google Analytics 4, you won’t see the filters you were used to seeing. Instead, you will see only two “data filters” in GA4. These are “developer traffic” and “internal traffic.”
The developer traffic filter is a predefined filter that allows developers to exclude their own traffic from analytics data. These filters are automatically applied to each GA4 property when created. (It’s worth noting that these are not foolproof and may not catch all the testing developers are doing on your site. )
The internal traffic filter in GA4 is a predefined filter that allows website or app owners to exclude traffic from their own organization’s network or devices.
Those are all the filters you can add in GA4. You cannot exclude certain IP addresses, include only your operating country of business, or segment your site’s content.
This means that all traffic in your GA4 right out of the box is similar to an “unfiltered” view in Universal Analytics. This means you can be making assumptions about your data and users that may not even apply to your business.
While there are less robust filters in GA4 vs Universal Analytics, there are several ways to “create a view” in GA4. The best way we would recommend to create “views” would be to create custom reports in GA4 using the filters in there.
For instance, if you wanted to look at only United States event conversions, you would create a custom report and add the filter view “County = United States”. You can apply this logic to other segments you wish to view including channel grouping, all events, etc.
These are just eight of the main differences between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics. There are countless differences between the two platforms, but ultimately, the switch to GA4 will give you a better understanding of the actions a user takes on your website or app.
Interested in improving your marketing efforts through data analysis? Reach out to our team to develop a custom plan that helps you track and meet your business goals.
Whether you’re a blogger, marketer, or small business owner, your dedication shines through your writing. You’ve poured your heart into your work, investing endless hours into research, content creation, and meticulous revisions. Nothing is more satisfying than finally pressing the “publish” button on your masterpiece.
But the sad reality is, you can have the greatest content in the world, but unless you get it in front of the right people, it can’t impact anyone.
Think your blog has what it takes to rise to the top of the search results? You may be surprised to learn how many subtle blog SEO strategies you could be missing.
What Is Blog Optimization?
Blog optimization is the process of amending your blog to enhance its visibility in search results. Blog optimization often includes:
Well-written metadata
Internal linking
Descriptive anchor text
Effective image alt text
Optimized content for featured snippets
We’ll go into more detail below, but for a summary, download our easy-to-follow blog SEO checklist.
Keep meta titles around 50-60 characters. According to Moz research, approximately 90% of your meta titles will appear correctly if they’re under 60 characters. Meta description length should be around 155-160 characters.
The challenging part is that Google sometimes adds the date or bolds certain keywords to match a query, which may add space. Also, letters are varying widths (i.e. the letter “l” takes up less space than a “W”). Since Google actually registers pixels rather than characters, it’s best to keep it on the lower side of those ranges to account for this.
Keep it unique. Use a different primary keyword, meta title, and meta description for each page on your site to avoid keyword cannibalization (competing keywords).
Put your keyword at the beginning of your meta title. Since users (and Google) read left to right, you’ll want the user to immediately see the match to their query.
Include your brand name at the end for recognition and credibility. Use the full brand name when possible (i.e. Tower Marketing rather than Tower).
Avoid quotation marks in meta descriptions. Google may truncate the rest of the description if you use them. Also, avoid brackets or parentheses.
Don’t stuff your metadata with keywords. Keyword stuffing is when you unnaturally repeat the keyword multiple times to try to appease search engines.
Write for your user first, not the search engine. Create a positive experience!
Match the meta title to the H1 (the main title on your page) if possible. This can reduce the chance of rewriting by about 20%. If you decide to make them different, make sure they’re related so the user knows they went to the right page.
Additional Metadata Info:
While meta descriptions aren’t ranking factors, they do persuade users to click on your result over others. This can increase your click-through rate, which is a ranking factor.
Use numbers and ampersands (&) to save space.
Capitalization doesn’t affect metadata. Personally, we suggest capitalizing the first letter of each word for consistency.
Include a call to action. Or, rather, a call to value. Describe the value the user will get from clicking on your result.
Generally, Google prefers dashes to pipes. However, pipes take up less space and some experiments have shown a higher click-through rate (so customers prefer it).
Personally, we like to use a dash when describing something relevant (i.e. Train Rides – All Ages Welcome) and a pipe with two individual things, such as a title and a brand name (i.e. Train Rides | Strasburg Rail Road).
Blog SEO Tip #2: Optimize For Featured Snippets
What Is A Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet is a short piece of content that appears at the very top of a search engine results page. This is often referred to as “position 0.”
How To Optimize For Featured Snippets
When doing keyword research, select questions as your secondary keywords. Then, use them as headings. Optimize for the featured snippet by answering the question in 30 words or less.
Types Of Content To Include To Optimize For Featured Snippets
Short, direct answers to questions
Bulleted or numbered lists
Tables/charts
Videos
Tools or calculators
Blog SEO Tip #3: Optimize Images
Alt text (a.k.a. “alt attributes,” “alt tags,” “alt descriptions,” or “alternative text”), is a short piece of content that describes what’s happening in the image. This allows search engines and people with disabilities who use screen readers to understand the image. Additionally, if the image doesn’t load, the alt text will show instead.
How To Effectively Write Alt Text For Search Engines & Screen Readers
A picture is worth a thousand words. But in this case, be concise. Keep it under 125 characters (that’s when screen readers typically cut off).
Don’t start with “A picture of” or “An image of.” Google knows it’s an image, and screen readers will announce that it’s an image before reading the alt text, so it would be repetitive.
Put a period after alt text so the screen reader will pause, creating a better user experience.
For decorative images, such as icons, the search bar magnifying glass, line page breaks, etc., use an empty alt attribute.
Note: This doesn’t mean leaving it out. If you leave it out, the screen reader will assume you forgot to write alt text, and may read the file name instead. This could just be random numbers/letters, creating a negative user experience. Use alt=”” to signal an empty alt attribute.
Going along with this, a descriptive image file name is helpful. Use keywords if applicable, and use hyphens, not spaces. We wouldn’t recommend going back and updating all of your image file names, but going forward, it’s a good practice.
