newsletter – Page 13

Facebook Is the New Google

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Facebook isn’t just for stalking your old classmates anymore. In the past few years, Facebook has evolved into a hub for exchanging information—everything from political opinions to diet tips to breaking news—among friends, coworkers, and relatives. People even outsource their own questions, asking trusted friends who they recommend for local doctors, dentists, hair dressers, repairmen, contractors, and so on. That means local businesses and service providers have a unique opportunity on Facebook: They can take advantage of this crowdsourcing trend and promote themselves right on Facebook, where people are already looking for info about them.
In fact, Facebook is slowly replacing Google as the go-to resource for local search. People used to turn to Google to find local appliance repairmen, plumbers, landscapers, and the like, but there was no way to know whether these professionals were actually reliable or not. Hence the uptick in crowdsourcing on Facebook. Now, people realize it’s much more easy and effective to ask the people they know and trust for their personal recommendations—instead of taking a gamble on the business that happened to have the best ranking on Google.

Optimize Your Facebook

To take advantage of this new opportunity, you must make your Facebook presence as appealing as possible to prospective customers. Here’s what you need:

Page “Likes.” A Facebook Page without fans is like a restaurant without patrons. People passing by will not go in because the restaurant is empty, implying that it’s unpopular. In other words, more “Likes” on your Page will give your business more credibility.
Reviews. Customer reviews used to just be nice to have. Then, they became integral in attracting new customers. Now, they’re a vital part of your local search rankings on Google. You simply must get your customers to leave reviews on your company’s Facebook Page.
Page activity. Your Page is a showcase for your company’s personality and expertise. You should be posting status updates, uploading photos, and sharing helpful articles on a consistent basis (at least a few times a week), otherwise your audience will see no value in following your Page.
An attractive profile. Your company’s description should be well written and captivating. Your profile picture and header should be unique, high-quality images that are relevant to your business—not grainy snapshots of your own face. You want Page visitors to see how professional your team really is.
Regular engagement. To show your audience that you care, you should be interacting with them regularly. When they comment on one of your posts, respond. When they leave a review, good or bad, thank them for their feedback. This is your chance to hear what your customers and prospects are thinking and to let them know that you’re listening.

What You Can Do Yourself

There are many aspects of social media marketing that you can take care of yourself. Maintaining a presence on Facebook is something that’s entirely within your abilities if you have the time and energy. Here are some of the Facebook tasks that are pretty DIY friendly:

Sharing status updates. It only takes a minute to share what your company has been up to for the past few days.
Uploading photos and/or videos of your work. Smartphones make it super easy to take photos and videos, and the Facebook app makes it even easier to upload them straight to your timeline.
Sharing links to relevant articles and/or blog posts. If you come across an item online that you think your audience would appreciate, it takes almost no time at all to copy and paste the link on Facebook.
Interacting with your audience (e.g. posing questions, replying to comments, etc.). As soon as you get a notification that someone has commented on a post or left you a review, take a quick moment to read it and respond. It’s also easy to engage with your fans simply by asking them about their plans for the weekend or an upcoming holiday.

What You Should Leave to Us

Of course, having some extra time on your hands isn’t always enough to make an impressive Facebook presence. If you really want to promote your brand and put yourself in front of local prospects, then you’ll need to consider some more advanced strategies. However, advanced strategies call for advanced expertise. The below tasks require the kind of experience you can only find at Prospect Genius:

