Find Perfect Keywords for Your Residential Service Contracting Business

Over the past few weeks we’ve laid a good foundation for an effective Internet marketing strategy. We’ve discussed the basic elements for search engine marketing including page optimization, best practices for metadata and how to quickly get traffic to your site through paid search marketing (pay per click, or PPC). Today we’re going to talk about how to go about forming that perfect list of keywords for both your website and your PPC campaigns to make sure you’re getting the type of traffic you need and not wasting advertising dollars on traffic that will never convert to dollars.

After you’ve built your PPC ads it’s time to select the search terms you want your ads to be displayed next to. Effective keyword research is essential to ensure your PPC campaigns will be a success. There are a few key points to keep in mind when conducting your research and several ways to determine what your best keywords.

Target – Have a clear idea of what your goals are and what you want to achieve. Do you want to generate leads for kitchen and bath remodeling work for homeowners in a given area or are you targeting rooter work and unstops for commercial locations?

Relevancy – Whatever goals you’ve set for your campaign make sure your keywords (and ad copy) reflect those goals. Keep keyword choices on topic for each ad groups’ goal. Resist the temptation to try to be found for every type of service you offer with a single ad and a huge list of keywords. If the overarching goal for your PPC campaign is to increase leads for all types of service jobs then create ads targeted for each individual type of service and use keywords only relevant to that specific service ad group.

Think Like a Lead – This step goes hand in hand with targeting goals for your PPC campaign as well as their relevancy. Here, it’s important that you use keywords and phrases that your ideal prospect would most likely use to search for the service their needing. Avoid technical jargon or industry lingo used to describe what you do unless that would be the most popular way a potential client might search for the service. If the goal of your ad campaign is to attract leads more in tune with the industry-speak associated with what you’re offering you may consider running a separate ad campaign using those specific search phrases as your keywords

Get Specific – Make sure keywords are worth the effort. Too little volume for your chosen keywords will make a campaign seem ineffective, when it’s actually the keyword choices that have limited the campaign’s success. You want to narrow your keyword focus enough to make sure you're only attracting the right type of visitor to your site, but an ad that has a keyword list full of search terms that absolutely no one is searching for will bring you absolutely no traffic or sales!

Get Negative – All PPC services I’ve dealt with have allow you to supply a list of negative keywords to help filter out traffic that you don’t want coming to your site. For example, at ShuBee we sell a lot of shoe covers and have several ad campaigns targeting different variations of that keyword. Unfortunately shoe covers are not specific just to the industries we cater too. There are several different types shoe covers available for cyclists too! I have nothing against cyclists at all, but the odds of a person searching for “Giordana Wintex shoe covers” will find any interest in our ads promoting shoe covers for plumbers. Also, I don’t want to run the risk of depleting my ad budget on clicks from Googlers searching for “women’s high heel shoe covers.” Neither of these search terms match my campaign’s goals nor match up with any of my target audiences, so they’re in my negative keyword list. This is a great way to further refine the focus of the keywords you do want to target.

Check Competitors – Constantly seeing your competition’s ads show but not yours? Use a tool like SEM Rush (http://www.semrush.com) or SpyFu (http://www.spyfu.com) to get a better understanding of what keywords they’re using and possibly uncover some gold nuggets you hadn’t considered!

Still need some help picking out keywords? Luckily there are some great tools available to help make suggestions for you. Google has their own keyword suggestion tool in AdWords to help jumpstart your brainstorming process: (http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Keep in mind though when using this or any other keyword research tool - no one knows your prospects, advertising goals or market like you do and it's going to take your expertise to put together the most effective keyword list to ensure your PPC campaigns are a success!

Buying Traffic Using Paid Search Marketing

Last issue we discussed how to track and measure online success through the use of analytics. Unless your site has somehow automagically blossomed overnight to the most popular site since Facebook, you’ll likely need to find ways to attract visitors to your online property. Paid search, commonly known as Pay Per Click (PPC) ads are a great way to make this happen.

