SEO: What is the most effective way to increase traffic to your website?

In today’s digital landscape  it is advantageous to create and maintain a web presence. Ensuring that this web presence can be found by visitors who are looking for what’s being offered (goods, services, or information) is an ever-changing challenge (McIntyre, 2015). Search Engine optimisation (SEO) is an important domain of marketing to understand because the higher a site’s ranking on a search engines results page (SERP), the more clicks are expected for the Web site (Mikulin 2013).  When a consumer searches a term they are presented with a SERP. This SERP lists web pages that are related to the searched term (Figure 1). Within this SERP there are paid and organic results. Sharp (2014) highlighted that from research 90% of individuals who search a term on Google automatically avoid the Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements  and go straight to the organically defined search results. He continues to say that being the organic number one on that SERP means that on average you can expect 33% of the traffic from consumers.

(Figure 1)

According to Google(2017), determining a site’s ranking is proprietary and it depends on thousands of factors. Baye et al (2016) explains that there are two ways to really push an organisations ranking organically to the top of a SERP. The first they describe at the ‘black hat’ strategy.

To develop a website is a marketing strategy which is more effective and least costly to reach many people. Promoting a website in search engine result list is one of the key of creating a profit producing web site. Sometime to get higher ranking in search engine result listing, SEO techniques are used in an unethical manner called spamming (Swati et al 2013). This has been found to boost figures on SERP’s but not improve the amount of clicks within a website. Such techniques not only mislead the search engine algorithms but also lower the quality of search results and increase traffic. Spamming techniques can come in the forms such as Invisible text ,Keyword Stuffing, Link Spamming etc.

The second method focuses more on improving brand equity. This strategy recognizes that consumers tend to click retailers that are more recognized, trusted, have reputations for providing value etc. In contrast to ‘black hat’ strategies, using white hat SEO techniques enables search engines  to return quality content to their consumers. These techniques are beneficial to both users as well as search engines.

Effective SEO requires On-site optimization and Offsite optimization to work in tangent to provide the best results(Shi et al 2010). Swati et al (2013) explains how Keyword techniques are crucial for on-site optimisation. They go on to explain that users enter keywords to search information on search engines. Keywords represent the relationship between a search term and several billion of web pages. On-site optimization includes website design elements such as keyword formatting, keywords in meta tag, keywords in title tag, position of keywords, external link, keyword density etc. These elements are controlled and embedded on the site itself. Off-site optimization revolves around the links that point to the site from other web pages. These links back to the site are called back links. Site with most back links in most cases will come out on top (Swati et al 2013). High quality external links pointing to a website are called inbound links. Total number of inbound links is called as link popularity. In Google, page rank of website determine according to quantity and quality inbound links. To promote site in top ranking list, the quantity and quality of external links are still recognized as the major ranking factor (Kumar & Saini 2011).

When deciding on the best  strategy around SEO, a decision has to be made with regards to how the traffic is going to be generated and why. Increasing the level of traffic often stems from the need to drum up high user interest, social power and the potential to increase profits. Profitability is the focal point for every business and to do this you require consumers to be visiting your web page where sales are made. The potential restriction on this strategy is that not all traffic is ‘good traffic’. Parsons (2014) explains that when increasing traffic to a webpage you need to ensure that the traffic is not only coming due to a viral video , point of reference etc. These users can be labelled as disinterested and will not actually be of profitability to the company.

Feifei and Guangnian (2009) suggest the algorithm to focus on when looking to improve SEO is one which assigns a numerical weight to a webpage according to its relative importance. It uses incoming link information to assign a global importance score to all pages on the web. The number of incoming links from quality sites measures the popularity of a page. SEO is based on quantity and quality of both inbound and outbound links.

 

References:

Baye, M. , De Los Santos, B. , Wildenbeest, M. (2016). Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. 25 (1), p7-32.

Feifei X. and Guangnian Z., Design and implementation of a Java-based search engine algorithm analysis system, Proc. 4th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, 1040-1043 (2009)

Goodwin, Danny (2012), “Organic vs. Paid Search Results: Organic Wins 94% of Time” (available at http://searchenginewatch. com/article/2200730/Organic-vs.-Paid-Search-ResultsOrganic-Wins-94-of-Time/) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.

Google (2017) “Explanation” (Available at http://www.google.com/explanation.html.) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.

Kumar R. and Saini S., A Study on SEO Monitoring System Based on Corporate Website Development, International Journal of Comp. Sci., Engg. and Infor. Tech., 1(2), (2011)

Mcintyre, E. (2015). Search Engine Optimization . Available: http://www.erinmcintyredesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Search_Engine_Optimization_Erin_McIntyre.pdf. Last accessed 6th April 2018.

