Addressing The Estimated Time Of Success For Your Houston SEO Campaign

May 13, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

SEO In Houston: How Long Does It Take To Work?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an absolute necessity in today’s online world, and admittedly it’s not the simplest of exercises. Any major provider of digital leads or online services has fielded the question “How long does it take to rank in Google?” or some variation thereof. Chances are this question comes up with virtually every new client. While it makes sense as something a business owner wants to know, the problem is that there’s no simple answer. There are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is the ever-changing world and even the very nature of SEO.

Ranking #1 or even ranking at the top of page one involves many different factors, and it isn’t as simple as it used to be as Google has introduced things like maps, snippets, above fold ads, related queries, and more. Whether wanting to know how to rank for #1 specifically or just top half of page one of Google, trying to put a timeline on things is really impractical.

Houston SEO Now vs SEO Then

There is an absolutely huge difference between how SEO used to be and how it is now, and that doesn’t help the confusion around the time issue. There was a time where simply identifying major keywords, writing some content repeating the keywords, and getting/making/buying backlinks and that would be it. There wasn’t much competition. There would be 5-10 main keywords, and they would be the big winners.

That was how things used to be. Normally when we find a client who talks about being #1 for a specific keyword or for just 2-3 keywords, it’s clear they have an idea of the old way of doing things. While this might have worked at one point, to be blunt nowadays this strategy is wrong. The truly big keywords are dominated by 20-year-old websites from established brands. In addition to this, Google’s data shows that most traffic comes from new keyword searches, longtail keyword searches, and most high traffic sites get hundreds or thousands of different searches making up that traffic.

In other words, if you’re completely focused on a small number of generic keywords you’re not likely to rank for anyway, that’s a losing old school strategy.

Modern SEO that is done well will have a very different focus. Between the expectation of getting very specific information to the use of mobile devices for search, to natural language searches due to vocal software, the overwhelming amount of traffic comes from natural phrases, questions, and keyword queries that are three words or way more.

Since searches are becoming more and more detailed for better more precise results, this actually opens up a lot of opportunities. Whereas the “top traffic” general keywords are often near impossible to rank for, there are thousands or tens of thousands of terms out there which have little competition, very few (or no sites) optimized for them, and this allows blog posts with dozens of these related terms to be used and ranked for quite easily.

This is great news. The traffic numbers might be smaller, but when combined they can add up quickly. In addition to this since the focus includes more detail that means your ranking pages will be more relevant, the traffic will convert at a much higher rate, and the end result means more visits, more followers, and more customers.

That true bottom line benefit should be your focus on modern SEO.

Do Rankings Still Really Matter?

Sure, rankings matter to an extent. You have to be found for your website to work for you. That being said, chances are that individual keyword rankings don’t matter as much as you think they do, and contrary to instinct, that isn’t the main measurement you should focus your attention on.

While higher keyword rankings are definitely a good sign, the end result you want isn’t a bunch of #1 rankings, but more leads and more paying customers. That outcome is what you should be focusing on above all else: the bottom line results.

After all, would you rather want five #1 rankings that bring only 3-4 new customers a month, or many middles of the page longtail keyword rankings that don’t look impressive but bring in 25-50 new customers a month?

That should be an easy question to answer.

How Long Does SEO In Houston Take To Work?

Understanding the real intent behind this question is leads, sales, and business and not just top keyword rankings, then understand that the answer is “It depends.” That might not be a gratifying answer, but it is the only honest one. We understand this can be frustrating, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

There are many different factors that go into how likely a website is to rank in a niche. Just a very short list includes:

How old your website is
If your website has ever been penalized
How competitive is your niche
Are you local, regional, national, or internationally based?
How many backlinks do you have?
How clean the coding is
How much good content exists
Does Google see you as trustworthy
Does Google see you as an authority
Is the past of your domain name (URL) clean or dirty?

These are just some of the many factors involved and no two situations are the same, even among websites competing against each other in the same market.

The SEO Process Timeline

One thing that we can give you is a general timeline of our SEO process to get the process going for every single one of our clients.

First Month

Full niche research, SEO audit of your website, figuring out an effective keyword strategy and planning the long-term customized plan that will work specifically for your site and your situation.

Second Month

We begin the technical SEO work based on our findings during the audit. This is important and we’ll take the necessary time to do it right since this sets the foundation for everything to follow. Some changes are quick, some can take months. Generally, technical SEO doesn’t lead to any noticeable changes or surges – but these are crucial to getting those bursts of traffic in the future. If appropriate, we may start adding quality content or building links during this time.

Third Month

This is when the all-important step of content creation really gets attention. This not only includes articles and blogging, but also white papers, filling out website informational pages, and more. Many times the first signs of benefit can be seen by the end of a month, but the large jump from consistently great content takes place further down the line.

Fourth Month

Continuing with the long-term content creation plan, finishing up any technical SEO at this point, and taking care of your site’s backlinks. This means disavowing damaging links, cleaning up low-quality links, and searching for opportunities for high-quality links. Many companies start seeing some good signs of life here, but this will be a trickle compared to another 6 or 12 months down the line.

Fifth Month

Add in social media management, more content-based outreach, as well as PR & media outreach for branding and getting attention from Google for more trust and authority. This often leads to direct SEO benefit, as well.

Sixth Month

If traffic is at 5,000+ a month, conversion rate optimization is looked at to test and really make sure you’re getting the most possible out of every visitor. If not, the earlier steps continue as long-term content and outreach will pay off over time, though that time frame will vary based on niche, area, and competition.

Generally speaking, most SEO specialists will give 4-6 months as to how long it takes to start seeing early results. Most of the time that’s fairly accurate as a rule of thumb, but SEO is a slow burn that becomes an explosion. The slow early results tend to happen in this time frame, but the work already done will continue to pay off months in the future. If you stay with it, then continued SEO efforts will eventually multiply. That’s especially true a year after starting SEO efforts and many companies see a second surge at 18 or 24 months, at which point steady growth based on effort is the norm.