PPC can be a great lead generation tool for any business and also a good method to to keep your visitors (aka “prospects”) searching online and out of the yellow pages. Most major search engines offer some type of PPC service and it’s up to you to decide which ones you want to try.

The big three in this area currently are Google (AdWords: www.google.com/adwords), Microsoft (Bing: http://adcenter.microsoft.com) and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Search Marketing:http://marketinginfo.yahoo.com - Yahoo! has recently partnered with Microsoft and much of their paid search technologies are powered by the same engines that manage Bing’s PPC).

For this discussion we’re going to focus on AdWords. With AdWords, you set a daily spending budget, design your ads, select the keywords for which you want your ad to display and then bid on each keyword. You can even set specific times of day you’d like your ads to display (know as day splitting) as well as isolate very specific geo targets for your ads. This gives you flexibility to pick and chose exactly when and where your ads will show.

Day splitting and geo-targeting are neat features of any PPC management tool, but the real focus here should be on your keyword selections when designing your ads. It’s important to make sure your keywords aren’t overly broad, but not too narrowly focused as well. This goes back to our discussion metatags from the article “Guide to Getting Found Online.”

For example, “plumber” may be a keyword that is entirely too broad. It’s also likely that many competitors could also be using the same keyword driving the bid prices for good placement for that search term are out of your budget. However, “Seattle plumbing contractor” may have fewer competing ads and a lower front page bid. Using a better key phrase like this will also help ensure your ad is displayed to more targeted crowd which will in turn help improve your click-through and conversion rates (which, let’s face it, conversions are really the goal for all this work, right?).

Where in the search results your ads display is another story entirely. As you set your bidding for each keyword, you may notice Google giving you a notice that your bid is too low to ensure front page placement. This means that with your current bid, your ad could be buried on page 2, 3 or 500 of all the ads competing for that search term and will never to see the light of day, let alone ever get clicked. While this means that your ad isn’t necessarily costing you any money, it’s also not bringing any traffic in to your site. The solution to this is to either raise your bid for that keyword, or find a better keyword or key phrase to target.

If you (or your developers) have set up all your tracking code correctly you should be able to see a breakdown of paid search traffic vs. organic traffic in your analytics. A good rule of thumb is to aim for 75% of your traffic to come from organic search results (meaning your site has been well optimized for the keywords you’re wanting to target) to 25% paid search traffic.

So today we’ve covered the basic strategies for paid search advertising and identified the importance of keywords as search terms. So how do we select the perfect keywords for our PPC ads? Stay tuned…

Using Analytics to Track Everything

In my last article ‘Guide to Getting Found,’ we discussed four steps to create a strong foundation for your business' online presence: building a website; listing your site with only directories and search engines; developing a metatag strategy and the importance of creating content. With these blocks in place we can really start to pump up reach and begin measuring ROI. So today we're going to discuss how the heck to keep up with everything your website is doing for you (which is probably a lot more than you think!) using the basic features available in most analytics packages and later talk about how to begin using you site as an effective sales tool.

Track Everything

One of the beauties of Internet marketing is that every interaction can be tracked clicks. With the right tracking (analytics) devices in place, you can easily tell where your website visitors are coming, learn which pages on your site are the most popular, determine where you lose visitors and even drill down to see where your website visitors are located.

If you don’t have some type of analytics tracking built into your site you won’t have access to any of this information or know where your areas of improvement exist or what your site’s strengths are.

There are several analytics packages available ranging from free to unnaturally expensive (but also equally impressive). When researching your options, make sure that you’re able to drill down to the specific information you need without a lot of hassle. Google has a great solution with their analytics package (www.google.com/analytics). The tool is free (unless you want to upgrade to their new Premium offerings and shell out around $50k/year) and is a breeze to install. There are other “free-mium” options around, such as Clicky (www.getclicky.com), Yahoo! Web Analytics (web.analytics.yahoo.com) and more. To get started with most of these options, you'll be required to set up an account (usually free) with the vendor and install a small snippet of code somewhere on your website.