Mikulin, Rebecca (2013), “Golden Triangle Study Findings Reviewed: Google Proves It’s Critical to Be in Top Three Search Results” (available at http://eyetools.com/research_ google_eyetracking_heatmap.html) Last Accessed 6th April 2018.

Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M., & Smit, E. G. (2011). Introducing COBRAs Exploring motivations forbrand-related social media use. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1),13-46.

Parsons, J. (2014). The Difference Between Good Traffic and Bad Traffic. Available: https://growtraffic.com/blog/2014/09/difference-good-traffic-bad-traffic. Last accessed 6th April 2018.

Sharp, P. (2014). The First Page of Google, by the Numbers. Available: https://www.protofuse.com/blog/details/first-page-of-google-by-the-numbers/. Last accessed 6th April 2018.

Shi J., Cao Y. and Zhao X., Research on SEO Strategies of University Journal Websites, Proc. 2nd International Conference on ICISE, 3060-3063, (2010)

Swati, P, Pawar, B and Ajay,P. (2012). Search Engine Optimization: A Study . Research Journal of Computer and Information Technology Sciences . 1 (1), p10-13

 

April 6, 2018 Uncategorized No Comments on SEO: What is the most effective way to increase traffic to your website?

Social Media Marketing – The Do’s & Don’ts:

In today’s technology driven world, social networking sites have become an avenue where retailers can extend their marketing campaigns to a wider range of consumers (Chi 2011). There are about 3 billion people around the world who have access to the Internet, which is about 45 percent of the global population. Approximately 2.1 billion people have social media accounts, and approximately 1.7 billion people have active social media accounts (Rosen 2016).

In discussing the recent development of social media Campbell et al. (2011) state that it is much more to do with what people are doing with the technology than the technology itself, for rather than merely retrieving information, users are now creating and consuming it, and hence adding value to the websites that permit them to do so. Sorescue et al. (2011), stress that a retailer must go beyond the advertising aspect of social networking sites and find groundbreaking ways to use them as a way to conduct conversations with consumers, instead of a one-way communication network.

Sales:

McCarthy (2015) reported that Facebook now influences over 52% of consumers in their online or offline purchases. Companies using social media as a form of selling have seen a 22.2% increase in sales revenue compared to companies not using social media (Brudner 2016). A major concept assisting businesses with the development of social media is the theory of shopper marketing. Shopper marketing is “the planning and execution of all marketing activities that influence a shopper along, and beyond, the entire path of purchase, from the point at which the motivation to shop first emerges through purchase, consumption, repurchase, and recommendation” (Shankar et al. 2011).

Viral Advertising:

Viral advertising has become a way in which retailers are marketing and providing more information on their brands or products. A viral approach to online advertising has a ‘major advantage’ because communication is more targeted to a brand’s intended consumer (Bampo et al. 2008). Viral advertising is “unpaid peer to peer communication of provocative content originating from an identified sponsor using the Internet to persuade or influence an audience to pass along the content to others” (Chu 2011). Golan and Zaidner (2008) state that consumer to consumer communication is the dominate force for distributing messages created by advertisers; for that reason retailers need to look at marketing in a whole new way and include social media marketing within their business plan.

 

Brand Image:

When exploring the subject of social media it is key to explore the limitations within the topic. Kaiser (2013) fears that ‘the power of social media is being touted by many who are not aware that there are other forms of marketing that are just as essential. In fact, social networking activities are not a solution to marketing issues. They are tools for reaching large numbers of people, inexpensively, but they are not yet the tools that bind people to a company’. De Vries (2012) explains that ‘The share of positive comments on a brand post is positively related to brand post popularity’. This can work in both ways and consumers interested in a brand can also act in a negative manner. Much negative information appears to produce a negative effect on attitude toward the ad and the brand (Eisend 2006). Negative consumer reviews have a negative effect on purchase intentions or sales (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006). Schlosser (2015) goes on to say that people do differentiate in their opinions. The seeing of negative comments can trigger consumers who are faithful to the brand to reply with positivity.

Social Media Monitoring:

Social media monitoring is a critical aspect to any well thought-out social strategy implementation. Social media monitoring has two main drawbacks. Firstly, the element of Spam and junk information that has to be shifted through to gain the correct information. In most cases spam can become such a problem that you have to alter variables in such a way that you end up missing over half of the conversations about your brand.

