Chicago Internet Marketing

Your website should be continually evolving and changing, adjusting its approach and updating campaigns in order to improve results and generate more sales or establish the brand to wider audience. Dig and research your competitors’ approaches and tactics by using one of the many free online competitive analysis tools.

Build sites in html, html5 or other simple language the search engine crawlers can read, keep in mind that Google, Bing and Yahoo tend to pay little if any attention to sites they can’t read or view as cluttered or with low usability.

Adding a page of content to your website each day (or every week) to keep the website strong in the eyes of the search engines is a definite must these days, Google search responds quite well to the constant addition of new content, blogs and comments. You will always see the rewards of adding fresh content and interaction with your site’s visitors.

Make and submit your “site map” to any search engines you plan on advertising on, your “site map” will show search engines the links the most important pages on your site. Search engines will look for the ”site map” listing on pages they hit and follow the links to read and index words and phrases on every page of your site.

Name the main pages of your site with specific keyword phrases and use those same phrases as navigational links around your site. Usability, ease of access and functionality are key to search engines crawling your site and placing it accordingly.

Your H1 tags create a headline on your website’s page; this headline informs Google that those words are important. H1 tags should be three to six words long, include main keywords and correctly display the title of your page. H2 tags are subheadings on your page and act as section headers; they are typically 6 to 12 words long and should include secondary phrases.

Every image and hyperlink on your site offers an opportunity to introduce keywords to a specific page. Add image names and alt-text to your site, keep focused on your product or brand and make it relevant and captivating. Search engines typically don’t read images on sites unless they are tagged with text. Naming images on your site and using “alt tags” will help search engines to read the names of pictures, links and the alt-tags.

You want to keep keyword density targeted at about 5%, density should reflect the ratio number of occurrences of a keyword or phrase to the number of total words per page.

Remember to break up keyword phrases, being repetitive will confuse search engines long enough for temporary gratification but may prove costly when the next algorithm update takes place. Using SEO services Chicago as an example, you would separate the words with a period, as in: I just moved and don’t know where to find the best SEO services. Chicago might have some great companies to help me with my site.

Facebook marketing is a vital part of any social advertising strategy but all to often advertisers find themselves frustrated with Facebook advertising tools. Often times they find they can get clicks to ads but not many conversions or a campaign that was previously converting is no longer doing so. So, for what it’s worth I can offer my failures so you can learn from all my previous mistakes help improve of your own campaigns.

1. Test ads evenly – Unlike Google Facebook lacks an evenly rotate option and will show the ad that gets the most clicks which is not often the ads that gets the most conversions. So it’s important to pause those ads to let others rotate.
2. Segment- Just like in keyword based advertising the more general the segment the less likely it will be to convert. It’s important to try out different segments and tailor your ads towards those segments as much as possible. The important thing to remember is you’re not targeting keywords you’re targeting interests and like keywords not all segments will work but that’s not a reason to write off Facebook all together.
3. Combat ad fatigue- Unlike Google advertising where new users are constantly coming to your site Facebook ads are shown to the same segments over and over again so users will quickly tune those ads out over time. It’s important to keep rotating images out to keep things fresh. A good guideline is to rotate images every two weeks or so.
4. Try look alike audiences- With look alike audiences you can load a list of email address from existing customers of your site into Facebook. Facebook will then get the common likes and interest traits of those existing customers from their Facebook pages and use those common interests to create a new segment of advertisers. This works quite well in obtaining new conversions from an otherwise un-thought of segment. Be mindful though that like all segments they eventually burn out so you will need to refresh the list every few months or so.
5. Can’t get conversions try likes – Getting likes to your page helps build up an audience. In addtion Sponsored stories are ads that display in a users newsfeed and look similar to an ad users would get when they subscribe to a business page. Facebook will scan the users profile for their likes pages and use those likes pages to advertise the business to their other friends. These tend to work rather well at getting conversions. 

5. Try landing page testing – When ads are getting tons of clicks but no conversions it could very well be your landing page. Test several variations of landing pages to see which one works better for you. To evenly test landing pages we suggest using testing tools such as Optimizely.

6. It’s not you it’s Facebook – Even your most successful segments will burn out eventually so it’s important to realize this as you’re setting up a new campaign. To help combat segment burnout we suggest refreshing images if this ceases to work it may be time to pause that segment for a while. 

If you are truly serious about your online presence, you cannot ignore the power of social media. Social media platforms are used by billions everywhere and there is nothing Google thinks of higher than content that is shared across popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Creating social media accounts, sharing original content, and engaging with your followers over a sustained period of time and will establish presence and brand following. All of these tips are based on personal experience and some of them may not work for you.