Catanich Internet Marketing

What does Local Search Relevance mean? Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for.  Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. Making sure you select the right category is the #1 reason a GMB listing shows up incorrectly. For more information, check out our  search optimization  page. --- Answered by: James Catanich

How does Google determines local rankings? Local results are based primarily on: Relevance Distance Prominence These factors are combined to help find the best match for your local search.  For more information, check out our search optimization  page. --- Answered by: James Catanich

  What does Local Search Prominence mean? According to Google, prominence is based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like websites, links, articles, and directories).  Google review count and score are also factored into local search ranking.  The more reviews and positive ratings you have, the higher probably it will improve a business's local ranking.  Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization. For more information, check out our  search optimization  page. --- Answered by: James Catanich

  What does Local Search Distance mean? It means how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search?  If a user doesn't specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location. Think of it as where you are standing.  When you do a mobile search for ~ Starbucks, you will get the nearest three Starbucks based on the "crow-flies" distance. Or, do a search for "dentist near me".  You will again get the nearest three dentists.  However, drive east 4 miles, and do the same search again.  You will see that you get a different set of three dentists. For more information, check out our  search optimization  page. --- Answered by: James Catanich

  Is there a difference between B2C and B2B content marketing? Yes and no. The purpose of each is the same, but since the audience is different, your content will also vary.  B2B content tends to be more professional and businesslike in its voice – though not always – and the topics will of course be more business-oriented.  B2C content, on the other hand, is usually more conversational, and the topics have a little more free range. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Paul Clemer

How can content marketing make me into an industry thought leader? There’s a lot of talk about the importance of becoming a thought leader – and with good reason.  Getting you known as an expert in your field is exactly what content marketing is meant to do.  It’s what creates the sense of trust in consumers, which allows them to feel comfortable making a purchase from you.  By creating unique, original content, in which you demonstrate your expertise and answer questions consumers might have, you’ll be on your way to becoming an industry thought leader in no time. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How do I make my content engaging? The answer to this question depends a lot on your particular audience.  What’s engaging to teens will necessarily differ vastly from what middle-aged business professionals will find engaging.  Speak to your target audience’s pain points or interests, let them see that you understand them and want to help them – and then open up the conversation. Ask questions, and invite them to respond.  The beauty of content marketing as opposed to traditional marketing is that communication is not one-way anymore. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Carl Jenkins

How important are keywords in content marketing? Despite the constant changes to Google’s algorithm, keywords are still important in content creation.  While the standards have been somewhat relaxed, so that words and phrases that mean approximately the same thing as the exact phrase searched for can now pop up in search results, too, it’s still best to include a few mentions of the exact words and phrases you want to be found for. Just remember that your priority is always to write for humans, not search engines. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  Do I need an editorial calendar? Some businesses swear by them, other not so much. How important an editorial calendar is depends on your individual strategy.  However, even if you don’t maintain a full-blown, detailed editorial calendar, you should at least plan out your content a month in advance, noting any holidays or promotion dates you want to mark with special content. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

 Is guest blogging part of a content marketing strategy?   Yes! Content creation is content creation, whether it’ll appear on your site or someone else’s.  Of course, guest blogging is also an essential part of outreach or digital PR, but the principles of content marketing still apply – you want to create valuable information that will help consumers. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How important is it to share my content on social media?   It’s not important – it’s essential!!! Posting content to a blog and then sitting back and hoping that visitors will find it is an exercise in futility.  In fact, some blogging gurus maintain that only 20% of your time should be spent on content creation, and the other 80% on promoting that content via social media! It’s that vital. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How often should I post fresh content on my site?   There is still a lot of debate surrounding this question – every industry and every demographic sees different content consumption patterns. But in general, fresh content should be posted no less often than twice a week.  As for an upper limit, there is none – studies seem to show that posting once a day, or even several times a day, is a very effective way to drive traffic to a website.  It’s just a matter of deciding how much time and effort you can devote to creating content. Google is known to give more prominence to websites that update their data on a frequent basis. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Paul Clemmer

  Do I need to constantly create new content? Yes and no.  Content creation does need to be ongoing, but there are ways to streamline and simplify the process. One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing so is to repurpose content.  This entails creating content in one form, and then reworking it several times in order to utilize that same information in other forms, as well.  For example, you might write an ebook about an important topic in your industry. Then, you could take the chapters of that ebook, and edit each one to make them into individual blog posts.  Next, you could create an infographic illustrating the statistics mentioned in the ebook. And finally, you could give a webinar discussing the content in that ebook.  Not only does this approach lighten the content creation load, but it also allows the same content to be consumed by people with different tastes in content. For more information, check out our content marketing page. ---...