You MUST Commit Long Term

Too many business owners want to make minimum investment for a minimum amount of time. That might have worked in some cases 15 years ago, but those days are gone. Far too many companies badly underestimate how much time, budget, and effort it takes to see the full-scale success that comes with a good SEO campaign. Often times even when companies start out with a healthy budget and taking the right steps, they cancel far too early because they don’t see results early enough.

SEO isn’t something you start at the beginning of a quarter and judge at the end of it. You don’t see major results at 3 months no matter how good the effort, or the budget. At a minimum budget 6 months and honestly, best results come from those willing to put in at least a full year – at which point you should definitely be seeing multiple signs that the campaign is working and delivering rankings, traffic, and customers to your site.

SEO builds on itself, and you won’t see the same results doing it piece-mail as you will with a concentrated and extended optimization campaign.

Your #1 Houston SEO Specialists

We know how to make a long-term SEO plan that will work for you and your business. No more losing to the competition, no more giving up the fight to bigger competitors at the start. There are opportunities out there that skilled SEO specialists can take advantage of and we are here to do that on behalf of your company against your competition.

These are plans that are built around bottom line results: not large lists of non-money making keywords that look good but don’t deliver. We enact SEO plans that get you rankings, but rankings not for the sake of rankings. Rankings which will get you qualified visitors looking for your services, your products, and who become buyers who help your bottom line.

Please feel free to get in touch with the best SEO agency in Houston by contacting us today or giving us a call now! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!

What Is A Public Blog Network?

April 8, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Comprehensive Guide To Private Blog Networks

In this comprehensive guide, we will be taking a very close look at private blog networks.

Beginning with the absolute basics, we will guide you through the process of how to set up, use, and manage a private blog network in 2019

With thousands of words of step-by-step training, even advanced and intermediate SEO can learn something new from our guide.

Let’s get started.

What is a Private Blog Network?

A Private Blog Network (PBN) refers to a network of authoritative, established websites that are used for building backlinks to your money website(s) to rank higher within the major search engines like Google.

A money website is s site you are intending on ranking. It is the one that will earn money for you. These sites are also sometimes referred to as the client website.

PBSNS is short for a PBN Site, which refers to a website that is part of a private blog network.

There is one very important detail to note, which is each of the individual PBN websites is not linked in any way to each other. The concept behind a private blog network is these websites appear to be unrelated to one another, so that links appear to be natural ones, instead of somebody linking to their own websites from other websites that they own.

Is this against Google’s guidelines?

Yes, absolutely.

The only time that Google will tell you exactly what you need to do to rank is when they advise you to use Google AdWords. However, for ranking in the organic results, Google is the worst possible source for information.

If I were them I would do the same thing. Why tell people how to rank for free, when instead you can earn over $40 billion a year from your ad revenues?

Does this work?

If it did not work, then I am sure that Google would not be trying to target PBNs and trying to scare people away from using this strategy.

Yes, it is basically just a scare tactic, but there are people still continuing to build networks and are ranking just as easily as they ever have.

Why does this work?

The top ranking factor is links.

When Matt Cutts was asked about backlink relevancy being excluded from the algorithm, he replied that although there is lots of spam and some noise, it turns out that backlinks are still a very big win when it comes to the quality of the organic search results.

What makes the strategy so effective is that the websites that make up a PBN are considered to be authoritative by Google. You are not getting links from a spammy, untrustworthy site, or a brand new one. Instead, you are getting backlinks from a popular website that is loved by Google’s algorithm.

Here is an illustrative example to help you understand how it works.

In 2011 there was an initiative that was launched to help clean up Chicago’s streets. They set up a website under the name of cleanchicagostreets.com.

This initiative got a lot of publicity. It was featured on local news websites and local government websites.

Enough money and publicity were raised to follow through with the plan. They did so within one year.

Now that they no longer need the website, it has become an unnecessary cost to renew their domain and hosting. So they just let it expire.

The domain has links from local news websites and local government websites. And because the site has links from highly trustworthy websites, Google assumes this is a trustworthy website as well.

Fast forward to the present, and this domain is found by an SEO. The person can look up the site’s metrics to see how authoritative and trustworthy it is perceived to be, and the buy it from a domain registrar and use it as part of their PBN.

That is basically how domains are located.

Every day, 30,000 to 50,000 domains expire, with many of them having good metrics to use as a PBN site.

Introducing Metrics

There are four major metrics that can be used to measure domains. All of them can be used at the same time, however often 1 or 2 is sufficient.

They are:

Citation Flow (CF) by Majestic.com
Trust Flow (TF) by Majestic.com
Page Authority (PA) by Moz.com
Domain Authority (DA) by Moz.com

I don’t have enough technical knowledge to know exactly how they all work. However, here are the basics:

CF measures the power of a website’s links
TF measure the authority and trustworthiness of a website’s links.
PA measures how authoritative one page on a site is, based on its links. It is influenced as well by the website’s DA.
DA measures the authority of the entire domain, based on its links.

The following is a quick guide on what you should look for:

CF – 15+
TF – 13+
DA – 18+

I have purchased weaker domains than this many times, but it is the general guideline that I try to follow. You don’t have to worry about following this guide exactly.

The metrics represent the domain’s power that you are reviewing. However, there are a couple of more things that you should check before you buy a domain.

Referring Domains – This metric shows how many websites are linking to the domain that you are researching. Anything over 30 will be good enough.

Backlinks – This is how many links that a website has. If a website links to another site 2 times, that is 3 backlinks but just 1 referring domain. So be sure to check them before you buy a domain.

Anchor Text – The text that is used by people when linking to their website. See if a brand name is contained (which is normal), but avoid sites that heavily target keywords or have large brand names frequently associated with selling counterfeit goods, and some other obvious things such as adult-themed or viagra.

Metrics Checking Tool I recommend:

Ahrefs – Biggest and more reliable live backlinks index.