Promoting sponsored ads. We have years of experience working with paid ads. We use those countless data points to identify trends and help your ads get the most visibility and highest conversion rates possible. Plus, since Facebook uses a CPM model instead of CPC (in other words, you pay for ad impressions instead of clicks), you’ll need a team that knows how to set up your campaign so you aren’t hemorrhaging money.
Implementing a “Like” campaign. Again, since we’re able to draw on our wealth of experience with paid ads, we know how to test and rotate ads so they drive the most “Likes” to your page.
Continuously sharing content. Even if you have the time to post on Facebook, you may not know exactly what to say. That’s where our SocialStream package comes in handy. Our professional writers will add a certain number of blog posts each month to your LeadTrax™ site, and our production specialists will share them on all of your social media accounts. It’s the best way to share useful, high-quality content with your audience on a consistent basis.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Social media is a lifestyle. It’s not a one-and-done campaign. Maintaining a solid Facebook presence requires lots of repetition. You need to be continuously active on your account. Your activity can’t just last for one month and then taper off, or else you’ll miss out on countless potential fans. If you don’t think you’ll be able to maintain consistent activity on Facebook, then you should seriously consider calling for reinforcements. Our professionals will give you plenty of valuable content to share and can even promote your brand through sponsored ads. You can’t afford to ignore such a vital (and mostly free) advertising platform… Give us a call and start coordinating with our team today!

Online Advertising Guarantees Are Just Tricks

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Let’s say you’re an appliance repairman. If you were to install a new part in a washing machine, you would most likely guarantee the quality of your handiwork, but you probably wouldn’t specifically guarantee how clean your customer’s clothes would come out of the wash. Why not? Because there would be too many variables out of your control, like whether the customer added enough detergent, whether they packed the machine too full, or how dirty the clothes were when they were put into the wash. While you can advise your customer on how to best use a washing machine and explain what normally happens when clothes are put into a washing machine, you can’t actually guarantee specific results. A lot of that is up to the customer and the washing machine itself.
Man lying with fingers crossed
This scenario translates to online advertising. Advertisers are the appliance repairman, Google is the washing machine, and quality lead generation is the clean clothing. While it may seem reasonable at first to ask for guaranteed results from your advertising provider, it’s just not something we can do because there are so many variables that are out of our control. We can give you a ballpark estimate of results based on the typical trajectory of a campaign, but we cannot guarantee you specific results. And you should question any provider who does.
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the most common types of online advertising guarantees and explain why you should think twice before believing them.

Guaranteed Number of Calls

There are plenty of online advertising providers who guarantee you’ll get “X” number of calls through their campaign. But here are some questions you should ask:

What kind of calls count?
Are they counting unique calls or repeat calls?
Are they counting existing customers?
Are they counting misdials?
Are they counting solicitation calls?
Are they counting calls for services you don’t offer?
Are they counting calls from totally different geographic areas?
Are your calls being sent to multiple other businesses at the same time?
What kind of timeline are they using to count the calls? Is it per month? per year?

Providers may guarantee a certain number of calls, but when you start digging for answers, you’ll usually see that their guarantees mean nothing. Even if they do fulfill their guarantee of “X” number of calls, they could be sending you lots of calls unrelated to your services, calls from outside of your service area, or calls that have been shared with your direct competitors. And unless they say otherwise, it could take the entire span of your campaign to reach the promised number of calls. In short, a certain number of calls does not guarantee success for your business.

Guaranteed Number of Leads

Meanwhile, some providers guarantee that they’ll send you a certain number of leads. In this context, the difference between leads and calls is that leads are sent to you in the form of a prospect’s contact info, and they require you to track down that individual in order to obtain their business. If an advertising company guarantees you a certain number of leads, here’s what you should ask:

Are they sending live leads to you?
Are they also sharing those leads with your competitors?
- If so, how many?
Are they sending leads that aren’t actually relevant to your service offerings?
Are they sending leads from the wrong geographic areas?
Are they counting leads from existing customers?
Are they counting leads from repeat customers?
Are they counting spam e-mails?
What kind of timeline are they using to count the leads? Is it per month? per year?

Just like providers who guarantee a certain number of calls, providers who guarantee leads will always find loopholes to get around their own promises. To satisfy their guarantee and provide you with the highest number of leads possible, they might just send you leads for any old service, even if you don’t provide that service. They also might be sending you leads that are simultaneously going to other clients, who are most likely your direct competitors. By sending you poor-quality leads or leads that aren’t exclusive to you, they’re able to fulfill their promise without actually helping your business.

Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings

One of the most common guarantees floating around the online advertising industry is for “first-page” rankings on search engines. If they say that they’ll put you on page one, there are a lot of technical loopholes that they might be going through in order to make that happen. Here’s what you should be asking:

Are you ranking in organic search results, as a sponsored ad, or in the maps section?
Who is performing the search?
Which search terms are you ranking for?
Which search engine are you actually ranking on?
If they’re using Google, are they searching while signed in to their accounts?
Will they clear their own search and browsing history before performing the search?
Do they turn off their browser cookies?
Are they using a proxy server?
Are they always using the same IP address?
Which web browser are they using?
What location are they searching in?
Are they searching from a desktop computer or from a mobile device?
How long will the page-one ranking last?
Are they just going to take over your existing Google My Business listing?

As you can see, these guarantees can get extremely complicated because there are so many technical factors that play a role in rankings. It’s easy for a provider to work around their page-one guarantee by simply manipulating all the right variables. Normal searches aren’t going to produce the same results.
For instance, if it’s a PPC campaign, then it won’t take much–aside from a lot of money–to get your business on the first page of Google, as sponsored results automatically display at the top of the first page. The specific search terms that they’re using to determine your ranking also matter: Are you ranking for natural search terms like “appliance repair in Albany, NY,” or are you ranking for “Bob’s Appliance Repair, 123 Main St, Albany, NY 12203″? You’ll probably rank at the top when someone searches for your exact company name and location, but that’s not what makes an advertising campaign effective or successful.
The final bullet point is especially important. If you already have a Google My Business listing in good standing, there are many providers who will seek you out because all they have to do to satisfy the guarantee is take over your listing, even though most of the SEO work was done before they even got there. It’s a dishonest tactic, but many providers fulfill their guarantee this way.

Guarantees Are Traps

Providers offer guarantees because they know how to grab your attention. But the takeaway from this post should be that online advertising guarantees, when boiled down, mean nothing. Just like with every other form of advertising that has ever existed in the world, online advertisers can’t actually guarantee results that are ultimately out of their control. If a provider does guarantee you specific results, you should be very, very skeptical.

The Do's and Don'ts of Expanding Your Campaign

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Thinking about expanding your Prospect Genius campaign in 2015? It’s not uncommon for clients to want to take their campaigns to the next level after being with us for a certain amount of time and achieving a certain level of success. You want to see how far you can take your online advertising campaign, and we can’t blame you!
You should feel free to make upgrades and additions to your Prospect Genius campaign, but be careful: more does not always mean better. Here’s what to do and what not to do.

Goal: Expand Service Offerings

If your goal is to expand your service offerings…

DO NOT just add any old service to your site.

It may be tempting to stack up your services as a way of offering the widest selection possible, but that strategy could actually backfire. Google likes specificity. The more laser-targeted your offering is, the more credible you’ll be in Google’s eyes. Love it or hate it, it’s just the reality of dealing with Google and their expectations. Google likes to put things in tidy boxes, so even if you do offer an eclectic range of services, your Internet marketing strategy should focus only on advertising what’s relevant to your main category.

DO add specialized service pages to your LeadTrax™ site.

Instead of just tacking on extra services, a more effective way to generate leads from your service offerings is to offer specialty services. Think depth over breadth. By offering a specialized service like Samsung or LG appliance repair, you’ll be able to capture attention from prospects who have highly specific needs and corner that niche market. Google likes this approach, too, so the hyper-specific search terms targeted by these pages rank really well. We’ve had many clients see fantastic success by adding specific brand pages and specialty pages to their LeadTrax sites.

Goal: Expand Your Market

If your goal is to expand your market or service area…

DO NOT create a fake Google listing.

If you want to reach a different geographic area, do not under any circumstances create a new Google My Places listing with a fake address. It may seem like a shortcut to getting listed in a different area, but this trick would only work if you actually had another physical location at that address. Google uses Google Earth technology, their own cars, and even local volunteers to check out new listings and determine whether they’re valid. If you try to pull the wool over Google’s eyes, you’ll pay the price with a suspended or penalized listing (which can take up to 12 months to rectify). So while faking an address may give you a temporary improvement in rankings, it’s not worth the risk of what could be a year or more of penalties and other problems.