Proofread! Spelling a word wrong could entirely change the image’s meaning.
For images with captions already on the site, you don’t need to include the captions in the alt text.
With linked images, describe the action rather than the appearance.
i.e. A question mark image that leads to a contact page could say, “Contact Our Experts” for its alt text rather than “question mark.”
Unless it’s an acronym, don’t use all caps. Screen readers may spell out entirely capitalized words.
For charts and graphs, list all important details in the text of the blog so that those with screen readers understand what it’s illustrating.
Include keywords if appropriate (but don’t stuff them). 62.6% of all Google searches are through Google Images, so including keywords in your alt text gives your images the chance to rank for them. Let’s look at an example below.
For this image, you may be tempted to say, “people shaking hands.”
However, try more descriptive alt text like, “A real estate agent and new homeowner shaking hands after closing a deal.” This provides context and a chance to rank in Google Images for keywords like, “real estate agent,” “new homeowner,” or “closing a deal.”
In addition to writing alt text, you should compress your images to reduce load time for a positive user experience.
Blog SEO Tip #4: Add Relevant Internal Links With Detailed Anchor Text
What Is Internal Linking & How Do Internal Links Help SEO?
Internal links lead from one page on your site to another page on your site. This helps users (and Google) navigate to other relevant pages. Here are just a few ways internal links help SEO:
Helps Google bot discover other pages on your site faster
Creates a well-structured website hierarchy, leading to the most important pages
Anchor text is the clickable, linked text throughout your content. Its purpose is to describe to your user (and Google) what that linked page is about. Follow these anchor text best practices:
Keep it succinct, yet relevant to the page it’s linking to.
Context is important. You look at the words around it – Google does, too!
Rather than repeating the same anchor text throughout your page, use a variety. Google’s penguin algorithm update in 2012 addressed spammy links. If your links all had the same anchor text, Google may penalize you, assuming you purchased them.
Beware of competing keywords. Essentially, don’t use your primary keyword as anchor text because you’ll be sending people to a competing site. This might confuse Google on which site to rank higher for that keyword.
Use keywords if they’re relevant, but avoid keyword stuffing. Here’s an example directly from Google on keyword-stuffed anchor text:
Ensure anchor text is clearly clickable (underlined/a different color). Also, don’t cause confusion by underlining things that aren’t clickable.
Use a table of contents for easy navigation. It could also improve your click-through rate from the search results because Google may include “jump to” links.
Summary: The Importance Of Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts
While you’re optimizing new content, it’s also a good idea to refresh older blogs for SEO with updated keyword research, links, and information.
If you’re looking for insight into a more in-depth content creation strategy, get in touch with our content marketing specialists to learn how we can generate and/or optimize the best content for your industry.
In part one of our local SEO series, we talked about how your business can reap the many benefits of local SEO by understanding what goes into ranking well. We mentioned one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO was backlinks.
One of the best ways to gain backlinks for your website is to add your business to as many relevant local SEO directories as possible. With a well-thought-out and researched local SEO directory strategy, you can put your business in front of highly targeted users and show up on the most important search engines.
Are Directories Valuable for Local SEO?
Adding your business to some, if not all of the local SEO directory listings below, will add value to your business, including both algorithmic and user benefits.
Generating backlinks for your site through directories can increase your chances of ranking well on search engines. Each backlink, a link that goes from one website to yours, essentially acts as a “point” in the local SEO algorithm regardless of what search engine you are trying to rank on.
Some directories will have higher point values than others due to their domain authority. When your site gains backlinks from directories, you are adding “points” to your site which will be a positive ranking factor that you will see.
Perhaps the most important and valuable part of adding your business to directories is getting your basic information in front of highly-relevant audiences. If you are strategic with your directory submissions, you can send your information to users who are lower down in your marketing funnel.
For instance, if you are a roofing business, you can add your company to local directories like Angi , HomeAdvisor, or Roofing Insights, a specific directory for those looking to get their roof replaced.
Local SEO Directory: Do’s & Don’ts
With all of the factors mentioned above, you can see just how important adding your business to local search directories is. You can boost your online reputation through various review sites, create backlinks to your site, and gain brand awareness. However, there are some do’s and don’ts when adding your site to directories.
Do’s: Be Consistent
Many of the local business indexes share data. That’s why it is important to have the same information displayed on each business listing you create.
At the absolute minimum, all of your local business listings should include the same:
Business name
Address
Phone number
Website address
Short description
These names, addresses, and phone numbers (NAP) must be exactly the same across all the listings you submit to. Additionally, create the same message. Make sure your categories and taglines are similar to avoid confusion.
Local listings all require you to add a business description, and it’s best to provide a long and short version. Adding all this information over and over again is tedious, so create two descriptions of your business:
A short description (about 125 characters)
A longer description (about 300+ characters)
With the descriptions ready, all you have to do now is copy and paste them to each of the local listings below to properly reap the local SEO benefits for your business.
Don’t: Add To Spam Sites
A general rule of thumb when submitting to local SEO directories is to check for spamminess. If a site looks like spam, it probably is. One way is to check a site’s domain authority via Moz. Generally, any site scoring lower than 20 would be considered spam and having links on those sites will add toxic links to your site.
Do: Claim Your Listings
As mentioned above, you may find that you are already listed on many sites, but you need to claim your listing. You may also notice that some of the information is incorrect. Make sure to change that when you claim your business listings.
Don’t: Target Irrelevant Listings
There are thousands of possible directories to add your business to and you may be tempted to add your business to every single one of them. However, targeting irrelevant directories will hurt you. Not only are you deceiving search engines, but you are also providing misleading information to the user that found your site.
Do: Add As Much Information As Possible
In addition, add as much information as possible. The more information you add, such as pictures, logos, and staff photos, the better. You want your listing to stand out from the competition.
In fact, Google Business Profile, recommends adding at least 22 photos to your profile. Tower Marketing recommends getting professional photography done to properly showcase your business.