The only important metrics in 2019

Is Domain Authority BS? Is Trust Flow BS? Those comments have been trending within our community for quite some tie now, but who can you believe?

The real answer is:

What Google thinks is all that matters. Not Ahrefs, Mox, Majestic or anybody else.

From the time that Google announced that they didn’t have any plans to do more updates to PageRank, there hasn’t been any way of knowing precisely how domain quality is measured by Google.

This is where the metrics above come into play. They are not ideal, but they are third-party algorithms that measure domain quality, that are based on the tool’s theories of what Google considers to be important.

At times they provide great analysis, while at other times they are inaccurate.

Manually checking the backlinks is the most important thing you need to do. If the backlinks come from mainly directory listings, thousands of different blog comments, Chinese anchor text, or an automated backlink building tool, then that is not a good domain.

To take things further, the following is break down of metric checking:

Do the metrics meet your requirements?
(If no) Are there any links coming from super authority domains. Those may be worth buying anyway sometimes. I.e. BBC.co.uk backlinks
(If yes) Are the site’s backlinks low quality or spammy?
(If no) Is it indicated by the Wayback Machine that the domain was used for spam?

Using the Wayback Machine enables you to see precisely how the website looked in the past so that you can verify whether it has been used for spam.

Where To Locate Domains

Knowing what you should look for in a domain is just one part of the game. You also need to know where you can find them.

Before we discuss that, it is important for you to understand the kinds of domains that can be found.

Expiring Vs Expired Domains

Expired Domain – This is a domain that has been fully dropped and can be registered at any registrar at the standard registration cost for a domain.
Expiring Domain – This is a domain that has reached its expiration date but the registrar has held onto for selling or auctioning off. Those domains retain their age. So, for example, if the domain was registered 5 years ago by its previous owners, then it is still considered to be a domain that has been registered for 5 years.

There isn’t any conclusive data on which kind of domain does better. There are some individuals who think that more power is provided by expiring domains. However, many of them are biased due to the fact that they sell expiring domains.

The only thing that I can tell you for sure is that both kinds of work. However, you are a lot more likely to find an expiring domain that has high metrics, than you are an expired one. However, you will also have to pay for that privilege.

In terms of finding domains, there are several different strategies that can be used;
Locate a broker – Easy
Scraping – Not viable any longer
Auctions – Easy and Time-Consuming
Backordering – Advance and Time-Consuming

1. Find a Broker

The following are several broker websites that you can purchase domains from, either in bulk or 1 at a time.

Note that I haven’t used all of the brokers myself, but I’ve at least heard some good things about them from others.

TBSolutions
HighPADomains
PureQualityDomains

Lion Zeal Market Place – join this 4,000+ person FB group for purchasing and selling SEO-related items

2. Use Auction Websites

Most people used to purchase domains from auctions before scraping became popular. They are expiring domains that keep their age since the registrar is selling the domain off because the owner did not renew it.

Usually, you can find domains that are more powerful at auctions compared to scraping since the dropped (expired) domains are picked up quickly by the competition – if they are not bought already during the auction stages. The drawback to auction is you have to pay extra in order to get first dibs.

The following are some auction sites that you can check out:

NameCheap Auctions – Has thousands of domains available in its marketplace
GoDaddy Auctions – In the past was THE place for purchasing PBN domains
NameJet – Good potential for finding high-quality domains

3. Backordering

The last strategy for buying domains is the most advanced one. However, for the cost, it is the best domains that you can buy.

A back ordering company is a service that you pay to grab a domain for you as soon as its registration is dropped.

We discussed this early when we said that whenever a domain expires it actually does not expire. The registrar frequently keeps it, sometimes it is sold or auctioned, and usually isn’t dropped for about 2 months.

Scraping tools look for really old websites and try to purchase domains that are missed by individuals who are back ordering. However, the advent of selling and scraping domains as a type of business, and with the industry buying millions of dollars in domains each year, it is really hard to scrape high-quality domains these days.

However, with backorder, you can ask for domains that are expired but not yet dropped by using a backorder service. They check repeated to see if a domain may be registered yet. When it can be, they will try registering it for you. That is referred to as drop-catching.

How successful you are will depend on your competition ultimately. If everybody is attempting to get the domain, you might miss out. Also, some of these services are of high quality than others.

In order to increase your odds, it is possible to use multiple services to backorder, depending on how much you want a certain domain.

If somebody else has back ordered a domain using the same service, and this service catches it, then it will go into auction between the other person and you – and that can get expensive.
The following are some of the top back ordering services you can use:

Pheenix
NameJet
SnapNames
DropCatch

Many of the services above will give you a pending delete list, which is a list of domains about to drop that can be back ordered.

The following are some links that can help you:

SnapNames
NameJet
Dynadot
ExpiredDomains

This strategy is for advanced users and is definitely not simple. Also, you will need to have some tools to check the metrics of the domains in the above list to check their quality. However, that is the way you should do if you want to buy the best-expired domains.

Important Things To Be Aware Of When Buying Domains

The first word of PBN is Private.

You cannot hide from Google, and you will need them to crawl your websites in order to see the links and then pass the power on. However, you do need to ensure that there are no associated between your websites. They need to appear to be independently owned.

Whenever you are purchasing domains, that means you should mix up your registration dates and domain registrars. Don’t purchase from the same one all of the time. And don’t have your information and name in Whois on all of your domains.

You can try out the following domain registrars:

GoDaddy (beware of expensive renewal fees)
Dynadot (they show your name even when you buy whois protection)
Name
Internet.bs
NameCheap

How To Find Hosting For Your Domains

Once you have a domain(s) in your possession, hosting will need to be set up so that your websites can go live.

In order to avoid Google (or anybody else) knowing that you own all of the websites, they each need to be placed on different hosting accounts.

If you host them all on the same server, then it will be obvious that they are associated with one another.

The need for having separate hosting providers is what fueled the popularity of using SEO hosting services.