The second factor is based around the intrusiveness with social media monitoring. In recent research from J.D.Power  it is suggested that 51% of social media users want to talk about companies without them listening in and 43% think social media monitoring invades their privacy. Taylor (2013) states ‘whilst this research will do little to deter brands from monitoring social mentions, it may make them think twice about when to engage. If a customer tweets about a brand, but does not ask a direct question or request for help, should the brand get involved?’. The risk is that users may see this as an unwanted intrusion.  The thought process is that you would not interrupt a conversation two people were having in public so why would you do it online?

References:

Bampo, Mauro, Michael T. Ewing, Dineli R. Mather, David Stewart, and Mark Wallace. (2008). “TheEffects of the Social Structure of Digital Networks on Viral Marketing Performance.” Information Systems Research 19: 273-290.

Brudner , E. (2016). 6 Surprising Statistics on Social Selling That All Salespeople Should Know. Available: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/surprising-statistics-on-social-selling-that-all-salespeople-should-know#sm.0000ohygau1e95fg1rkc3sxt7qz2a. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Campbell, Colin, Leyland F. Pitt, Michael Parent, and Pierre R. Berthon. (2011). “Understanding Consumer Conversations around Ads in a Web 2.0 World.” Journal of Advertising 40:87-102.

Chevalier, J.A. and Mayzlin, D. (2006). “The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews,” Journal of Marketing Research (43:3), pp. 345-354.

 

Chi, Hsu-Hsien. (2011) “Interactive Digital Advertising VS. Virtual Brand Community: Exploratory Study of User Motivation and Social Media Marketing Responses in Taiwan.” Journal of Interactive Advertising 12: 44-61.

Chu, Shu-Chuan. (2011). “Viral advertising in social media: Participation in Facebook groups andresponses among college-aged users.” Journal of Interactive Advertising 12: 30-43.

De Vries, L. (2012). Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: Effects of Social Media Marketing. Available:http://www.aenorm.nl/files/nlaenorm2012/file/article_pdfs/7m2rw_Popularity%20of%20brand%20posts%20on%20brand%20fan%20pages.pdf. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Eisend, M. (2006). Two-Sided Advertising: A MetaAnalysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23(2), 187-198

Golan, Guy J. and Lior Zaidner. (2008). “Creative Strategies in Viral Advertising: An Application of Taylor’s Six-Segment Message Strategy Wheel.” Journal of Computer –MediatedCommunications 13: 959-972.

J.D. Power. (2013). Poor Social Media Practices can Negatively Impact a Businesses’ Bottom Line and Brand Image. Available: http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2013-social-media-benchmark-study. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Kaiser, M. (2014). The Power and Limits of Social Media. Available: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/the-power-and-limits-of-s_b_3893320.html. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

McCarthy, J. (2015). Facebook influences over half of shoppers .Available: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/04/24/facebook-influences-over-half-shoppers-says-digitaslbi-s-connected-commerce-report. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Rosen , J. (2016). Social Media Growth Statistics. Available: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-growth-statistics-01545217#CAAcdUv9dVcW3CgA.97. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Schlosser, A. (2015). Converting Web Site Visitors into Buyers: How Web Site Investment Increases Consumer Trusting Beliefs and Online Purchase Intentions. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiffany_White2/publication/228630251_Converting_Web_Site_Visitors_into_Buyers_How_Web_Site_Investment_Increases_Consumer_Trusting_Beliefs_and_Online_Purchase_Inten. Last accessed 17th Feb 2018.

Shankar,Venkatesh, Jeffery Inman, Murali Mantrala, Eileen Kelley & Ross Rizley.(2011). “Innovations in Shopper Marketing: Current Insights and Future Research Issues.” Journal of Retailing 1:s29-s42.

Sorescu, Alina, Ruud T. Frambach, Jagdip Singh, Rangaswamy Arvind, and Cheryl Bridges. (2011). “Innovations in Retail Business Models.” Journal of Retailing 1: s3-s16

Taylor, D. G., Lewin, J. E., & Strutton, D. (2011). Friends, fans, and followers: Do ads work on social networks? Journal of Advertising Research, 51(1), 258-275.

 

 

 

February 19, 2018 Uncategorized 3 Comments on Social Media Marketing – The Do’s & Don’ts:

24/7 Service: How Social Media is the future of customer service for businesses

Social Media has become a phenomenon over the past ten years with 76% of all internet users now using one or more forms of social media (Anderson and Raine 2012). Mangold and Faulds (2009) state that from a business perspective the tools and approaches for communicating with customers have changed greatly with the emergence of social media; therefore, businesses must learn how to use social media in a way that is consistent with their business plan.