Don’t: Create Duplicate Listings
There are many reasons why your business might have duplicate listings. Maybe your business moved locations or a previous effort was placed on creating a listing on that particular site.
Whatever the situation is, duplicate listings can confuse users and search engines. As noted above, the key to creating a successful local SEO directory strategy is consistency. If possible, delete the old listings or claim and update them.
Best Online Business Local Directories
Take a couple of hours and add your business website to these top-rated local SEO directories.
While these listings are generally used for any business, we also highly recommend checking out Moz’s Directory Listings page. Here you can find the top industry-specific directories to add to.
If you don’t see your industry there, Tower Marketing’s local SEO team can help you find the best directories for your local SEO strategy.
Top Free Business Listings
While there are thousands of free business listings online to choose from, these are the ones we would recommend starting with regardless of your industry.
Google Business Profile (GBP) formerly known as Google My Business.
Having a Google Business Profile listing is probably the most important first step when trying to rank in the top local results. All you need to get started is a Gmail account and if you don’t have one, create one. Adding your Google Business Profile listing information here will help you to be found across Google platforms, including organic search results, and the Google Maps Pack.
It should be a top priority for any business to have its location listed on Google Maps. More users are searching for products and services with local intent and using GPS navigation as a way to guide them to different locations. Optimizing your Google Business Profile page will help your business to be found on Google Maps.
Bing Places for Business
This business listing is powered by Bing.com and operates in a similar fashion to the Google My Business listing service. Bing Places for Business is a Bing portal that enables local business owners to add a listing for their business. With Bing Places for Business, once you have your Google Business Profile set up, you can import that information directly onto Bing so you do not have to redo essentially the same work.
Apple Maps
Apple Maps is one of the most used map platforms in the world. Local SEO Guide estimates that at least 75-100 million adults it. With your business listed, users can see directly in the app your reviews, photos & categories just like Google Maps.
Please note that you can submit a business listing for free on Apple Maps but often the information is pulled from other sources such as Yelp.
Yahoo Listing via Yext
Getting a Yahoo Listing isn’t as easy as Bing or Google. In order for you to claim your listing on Yahoo, you have to go through Yext.
These listings are very similar to Bing or Google. Use your same NAP across Yahoo as well.
Please note, you can claim your free listing on Yahoo via Yext but there are also more premium options that allow you to distribute your information across up to 50 platforms.
Facebook
You will need to create a Facebook business page, which means you will first need to have a personal account on Facebook. Add your business name, description, and website, and connect with users socially.
Yelp
Most people think you need to be a restaurant to be listed on Yelp. Not true. Any US business can be added to the local business listings.
Foursquare
Foursquare is a local search and discovery app and is a fantastic business listing to be included. Make use of their location data by adding your business.
Insider Pages
Insider Pages is a web directory looking to offer users the best recommendations. Not only do you want your business listed here, but you also want people who use this site to recommend you.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is great for B2C businesses. This free business listing online allows you to share your hours, upload photos, and more importantly, customers can leave reviews. There’s also a Q&A section where you can answer your most commonly asked customer questions. TripAdvisor profiles can also be shared across other directories online.
Best of the Web (BOTW)
BOTW is a general web directory listing for both commercial and non-commercial sites. Each listing is manually approved and, therefore, search engines value the citation of businesses listed here. This is one of the oldest internet web directories and is organized by category, offering content-rich and well-designed websites.
Superpages
This is a great online that acts much like the Yellow Pages. Superpages is a local business directory including phone numbers, ratings, reviews, maps, driving directions, your address, website, hours of operation, and more.
NextDoor
While NextDoor is often thought of as a social media platform for connecting with your neighbors, it is also a great place to list your business. Here you can share posts with people in your community making it one of the more powerful local SEO directories out there. Your business can even interact with users much like Facebook or Instagram as well.
Citysearch
Citysearch is a web-based city guide offering information about local businesses using categories throughout different states in the US.
HotFrog
HotFrog is a commercial website directory sorting businesses according to location and category.
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages is one of the most well-known off-site and on-site directories. Everyone has heard of it or used it, at some point. Having your business listed here is a must.
Top Paid Business Listings
Please note, as of the time of this writing, you have to pay to be on each one of these listings. Each platform additionally has multiple pricing levels with the option to pay for advertising as well. We recommend adding costs for the platforms into your marketing budget.
Angi FKA Angi’s List
Angi formerly known as Angi’s List, is one of the most powerful listings you can add to your local SEO directory strategy especially if you deal with homeowners. While Angi is free to join, the most powerful way to use Angi is to pay for lead generation. You can also send and build custom quotes, request payments, and integrate with QuickBooks making it one of the more forward-thinking business directories.
Better Business Bureau AKA BBB
The Better Business Bureau is a nationwide nonprofit organization with a self-described mission of “focusing on advancing marketplace trust”. Once again this is free to join but to become an accredited business in the BBB, that comes with a fee. With the fee, you show customers “that you are an honest, ethical business that they can trust.”
Within their listings, users have the option to search for BBB Accredited Businesses only OR all businesses which includes the free account. In each listing is a list of complaints from consumers, average star rating as well as your NAP.
HomeAdvisor
HomeAdvisor is a great local SEO directory to add your business to if you deal with homeowners. Getting your business on HomeAdvisor is only paid and there are no free options so do careful research before deciding if it’s a good fit.
Chamber of Commerce
Listing your business on your local chamber of commerce website is a great way to reach local customers and network with other businesses. While each chamber of commerce has different pricings, you will most likely not be able to join for free.
Taking the time and effort to add your business to the listings above and to your industry’s niche directories will be worth it. There is both a local SEO algorithm and user value to adding to each website.
We at Tower Marketing have done this for our clients across almost every industry you can think of. We understand it can cost time and money to add to each directory. But we can help you find your industry’s niche directory and even do the hard work for you with our local SEO services.
Our team of experts will help get your business ranking well locally no matter where you conduct business. Contact us today to get our local SEO expertise.