However, the problem that “SEO hosts” have is most of them come with footprints that show all of them are the same provider.

The best thing that you can do is hide them all in plain sight.

The way to do that is to use popular hosting services that real websites use.

The following are some examples:

Incapsula
CloudFlare
Amazon Web Services (technical)
DigitalOcean (technical)
HawkHost
GreenGeeks
HostGator
BlueHost
ASmallOrange
Premium Shared Hosts

When compared to cheap shared hosts or SEO hosts, most of them are expensive, but it is worth it to reduce the risk of losing your entire PBN network.

Fortunately, there is a less expensive option that is available.

My friend Kevin has purchased reseller accounts from all of the leading shared hosting companies and will host all of your PBN websites on them at a much lower rate (starting at just $1.82/month per website).

Learn more about the services offered by Kevin here

There are costs associated with getting all of this setup, and for beginners can be scary. However, the overall ROI to having top rankings for multiple websites can justify the costs easily.

Later in this guide, I will be covering clustering, which is an advanced strategy. That will enable you to host multiple PBN websites on the same hosting account without any risk. However, you can only do this if it is allowed by your hosting plan. So be sure to purchase packages that allow MySQL databases and multiple domains.

For now, just realize that the safest method is to just host 1 website on each host, and to always use high-quality hosts.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

Lead Generation Tips From SEO Experts SEO Houston Pros

March 28, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Everything About Lead Generation That You Need To Know

Part 4

Content Syndication

Prospective buyers will not check your website each time while they are on their purchasing journey. It is always critical to be present in every potential place that they might end up, and using content syndication helps to accomplish exactly that. The content strategy enables you to provide the right prospects with valuable content. This content may be in the form of whitepapers, articles, new releases and other types of content, and appear on third-party platforms and sites. You can also be assured that your leads will increase, given that content syndicators are going directly into your inbox.

Sales Development Representatives

Also referred to as Lead Qualification or Sales representatives, a Sales Develop Rep works through conducting the qualifications, contacts, and reviews of leads that are generated through marketing, and then getting them over to Sales Account Executives subsequently. These middlemen are in between sales and marketing. It is a necessary transition to ensure that the only lead marketing that gets over to the sales team are all qualified. Therefore, the SDRs ensure that leads are educated well by offering valuable content to them and creating a positive impression that creates future demand and gains the lead’s trust as a reputable advisor. If this part of the lead generation process is skipped, you will end up having blank leads that are waiting to qualified, questioned and finally converted.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

Too much information causes buyers in some cases to have a tendency to ignore your messages. However, you need to keep pushing until the point that you are noticed, and one of the ways to do that is to create a strong relationship with the prospects. Instead of pressuring buyers who aren’t ready to purchase into buying, then you can leverage a proven lead nurturing style in order to get them to become interested in your brand, without having to stop them necessarily from educating themselves. Lead nurturing can significantly improve the Middle o the Funnel (MOFU) – you are able to keep the prospect engaged by providing them with valuable conversations after their attention is captured through your own lead generation efforts.

Getting your lead nurturing right, will low you to make improvements to your conversation rate as well, obtain more revenue, and reduce the length of your sales cycle ultimately. I just need to find the right customers at the right time. Buyers are brought into your sales through your lead generation efforts, and scoring and lead nurturing drives them into the direction of sales, which leaves your sales team to be able to close the deal when the timing is ideal.

Lead Scoring

This a type of shared marketing and sales techniques that come in handy when ranking leads in order to establish what their readiness it to buy something. The interest level that is displayed in your business, their current interest level is displayed in your business, and their current stage within the buying cycle, and how it fits with respect to your business is what the determining factors should be when leads are scored. When appropriately done, lead scoring may help the company understand if lead nurturing should be applied to the lead or just fast-tracked to sales. It helps to improve your revenue cycle subsequently while driving increased ROI and aligning sales and marketing.

Popular Metrics That Are Utilized In Lead Generation

Measurement strategies should be created ahead of time, which will assess and guide your marketing technique. While creating those strategies, you need to understand what be measured and when, and how you are planning on measuring it. The following are some of the most common lead generation metrics that you can use to measure as an evaluation method for all of your lead generation efforts:

SAL to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) that refers to the converting from the SAL over to Sales Qualified Leads.SQL over to Opportunity, that refers to converting from SQL over to opportunity Quantity for Sales Qualified Leads and that is number SQLs that are transferred over to their sales team.
Quality of SQL, that refers to the percentage of SQLs that your sales team accepts.
Cost per inquiry, which refers to the ratio of your lead acquisition costs and the total amount of inquiries.
Cost per lead refers to the ratio of total campaign costs and number of leads.
Inquiry to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), refers to converting the initial inquiry into a Marketing Qualified Lead.
Marketing percentage of contribution to the sales pipeline, or the percentage of revenue into the sales pipelines (opportunities) that are received from the marketing strategy that is employed.
Marketing percentage of the contribution to close revenue, that is the percentage of the revenue that is part of close won deals that come from the marketing strategy that is employed of MQU to SAL(Sales Accepted Lead) which refers to converted from MQL over to SAL (Sales Accepted Lead).

Lead Generation Resources

There are different forms of lead generation resources that are available. For example, you can use lead generation software for achieving better alignment between your marketing and sales, to amplify the speed of your sales pipeline and obtain more qualified leads, which will all culminated in an increase of overall effectiveness across all of your business’s aspects.

Having the right lead generation resources and tools can improve the number and quality of your leads significantly that are transferred over to your sales team. That is an indication that your lead generation efforts are definitely achieving your desired results.

Conclusion

Now that you have a thorough understanding of what lead generation is, we are confident you will be able to improve your company’s lead generation strategies and align them with your set objectives and goals ultimately.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston! Click here for the First installment of this article!

