Blog – Page 47

Why Organic Search Will Always Be Vital

Last Updated: September 10, 2015

As you’re well aware, your website can get traffic from countless channels. Social media, paid advertising, and e-mail campaigns all contribute to your site traffic. But did you know that organic results (mainly from Google) remain the most significant source of traffic? This is according to a recent Search Engine Land article by Kristine Schachinger. Titled, “4 Reasons Organic Search Is Better,” the article explains why there’s no match for the long-term effectiveness of organic, SEO-based advertising.
Schachinger supports all of the article’s claims with data from a 2014 report by BrightEdge, which declares organic search “the clear champion” of website traffic. Accounting for 51% of total site traffic, “organic is simply better for delivering relevant traffic.” However, in addition to being the highest-performing traffic generator in terms of raw numbers, there are a few other reasons organic search is still the most viable resource for site visits:

You have more control over your organic presence. When you rely on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to drive your traffic, your success is based on the whims of their platforms—which are completely unpredictable. For instance, Facebook is notorious for limiting the organic reach of business pages, thus forcing businesses to pay for their posts to be seen by their followers.
With organic traffic, you have more long-term security. With sources like social media, e-mail referrals, and paid ads, your traffic will go away as soon as you stop investing in them. (This is especially true for paid ads.) But once you’ve created a secure, organic presence, it takes a significant period of negligence to create a major deficit in traffic.
Visitors who arrive to your site via organic search are more likely to become long-term customers because they sought you out. As Schachinger explains,

“Matching keywords to user intent means you may be present in many searches. The user may find you consistently, and once they get to your site, they are more likely to stay. Organic users are still your best long-term customers. In my experience, they have lower bounce rates and more pages visited, and they are more likely to return.”

This isn’t to say that the other traffic sources aren’t valuable. While organic search results will drive the majority of your traffic, the best way to approach advertising is to capitalize on all possible sources. The synergistic effect of multiple traffic generators is the key to long-lasting performance.
Be sure to read Kristine Schachinger’s full article over on Search Engine Land.

Take a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Prospect Genius

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

When you hear us talk about SEO and lead generation, do you feel like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher go, “Wah wah-wah wah wah”? If you’re not someone who specializes in online advertising, it’s perfectly understandable to feel confused—and, frankly, a little bored—about what it is we do. However, it’s important to know a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes so you can appreciate exactly how our services are benefiting your web presence.
Here’s what you need to know.

We Amplify Your Existing Presence

There’s a good chance that you had already set up a Google My Business or Facebook account before joining our program. If that’s the case, you may be misled into thinking that any leads coming from Google or Facebook are a result of your existing presence instead of our work. It’s a logical assumption, but it’s incorrect.
Instead, local search optimization functions as a multifaceted machine, with a series of gears, levers, and wheels all working together to create the final output. The phone call or e-mail inquiry that came from your Google listing is actually a product of the search optimization machine. Your company information ranked well in Google’s local search results, thus leading the customer to contact you thanks to all of the behind-the-scenes work we did.
For proof, take a look at two examples of clients whose Google traffic skyrocketed after signing up with Prospect Genius.
Company A:

Company B:

As you can see, after signing up with us, these two clients saw huge increases in their views and clicks. That’s due to all the work we’re doing for your campaign. But what does that work entail, exactly?

We Build the Machine

Prospect Genius’s job is to design and build the local search optimization machine that powers your campaign. That means making sure each individual part works perfectly in addition to fitting all of those parts together seamlessly.

Here are the four main parts:

Google listing
On-page SEO
Citations
Inbound links and social signals

Google Listing

Local search rankings improve when your Google listing is thoroughly optimized and populated with lots of customer reviews. That’s why Prospect Genius optimizes every client’s listing and provides a handful of tools to help you increase your number of reviews.

On-Page SEO

To appeal to Google’s search algorithms, all of your website’s pages must be optimized. You must have valuable content that’s targeted at specific search terms and is generally informative. All of our LeadTrax™ sites are written and designed for on-page SEO to further boost your company’s rankings.

Citations

Citations refer to all of the instances in which your business name appears alongside your contact information (e.g. address and phone number), and they must be consistently accurate. Citations most often come from online directories and Internet yellow pages, but they may also occur in newspapers, magazines, local blogs, and social media posts. Many of Prospect Genius’s packages add your business info to numerous directories, ensuring accuracy across the board and driving up your citation score.

Inbound Links and Social Signals

Inbound links are links that exist on another website and link to a page on your website. They indicate that your page contains valuable information. Along the same lines, social signals are data points that tell Google how appealing your website is on a human level. If lots of people are sharing links to your website on social media, and your company’s social media account has lots of “Likes” or followers, then those valuable social signals will boost your local search ranking. That’s why Prospect Genius sets you up with Facebook and Twitter accounts (if you don’t already have them) and promotes you on social media.