Google Analytics is by far the most popular and widely used analytics tool available. It’s my choice in tracking since Google offers a slew of other tools that can be used in conjunction with their analytics, and the fact that I can create and share custom reports is a plus too. To monitor your site with their tool, I'd recommend installing the code they supply in a part of your website that will be included with each and every page load. If you only installed the tracking code on your home page, well, that's the only page that will publish any tracking data. Google currently recommends installing their code in a header file of your site between the tags.

Once installed, visit your analytics dashboard a few hours later to see all the glorious data your website has to offer about your visitors! The variety of built-in reports available in whatever analytics package you choose should be a great start in gaining some insights to your website. To gain a good high-level understanding of your website some points of interest would be: total number of unique visitors in a given time frame, overall bounce rate (a bounce by most analytics engines is considered a visitor who enters your website, does nothing else and then leaves), average time on site, average page views and conversions.

Again, this is good high-level data but won’t give you much actionable insight. You can, however, use this data to start establishing benchmarks for your website and SEO/SEM performance. No visitors yet? We'll talk about traffic generators a little bit down the road. Next issue we'll discuss analytics data mining and what to look for beyond basic analytics reports!

Guide to Getting Found Online

At the end of every year I put together a list of goals. Not a list of resolutions, but goals I want to accomplish during the upcoming year. (great article on those differences here and why resolutions tend to be forgotten here). One of my goals for 2012 is to improve the ROI of ShuBee's Internet marketing efforts.

My first step towards accomplishing this goal was to establish benchmarks of where we are currently as well as document what helped us achieve that success. From there it was on to numbers crunching so I could establish a budget for 2012, then on to growth projections and finally planning some new strategies.

It was at this point in the process that I remembered an article I had written for theBuzz in 2009 about getting found online. As often as Google keeps changing the game when it comes to businesses getting found online, keeping first page rankings and determining what they feel is most relevant to your search much of the meat of this article still rings true when establishing best practices and strategies for SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing) for business.

I've made some tweaks here and there to any outdated practices and also added a few new ideas to help keep the content current. So here goes, my “Are You Getting Found Redux”:

Tech awareness is rising. Business owners are becoming more hands on with social media, web analytics, SEO/SEM and have a better understanding of Internet marketing. Even small home-based one and two truck service contracting businesses are becoming aware of the need for an online presence and realizing the effectiveness of online advertising. As technology grows we as business leaders need to either learn how to embrace and harness it to become more productive and more efficient or get out of the way. So how do we start the embracing process when it comes to Internet marketing strategies?

First things first, get a website
It’s been said more times than I care to count, “The Internet is the new phone book.” People are looking for you, are you being found? If you don’t have a website for your Michigan-based HVAC business, people searching online for “Detroit heater repair” will never know you exist. In today’s instant information age, it’s more important than ever to have an online storefront.

Let’s take this scenario: It’s January and Suzy Homemaker just put the kids down for a nap. The house is starting to get a little more chilly than normal so she goes to adjust the thermostat. Twenty minutes later she’s shivering. She picks up the phone to call hubby at work to tell him how cold it is in the house. He clicks over to Google and searches for “Detroit heater repair.” Does he find you? If the answer is “No,” how can you ever expect to get that job? If he did find your site but passed over you because of a outdated looking site or lackluster information, he still may as well not have found you. Either way, you need a site and it should be optimized for both search engines and humans alike. This means strategically using keywords you want search engines to find you for as well as having the content on your landing pages that’s relevant to what the visitor (aka, prospect) is looking for.
Work with a developer who has knowledge of your industry. There are quite a few industry specific offerings available. Be sure to do a portfolio review before signing any agreements to make sure the developer has a design style that suits your needs.

Next, get listed.
The first priority with most new service-related businesses after having set up shop is getting an ad in the local phone book. Think of the first step in your online success after building your shiny new website is getting your business listed with the search engines. Most major searching engines now have a listing section specifically for businesses. Just like with their printed counterpart, the basic business listings are free, but if you’d like to add a few bells and whistles to your listing in hopes of pumping up your reach and ROI there are a few pay services that promise more traffic and better conversions.