Johanasson, (2017) describes the impact that social media has had on modern customer service as ‘undeniable’. Giosi (2017) states that “Companies are better equipped to handle more customer issues with the help of social media, making the process faster and easier for everyone involved. Now the majority of issues can be resolved with something as simple as a link to a page that has all the answers they’ll need”.

(Figure 1:)

Sixty-five percent of millennials believe social media is an effective customer service channel when being used in comparison to call centres. When looking at brand involvement nearly half of millennial consumers had actively used social media to ask customer service questions compared to just twenty seven percent of the older generation who share this belief (Microsoft’s State of Global Customer Service Report 2016). The statistics in Figure 1 go on to show that 40% of participants believe that social media improves customer service which is six times more than the naysayers who fear social media will harm service. This surge in social media activity according to the 2013 report by J.D. Power is down to expectancy of customers for faster response times and 24/7 support. They go on to say that companies that can deliver this succeed over their competitors.

(Figure 2 – An example of GoDaddy.com)

Customer service via social media does also provide ‘knock on’ benefits. A study by the Aberdeen Group (2014) shows that companies engaging in social customer service see much bigger annual financial gains (7.5 percent Year on Year growth) in comparison to those without (2.9 percent Year on Year growth). This figure is a generated from a wide range of businesses and not specifically one industry however the difference in growth is highly significant. Adequate customer service via social media, which is called social care, is not only a strategic necessity for customer relationship management but also a viable means to reduce customer service costs (Maecker, Barrot and Becker 2016). Depending on the size of the business, hiring one employee compared to several to respond to comments and messages over answering calls can significantly reduce costs. Social media doesn’t cost anything to use, saving businesses from having to pay for multiple phone lines and answering services. If used effectively, using social media can cut down on the number of employees you need for customer service, saving you more money.

There are however risks associated with customer service through social media. De Vries (2012) explains that ‘The share of positive comments on a brand post is positively related to brand post popularity’. This can work in both ways and consumers interested in a brand can also act in a negative manner. Much negative information appears to produce a negative effect on attitude toward the ad and the brand (Eisend 2006). Negative consumer reviews have a negative effect on purchase intentions or sales (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006). Schlosser (2015) goes on to say that people do differentiate in their opinions. The seeing of negative comments can trigger consumers who are faithful to the brand to reply with positivity. A key way to measure and prevent negativity is the speed of response from staff to these issues and interacting with the positive comments as well as the negative.

References:

Aberdeen Business Group. (2014). 10 Benefits of Social Media for Business. Available: https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

Anderson, J & Raine, L. (2012). Main findings: Teens, technology, and human potential in 2020. Available: http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/02/29/main-findings-teens-technology-and-human-potential-in-2020/. Last accessed 1st Oct 2017.

Chevalier, J.A. and Mayzlin, D. (2006). “The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews,” Journal of Marketing Research (43:3), pp. 345-354.

De Vries, L. (2012). Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: Effects of Social Media Marketing. Available:http://www.aenorm.nl/files/nlaenorm2012/file/article_pdfs/7m2rw_Popularity%20of%20brand%20posts%20on%20brand%20fan%20pages.pdf. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

Eisend, M. (2006). Two-Sided Advertising: A MetaAnalysis. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23(2), 187-198

Giosi, L. (2017). How Social Media has Changed Customer Service. Available: https://www.activewebgroup.com/social-media-redefined-customer-service. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

J.D. Power. (2013). Poor Social Media Practices can Negatively Impact a Businesses’ Bottom Line and Brand Image. Available: http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2013-social-media-benchmark-study. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

Johanasson, A. (2017). How Social Media Has Changed The Way That We Engage Consumers. Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-johansson/how-social-media-has-changed-the-way-that-we-engage-consumers_b_9874242.html. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

Maecker,O , Barrot, C and Becker , J . (2016). The effect of social media interactions on customer relationship management. . 9 (1), 133-155.

Mangold, Glynn W., and David J. Faulds. (2009). “Social Media: The New Hybrid Element of the Promotion Mix.” Business Horizons 52: 357-365.

Microsoft. (2016). STATE OF GLOBAL CUSTOMER SERVICE REPORT. Available: https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/dynamics365-en-global-state-customer-service.pdf. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

Schlosser, A. (2015). Converting Web Site Visitors into Buyers: How Web Site Investment Increases Consumer Trusting Beliefs and Online Purchase Intentions. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiffany_White2/publication/228630251_Converting_Web_Site_Visitors_into_Buyers_How_Web_Site_Investment_Increases_Consumer_Trusting_Beliefs_and_Online_Purchase_Inten. Last accessed 1st October 2017.