Lead Generation Tips From SEO Experts SEO Houston Pros

March 18, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LEAD GENERATION

Part 3

Modern-day search engines are engineered to recognize and reward top-quality content posted on optimized websites. As such, it is not only important to craft content but the content must be of high-quality. To ensure you meet these targets, you can organize a content audit intended to give you insights as to the distribution between leadership and promotional themes.

With regards to thought leadership content, the content must be compelling, insightful, and substantial. It is not just a matter of developing content for the sake of it. Ensure that the content prioritizes content quality and not just quantity. Your content should not just promote you or your products, it needs to be useful.

Moreover, you should promote your content, both visual and non-visual contents, on your social channels. This is especially important for your high-quality and engaging content. As the content continues to engage with the audience and improving viewership/readership, Google and other search engines will consider your content as being valuable content. As a reward for producing high-quality content, they will rank you higher. Additionally, the natural links that you get from your promotional efforts tend to be more valuable than other links. Therefore, make a point of developing useful and informative content.

Website

For all your marketing efforts, you need a place to carry out all your conversions. A well-optimized website is the best place to do this. Endeavors such as convincing prospective customers and or clients to sign up to your newsletter or enter promotions are most effective when done on websites. Importantly, such endeavors help you convert visitors to leads. However, you need to get the content, the layout, the forms, the designs, and Call-to-Action (CTA) right.

Blog

The blog provides the best space for you to foster trust with your potential customers and clients. For starters, the blog is accessible via various internet channels, which makes it search engine optimized.

That being said, you should note that not everyone is readily willing to sign up for a demo or give their email to sign up for the newsletter. The best course of action is to clearly and ask the blog traffic to follow you on the various social media channels you are active. While they follow you on social media, you can use highly engaging content to capture their interest bringing them back to your blog. When they visit your blog several times, they will naturally explore your entire website. This makes your blog an important conversion tool.

Social Media

Social media has been growing tremendously in the recent past resulting in an explosion of information. These days, buyers are using social channels to get reviews of certain products and services, especially through the eyes of influencers and their peers. As such, you can use social networks for branding and exposure, you can use it for lead generation also. Therefore, you should aim to be easily accessible of social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. wherein you can build trust.

Outbound Marketing

While the main interest in marketing has been inbound marketing, the prudent approach is to blend both inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing will unboundedly yield lead generation activities, you still need outbound marketing to bolster your inbound marketing efforts and streamline the target audience.

Inbound marketing is the use of outbound channels to get your content and message to an audience of potential customers and buyers. These efforts are typically made through rented attention, instead of your own attention channels.
On the other hand, when dealing with outbound techniques, you have to make our audience know about you without having met you. As such, the outbound methods are designed to wow your audience, giving your company a stellar image. The massaging in outbound marketing is highly streamlined and it is accompanied by a compelling call-to-action.

This makes outbound marketing very effective; it can push a lead through a funnel very fast to the intended conversion, whether a purchase, a newsletter sign up, or any other end-goal. By combining both inbound marketing and outbound marketing, you can provide the leads with the extra urge to go down the funnel much faster.

The perfect blend of inbound marketing and outbound marketing can potentially skyrocket the number of shares and views you generate. Importantly, this increases the number of potential buyers accessing your message and content.

Email Marketing

Email is another important marketing tool. It is the most popular lead generation tactic that marketers use given its stellar ability to grab the attention of prospects. As such, you should use emails as one of your main communications channels. This will allow you to get your content and message directly to your audience, prospects, and leads.

Display Ads

The main advantage of display ads is the potential to directly reach out to a specific demographic or target a certain behavioral action. However, this means of lead generation allows you to target a specific location or even a specific online publication.

You can also use re-targeting ads which track your leads pattern of behavior on your website. With re-targeting ads, your visitors can be cookied, allowing you to display your ads to them even they visit other websites.

When done properly, display ads can drive leads, pass your message to your target audience, and educate your potential leads. In fact, displayed ads can and are used in every stage of the conversion funnel. You can use display ads to build your audience and brand at the upper stages of the funnel. It can help evaluate and educate your leads in the mid-section of the funnel. Finally, it can improve drive conversion at the bottom of the funnel.

Pay-per-Click Ads

Pay-per-Click better known as PPC is the ads that you are charged with each click of the ad. This model of marketing is usually deployed by search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo on search results pages or even on third-party websites.

On search engine results pages, the PPC ads are displayed in the sponsored section of your results, which is typically located in the top section of the page. Therefore, you can use PPC to grab more attention to website and company. Importantly, you can use PPC to generate high-quality leads. By use relevant and targeted keywords in your ads, your ads will be displayed when your audience search for the keywords.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston! Click here for the fourth installment of this article!

Lead Generation Tips From SEO Experts SEO Houston Pros

March 11, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LEAD GENERATION

Part 2

To be successful at lead generation, a lead must be willing to invest in lead nurturing and facets of Middle of Funnel (MOFU) techniques. The MOFU techniques are designed to nurture the already established relationship and create and grow trust by providing high-quality engaging content. Importantly, the techniques should gently guide the lead to making a purchasing.

In recent times, to be successful in lead generation, you have to combine TOFU and MOFU techniques and approaches effectively into a holistic marketing philosophy. Only then can you efficiently convert your leads into paying customers and or clients.

Lead Generation Research

Lead generation tactics are an important part of lead generation. Increasingly, companies are now spending a lot of money to diversify the creative means they can capture their audience’s attention despite all the noise that exists.

Lead Generation Budget Observed Trends

In recent times, we have observed the rise in the net spending on lead generation by marketers. The money is typically used in SEO, website optimization, and social media.

CMO Lead Generation Focus

MarketingSherpa reckons that senior-level marketing executives and CMOs are prioritizing increasing or getting measurable ROI from their marketing efforts. Moreover, they are prioritizing the optimization of marketing and sales funnel over in their lead generation. As such, CMOs are focusing on finding viable methods of improving the quality of the leads generated from their marketing efforts and investments.