Start with Google Business Listing (www.google.com/local/add). To do this you’ll first need to set up an account with Google, but that’s easy and free (and you’ll find you’ll be using it a great deal down the road in your online marketing campaign). With your Google Business Listing, you can also incentive customers for their business by using coupons in your business listing.

Once you’ve built your website and set up your business in Google, check the other major search engines for similar business directories, currently the top five search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Bing and (gasp, still) AOL. All have similar offerings for businesses, but for this article, I’m going to focus on Google because in my opinion they have the most comprehensive options and are the most user-friendly.

Metatags: Some say they’re dead… but I still love them!
When you’re working with this industry-knowledgeable web developer professional make sure they’re including metatags on each and every page for your site. If there’s the slightest inkling that he’s unsure what you’re talking about, run. Metatags are the descriptions, keywords and key phrases that work behind the scenes of your website to help search engines identify what your pages are about.

Many SEO professionals claim that metatags are unimportant now. While search engines have changed their ranking algorithms to focus more on page content than metatags now, these hidden page identifiers still play a big part in how your site is found and listed.

For instance, the title tag of each page controls the text that’s displayed in the very top of a visitor’s browser and can differ (read: should be different and relevant to the page, giving the visitor a high level overview of the page’s content) for every page on your site.

The description metatag for your page will be what’s displayed in Google’s search results under your link when you pop up there. So if your site came up in as a result you’d see a link to your site at the top of your listing followed by your description. Generally, you want to keep this description around 80-100 words. Many search engines use this description in their search results.

Keywords or Key phrases should be your next metatag project. Keywords help to further drill down the relevancy of your site to a user’s searches. Include unique keywords for each page and make sure they are relevant to the content on the page. If you want a certain page in your site to be listed when a user searches for “new construction plumbing contractors,” make sure those keywords are in your tags and on your page! Keywords are a good starting point identifying what the content of your page is about, but a well laid out key phrase may help bring more qualified traffic to your site. For instance, the keyword “contractor” is extremely broad and probably in use by hundreds of thousands of competing sites. However, if you drill it down a little more by including the key phrase “Atlanta Georgia flat rate plumbing contractor,” you’re likely to see much more targeted results. It’s generally a good rule of thumb to include seven to 15 keywords and key phrases per page.

The Internet is content-driven, meaning that people are actively searching for specific content and they are returned the most relevant results search engines can find for their inquiries. It’s up to you to provide the most relevant content about your business as it would relate to your prospects and customers. Posting an article to your website on what you ate for lunch won’t help at all when it comes to finding prospects looking for someone who can install a water main. It may make for an interesting post and help people choose where to go for a good hoagie, but other than that – there’s no real benefit.

Use a section of your site to frequently post relevant industry-related news, press releases about your company, tips for consumers, etc. This helps establish you as an industry expert, increases your keyword density (the number of times a desired search term appears on your page), and gives your current customer base a reason to come back to your site.

This rounds out part one of this online primer. Next issue we’ll look at ways to expand your Internet presence beyond your website. We’ll cover PPC (Pay Per Click) ads, social media and more!

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Five Tips for Successful Advertising

Successful business growth relies on one thing: expand your client base faster than the rate of inflation.

Enter “Advertising.”

Back in the day, owning and operating a successful business consisted of establishing a brick and mortar business, hanging a sign on the door and telling all your buddies where you were and what you were selling. Today’s competitive markets have introduced a slew of ways to attract new business as well as cultivate existing clients into more profitable ones. In fact, it’s estimated that the average American is exposed to more than 3,000 commercial messages a day, and as a whole $620 billion is spent each year by businesses with the aim of making their product more desirable to the public (Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/).