Ever wondered if there’s merit to updating old blog posts for SEO instead of always focusing on new content? One of the most popular questions we hear from a review of our content calendars is “why are we doing a rewrite — do we need to do that?” (The short answer? Yes!)
When it comes to your blog, new isn’t always better. Sometimes there’s value in refurbishing what you have.
That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at the top 5 benefits of rewriting blog content. And towards the end, you’ll find tips on how to update blog posts for SEO in a way that can help your performance in search.
1. It Can Boost the Performance Of Your On-Page Optimizations
If your blog was published several years ago, you likely have some new competition trying to rank for the same query. But with some research into keywords, you can assess what kind of keyword updates will help your content writing strategy.
Plus, since our language is always evolving you’ll be able to capitalize on new ways of speaking about a topic. That way you’re capturing trending terms in your industry.
Keywords aside, you can also look at re-organizing the internal links used in your blog. An up-to-date internal linking strategy is important since it creates a better journey for visitors navigating your site. Plus, you can include new, relevant pages that were created and those pages will also benefit from being linked to applicable blogs.
And last but not least, when you update a blog you have a fresh chance to look at the schema. That way you can make changes that will positively affect which queries the blog is showing for. (And make sure it isn’t showing in the wrong searches, which can frustrate users.)
2. It Creates A Positive UX (User Experience)
Old blogs can have a few problems, such as:
Broken links
Dense content (with no/few headings or images)
Poor display on mobile
But fortunately, when you go to update a blog there are some workarounds. To start, you can use this handy tool to find any broken links. And while you’re revising the writing, you can also look at doing more visually with the blog.
With the help of tools like Canva, Unsplash, and Pexels, you don’t need to be a designer to create infographics or pay for an expensive subscription to find stock images. Although, when possible it’s better to use in-house over stock imagery, since it lends a more authentic feel.
Either way, including multi-media content in SEO-optimized content can extend your reach. Using rich media like videos, infographics, etc., can help your blog get pulled into different types of search features.
Visuals aside, make sure you consider mobile visitors. Keep paragraphs extremely short (2-3 sentences) so they don’t appear as walls of text on someone’s device. Otherwise, you risk someone immediately leaving because of how difficult the blog is to read.
Ultimately incorporating these practices will help ensure that anyone finding your content has a better experience. Which can affect important digital marketing metrics, like reducing bounce rates or creating a higher pages per session.
If you want more ways to improve your site’s UX, read our blog on 7 easy UX improvements to make on your site.
3. It Can Boost Your Brand’s Credibility
In Netflix’s show “Inventing Anna” (based on a real story) there’s a moment where a journalist is discussing the effects of content and the internet. She tells her husband “People forget but people use Google… and Google never forgets.”
And as a marketer, I couldn’t help but resonate with that line and commit it to memory. It’s easy to forget all the blogs published on your site once you have a lot of them — but Google doesn’t.
This means that an old piece from several years can still pull into a search, even if some of the information is a bit dated. And that in turn can dilute your brand’s reputation as a credible expert.
A good blog content strategy will help boost your E.A.T. (expertise, authority, and trust) on different search engines. But old blogs with incorrect information can degrade that among users.
Any time you see new research released or notable consumer shifts, take note of older pieces that should be revisited. Make sure the content you have in them holds true to the current industry.
It can definitely be difficult to keep tabs on your content library if you have a lot. So we recommend setting up a content index where you at minimum log details on the pieces you’ve created, keywords targeted, and publish dates.
That will help you identify blogs that need rewriting. And further down we’ll also look at how you can use Google analytics to spot potential targets for updating as well.
4. It Can Increase Your Click-Through Rate in the SERPs
At the end of the day if two pieces are pulled into a search and look fairly similar, but one was published more recently — which one do you think users will pick?
In the SEO world, fresh content is a google ranking factor. Google (and other SERPs) will tend to show more recent results at the top of searches. Keep in mind that you can’t trick the system and just re-do the publish date on a blog to take advantage of this.
Based on how search engines crawl your content, they’re also looking to see significant content updates paired with that date change. (Something we’ll discuss below in getting started updating blogs.)
5. It’s A Time-Saving Content Creation Tactic
If you’re in charge of any marketing efforts, you know that some seasons are busier than others. An added benefit of working blog updates to your blog publishing schedule is that they are typically faster to do than starting from scratch.
Where to Start: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO
Now that you have an idea of the benefits of rewriting content, you may be curious how often should a blog post be updated. There’s certainly no hard or fast rule, but what we find works best is a blended approach.
For example, in a 6-month content calendar, you could work on 2 blog rewrites and 4 new blogs. That way you’re still creating truly fresh content, but you’re holding your business accountable to keep older pieces in good shape.
As you look to get started, here is some helpful advice to guide you.
Tips For Identifying Blogs To Update
The most successful way to create a content strategy that wins in the SERPs is to identify your topics based on data instead of gut decisions. So you’ll want to make sure that you have a content reporting system in place to track the performance of what you’re publishing.
Once everything is tracking properly, you can identify blog updates in a few different ways:
Find low-ranking queries on Google Search Console and see if there are opportunities.
Identify blogs with an extremely high bounce rate. (Above 90%, since blogs typically have bounce rates between 70-90%.)
Find blogs getting the top clicks from queries and spot-check titles to find ones you know are old but are still getting a lot of traffic.
Steps For Updating Old Blog Posts for SEO
Whether you’re wondering how to republish a blog on WordPress or update one on a different CMS system (Shopify, Squarespace, etc.), here are some tips to keep in mind.
Step 1: Find the original blog and make sure that when you have content finalized, you update it directly in that post.
Step 2: Revisit your original primary keyword and do research. Is it still relevant or is there a new one with more opportunity?
Step 3: Re-write the content as you see fit. Keep the parts you think work well, but create new content wherever it’s needed.
Step 4: Once it’s ready to post, go into your post and replace the old blog with your rewritten one.
Step 5: Make sure to add an editor’s note at the bottom of the updated post to clarify. That way if someone finds your blog but sees comments on it from before the publish date, it doesn’t look suspicious.