Top Lead Generation Challenges

As mentioned above, lead quality is the main priority for marketing executives across the board. However, lead quality is a significant challenge that marketers have to deal with. An IDG study revealed that 61% of the marketers in the study find generating high-quality leads to be a huge challenge.

That being said, marketing executives have to contend with inadequate resources. They have to operate with inadequate budgetary resources, staffing, and inadequate data (both quality and quantity-wise) while still trying to generate quality leads.

Most Effective And Efficient Lead Generation Tactics

Another IDG survey dubbed The B2B Lead Generation Marketing Trends Survey revealed email marketing, corporate websites, tradeshows, and conferences are the most effective and popular lead generation tactics in use today. Conversely, direct mail and print advertising have been identified as the least effective lead generation tactics.

Fundamentals of Lead Generation

To get the fundamental of lead generation right, you need to appreciate that defining a lead is a subjective matter. It all depends on the company involved. Typically, the definition of a lead will depend on a company’s sales cycle. However, a lead is generally defined as a qualified potential buyer who offers a certain level of interest in buying your goods or services. It is important to note that every lead that submits details with you gets something in return; this might be additional information on the products or a convincing offer.

Generally, there are two types of lead generation – inbound and outbound. Nonetheless, the basic principles of recognizing, nurturing, and customer retention remain part and parcel of a comprehensive strategy.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing entails assisting potential customers and/or clients learn about or locate your company, typically before they consider making a purchase. In doing this, you convert this early audience into having a preference for your brand, eventually turning them to a lead and revenue.

In a market where customers are immensely empowered by having ample choices, marketers cannot rely on trade shows, advertisements, cold calling, and other outbound marketing tactics only. Today’s consumers are educated and knowledgeable, and, therefore, require a lot of information. As a marketer, you work is find innovative and creative ways of standing out in the crowd and catching the attention of the audience. To achieve this, you need a good grasp of inbound marketing.

You can achieve this by providing a blend of informative, relevant, and entertaining contents. The goal is to create a relationship with your audience who are also your potential clients. That said, note that creating content is not enough. You need to avail the content to your audience through channels your potential clients use.

We will delve into some of the most effective inbound leads generation:

SEO and Content

Your inbound marketing efforts will quickly hit a brick wall if you do not generate and use the right content. Content marketing, therefore, is a cornerstone to inbound leads generation. Content marketing is at its core creating and disseminating in-depth and useful content in an effort to capture the attention of a well-defined target audience and engage with the audience with the end goal being helping the audience take profitable customer actions.

Email marketing, social media marketing, and other types of marketing thrive on content. Having the right content can get you right in front of the buyers, helping you to gain their trust.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston! Click here for the third installment of this article!

Lead Generation Tips From SEO Experts SEO Houston Pros

March 4, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Everything Important That You Need To Know About The Lead Generation Process

Part 1

The Basics Of Lead Generation

When it comes to lead generation, there is so much to know about the process. However, basically, it is a type of marketing process for energizing and capturing interest for a specific service or product, and then leverage them to develop a sales pipeline. Digital channels are critical for generating leads, and the techniques that are applied to the changes that have continued to evolve over the years. Today we have modern social and online techniques that are available. One notable development is the rise of a “self-directed buyer,” who thrives on the degree of information that is available online. Now we have modern social and online techniques. These new techniques help to create and evaluate prospective leads before they are converted into sales.

Here Is Why Lead Generation Is So Important

The buying process’s new face calls on marketers to come up with fresh ways of getting their messages across to prospective buyers. Up until now mass advertisements and email blasts were acceptable ways to advertise. However, marketers have the new now to do more in order to remain on the radar screen and increase their chances every day of customers being able to find them. After they are discovered, they need to develop close working relationships with customers.

Attention Economics And The Abundance Of Information

The rise of the internet has caused information to be more abundant. Although it is great to have so much information available, it also comes with a challenge. An abundance of information results in the security of attention: this is a basic principle associated with attention economics. Herbert Simon, a pioneer of attention economics and a social scientist, says that in the economic sense, that information obviously consumes its recipients’ attention. And it has changed the buying process. Now, buyers have so much information that is available to them, and in an attempt to not be influenced, buyers are continuing to ignore or reject a majority of these messages. They instead rely on personal research in order to learn more about a topic that interests them.

The New Buying Process

IN the past, in the age of information scarcity, lead generation involved marketing, which was the process of finding out the name of prospective buyers and then converting the information into sales. Buyers then relied on engaging with sales agents to assist them with making a decision. On the other hand, the sales agent might be lacking in the knowledge that is needed to convince early stage, uneducated buyers.

The new buying process, by contrast, the new buying process involves buyers doing their own prospective research online where they search for resources that can help them make the right decisions. They rely on search engines, other online channels, and social media for obtaining more information on a specific service or products. They are well-equipped before they ever engage with a sales person.

That is why businesses need to ensure that have a solid digital presence. This new buying process puts the vendor on the tail end of the buyer journey of the consumer since they have obtained the information that would have received when they were in contract earlier with the seller. So they are more of their own experts.

Any business that has a well-developed lead generation strategy will stand a much better chance of earning a potential buyer’s total trust and sparking their interests before reaching the final stage of meeting with the vendor. This also saves stress and the waste of time for the sales team with a reduced need for cold-calling. It is an easier process when you have solid leads for your sales, and you ultimately will get faster and higher conversations of the leads into revenue.

Rented Attention and Owned Attention

Currently, the buying process is experiencing a shift away from “renter attention” and over to “owned attention” instead, due to attention scarcity. Before now the common practice was to apply a marketing strategy that thrived on rental attention, i.e. attention that is built by other individuals. For example. renting a space at a tradeshow or purchasing an aad in a magazine. however, those are less expensive now, due to information overload. So more needs to be done to gain the buyers’ attention, maybe a combination of refined attention and owned attention – to archive results from the lead generation efforts that you make.