DO use a pay-per-click campaign.

This is the smarter alternative to creating a fake listing. Did you know that pay-per-click (PPC) isn’t as geographically limited as organic SEO is? That means adding our PPC package to the mix will help you to expand your geographic market, regardless of whether you’re already a Prospect Genius Core member or you’re using one of our à-la-carte services. While local search is dictated by the address on your Google listing, PPC is much more flexible. You get to decide on how broad or narrow your targeted geographic area is. For example, you could choose to target ads specifically at Schenectady, NY, or you could choose to widen your ads’ reach to all of Albany County. It’s totally up to you. In other words, PPC will allow you to reach a wider audience without hurting your organic local search rankings.

Goal: Maximize Results From Online Advertising

If your goal is to get even more out of your online advertising efforts…

DO NOT use two SEO companies.

You might think, “My campaign is doing well. I’ll add another one to get even better results!” That couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to SEO. While combining organic search optimization and paid search optimization typically generates great success, combining two organic search campaigns from two different providers will do the opposite. Working with two separate SEO companies at the same time will essentially sabotage both your campaigns. Read more about this in our blog post, “For SEO Companies, Two’s a Crowd.”
This principle applies to all forms of online advertising: You don’t want to hire two different companies that provide the exact same services. Whether it’s two SEO providers or two social media specialists, they’ll counteract each other’s work, get in each other’s way, and create a disaster for your web presence.

DO leverage social media.

If you want to get more out of your online advertising without sabotaging your own campaign or paying for PPC, then optimize your social media presence. By leveraging all the social media tools available to you for free, or even taking advantage of our specialists who can do the work for you, you’ll be able to reach customers in a whole new way. Not only will you be able to spread the word about your business more efficiently, but you’ll also create a terrific showcase for your business’s unique personality. When prospects get a glimpse of what your company is about and see that there are real people behind it, they’ll be much more likely to connect with you. Plus, the more “Likes” you have on Facebook and followers you have on Twitter, the more credible your business will seem to prospective customers.
To that end, consider taking advantage of Prospect Genius’s SocialStart or SocialStream packages. If you’re looking for an even greater push, we also perform Facebook ad campaigns that will boost your posts and get more “Likes” for your page.

Always Ask Questions

If you want to expand your campaign but you’re having trouble setting goals or deciding where to start, give us a call! We’re always happy to discuss your company’s needs and work on a solution that fits perfectly.

Are You Spending Your Online Advertising Dollars Wisely?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Throwing Money Away

Are you getting your money’s worth from your online advertising expenses?
That’s the question many business owners should be asking themselves. You already know that having a web presence is crucial and that hiring an online advertising professional is worth the investment—but are you making the right investment for your company? Once you’ve decided to hire a provider, it’s a little more difficult to figure out if you’re actually getting the best return possible.

What Are the Options?

There are advertising options for every budget, and they can be categorized into a three-tier system of pricing.

Top-tier providers are suited for large, competitive markets and undefined geographic boundaries, and are therefore very expensive.
Mid-tier providers are perfectly serviceable for niche markets and narrow geographic boundaries, and are therefore more affordable than top-tier providers.
Bottom-tier providers are entry-level online advertisers who provide one-size-fits-all marketing, and are therefore considerably cheap.

To simplify matters, we’ll use general terms and average rates to discuss the advertising providers in each tier (as specific services and price points vary from provider to provider). Obviously, the tier that you’ll want to use will depend on your company’s marketing budget as well as its needs. At the end of the day, you want to get the best possible online advertising services that you can afford for your business.