Eg., editor’s note: “This blog was originally published on April 25, 2019. It was updated on March 25, 2022.”
Step 6: Keep the URL as is if possible. If not, update it but make sure you have a redirect put in place, in case someone saved that old link and tries to access the piece.
Step 7: Adjust the blog snippet to ensure it accurately describes the updated blog when users find it in SERPs.
Step 8: Revise the publish date to reflect the date you’re pushing the rewritten blog live and publish the piece.
Looking to elevate your blog strategy to better compete in the SERPs? See how our content services can support your business by creating optimized content that helps you connect with your audience online.
Whether you listen to Christmas music year-round or dread the holiday rush, there’s no denying that the holidays are the most profitable time of year for many businesses. In fact, estimates from the National Retail Foundation attributed between $755.3 to $766.7 billion in sales last holiday season alone.
In order to capitalize on some of the biggest shopping days of the year, here are a few of our favorite holiday marketing ideas and advertising tips.
General Tips for Holiday Advertising
Before we dig into the tactics that can help boost your business during the holiday season, it’s important to understand the bigger picture of marketing during the holidays. Here are five goals to keep in mind when planning your holiday marketing campaigns.
1. Be Timely
It’s never too early to start planning your holiday marketing ideas and initiatives. Pages can take up to 45 days to rank, so we recommend moving any web-based tactics live no later than mid-October. While Christmas isn’t until the end of December, many people start shopping in early- to mid-November, well before Black Friday deals hit.
2. Be Brief
With advertising competition at an all-time high, attention spans are short. Keep your messaging short, sweet, and impactful for the best results.
3. Stay Focused
Online noise and increased ad costs mean that your holiday advertising ideas have to be sharply focused to make an impact. If you have a limited budget, focus on a few key days of sales based on historical data from years past.
If you’re looking for the strongest return possible on a small budget, remarketing is another great option, as you’re likely to see a higher conversion rate by advertising to former and current customers.
4. Respect Your Brand
Just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean that your blue brand has to transform to red and green! Consider what the holidays look like visually for your business, and allow your foundational brand to shine through in every marketing initiative you undertake.
Here are some holiday angles to consider:
Feel-good, charitable, emotional, and grateful
Exciting, flashy, and full of great deals
Fun, bright, and family-focused
Non-denominational, winter-focused, or inclusive of all winter holidays
When choosing a direction for your holiday marketing ideas, always consider your business’s brand, tone, and overall marketing goals. Slapping a graphic Santa Claus on your year-round advertising simply doesn’t cut it.
5. Be Truly Competitive
Don’t expect to own the market and see a massive boost in sales if you’re only willing to offer 10% off and free shipping. In order to succeed at marketing during the holidays, you’ll need to be generous with your sales and special offers, especially to loyal customers who have waited all year to make a big purchase and get a great deal.
If you’re a service-based company, consider offering vouchers or pre-orders that customers can buy now and use later. Not only does this create urgency and encourage sales, but it allows you to pre-schedule and guarantee your next year of business ahead of time.
Holiday Search Optimization
In order to rank during the competitive holiday season, you’ll need to foster strategic search engine optimization (SEO) on your website year round. That being said, here are a few considerations to keep top-of-mind to expand your optimization during the holidays.
Holiday SEO & PPC Strategies
SEO and PPC should be a major focus when it comes to holiday marketing ideas. Making timely gift guide landing pages for holiday search terms is one of the best ways to capitalize on the busy shopping season.
Fill these pages not only with best-selling products but thoughtful content that will help customers who are unfamiliar with your business make a quick and easy purchase. And, be sure to focus on internal linking and all of the usual SEO-boosting suspects to get your pages ranking.
Keep in mind that like with any paid medium during the holidays, you’ll pay more per click than you do during other times of the year. The heavy competition can be discouraging when deploying your holiday marketing ideas through PPC, but it can pay off big if you are strategic in your keywords and bids.
The Merits of Google My Business
An often-overlooked element of your website’s search engine optimization is your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This panel allows customers to view your company’s store hours, reviews, and updates without even having to click through to your website.
Be sure to complete your GMB profile before the holiday season begins, and revisit it frequently to ensure your hours, contact info, and other store details stay up to date.
The holiday season is one of the best times to grow your email list organically. The trick? Offering direct, valuable savings to customers to encourage them to sign up. Once you have a customer hooked, here are a few tricks to prevent them from unsubscribing:
Use subject lines to create urgency around sales and deals
Create email automations for abandoned carts
Offer valuable content like gift guides and product tips
Inboxes are especially cluttered this time of year, so be sure that each email you send has a true purpose and won’t simply frustrate your customer to the point of unsubscribing.
Holiday Social Advertising Strategies
With high costs and oversaturated platforms, social advertising during the holidays can be incredibly competitive. You’ll have to be at the top of your game if you want to stand out among the crowd.
Giveaways, contests, and other content that encourages audience engagement can be particularly helpful in breaking through the noise. While you have limited space to get your message across, try to think about your audience and speak directly to them in a novel and creative way to grab their attention. At the end of the day, authentic ads that showcase great deals will do far more than screaming at users with all caps and bright flashing signs.
Writing Content for the Holiday Season
When it comes to holiday marketing ideas, content is everything. Here are three tips to keep your content thriving and bringing in new customers.
1. Be Timely
We can’t stress enough the importance of timeliness when it comes to seasonal content. It can take weeks or months for your content to be indexed and served to users. And, many users start researching holiday decorations, gifts, and more up to two months before the big day.
That means any search-driven content you have planned needs to go live no later than October. It may feel strange working on holiday copy before fall has even arrived, but it will pay off big time come the holiday season.
2. Consider Your Unique Holiday Customers
During the holidays, millions of people shop for gifts at stores they’re unfamiliar with. One of the best ways to earn a new customer is to make sure they have everything they need to make a decision (and a purchase), even if they’re unfamiliar with your industry.