  What are the steps to developing a content marketing strategy?   First, determine who your target audience is. Develop a customer persona to whom your content should speak.  Then, based on that persona and your company’s brand image, decide on your company’s voice, and the type of content you will be creating.  Your content needs to be informative and valuable, as well as interesting and engaging, to your target demographic.  And once you start producing content, constant tweaking of your strategy is in order, based on how successful each post is. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How should I get started with content marketing?   Though it can be tempting to jump right in and start writing a blog without much forethought, the only way to ensure that your content marketing will be effective is to take the time to create a strategy first.  Without a clear plan in place, all the time you put into developing content is wasted. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  What qualifies as content?   When most people think of content marketing, they think of a blog. And blogs are certainly one of the easiest and most effective means of content marketing available.  But they aren’t the only forms of content that can be employed in a content marketing strategy.  Any valuable information, conveyed via any medium, can be considered content. Videos, infographics, slideshares, PDFs, blogs, articles, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, webinars – the list goes on and on. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  What is content marketing exactly?   Content marketing turns traditional marketing on its head. Instead of focusing on a company and its products or services, it focuses on the consumer’s needs first.  The goal of a properly planned content marketing campaign or strategy is to provide valuable, genuinely helpful information to consumers for free, in order to create a relationship with them based on trust, which eventually leads them to make a purchase. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

Should I use AMP technology? I have a B2B business would it be wise to roll AMP on my solution pages?  Should I just implement AMP on my content heavy pages like the resource pages?   You need to first understand how your customers visit your site.  AMP is almost a certainty, UNLESS you have a very low percentage of mobile visitors. It’s unusual, but some verticals work out that way. RFP-heavy businesses or government contract businesses work out this way. Google Analytics is a great tool to learn this. Once you know these numbers (if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business), you can put the work into AMP. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Paul Clemmer

  Is Content Marketing the Same as Social Media Marketing? These two branches of marketing aren’t the same, but many businesses integrate their content marketing and social media marketing strategies.  This synthesis helps brands ensure that they’re optimizing their marketing efforts. While content marketing encompasses written, graphic, and video material that can live on your company’s website or any number of other places online, social media marketing takes place strictly on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.  Many social media marketers build their editorial calendars around sharing links to content that their brands have created, as this practice can drive views and value. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  What’s the Most Common Content Marketing Mistake? For most businesses, the biggest content marketing mistake is jumping in without a coherent strategy. Like any type of marketing, you need a plan to get the results you want from content marketing.  Launching a blog and producing posts regularly may never help you achieve your objectives if you don’t know what you want to accomplish or how to get there. To develop an effective content marketing strategy, you’ll need to understand who your target audience is, what kinds of content they want, and how your brand can offer the greatest value to your audience.  Many businesses opt to create buyer personas so they can get to know their target audience and design content that’s sure to resonate. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Carl Jones

  Can Content Marketing Generate Leads for My Business? With the right strategy in place, you can use content marketing to generate a steady stream of new leads for your business.  While most brands offer content like blog posts, articles, and videos free of charge, they also create high-level content, such as white papers, case studies, and eBooks to serve as lead magnets. Then they require readers to opt in to a mailing list before gaining access to the high-level content. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  What Types of Businesses Can Content Marketing Help? Small and large businesses in virtually every industry use content marketing to their advantage. From major consumer brands and retail stores to tech companies and service-oriented businesses, content marketing can help you reach out to your target audience. Both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies have developed successful content marketing strategies. The techniques and goals vary between B2B and B2C companies, but that doesn’t make content marketing any less effective. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Sharon Jenkins

Why won’t people come to our content? The short answer is that people in charge lacked a basic understanding of SEO.  A slightly longer answer is they didn’t do link building and outreach, or perhaps they didn’t produce content that was “link worthy” in the first place. Imagine a restaurant would open in the middle of the desert. Would you go? Even if you knew it existed, you would probably not go – unless that restaurant had unique food (value) to offer you.  If you want people to come to your content, you need to: Create unique content that they can’t get anywhere else. If you’re just getting started, make sure you start with a WOW factor – for example, invite an influencer to write a guest post or interview a key figure in your industry. That will help you get initial traction. Invite them to come – Make sure you target the right audience that needs/wants your content and let them know the content is there, be it through social media, newsletters, SEM, or any other re...

    How do we manage all the different audiences? For example, instead of producing three original versions of an email, include the same offers and calls to action in all, but change the openings to address each audience’s unique pain points. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Paul Clemmer

  What's the difference between internal and inbound links? Internal links are links on a page in your web site that link to another page in your site.  Inbound links are other websites that link to your website or content.  Both are valuable elements for SEO. For more information, check out our search optimization  page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How many buyer personas do we need? Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20.  But if you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

    How can we make something go viral? There’s no guaranteed formula.  But no matter the industry, you can increase your chances if your content  Presents a unique story, idea, or dataset  In a way that directly addresses a pain point or creates an emotional response in your core audience and  In an engaging format.  And that’s not enough. You have to promote the heck out of it. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  What are we doing about voice search? Keyword research is more important now than ever. Specifically, in regard to capturing Google Home answers.  Google provides most of its voice answers from the featured snippet (i.e., answer box) at the top of search results. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Paul Clemmer