Top-Tier Providers

In this tier, clients have a range of advertising options to choose from. However, the two most prominent options are premium outside marketers and in-house marketers.
OUTSIDE MARKETERS
Premium marketing services from outside providers generally cost around $10,000 per month or more. Not surprisingly, these services are typically reserved for large corporations that have broad national or international campaigns. Regional campaigns (in New England or on the West Coast, for example) with a more focused market will cost maybe half, but that’s still in the ballpark of $5,000. Regardless, let’s use $10,000 as the baseline price. That adds up to $120,000 spent on Internet marketing services in one year.
So, what are you getting for $120,000 per year? You’re paying for high-end, 100% customized services from a small firm that only takes on a handful of clients at a time. You’ll get personal attention at all hours of the day. Your hired specialists won’t have tons of data points to work from, given that they typically don’t focus on more than a few clients in a given year, but they’ll still be able to draw on experience from previous and other current clients in order to evolve their approach when necessary.
IN-HOUSE MARKETERS
The other top-tier option is to hire an in-house team that performs numerous online marketing activities for your company. This will involve hiring at least one promotions specialist on a yearly salary that falls between $50,000 and $55,000. (Keep in mind, costs for in-house employees go beyond salary; you must also account for health benefits, personal equipment, and other overhead costs.) However, if you want an efficient marketing team, then you’ll want to hire a couple of additional specialists, as well. If you hire just two promotions specialists, you’re already looking at a yearly cost of $100,000 to $110,000 in salary alone.
What are you getting from your in-house marketing team? You’re getting a team that, by definition, is under your employ and therefore at your beck and call. Attention to your campaign can’t get more personalized than that. However, this team is only working on one campaign, so it won’t have the benefit of A/B testing and multiple data points that come with an outside provider who has many different clients. This means they may not be able to spot trends in updated search algorithms or test new techniques with as much confidence.
THE WINNER
With the average costs of both options being relatively equal, we’d say that premium services from an outside provider will get you the biggest bang for your buck. However, they’re both viable and effective options.

Mid-Tier Providers

On the other end of the spectrum, mid-tier providers are for local businesses that are marketing to a niche audience in a restricted geographic area. These are plumbers, electricians, handymen, and similar businesses. Prospect Genius is a mid-tier provider.
This type of provider may cost between $300 and $500 per month. With these providers, a campaign is roughly 20% customized, with the remainder following a standardized procedure that’s used for all other clients. Although the vast majority of small businesses have similar advertising needs and face similar issues, mid-tier providers will work with clients to tailor campaigns as much as possible within the framework of their program. These kinds of campaigns are effective because small, localized markets aren’t very competitive and don’t require as much legwork to get off the ground.
What are you getting for $300 to $500 per month? You get all the online advertising essentials: a fully functional website with custom content, Google+ Local optimization, directory listings, social media exposure, and (usually) performance reports. Mid-tier providers typically work with hundreds and hundreds of clients who all have similar needs, so they’re exposed to a high number of data points that allows for accurate A/B testing. This means they will be able to detect patterns with different search engines and continually test new techniques to create the most effective strategy possible.
With mid-tier providers, there’s also plenty of room for clients to grow. Typical mid-tier providers will offer a wide selection of campaign upgrades and add-on features that clients may take advantage of at their own discretion. Popular expansion features include social media updates, blog posts, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clients usually start out paying for the bread-and-butter package, but over time they might like their campaign’s results so much that they want to add to it to make it even stronger.

Bottom-Tier Providers

Otherwise known as “one-size-fits-all” marketers, these providers cater to small, local businesses who don’t wish to spend much money on advertising. You’ll find a lot of snake oil in this tier. These providers usually cost about $100 per month because their services and strategies apply to every one of their clients with little to no variation whatsoever. They sell the same exact product to every single client, which is how they keep their costs down. Some of the better known providers in this category are Yodle and 99 Calls.
Well, $100 a month sounds pretty cheap! But what are you getting out of it? You’re getting a one- or two-page website that’s identical to many of the provider’s other clients, as well as written content that’s been outsourced to a non-native English speaker. What’s more, most of that content is duplicated from one client to the next, with only minor details like company name and location changed. (As we all know, Google penalizes duplicate content.) But, in a way, their practices make sense: With $50 of your $100 going to overhead costs, and another $25 going to profit, these providers only have about $25 to actually spend on your campaign per month. They’re doing all they can afford to do.
Unlike mid-tier providers, who not only offer room for customization but also room for growth, most bottom-tier providers don’t offer any expansion features. What you see is what you get. The providers that do offer expansion features essentially just upgrade you to a campaign similar to a mid-tier one. In these cases, where they clearly have the resources to provide you with a better service, they should have just sold you the right solution from the start.