Consider building out your product pages further to aid in product comparison and streamline decision-making. Product guides that go over sizing, features, and the differences between product models can also make online shopping a breeze for those unfamiliar with your store.
3. Utilize Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the top ways that Google understands the architecture and content relationships on your website. This means that high-quality internal linking can help your holiday-themed blogs gain traction faster when every day counts.
Use links with purpose. No reader wants a constant bombardment of product links without any explanation to help them make a decision. Be sure to include plenty of helpful and educational content links, as well.
Breaking the Mold with Creative Holiday Campaigns
With so much noise online, you’ll need to think differently when brainstorming holiday marketing ideas if you want to stand out in your customers’ eyes. Consider the go-to marketing tactics of competitors and industry leaders, and then brainstorm adjacent or opposing ideas to get started.
One of our favorite innovative holiday marketing strategies over the years was a digital holiday card we created for local law firm Barley Snyder. They wanted a unique and memorable way to wish their clients and colleagues a happy holiday season. We planned, designed, and animated a custom digital greeting card that was equal parts meaningful and charming.
Whether you work with a digital marketing agency or an in-house marketing team, you’ve probably received reports that have a lot of information you don’t fully understand.
In this blog, we’ll explore the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should pay attention to, regardless of your industry. We’ll also review how you can analyze your digital marketing performance metrics and explain what your spend is going towards.
What Are Internet Marketing Metrics?
There are two buzzwords you’ll hear when talking about digital marketing: analytics and data.
Not sure what these terms mean in the context of Internet marketing? Simply put, analytics help us see the data that’s being processed to provide us with the valuable performance metrics we use to make informed business decisions.
That raises yet another question: what are marketing metrics, and which ones should I be paying attention to?
Marketing metrics are the measurable, quantifiable insights you or your agency use to measure the success of campaigns and projects. They’re the most important indicators you should pay attention to because they help you determine exactly where your money is going.
We’ve established that you need data to make informed decisions. But which metrics should you pay attention to on your report?
Digital Marketing KPIs: What They Are, Why They Matter, & How to Analyze Them
While there are hundreds of metrics to consider, we’re going to review the most important digital marketing KPIs for each marketing channel. Each of these metrics are important, but you can’t draw a single conclusion without looking at the bigger picture.
Overall Digital Marketing KPIs
The KPIs below apply to every channel and are fairly universal across digital marketing.
Impressions
What It Is
Impressions are how many times your content is shown to a user.
Why It Matters
Impressions matter for many reasons. The most important reason is that they reveal how many people are seeing your content, whether it’s an ad in a PPC campaign or an Instagram post.
How to Analyze It
For a brand exposure campaign, higher impressions are great. But for a lead generation campaign, impressions may not be as important as conversions.
Clicks
What Is It
Clicks are how many people click on your content.
Why It Matters
Clicks are when a user takes the action you want them to. This could be clicking on a sale link in an email, reading news from a social media post, or clicking on a video ad.
How to Analyze It
You should analyze clicks for every campaign you run online. If you see low clicks, be sure to dive into the issue. It could be a simple spelling mistake on your ad copy, or it could mean you’re targeting the wrong audience.
If you see an abundant amount of clicks on your content, make note of this and document exactly what you think is working.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
What It Is
Click-through rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
What It Means
You can use CTR to determine which campaigns are successful and which ones need improvement. For example, if you received 1,000 clicks on an ad that had 5,000 impressions, you would have a 20% CTR.
How to Analyze It
First things first: there is no “good” click-through rate. Every campaign, industry, and business has different benchmarks for CTRs. Google Ads campaigns have much lower click-through rates than Instagram ads, but this doesn’t mean one is working better than the other.
If you see a dip or increase in your CTR, always question it within the bigger picture. Was there a change in the wording on a button? Was there an engaging picture?
Engagement Rate
What It Is
According to Hootsuite, “engagement rate is a formula that measures the amount of interaction social content earns relative to reach or other audience figures. This can include reactions, likes, comments, shares, saves, direct messages, mentions, click-throughs, and more (depending on the social network).”
Engagement rate can be a critical deciding factor when allocating more marketing spend. If you see that videos are driving traffic to your site and experiencing a long retention period, you should consider spending more on videos. The same goes for a low engagement rate. If you see that videos are not performing well, you may decide to reduce your video budget.
Conversions
What It Is
Conversions are actions that users complete on your site.
What It Means
If you’re a service-based company, one conversion is lead generation. On the other hand, an eCommerce website’s conversion could be purchasing a product. Simply put, a conversion is a final action a user completes on your site.
How to Analyze It
In most cases, conversions mean nothing without a business goal. If you find you’re exceeding or underperforming your conversion goals, it may be time to:
Reevaluate your objectives.
Ask your marketing agency what they’re seeing on their end
Conversion Rate
What It Is
Conversion rates are the percentage of website visitors that complete a conversion. This is calculated simply by taking the number of conversions divided by users, or impressions.
What It Means
Conversion rate should be one of the first metrics you look at when checking your reports. This is because it’s a simple way to determine if your digital marketing is working or not.
How to Analyze It
A high conversion rate can indicate a successful campaign, and a low conversion rate signals something isn’t quite working.
Cost Per Conversion
What It Is
Cost per conversion is the total cost of the traffic (or impressions) by the number of conversions.
What It Means
In other words, cost per conversion is the actual spend it took to obtain a customer.
How to Analyze It
Cost per conversion is the easiest way for you to answer, “how much did it cost me in advertising to get my customer to do action X.”
You should use cost per conversion to evaluate your online advertising success. Don’t be alarmed if your cost per conversion is high when you first start digital marketing. It should decrease over time, and if it doesn’t, contact your marketing agency to solve this problem.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
What It Is
While cost per acquisition is often confused with cost per conversion, cost per acquisition is the total cost of a campaign divided by the number of conversions.
What It Means
Just like cost per conversion, this is an easy way for you to examine the dollars and cents that went into your acquisitions.
For example, if your total budget was $1,000 and you received 50 conversions, you paid $20 per acquisition.