IN order to build attention for yourself, the only way to do that now is to establish yourself as a trustor advisor for your prospective buyers. This can be done through constantly creating and disseminating thought leadership and valuable content. When done correctly, it will help to increase your chances of your lead generating success instead of being a very complex buying environment that we are in now.

Leading Down The Sales Funnel

It is critical that you understand that the current process demands you do more than simply convert a new lead into a sale. A business needs to go beyond marketing at the Top of the Funnel. If you consider that noo every new lead will purchase something tat the moment, then you will understand that there is the need to retain your leads, so that they don’t get ignored, lost, or snapped up y the competition.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston! Click here for the second installment of this article!

Is Houston SEO Fading Out?

February 25, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Is Search Engine Optimization Dead

Every single day there are changes taking place within the digital world. This leads to business owners wondering what they should focus on in order to get their website ranked high in the search engines results pages. The major driving force for traffic is content, but if that’s really the case, then does SEO still matter? What is its future and is it dead?

A Little Background Into SEO

SEO was far more simple in the internet’s early stages. People could easily throw around a few keywords on their website and have it found when someone went to Google and typed in those keywords. In the old days, search engines mainly focused on keywords when they were considering how they would rank websites.

Times have changed and what people were doing in the old days can ruin your site’s chances of ranking high in the results. Thanks to online marketers who have learnt to game the system, what worked no longer works. In fact, keyword stuffing is frowned upon and is one of the worst things you can do when creating content for your website.

Algorithms Are Here To Stay

Google has been waging a silent war with the goal of making sure high quality content is being found when users are searching for stuff. There are new algorithms that have been created with the purpose of finding the most relevant content possible. These algorithms take in various considerations when ranking websites, and this includes content, social media signals, back-links, formatting and much more.

Artificial Intelligence

AI, short for artificial intelligence, has been playing a crucial role in SEO. However, leveraging AI for SEO purposes can require a lot of money and time. If you’re a small business who has major corporations as your competition, then you have a small chance of getting to the top of the results pages. If you have deep pockets, then you might have a chance.

Info Blocking Is Prevalent

Google has technology that can block certain keywords from appearing in its results. This means it is tough to figure out where organic traffic is coming from. Five or so years ago “not provided” keywords might have been reported in analytics as 20 or less percent, but that number is easily over 90 percent. This means figuring out what keywords you should use is challenging.

SEO Tips

A lot of people feel like they are tackling an impossible task when it comes to keeping up with the changes Google makes on a regular basis. This is why you need to focus on implementing SEO best practices, which can still help you get more traffic. However, you’ll want to reconsider what you’re doing if SEO is the only thing you are doing.

The bottom line is SEO is still important, but what SEO does has changed a lot. This is why regular SEO audits are a must, but you should also focus on always improving the content you create. Engagement is another factor to take into consideration, so do your best to gain traction with your content when publishing it on social media.

Do you want to improve your site’s ranking in the search engines results pages? Of course you do. That’s why you should contact us today. Feel free to request a quote and ask us any questions you may have.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

What’s Your Digital Marketing Campaign Budget?

February 18, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Tips For Determining Your Marketing Budget

It can be an overwhelming task to determine your yearly marketing budget, especially when the digital marketing revolution is considered. This is especially true for startups or small businesses that know they need to spread the word about their brand but are lacking in the knowledge and resources needed to compete effectively. Marketing is still an effective way of increasing awareness of your brand and driving sales. Although it is free, you should not just use social media as the only platform that you use for your company’s marketing efforts. It is necessary to invest in a broader range of options in order to increase your customer base and grow your business.

Playing with the Percentages

However, it is also important to not spend a lot of money on the wrong things. So how can you determine the amount that you should spend? Although there is no definite number – for small business marketing the standard percentage for allocations ranges from 8 to 13% of total gross income. Businesses with high market share and with great reputations can afford to spend less. Businesses that have been in existence for less than 5 years need to increase the amount of their marketing investment in order to make any kind of impact on their industry. Your company’s size, in addition to your current sales amount, also will influence your final marketing budget allocation. Whenever you are using a percentage model in order to determine your budget it won’t ever be a fixed amount, since it will continue to expand as your business does. Also, it helps to nip in the bud any potential overspending. The method only should be applied when your current margins are over 10 to 12% (This approach wouldn’t be ideal if you are currently operating at a loss).

A fixed budget method could also be used where you come up with a figure and then devise a strategic marketing plan to maximize the resources that you currently have.

Learn from Your Competitors

It is essential to research the competition to determine what their marketing budgets are (or you can try asking business owners who have businesses that are of a similar size to yours, how much they spend). Take a look at the marketing efforts of your competitors and how they link to their advertising expenses. Just make sure you are comparing apples with apples rather than looking at an industry giant when you happen to be a small business. Always keep in mind that before deploying a marketing campaign you need to have researched your target audience and segmented it, so that you know precisely who you are “speaking” to and where they can be found.

Calculate Your CLV

A key metric that you need to understand before determining what your final marketing budget is going to be, is your customer lifetime value (CLV). That figure refers to how much each of your new customers is worth to our company over the long term. Once you know what that figure is, that can help you to determine how much money you are willing to spend on your marketing to obtain new customers and how much to retain your current customers. There are a number of different complex calculations that can be made in order to arrive at that figure. These include such elements as customer’s average lifespan, customer value, purchase frequency, and average order value. Once you know what your CLV is, you will be able to accurately forecast what your marketing spend should be so that you won’t ever spend more on obtaining a customer than what their lifetime value is.

Showing Up In All Of The Wrong Places

The most significant calculation that you will need to make is what your return on investment (ROI) is for the marketing efforts that you choose to do. Whatever you spend on your ads will have be bring in double the amount in revenue, otherwise that means you are spending too much money on your advertising, in all of the wrong places. It is essential to evaluate the challenges and successes of all of your marketing campaigns in order to determine what is really working. Once your conversion creating initiatives are repeated, you can increase your ROI. When the data from your marketing efforts is analyzed, it can help you predict next year’s marketing spend rather easily.

