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[VIDEO] I Ask My Boss 5 Marketing Questions In 1 Minute

Topic: SEO

  1. What is SEO?
  2. How long does it take for SEO to work?
  3. What’s the difference between an organic listing and a local search listing?
  4. What are Meta Titles for?
  5. As a business, how do I find the right keyword for me?

Topic: Google Ads

  1. How do I get immediate traffic with Google Ads?
  2. What are the different kinds of Ads I can run on Google?
  3. How expensive is retargeting in comparison to other ads?
  4. When would I use Google Ads’ Phrase Match keywords?
  5. How would I know if someone who clicked on my ad actually converted on my website?

Topic: Web Design

  1. What’s a Lead Magnet?
  2. Why does a website need a blog?
  3. Where should I find a call to action on a website?
  4. What’s more important: Mobile design or desktop design?
  5. How do I know if my website is brand consistent?

——————————————————————

I hope you enjoyed my video experiment! If any of the questions caught your attention but we didn’t elaborate quite enough, I’ve included more detailed answers to each of the questions below.

Topic: SEO

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it boils down to how much Google trusts your website. I always explain that Google wants to make sure they look good, which means they’re much more likely to show your link at the top of their organic search if it meets certain criteria such as high page speeds, low bounce rates, mobile-friendliness, trustworthy backlinks, etc.

Google is looking to see if your website has what it takes to provide a suitable answer to a customer’s inquiry, and they measure this by looking at how many people leave your site immediately, and how many stay and interact.

How long does it take for SEO to work?

SEO depends on a ton of factors, but we can usually expect a campaign to show results after about 3 months. An SEO campaign at Yas consists of 2 parts. The first is the on-page audit where we make sure that your meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor links, on-page keywords, etc. are all in-line with what Google wants. The second part comes down to building backlinks, which are links that point from an external website to yours.

Google’s crawlers can take some time to pick up on back-linking, which is part of the reason SEO is considered a slow, but vital, marketing tool.

What’s the difference between an organic listing and a local search listing?

As Mike mentioned, your local search listing appears in the box with the map (as seen in the image below), and your organic listing is displayed below that map.

There is debate about the deciding factors behind who shows up in the local search box, and many sources believe that it involves a lot of the same criteria that the organic listing does, but puts a much larger emphasis on geographical location.

As an example, if you searched for McDonalds on one side of the city, you would expect Google to show you the closest ones first; it would make Google look bad to make you drive across the city, right?

What are Meta Titles for?

As you can see in the graphic below, in Google’s organic search, a website’s meta title is the title that shows up as the main link. From an SEO perspective, Google reads the meta title as “this is what the website is about”, so it’s important to include your main keyword here.

The meta description is similar, being the short description underneath the link, and Google reads this description as an indicator of what can be found within the site. It’s also important to include your main keyword here so it’s 100% obvious to Google that your website is the answer to the customer’s search.

As a business, how do I find the right keyword for me?

There are plenty of resources that can help you find relevant keywords. The example Mike gives in the video is Google’s Keyword Planner. This tool will show you a list of relevant keywords, as well as how often they’re being searched and how competitive they are. Some articles and videos will also suggest you use Google’s search predictions.

In this image, you’ll see that when you go to Google and type in something relevant to your business, it’s going to predict your search based on what most people search. Yes, this means that “Health Food Stores Saskatoon” gets a ton of searches and would make a great keyword! That said, this method won’t show you how competitive a keyword is. Don’t get stuck in the trap where you’re competing for SEO against a company with a much larger marketing budget than you.

Topic: Google Ads

How do I get immediate traffic with Google Ads?

This answer is easy—start an ads campaign. The beauty of Google Ads from a marketing perspective is that they’re meant to start getting you results QUICKLY! Google wants to take your money, so you can be certain that they’re going to start using up your daily budget the same day the campaign begins.

What are the different kinds of Ads I can run on Google?

The answer to this question can be either very simple or very in-depth. In This Article by Google, you can see that there are search campaigns, video campaigns, image campaigns, and more. This can get even more complicated when you consider that each of these campaigns has a ton of customization.

As an example, one of the ones I use the most is a retargeting display ad campaign. With this campaign, I use promotional images to target customers who have already been on my site to stay top-of-mind. This limits my audience when compared to a more general display ad campaign, but it’s a great value because I know spending money on people who have shown an interest in my website already can provide an excellent ROI.

How expensive is retargeting in comparison to other ads?

I answered this one a little in question #2 of this section, but to put it into better perspective, my cost per click for retargeting is usually only a few cents, whereas my cost per click on search ads can be several dollars. The reason for this is that the audience is much smaller and it’s much less competitive.

When would I use Google Ads’ Phrase Match keywords?