How to Analyze It
Like most KPIs, there is no “good” CPA. Every online business has different factors – such as margin and prices – that make up a “good” CPA. As you analyze your CPA, ask yourself, “is the cost of acquiring the new customer worth it?”
Customer Lifetime Value
What It Is
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric you can use to determine the total revenue of a customer throughout their relationship with your business.
What It Means
You can use this metric to determine how much you can expect to make from one single customer. If you own a car dealership, you might see a high CLV, as a new car will need to be serviced often. If you own a service-based business that offers a one-time setup, you can expect a lower CLV.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing your CLV can be tough, as it may remain stagnant. However, this can be a valuable opportunity for you. If you can figure out ways to improve your CLV – such as loyalty programs and offering more services – you can greatly benefit from analyzing this metric.
Email Marketing KPIs
List Growth Rate
What It Is
List growth rate allows you to calculate whether your email list is growing. You can calculate the list growth rate by subtracting the number of unsubscribers from the number of new subscribers and dividing that by the number of email addresses in your list.
What It Means
List growth rate is an easy way to determine if your email list is growing or declining.
How to Analyze It
You can use list growth rate to evaluate whether you should increase or cut back on your email marketing efforts.
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)
What It Is
Click-to-open rate, according to Active Campaign, is the percentage of people who open an email campaign and also click on a link within that campaign.
What It Means
Looking at your CTOR is a great and simple way to measure your campaign’s effectiveness.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing CTOR is often better than measuring your open rate on your email. Open rate calculates the amount of subscribers who opened your email while CTOR also looks at those subscribers who opened the email, which ones also clicked on the links.
Looking at your click-to-open rate will give you a better idea of who is engaging with your emails the most and if they are not, should you segment that list to further hone the strategy.
Unsubscribe Rate
What It Is
Unsubscribe rate is the opposite of list growth rate, as it shows you the percentage of users who opted out of your mailing list after a campaign.
What It Means
Looking at your unsubscribe rate tells you which types of emails are working for you.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing your unsubscribe rate may be counterintuitive at first, as you may think, “my emails aren’t working” and move on. But a high unsubscribe rate may be a good thing. Everybody wants bigger email lists, but there is value in only sending emails to only the most willing and engaged recipients.
On the other hand, your unsubscribe rate may be a bad metric to look at because it may mean your emails have no value and that people on your list want out. Or, it could be a signal that you’re sending too many emails.
SEO KPIs
Backlinks
What It Is
Backlinks are links from other websites directing users to your website.
What It Means
The number of backlinks you have is important for a multitude of reasons. Essentially, backlinks act like votes for a search engine. The more backlinks your website has, the more a search engine sees you as a trustworthy site.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing the number of backlinks you have, you should look at whether the number is increasing or decreasing when compared to another period.
If your number of quality backlinks is increasing, you should continue to invest in SEO. If you see a low number of backlinks, you should probably still invest more in SEO to get “votes” for your site.
Keywords
What It Is
Keywords are specific phrases, questions, or ideas that define what your content is about.
What It Means
The number of keywords or “search queries” you have on your site is essential to a high-ranking website. The goal is to drive users to your site through your content, which should have keywords that users are searching for. The more keywords you have, the better chance you have of driving organic traffic to your website.
For example, when you Google “what is the best coffee grinder for under $100?”, the keyword is “Best Coffee Grinder For Under $100”.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing keyword queries on your report, take note of ones that are outperforming other queries on your site. This will give you a better understanding of your customers and how they got to your site.
For example, if you see an increase in traffic on your site for product X, it may be worth investing in more content explaining the benefits of that item. You could also create search ads around that product, as you know people are searching for it
Visibility Percentage (%)
What It Is
According to SEMrush, “visibility % is based on click-through rate (CTR) that shows a website’s progress in Google’s top 100 for keywords from the current tracking campaign.” In layman’s terms, visibility percentage is how often your website is found by users.
What It Means
You can use visibility percentage to determine whether your website is being shown to users. A higher visibility percentage means you have a better chance of bringing in new users through your site.
How to Analyze It
You can use visibility percentage as a baseline metric to help you measure your overall SEO efforts. If you’re seeing a growth in visibility percentage, that means your SEO is generally performing better. On the other hand, a drop in visibility percentage may be caused by outside factors, such as algorithm changes.
Indexed Pages
What It Is
Indexed pages are specific pages on your site that a search engine contains within its database.
What It Means
It’s important to consider the number of indexed pages on your site that a search engine has in its database. Pages that have been successfully indexed can be found by users through keywords and relatable content.
It’s also important to look at your non-indexed pages, which are pages you don’t want users to find via a search engine, but still have some sort of value to you. These could be thank you pages sent to eCommerce customers after they purchase an item.
How to Analyze It
Looking at indexed pages is a quick and easy way to see if the content on your website can be found by potential customers. If you see your number of indexed pages increasing, you know more people can find your content, visit your page, and possibly convert.
Domain Authority
What It Is
According to MOZ, “Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking.”
What It Means
Domain authority is an SEO KPI, but it is not a Google ranking factor. Instead, it’s an AI-based ranking developed by MOZ to predict how well your site will rank compared to your competitors.
How to Analyze It
Generally speaking, a higher Domain Authority score means your business will show up higher in search results than your competitors. Conversely, a lower Domain Authority often means you’ll be ranked lower than the competition. If you see that your DA is increasing, that means your investment in SEO is working.
How Customers Search For Your Business
What It Is
How Customers Search For Your Business is a local SEO metric found within Google My Business (GMB). This metric is actually a combination of three metrics: direct, discovery, and branded searches.
Google defines these three metrics as:
Direct. People who find your business profile by searching for your business name or address.
Discovery. People who find your business profile by searching for a category, product, or service.
Branded. Customers who find your listing by searching for a brand related to your business.