It’s All About Synergy

Did you make it to the end of this post without your eyes glazing over? Good! Hopefully, you now have a much deeper understanding of what drives your campaign and keeps it successful.
With your cooperation, we’re able to create a uniform front to fortify your company’s online presence. We achieve substantial, organic results by creating a well-oiled machine that runs flawlessly. While your Google listing is significant, you can’t give all of the credit to a single cog.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions you may have.
Photo credit: Linda Buquet, localsearchforum.com

Do You Have a Plan for Handling Missed Calls?

Last Updated: August 19, 2015

As a small business owner, you can’t possibly answer the phone every time it rings, especially if you’re on a much-deserved vacation from work. But that’s no excuse for missing all of those incoming leads. The number of sales you close is directly proportional to the number of calls you answer, but for those times when you just can’t get to your phone, you must at least have a working backup plan. Otherwise, you’ll never even have a chance to get those leads back.
Here are some things you can do to make sure missed leads don’t tank your business.

Have a Professional Voice Mail System

When answering your phone isn’t in the cards, having a proper voice mail system will allow prospects to leave a detailed message and enable you to follow up with those leads as soon as you can.
Set up a professional greeting: The first step is to set up a professional voice mail greeting. Whether you’re frequently out on the job and can’t pick up your phone or you’re going on an extended vacation, you must record a detailed greeting so prospective customers know that they’re calling a legitimate business. Include your company name, an explanation and/or apology for not answering the phone, and assurance that you’ll return their call ASAP.
Keep your inbox empty: If your inbox is full of old voice mail messages, new callers won’t be able to leave a message. If they can’t leave a message, they’ll immediately find another local business to call. To avoid this problem, delete new messages as soon as you’ve returned the call or logged the contact info. If you’re consistent with this, you won’t have to worry about your inbox filling up ever again.

Note: A few business owners who use pay-per-call services might strategically keep their inboxes full as a way to avoid getting charged when they don’t answer the phone. However, doing this prevents all incoming leads from leaving voice mails. The amount of business you lose by doing this outweighs any pay-per-call charges you’re saving. (If you’re dead-set on avoiding pay-per-call charges, you may want to consider adding another phone line dedicated exclusively to this purpose. Ask Prospect Genius about how to do this.)

Leverage the Convenience of Technology

Because it’s 2015, you can always count on technology to pull through. There are several different ways you can use technology to keep track of missed calls without much effort. The most popular options involve receiving text and e-mail notifications on your mobile phone whenever your business misses a call or receives a voice mail. This way, when you’re out on the job and miss a call, you’ll be able to follow up right away instead of waiting until you’re back at the office. Your chances of closing a sale are much greater if you can catch that prospect before they find another business to hire.
While we do not endorse any particular company, we know that RingCentral offers great message alert and notification services tailored to small businesses. You can also ask Prospect Genius to set this up for you.

Use a Professional Answering Service

While falling back on voice mail or text alerts is cheap, it also incurs a significant risk that those prospects will find another business or service provider before you get the chance to call them back. That’s why many business owners hire professional answering services.

Answering services are much less expensive than in-house receptionists.
Operating from a remote office, they can answer the phone and deliver messages to you 24/7.
They’re professionally trained for customer service and interacting on the phone, making them especially useful if that’s not your strong suit.
To make sure they get all the relevant information from your leads, you can even give them a script of which questions to ask.
An answering service is also a useful way to screen out marketing calls so you never even have to deal with them.

Again, we do not endorse any particular company, but we know that some of our clients successfully use AnswerConnect as their answering service, so that might be a good place to start.

But Really: Pick Up Your Phone

One of the things that all successful businesses do is answer their phones when prospects call. As we’ve covered before, missed calls mean missed customers, even if you do have a backup voice mail or answering service. Signing up for a missed call notification service shouldn’t be Plan A. Forward calls to your mobile phone, set up an advanced package with multiple lines, reroute calls to ring multiple phones… Do whatever it takes to connect with a lead. That’s the only truly effective way to create new business.

With PPC Ads, Users Prefer a No-Brainer

Last Updated: August 13, 2015

Are your PPC ads making users think too much?

In a recent article for Search Engine Land titled, “PPC Ads Not Performing? Reduce Cognitive Load,” Andrew Goodman describes what user-experience experts say is an often overlooked performance factor for PPC. In a nutshell, cognitive load refers to the “amount of mental processing power” required to use a website. Applying this principle to PPC ads, Goodman explains that reducing the cognitive load of your ads will make it easier for users to process your ads and, thus, click on them.
What does “reducing cognitive load” mean in practical terms? Basically, you want to make clicking on your ad a no-brainer. Don’t make the user think. Draw a straight line from their search query to your landing page. Use an explicit and specific call to action. Most importantly, make your ad as simple to read as possible. That means minimizing the number of characters and using white space strategically. Overcrowding an ad with too many words and ideas will increase the ad’s cognitive load, which will distract the user and push them away.
For specific examples of effective vs. ineffective ads, read Goodman’s full article.

11 Simple Ways to Customize Your Online Advertising Campaign

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Our lead generation program allows you to be as involved as you want, an aspect that appeals to many of our clients. If you prefer to be hands off and let us take care of all the details, that’s great. However, there are many clients who like to be more interactive with their campaigns. By making their own contributions and adding touches of their unique personalities to their sites, they feel more invested in their campaigns and forge a stronger connection with their own customers.