Go for the Best

When selecting an online advertiser, you should apply the same logic that you use when you’re selecting tools for your trade. When you go to the hardware store to purchase a new tool for your plumbing or remodeling business, do you buy the cheapest tools—or do you buy the best tools? You shouldn’t spend beyond your means, but you also shouldn’t skimp on quality, either.
Whether you’re currently in the market for a new online advertiser or you’ve been using the same one for years, keep this in mind: You get what you pay for.

Actionable Lessons From 2014 That You Need to Know

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Did you feel overwhelmed this year by what seemed like a constant barrage of Google updates? You’re not the only one. A series of new guidelines, new dashboards, and new search algorithm updates made it a full-time job to stay on top of Google in 2014. As a business owner with your own hectic schedule, you probably weren’t able to keep up with those changes as much as you would have liked. That’s okay. Prospect Genius is here to highlight the most important points to take away from all of 2014’s changes.

Person jumping over 2015 What’s the underlying lesson? As Google continued to refine its search algorithms, and search engine optimization continued to adapt, we were reminded that it’s just as important for your campaign to have a solid foundation as it is for your campaign to evolve with Google’s changes.

Here, we give you some of the actionable insights we gleaned from 2014 so you can have an even stronger campaign through 2015.

Oldies but Goodies

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This year, we saw firsthand that some of the old, tried-and-true ways for business owners to lay the groundwork for a campaign still work. Here are a couple of classic ways you can take initiative and make sure you’re primed for a strong campaign, no matter what updates Google throws your way.
GET REVIEWS
We’ve said it over and over again on this blog, but we can’t say it enough: Customer reviews are a crucial aspect of your online presence. When prospective customers see a significant number of reviews and a positive consensus about your company’s services, they will be exponentially more likely to hire you for a job.
In 2014, we saw many clients experience great success with their SEO campaigns after fortifying them with strong customer reviews. Take a look at a few for yourself:

Conner & Sons Repair — This Michigan-based appliance repair company has a 4.9 rating (out of 5.0) from 34 reviews on its Google listing. Its first year with PG, this company got approximately 65 calls per month; the second year, it averaged over 100; the third year over 200. In August 2014, it received a whopping 551 calls! That number hasn’t dropped below 300 since.
Ace Appliance Repair, Inc. — Based in New Jersey, Ace Appliance Repair has a stellar 5.0 rating from 23 reviews! Not surprisingly, these appliance repair pros went from around 75 calls per month last year to 120-160 calls per month this year.
Jimmy Gusky Heating & Air LLC — This D.C.-metro outfit boasts a 4.6 rating from 14 reviews. That’s a slightly lower number than the two clients above, but this company is already pulling in around 75 calls per month!

While there’s no way to definitively prove that the high number of reviews in these cases caused the high number of leads, we certainly don’t think it’s a coincidence. The takeaway? You should always be asking customers to leave reviews on your Google listing. Your company’s success may depend on it.
SHARE YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS
This is another topic we’ve written about extensively, and it still holds true: Prospect Genius—or any online advertiser, for that matter—needs access to clients’ Google My Business accounts in order to properly optimize and manage them. We need to keep tabs on your local business listing’s performance and update it whenever necessary to remain in compliance with Google’s ever-changing guidelines.
We understand the hesitancy to share log-in information in this day and age, but that’s why Google instituted the Google My Business platform, which allows you to name a manager of your account without requiring that manager to have your password. But if you don’t name Prospect Genius as the manager of your listing, then we’ll have difficulty tracking your campaign performance and making sure all of your online information matches. This could result in conflicting information (something Google will penalize you for) and poor visibility.
As we said in our April 2014 blog post, “Hand Over Your Google+ Local Listing to a Pro“:

If you’re paying for professional online advertising services, it’s wiser to let your money work for you. You’ve made an investment in an online advertising company, so why not facilitate that company’s job to the best of your abilities? Rather than complicating matters by actively interfering with your own listings, you’re better off relinquishing a little control and letting your hired specialist do the work.