What It Means
Looking at this metric allows you to determine how people are finding your business profile on Google. If you know what users are searching for, you or your agency can optimize your content to match those trending metrics.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing this metric, be sure to look at the three metrics included in How Customers Search For Your Business. If you see that your search is lacking direct traffic, you may want to optimize your web pages to include your brand name in the page titles.
Pay Per Click (PPC) KPIs (Google Ads & Facebook)
In this section, we’ll review PPC KPIs, which include both Google Ads and Facebook. Most people do not realize that Facebook ads are technically PPC, even though it’s a social media channel.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
What It Is
Return on ad spend measures the amount of revenue your business earns for each dollar you spend on PPC advertising.
What It Means
At the most basic level, ROAS measures how effectively you’re spending your advertising dollars.
How to Analyze It
When looking at ROAS, it’s important to remember that the higher the number, the better. For example, let’s say your ROAS is 10:1. This means that for every dollar you’re spending, you’re making $10.
ROAS is often confused with ROI. However, ROAS looks specifically at the campaign level, while ROI looks at the overall investment.
Social Media Marketing KPIs
Likes/Followers
What It Is
Likes and/or followers on a social media channel are the number of people who are following your page.
What It Means
Depending on the social media platform you’re tracking, likes and/or followers are an indication of how many people are using your channels.
How to Analyze It
When looking at your follower count, you can analyze several things. Ask yourself questions like, “is it worth continuing to push our social media if we’re not seeing any engagement?,” “should I run a campaign to boost my followers?”, and “should I hire someone to optimize my campaign if I see value in it?”
It’s important to think of your social media channels as another website for your business with the goal of being a 24/7 sales tool.
Top Posts
What It Is
Top posts on your social media channels are your top-performing posts during a given period of time.
What It Means
Looking at top posts helps you determine exactly what type of content is working for you. You should consider factors like the subject, content type (images, videos, and links), the time you posted, etc.
How to Analyze It
When looking at top posts, you should be able to draw several conclusions and make decisions accordingly. If you see that all of your top posts in a given month were videos, you should probably invest more spend into videos.
How Metrics Can Be Used (and Misused)
Data-based decision-making is often at the core of digital marketing and what makes digital marketing so special. You can pinpoint where every cent you spend goes and whether it’s effective.
If you compare a traditional marketing campaign to a digital marketing one promoting the same product, there’s often ambiguity with the former. Do you know how many people saw your billboard on the side of the highway? You may have an estimate, but with digital marketing, you can measure exactly how many people saw it.
Metrics Are Often Misused
While there’s often an emphasis on metric-based decisions, it’s important to remember that, in the end, they’re just numbers and percentages. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but you may be misusing your metrics.
Let’s look at an example from two different points of view: Person A and Person B.
Let’s say you are running a Google Ads campaign that’s spending $5,000 a month to drive traffic to a particular product. Your click-through rate and impressions are higher than normal, but your conversions are zero.
Person A stops the campaign completely because they spent all of that money and didn’t get a single sale.
Person B looks at the same campaign and sees an issue. The ads are working, but something on the actual product page may be broken. They determine that there’s no purchase button on the page, which led to zero conversions.
This is a simple example of how metrics can be used or misinterpreted. Both people were looking at the same metric, but one saw it as an issue, while the other saw it as a signal that something else was wrong.
Collecting and analyzing your digital marketing performance metrics is only valuable if you take the time to consider what they mean to your original investment.
Common Ways That Metrics Are Misused
Collecting the wrong information. If you collect the wrong information, how can you make smart decisions based on that data? You can imagine the trickle-down effect this might have.
Looking at vanity metrics.Vanity metrics are important, but they’re not necessarily the best figures to use when making decisions. Impressions are a great example of this. You may have a ton of impressions, but if they aren’t achieving the goals you’ve set, does it really matter? This is why looking at the bigger picture is so important.
Never changing metrics. Business goals change all the time, and so should your metrics. How can you determine ROI if you’re measuring the wrong things?
Having too many metrics. There are thousands of metrics you can collect and analyze, so picking the most important ones for your business may be difficult. Choosing the wrong metrics can lead you down the wrong path.
Tips for Explaining Reports To Other Stakeholders
You’ve learned the various digital marketing performance metrics that make up each channel. Now, it’s time to learn how to explain your reports. Here are four tips to keep in mind when explaining your digital marketing reports to other people:
Explain each metric in the simplest terms possible. The key to explaining your marketing report to anyone is to explain it in Layman’s terms. The best way to explain your ROI is to put it simply. Let’s say you spent $2,000 on a PPC campaign that earned 10 goal conversions on a product that costs $500. You may know this, but if you explain what this means to a five-year-old, you would say, “We spent $2,000 and got 10 people interested in our $500 product, meaning we potentially have $5,000 in sales. This means we’ve potentially made $3,000 on this campaign.”
Avoid vanity metrics and focus primarily on data involving investments. The truth is that not every digital marketing performance metric carries the same weight. Does a social media follower increase mean more than the average CPC on your social media campaign? Probably not. At Tower, we only include the most important metrics that our clients care about, but not every agency will do this. You’ll see every single metric available, even though you may only need to pay attention to dollar amounts. We encourage you to sit down with your agency and figure out which metrics mean the most to you.
If you have older reports to draw on, compare the numbers. If you happen to keep all of your old reports, reference them. If you don’t have them, ask your agency to pull the numbers again. How can you know what’s working and what isn’t if you don’t compare last month’s reports to the previous month or the previous year? This is one of the best ways to explain whether your investment is or isn’t working.
Look at everything together. This is ultimately what each report is for. While every digital marketing channel looks different, they’re all smaller pieces that make up the greater part of your business. Don’t just take one part of your report and look at it as a positive if there are negative aspects, too. Seeing the bigger picture is the best way to gauge the success of your digital marketing efforts.
What’s Next?
Now that you’re an expert – or at least better informed – regarding your digital marketing report, you should be able to analyze your return on your digital marketing investment.
Need help digging further into your digital marketing reporting? We do all the analysis for you so you can focus on what matters most. Work with our Internet marketing specialists to ensure you’re getting the most out of your online efforts.