January 2, 2018 Uncategorized 1 Comment on 24/7 Service: How Social Media is the future of customer service for businesses

Success or Failure? : How can audience participation in social media marketing be evaluated?

Success or Failure? : How can audience participation in social media marketing be evaluated?

Social Media has become a worldwide phenomenon.  The 24th January 2017 was a landmark day for social media , with the new Digital in 2017 Global Overview report from We Are Social and Hootsuite revealing that more than half of the world’s population now uses the internet. The big question now is with a potential audience of 3.77 billion how can participation be audited?

Davis (2012) suggest there is five key metrics that should be being measured to evaluate an audience :

  1. Volume
  2. Reach
  3. Engagement
  4. Influence
  5. Share of Voice

Volume is the easiest method of evaluation and automatically can give you an indication as to whether interest is being generated. Evaluating volume is much more than looking at how many posts there are about your company. Programmes such as Facebook Insights (Figure 1) allow brands to track how this volume changes over time.

(Figure 1)

Not all interest is good interest though. Volume measures the amount of people talking about your brand. Causon (2015) explained that, increasingly, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are being viewed as the perfect vehicles for customers to escalate complaints, with 12% of the 2,195 consumers we surveyed stating they had taken this course of action. The cheap, convenient and public nature of social media platforms means they are a convenient way for shoppers to register their concerns.

Causon continues however that it’s not all negative. ‘The public is not flocking to social media just to complain; 39% of consumers we surveyed actively provide feedback to organisations online, while 31% make pre-sales enquiries.’

Reach measures the spread of a social media conversation. Evaluating reach can show a brand a measurement of their potential audience size. Just because you have a large audience doesn’t automatically mean that your social media marketing is a success. Davis (2015) explains that reach only becomes powerful when compared to other engagement metrics. Using the amount of retweets on a particular post as an example, if a brands reach is 100,000 users but the post is only retweeted 1,000 times a percentage reach of 1% cannot be considered a success. In summary reach can help contextualise your other metrics.

Engagement is one of the most important areas to measure in social media (Barbe 2017). Engagement metrics allow you to identify which posts are being shared. By analysing the cumulative number of link clicks, shares/retweets, likes and comments etc a company can then look for similarities and differences to determine what types of posts are getting attention.

Web referrals track the click-through vs bounce rate engagement metric to determine if you’re targeting the right audience. Through the attachment of a UTM code to your link leads to particular posts or paid campaign can be monitored so that traffic can be compared by click through rate by source, i.e., direct, search, social, etc.  This enables a company to measure the value of traffic generated from social media.

Davis (2012) considers Influence as ‘probably the most controversial social media metric’. She goes on to say that ‘audience size does not necessarily relate to influence’ . It essentially describes that just because the audience is large doesn’t mean that their participation is there. Tools like Klout and PeerIndex assign audience members an influence score.  These programmes measure online social capital and the (potential) ability to influence others.

Figure 2: An example Klout Score

Share of voice metrics enable a brand to answer the question ; How does the conversation about my brand compare to conversations about my competitors? Measuring voice metrics enables you to not only measure audience participation with your own brand but more importantly how your audience is participating with competitors. Audience participation enables a company to learn from their competitors’ successes as well as failures; since so many of these social media conversations are publically available online.

Figure 3: Voice Metric Example Measurement

To confirm whether your social media marketing is a success or failure being consistent and preparing are essential. Metrics need to be started being tracked now and these numbers have to be measured on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. If abnormalities arise they should be investigated. These abnormalities could be the difference to creating effective social media marketing or wasting capital on an ineffective strategy.

Figure 4: Chaffey et al (2009) recommends the review of 6 key digital media channel approaches when analysing website and social preferences.

References:

Barbe,R. (2017). Measuring Social Media – the Most Important Engagement Metrics. Available: http://marketing.wtwhmedia.com/measuring-social-media-important-engagement-metrics/. Last accessed 21/11/2017.

Causon, J. (2015). Customer complaints made via social media on the rise. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/may/21/customer-complaints-social-media-rise. Last accessed 21/11/2017.

Chaffey, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Johnston, K., & Mayer. (2009) Internet Marketing: Strategy, development and practice. Harlow: Pearson.

Davis, J. (2012). 5 Essential & Easy Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring Right Now. Available: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/essential-social-media-metrics/. Last accessed 21/11/2017.

Kemp, S. (2017). Digital in 2017: Global Overview. Available: https://wearesocial.com/special-reports/digital-in-2017-global-overview. Last accessed 21/11/2017.

November 27, 2017 Uncategorized No Comments on Success or Failure? : How can audience participation in social media marketing be evaluated?