  What’s our goal?  Why are we doing this? The goals of content marketing are simple: you build your brand awareness by personalizing your brand; you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry; and you increase traffic to your website with each post by using SEO friendly keywords. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How much is it going to cost? Marketers who have limited experience with content marketing often worry that the cost of creating content is just too expensive for their company.  The reality is that marketers often expect to pay way more than creators charge for various content assets. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  Should I hire someone to do my SEO? Hiring someone internally or externally to do your SEO can be helpful, but it can also be dangerous if that person doesn't actually know the modern rules of SEO.   Each of our SEO team members are considered experts with years of HTML, CSS and PHP coding experience to back up their SEO skill set. Without this experience, it is very difficult to get quality results you should expect from a vendor's SEO services. For more information, check out our search optimization  page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines? Yes. All of our clients websites meet or exceed Google Webmaster Guidelines.  Our SEO Services are always White Hat SEO!  And after 20+ years, none of our clients have ever been penalized by Google. For more information, check out our  search optimization  page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How can I use content marketing to increase brand presence in the most efficient way? First, make sure you’re inserting your brand into a conversation that’s relevant to both your offering and your audience. Missing that foundational mark is the content equivalent of getting on the wrong flight. Secondly, once you’ve identified your broad opportunity, do your homework – find the optimal intersection between conversation volume and conversation saturation. The goal is to tackle the topic(s) that are unexplored enough for you to own that still attract enough eyeballs to drive your bottom line. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  How can content marketing help address our target audiences throughout the customer purchase journey? That question gets at the heart of how content should be used.  Content should address the motivations and needs of the customer at various points of their process, so that it strengthens their positive feelings about the brand, heightens their likelihood to convert, and increases their customer lifetime value. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  Why would I want to educate my customers and help my competition? Loyalty, building a long-term relationship, and customer retention are three key components …  Consumers today are over saturated with many businesses providing the same product or service.  By educating customers, they will make informed decisions and look to you as the subject matter expert. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

    Does content marketing work? What does it mean that your content marketing is “working?”  In general, this means it’s supporting your marketing and business goals.  Here’s a simple way to track your content marketing program and, more importantly, how to communicate this to your team and management. For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

What is content marketing? When you create content with the intention of attracting and engaging prospective customers, you're engaged in content marketing!  The content you create can be articles, blog posts, case studies, custom magazines, mail newsletters, micro-sites, webinars, videos, and much, much more.  For more information, check out our content marketing page. --- Answered by: Beth Simonds

  Where can I go if I have questions about how to use Google Analytics? Google Analytics maintains an excellent, comprehensive, and search help support Website for Google Analytics at: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/ For more information, check out  web analytic  page. --- Answered by: Julie Perkins

  What is Bounce Rate and is it important? One of the more commonly referenced website analytics terms is "bounce rate."  What is bounce rate? What does it mean? Is it an important metric to monitor?  Let's start with defining what a bounce is. A bounce occurs when someone visits your website, views a single page, and leaves. In this scenario a website tracking tool like Google Analytics, would report one bounce or a 100 percent bounce rate (depending on which type of report you run/view).  For more information, check out  web analytic  page. --- Answered by: Bill Wilson

  How Do I Track SEO Rankings with Google Analytics? If you want to track your organic rankings in Google, there are a number of commercially available SEO tools that will get the job done.  However, few people realize that you can use Google Analytics to track your SEO rankings.  Not only can you customize Google Analytics to show your keyword rankings alongside the rest of your data, unlike other tools, Google Analytics is an exceptional bargain at the low, low price of FREE! For more information, check out  web analytic  page. --- Answered by: Julie Perkins

  What is a conversion? Web marketing people love to create new terms for things you thought you already understood!  In the world of Internet marketing, the word "conversion"   represents any action on your website that is more valuable than someone that visits your site and leaves without doing anything.  What constitutes a conversion depends entirely on the industry and on the individual company. For most companies, it's a web form submission (aka. a lead). Other terms that are interchangeable with "conversion" include: goal, upper funnel action, lower funnel action, lead, action, and event (I'm sure there are dozens of others, but you get the point).  For more information, check out   web analytic  page. --- Answered by: Julie Perkins

  What does "website conversion rate" mean? Website conversion rate is a critically important metric used to measure and improve website performance.  It is typically calculated by dividing the number of defined conversions by the number of visits to your website (expressed as a percentage).  In some industries, and depending on what you're actually trying to measure/improve, it might be calculated using a segment of visits (vs. all visits).  For example, a local plumber serving Colorado might have a 4% conversion rate when using all visits, but a 14% conversion rate when visits are segmented to only calculate the number using visits in Colorado--after all, can the local plumber really expect a visitor from New York to convert? For more information, check out  web analytic  page. --- Answered by: Pam Jenkins