You’ve trusted Prospect Genius to perform your online advertising, so let us do the job right.

Today’s Top Hits

So, you’ve laid a strong foundation. Your content is valuable, your online reviews are glowing, and your advertiser has access to your listings. Now, it’s equally important that you make the necessary upgrades in order to adapt to Internet marketing’s ever-evolving landscape. It’s imperative to keep up with Google’s changes, or you’ll get left behind.
In 2014, we were able to examine the latest algorithm updates and determine some of the most significant actions our clients can take to boost their campaign performance going forward. Here are the highlights.
USE PAID ADVERTISING
Paid advertising became even more prevalent in 2014. Pay-per-click, or PPC, is widely recognized as a valuable investment, and it’s even more effective when combined with SEO. (Read more about that here: “Optimize Your Site Before You Bid on AdWords.”) PPC and SEO complement each other, as a site with optimized content will have a higher “Quality Score” and therefore see greater PPC success. Having an optimized site will also allow you to pay less for bids on AdWords. The best way to integrate PPC with your existing Prospect Genius campaign is to upgrade from Core to the Premium package.
In fact, PPC has grown so much in popularity that Pauline Jakober, a leading paid search strategist, recently published a whole article on Search Engine Land dedicated to extolling its benefits. Titled “5 Incredibly Practical Reasons to Do PPC in 2015,” Jakober’s article cites PPC’s consumer-targeting capability and lightning-fast results as top reasons to start using PPC this year.
Paid advertising can be leveraged outside of search engines, too. Many social media platforms, most notably Facebook, offer some form of paid advertising. In Facebook’s case, a business can create sponsored posts, which are posts you pay Facebook to target at a specified demographic. The sponsored post will then appear in the news feeds of individuals within that targeted group. Ultimately, as your posts reach more and more people, you’ll see an increase in your number of Page “Likes.”
PUBLISH MORE CONTENT
These days, Google’s algorithms favor websites that have a continuous flow of fresh content. The way Google sees it, the more up-to-date content is for its users, the better. This doesn’t mean you have to add a new page to your site every week; it just means you have to make updates every once in a while.
The best and easiest way to do that is to add a few short blog posts every month. (Every Prospect Genius LeadTrax™ site comes equipped with a fully functional blog you can update at will.) Posts don’t have to be lengthy or detailed—they just have to show prospective customers that you care about them and that you’re passionate about your work. You can recount a recent job so prospects can get a glimpse at what your process looks like, or you can give a few handy tips to homeowners. An updated blog will show off your knowledge about your trade, and it will boost your site’s SEO value to boot.
TARGET YOUR CONTENT
Specificity has become hugely important with the latest search algorithm updates. To use this to your advantage, try adding a couple of pages to your LeadTrax site that are specific to one brand or product. This way, you can capture targeted searches for things like Maytag appliance repair, Trane furnace repair, and so on.

Your Participation Is Key

Prioritizing user experience, Google constantly seeks to improve the quality of its search results. That means Prospect Genius has to make a continuous effort to elevate the perceived (and actual) value of our clients’ websites. But while we’re hard at work on your site, it’s just as important for you to do your part. Take initiative.

Make a concerted effort to get more reviews from your customers.
Give us access to your Google (and Facebook) listing.
Let us display your address on Google+ Local.
Write your own blog posts.
Add more specific pages to your LeadTrax site.

No matter how many updates Google makes to its guidelines and search algorithms, there’s one thing we’ve learned that will never change: When you take an active role in your campaign, the results will grow exponentially.
Here’s to a prosperous 2015!

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