How Much Of A Risk Taker Are You?

At times businesses make the decision to use an aggressive marketing strategy which requires a large investment, but potentially has big rewards associated with it (without needing to break the bank). In order to achieve revenue growth, you need to have a decent marketing budget along with an effective strategy. It is a difficult but necessary task. If you spend only a small amount on your marketing, then your product may be invisible, but if you spend too much money you won’t have any ROI when your campaign ends. Whatever amount of money you decide to spend make sure that you testing and analyze your data constantly so that you can make improvements. You will need to continue to tweak your campaigns in order to eliminate low performing campaigns and build on your successes.

If you are currently struggling on how to create a strategy with your available resources or determine what an appropriate marketing budget is for you, we can assist you with seeing the forest for the trees. Call us today to see who we can help you with your critical marketing needs.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

Keyword Tips From Houston SEO Experts

February 11, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

GOOGLE ADS KEYWORD TIPS

Google AdWords has become an important digital marketing option that a brand can benefit from. If you try to get into it without having a net, then you might end up spending a lot of money. You will need to invest time and effort in doing keywords research because it plays a big role in the success of any campaign. Below are some great tips to help you get started with Google AdWords.

HOW GOOGLE ADWORDS WORK

Google AdWords will leverage the keywords you choose and get your ad in front of the right people. When you set up the d, you will be asked to place a cost-per-click (CPC) bid for each of the keywords. The bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for every click.

The actual cost of the click will be determined by the competition you have for the keywords. If you were to place a bid of $0.20 and another person bids $0.19, then you are going to pay for the full amount to have the ad placed. If the only competition bids $0.14, then you are going to pay $0.15. You will be paying one cent more than the highest bid until it reaches your maximum. If you bid $5 per click, you could end up paying just $0.15 for every click.

Another important thing to know – once you have started to get impressions (this is the number of times the ad has been placed) you will develop a click-through rate (CTR). The higher the CTR rate, the lower the cost per click. A higher CTR rate means that your ad is relevant, and Google rewards you. What this means is that if you have a higher CTR than your competitor, your ad will be placed before theirs even if they have a slightly higher bid.

NEVER SKIMP OUT ON KEYWORD RESEARCH

The keyword strategy should be an ongoing thing. With time, you will be able to see how the campaigns are performing. You will still need a solid foundation that you are going to build on.

It is a good idea to use a tool like WordTracker when doing keyword research. It is a good tool that has become an industry standard, and there is a 7-day free trial, which gives you the chance of trying it out and seeing whether it works for you. Tools like these will help you in determining the keywords that you can use for the AdWords campaign. Choose a tool that you find easy to use and provides the most value.

There are free keyword tools that you can use, but many of them have limited features. Example a tool like an Overture will only show results on Yahoo, which will not be of help because you are interested in Google. When it comes to tools for your campaign, you always get what you pay for.

These tools are good, but they are not going to do the keyword research for you. There are a lot of things you will still need to figure on your own. You should list down keywords and phrases then go and use these tools to see which ones are the best. Everything might not go as perfectly as you thought when getting started, but you will notice some improvements with time.

Give us a call if you ever need help with keyword research.

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SEO, SEM, PPC… What In The Digital Marketing Is The Difference?!

February 5, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

What Makes SEO, SEM, And PPC Different From Each Other?

The realm of digital marketing has quite a few acronyms being thrown about, and trying to keep up with it all can make your head hurt. What do all these acronyms mean? Are they really that important? Do you really need to know them? All of these are great questions, but based on what you personally do or how you do things, then it might be really important for you to find such answers. With that being said, keep reading to learn three of some of the most-frequent acronyms you come across a bunch and find out how they can apply to you.

SEO: What Is It?

The acronym of SEO stands for search engine optimization. In short, SEO is a bucket of various strategies people use to make websites rank higher in search engines. This is crucial, because when online users type keywords or search phrases that relate to your niche, then you’d like them to come across your site. When your business is more visible to search engines, then you get more unpaid and organic traffic directed towards your site from the search engines.

SEM: What Is It?

The acronym of SEM is short for search engine marketing. In essence, it’s how you use paid digital advertising online to get traffic. SEM is also sometimes just called paid search, but whatever you call it, it can involve a number of various digital advertising activities, like paid search ads and PPC, which can be called pay-per-call or pay-per-click. Google AdWords is probably the most highly visible SEM engine, but there are also Yahoo Search Ads and Bing Ads among other options.

PPC: What Is It?

The acronym of PPC is short for pay-per-click, and sometimes pay-per-call if a phone call is what winds up being taken. It can also be known as cost-per-click or CPC, which is a method wherein the advertiser pays for any results generated by its digital advertising. In such cases, you only get charged when users actually click on ads.

PPC ads get served based off of bids which you determine, as you pick the keywords you’d like to rank for whenever you set up your ad. That just means that you aren’t able to pay more for your ads just to have it served extra times over your competition. You put your bid in, and then the search engine will decide the relevance and validity of your ads in terms of search queries.

SEO, SEM, And PPC: Similarities And Differences

The one thing that all three of them share is that each is a great way to get traffic coming to your website and building up your brand. All of them are online marketing techniques, so they all land under the same broad umbrella. The biggest differences between them is that while SEO is always unpaid advertising, it technically falls under the purview of SEM, even though SEM usually refers to actually paid marketing efforts. PPC is just a kind of paid advertising technique. All three of them work well with one another, but SEO is the basis which brings them all together. If you don’t have good SEO, then your paid efforts are going to deliver results which you need to be viable or bring you a good ROI.

How’s Your Website Doing?

If your current online presence isn’t living up to your hopes and dreams, then SEO, SEM, and even PPC can bring you a lot of improvement. We’re an industry-leading SEO agency, and we’d relish the chance to demonstrate what we might do for your website. Contact us right away to arrange for your SEO consultation and evaluation, free of both cost and obligation.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!