Thankfully, it’s not only easy to add custom flourishes to your online advertising campaign—it’s also inexpensive.

DIY Freebies

These do-it-yourself options are free through the Client Portal.

Add a photo gallery. Through the Client Portal, you can manage a photo gallery by uploading your own original photos. All you have to do is ask us to enable the photo gallery tab on your LeadTrax™ site, and then you can go to town! The gallery can focus on anything you want: recently completed work, before-and-after shots, items for sale, or even your team members. People love pictures, and having a photo gallery that showcases your talent or brand is a great way to take advantage of that.
Add a “For Sale” tab. Operating the same way as the photo gallery, this tab allows you to upload your own pictures and captions for items that you’re selling (once we’ve enabled it on your site). This has been very popular with appliance repair companies that sell refurbished appliances. Take a look at the “For Sale” tab at A B Appliance Services, for example.
Keep your own blog. Every new LeadTrax site comes with a fully functional blog just waiting to be filled with content. We write a couple of initial posts for you following your site launch, but after that, you can feel free to update your blog as much as you want. As long as you have a topic that your audience wants to read about, you can write your heart out. An up-to-date, informative blog proves to your prospects that you’re engaged and knowledgeable.

Complimentary Add-Ons

Our professionals will take care of these for you free of charge. Simply call or e-mail us with your specific requests, and we’ll do all the work!

Add unique tabs for extra content. This is a great option for business owners who want to include a separate “About Us” page, but it can work for almost any extra content you wish to include. You can either submit your own, original content for us to add, or our professional writers can do the job for you. Take a look at the “About Us” page for Mary Ellen Flaherty & Brendan Flaherty Realtors as an example. You may also be inspired by Yocum Shutters and Blinds, who used this tab to showcase their “Best of West Chester” award.
Add custom e-mail/service request forms. Many business owners find that their customers like to submit e-mails and service requests right from their websites, which is why we include an “E-mail Us” link as a standard feature on all of our LeadTrax sites. However, some businesses find it handy to have custom content in their e-mail forms so they can ensure they get all of the necessary information from their prospects right up front. Just tell us about the specific fields or questions you’d like to include, and we’ll create a custom form for you. For instance, we created a custom e-mail form for Acello Tax Resolution Group that asks prospective customers to provide details about their tax problems. This gives the tax consultants a baseline understanding of the case, making life easier for both the business owner and the customer.
Add a “Leave Us a Review!” button. As we’ve covered extensively, customer reviews are a crucial part of your online presence. When you have us add this button to your site, it will be more convenient for past customers to click on it and submit a quick review of your business. Then, the feature will automatically upload the positive reviews straight to your Google+ listing.

Low-Cost Additions

These options require the hands of our professionals, but they’re well worth the minor investment.

Upgrade your template. If you’ve been with us for a few years, then you might be sick of looking at the same ol’ layout all the time. Or you might want a more updated look to keep up with the times. Whatever the reason, if you’re interested in upgrading your LeadTrax site template, just let us know! Right now, we have several brand-new templates hot off the presses.
Request brand pages. If you work in an industry like appliance repair, you might find that customers are often seeking a repairman who specializes in specific brands. You can easily address this by having us write a brief, targeted page for any brand you wish to highlight. Morris County Appliance Repair, for example, chose to add pages for quite a few of its most popular appliance brands.
Request a press release. Has something newsworthy recently happened with your company? Why not announce it? We can write a press release on your behalf and distribute it to boost your SEO. At the same time, you’ll have a tangible news item that you can share with all of your friends and fans on social media.
Use MapTrax™. MapTrax is a tool that monitors your Google listing for you. It will alert you if the content or status of your listing changes so you can be aware of any red flags. MapTrax saves you from having to manually check your listing daily, which means you can focus your time and energy elsewhere.
Use AdTrax™. AdTrax allows you to laser-focus the way you track your campaign. Instead of giving you a broad picture of how many leads your campaign is generating per month, AdTrax lets you see how your site is ranking on Google for specific keywords of your choosing. This way, you can make sure you’re attracting your ideal audience and make adjustments as you see fit.

Take the First Step

Your online advertising campaign won’t customize itself! Why not browse the Client Portal and try out some of those free tools yourself? If you’re having trouble with the technology or you need some guidance, don’t hesitate to call your campaign coordinator for help. That’s what we’re here for! Similarly, if a few of the paid options appeal to you but you can’t decide which one is best, feel free to discuss them with us. We’ll help you figure out how to get the best value for your campaign.
The bottom line is, we’re here as a resource for you. However you decide to proceed, let us in on the conversation so we can help you make the wisest decision possible. Good luck!

Prospect Genius

Do You Have a Plan for Handling Missed Calls?

Have a Professional Voice Mail System

Leverage the Convenience of Technology

Use a Professional Answering Service

But Really: Pick Up Your Phone

With PPC Ads, Users Prefer a No-Brainer

Contact Us

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