3 Pillars of Internet Marketing

Pillar 1: Increase Traffic to the Website via SEO

1: Targeted Title Tags

There should be unique Title Tags for each page on a website. In addition, the title tags should be targeted around specific keyword phrases. A title tag that says “Home Page” is much less effective than a title tag that says “SEO Title Tags: Why Using Targeted SEO Title Tags is a Smart Strategy”

2: On Page Keyword Usage

We want the key phrases that people enter into Google’s search box to be found on the pages on the website. You also get bonus points if phrases are used in places like headers, links, image tags, etc. It is also important to target a single keyword phrase per page. Don’t confuse the search engines by targeting many phrases on 1 page!

3: Internal Cross Linking

Search engines look at the website structure to determine the most important pages. They evaluate the importance by the number of Internal Links, and the source of those links. Internal Links simply are pages within your site that link to other pages on your site. For example, if Page A has 40 internal links, and Page B has 3 internal links, search engines will prefer Page A. In addition, links from important pages – such as the home page – hold more value than links from less important pages.

4: Fresh Content

Search engines like to find new and unique content on the site when they come back to crawl the site. Therefore, over time, writing new content that targets specific keyword phrases, which also increase the size of the site, is a smart SEO strategy. This includes items such as writing articles and blog posts.

5: Quality of Backlinks

The more highly respected websites talk about your website, the better. Go to Search Console and see the number of Links to Your Site. Are there big name sites on this list? The more links you have from big name sites, the better. In addition, check the pages to which these links are pointing. We want to make sure that the links are not only going to the home page. It’s much better if Links to Your Site are pointing to a variety of key pages on your site.

Lever TS 6: Quantity of Backlinks

Another way search engines evaluate the popularity of a website is to check the total number of links pointed back to your site. Go to Search Console and see the number of Links to Your Site. You can also use 3rd party tools to estimate the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site, and compare those results to your competitors. Currently, tools like Moz and Cognitive SEO can help provide some comparing tools for you.

Pillar 1: Increase Traffic to the Website via PPC

1: Keyword Expansion

When a PPC Account is created, it starts by targeting a fixed number of keyword phrases. Once the account sees some success, the number of targeted phrases should increase. This will trigger the ads more frequently which will increase the number of impressions received.  This should ultimately increase the PPC traffic to the site.

2: Optimize the PPC Budget

As money is spent inside a PPC account, it is spent on a variety of keywords, triggering a variety of ads, and sending people to a variety of website pages. As data is gathered, the money should be reallocated to the more effective keywords. Make sure the most effective keywords aren’t limited by budget!

3: Increase Exposure of the PPC Ads

Once the target set of keywords are triggering ads, there a number of different strategies that can be implemented to help those ads show up more frequently and/or in more places. Some of these options include:

• Targeting new Locations (adding cities, different states, countries, etc)
• Increasing the number and types of Devices that show your ads (phones, tablets, etc)
• Increasing the number of Languages (not just Google.com, but international versions as well)
• Use the Google Display Network or GDN (show ads non-search engine sites, show banners, etc)
• Use Google’s Search Partners (other search engines that show Google results to their visitors)

4: Increase the Click-through Rates (CTR) of the PPC Ads

When your ad is shown, that counts as an Impression. The Click-through Rate (CTR) is the ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. You can improve the CTR by:

• Writing better, more compelling ads
• A/B Test ad content (write 2 versions, let Google rotate the ads, & see which gets clicked more)
• Increase the Average Position by increasing your Cost Per Click
• Add Sitelinks to allow customers to see popular sections of your website

5: Improve the Keyword Quality Score

Keywords trigger ads. Ads send visitors to specific web pages. If the keyword and ad aren’t related, or the ad content and the landing page content don’t match well, your keyword will receive a low Quality Score. So again, the Quality Score measures the matching of your keyword, your ad and your landing page. Low Quality Scores will either result in a higher Cost per Click, or may even prevent your ads from ever displaying. Try and ensure that all Quality Scores are at least 3 or higher. Ideally, all the Quality Scores should be 5 or higher.

Pillar 3: Maximize Average Order Value

1: Cross Sell Popular Products

When a person has made a decision to buy, it is more likely that they are willing to buy addition products. A common way to increase Average Order Value is to Cross Sell other products. Common methods include “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought…”, “Popular Products”, “Top Sellers”, etc

2: Bundle Products

Rather than rely on Cross Selling, a very effective technique is creating Product Bundles. If you go buy some new skis, you likely will be shown a package with skis, boots, bindings and poles. This makes the buying decision to purchase multiple products much easier. This is especially effective if the bundle will save money over buying the items separately, and those savings are clearly communicated.

3: Highlight Benefits of Expensive Products

Let’s suppose you sell a $39 “Basic” product and a $99 “Professional” product. How will you communicate the real value in the more expensive features? Changing the name isn’t enough. There are lots of ways to do this. Comparison charts, listing items and saying Best Value, and summarizing what’s included in each product are common techniques. For example:

4: Free Shipping over $XXX.XX

Offering free shipping not only increases the conversion rates, but it also can encourage additional purchases, increasing the Average Order Value. For example, Amazon does this extremely effectively. And with the popularity of Amazon Prime, it’s even more important to consider this option. If you can’t offer Free Shipping for all purchases, at least try different pricing levels where people qualify for free shipping and see what works best.

5: Encourage Repeat Orders with Promotions or Incentives to Buy

It is much cheaper to keep sell to existing customers than to acquire new customers. What are you doing to encourage clients to buy from you again?

• Are you sending your past customers specials via email?
• Are you offering Social Media promotions and specials?
• Do you send a coupon for future purchases when you mail something to your customers?Bounce Back Coupons are a very common and effective method of doing this.
• Do you give incentives for customers to tell their friends?