So how do we maximize our advertising spending to make sure we’re capturing and keeping as much business as possible? Read on to learn the secrets to successful advertising:

1. Define your goals – For each ad you place, whether it be in print, television, radio, pay per click (PPC), outdoor advertising, etc., have a clear goal of what you want the piece to do for your business. Are you trying to generate interest? Make the phone ring? Schedule a specific number of presentations? How do you want your audience to respond? Write down your goal for the advertising piece and make sure that all decisions leading towards the execution of the ad support that goal.
2. Develop a plan – a no-brainer, right? You’d be surprised how many advertising dollars are hastily spent without thought to overall marketing goals. Set a budget; prepare a calendar; profile your clients and/or prospects. Without a plan, you’re advertising could potentially do more to harm your business than propel it if you send the wrong message to the wrong audience.
3. Qualify your audience – Knowing how to deliver your message is as important as the message itself. Who are you targeting? As a group, what are their interests and how can you appeal to them? What delivery method (platform) do they accept best? To maximize your impact with this group, list specific features and benefits the client will see by choosing to work with you.
4. Keep your message simple – Don’t get overly wordy or too clever with your advertising. You may spend days working on an advertising project to get it “just right,” but your audience is going to spend about .6 seconds looking over it before making the decision to respond or ignore it.
5. Establish a clear call to action – Tip #5 goes hand in hand with Tip #4. Having a single call to action will help funnel your audience to the goal you have set. Use distinct words and phrases to outline what it is you want your audience to do. For example: Click Here; Call Today; Register for your free gift, etc.

Remember, advertising is much more a form of art than it is a science, but by knowing how to systematically deliver your message, set measureable goals and track campaign successes and losses will certainly help you make better educated decisions on how to spend and maximize your overall advertising, capture more market share and ultimately grow your business to new levels of success.

Create a "Stickiness Factor" for Your Business

Over the years, many trends have caught on that most people would not have expected, like the surge of popularity of then-terminally-uncool Hush Puppies shoes in the 1990’s, which were previously only popular among a handful of hipsters in Manhattan.  Television shows which many thought would surely flop reached great success, such as Sesame Street.  People underestimated the cognitive levels of children, but the show’s new approach to teaching gained widespread popularity and fostered literacy in preschoolers.  Books, like The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, have climbed from little known cult series to best-sellers and messages that seemed to hold little importance at the time, such as the dangers of smoking, took hold and are now hot topics all over the world.  It seems that there is a pattern to these phenomenons, which many businesses could learn, replicate and benefit from greatly.

In the book “The Tipping Point,” author Malcolm Gladwell connects the dots for a pattern that can move any idea, message, product, or in our case business in the residential service industry from a small, unknown group to a front-runner in their field.  The main thing you can do to propel your business to its “tipping point” is to create what is known as “The Stickiness Factor.”

At ShuBee, we are constantly encouraging businesses to do things that make them stand out from their competition – and that’s really what making your business “stick” is all about.  It’s the small details that will make you stick in the minds of your customers, and it’s usually details that aren’t expected or considered to be the norm.

When a client calls a plumber to come to their home to do some work, they’re probably not expecting a well-dressed, professional looking, nice smelling technician to knock on their door.  If that person does knock on their door and announce that he or she is there to fix the toilet, the image of that employee and ultimately that business will “stick” with that customer, without a doubt.

If you can make small alterations to make your business “sticky,” you will influence the public’s future behavior.  By doing things that are out of the norm for the industry, you make yourself memorable.  People remember what they don’t expect.  What they don’t expect is what “sticks.”  At ShuBee, we answer the phone in a way that callers never forget.  With a smile on our face, we answer the telephone, “It’s a great day at ShuBee.  How can we make you smile today?”  In an instant we’re able to ease any tension that may be felt from making a business related call.  It’s a small gesture that doesn’t cost anything, and people also remember.

The smallest changes can be the most critical for taking your business to the next level.  The image both the business and the employees present should be different from that which has been expected in the past or from that which others are presenting.  In the case of service industry workers, the more professional of an image you can present, the more memorable you will be to your clients.  All humans instinctively try to explain the world and the things around us in terms of people’s obvious attributes.  That means you have the power to control how people will perceive your business and its employees.

Something as simple as the way you package or present information can increase your business’ “stickiness factor.”  When giving your client information, use presentation folders with your business logo on them.  The smallest acts can help increase your “stickiness.” By tinkering with the smallest details you can increase the momentum of your business, reach your “tipping point” and run circles around your competition.