As I described in the video, Google Ads has three Match Types. Detailed information can be found here. To sum up,

Broad Match: Broad match keywords will return results for synonyms, related keywords, misspellings, etc. This will return the absolute most results total, but also the most negative results.

Exact Match: Exact Match keywords are the most limited and will only return results for searches that are exactly your keyword.

Phrase Match: Keywords using phrase match will return results for similar phrases, or any additional words at the beginning or end of your phrase.

You would want to use Phrase Match keywords when there are many applications of your keyword. For example, if your keyword is “Pizza”, then phrase match would allow you to return results for “great Pizza” and “Where do I buy Pizza” etc. Be careful, though, because it will also show for irrelevant searches like “How to make your own Pizza” and “Pizza haters club”. These can be dealt with using Google’s Search Terms workflow.

How would I know if someone who clicked on my ad actually converted on my website?

Within Google Ads, you can create “events” and “conversions” by inserting code provided by Google Ads into your website. For example, if you have a contact form that leads to a thank you page, you can set an event to trigger every time someone hits that thank you page.

By including this information in your conversions in Google Ads, you can track how many people clicked on the ad, and how many of those people also filled out your contact form.

Topic: Web Design

What’s a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet comes in many forms, but an easy way to understand them is as a working strategy to collect your customers’ emails. Think back 5 years and remember that almost every website had a spot somewhere on the page that said “sign up for our newsletter”. You can probably think of a few sites you’ve seen recently that still have it.

Now, think of all of the newsletters you’ve signed up for. Maybe I’m a unique case (I don’t think so), but I’ve signed up for 0 newsletters in my life.

I have, however, signed up for one lead magnet. You can find it here. It will likely pop up on your screen when you try to leave Deep End’s site.

The reason Wes got my email was that he was offering free video training with information I actually wanted to learn. Sure, at the end of the free video I was directed to sign up for more, but the point is that I got real value in exchange for permission for Wes to market directly to me.

Why does a website need a blog?

First, I’ll tell you when you don’t want a blog. You write a few posts about banking trends and share the new additions to your team and then work gets a little busy. Before you know it, it’s 2020 and your latest blog post says “published 2013”. This is not a good look.

The main reason you do want a blog, though, is the way that it affects your SEO. Google reads all of the pages on your website, right? If the information is on-point and your website is trustworthy, you can bet they’re going to serve your blog to answer people’s questions.

Think about it: how many times have you seen Google results for a Forbes article? Now, how many times have you seen Google results for Forbes’ homepage? Probably almost never.

Even better, if you write valuable articles that people share freely on their websites and social media, that’s free back-links and publicity for you!

Where should I find a call to action on a website?

I wrote an in-depth article about this question a few weeks ago; it can be found here.

Banner image for the blog Hitting Goals With Your Website's Calls To Action | Edmonton Web Design

To sum up the main points, every website should have two kinds of calls to action. The first is your main call to action that should be visible on every page. It is recommended that this CTA is a different color to stand out and its purpose is to fulfil your website’s main goal. Whether that be filling out a contact form, calling a number, or “shopping now”.

The other kinds of calls to action serve all sorts of purposes. They’re buttons that help your customer take the next step you want them to take on their client journey. If they’re on your home page and read a small preview of your services section, use a CTA to lead them to the full list of services.

Calls to action should be found in every section of the website that could lead customers to that next step.

What’s more important: mobile design or desktop design?

While it isn’t always the case that mobile has more views than desktop, Mike was onto something when he mentioned that Google has started crawling mobile pages specifically.

Yes, the more people Google sees using your website from a mobile device, the more they’re going to care how your website performs on mobile. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly enough for Google to show to your customers, their dreaded algorithms might show your competitor instead.

So, which kind of design is more important? The short answer is that they’re both extremely important. If one is lacking, your website will fall behind.

I wrote a more in-depth article about the different types of responsive design; it can be found here.

Faces Masks responsive web design blue orange

How do I know if my website is brand consistent?

To understand this question, you need to visualize what all goes into a brand. Sure, you’ll first think of visual components like your logo and your coloring, but are you paying attention to everything on the following list?

  • Logo System
    • Logo with and without text
    • Logo in black, white, and greyscale
    • Small Logo for Favicon or apps
  • Style Guide
    • Company colors
    • Company fonts
    • Visual cues like image, photograph, or graphic guidelines
  • Communication Guide
    • How your pamphlets are written
    • How your social media content is written
    • The style of your web content
    • Your main messaging surrounding your core values
    • Your mission and vision statements
  • Brand Perception
    • How you classify your brand (cool, innovative, etc)
    • How happy employees classify your brand
    • How unhappy employees classify your brand
    • How happy clients classify your brand
    • How unhappy clients classify your brand

This is not an exhaustive list. Your brand includes everything your company -is- from every perspective. What’s important here is that no matter what I see or hear from you, whether that’s pamphlets, emails, web pages, radio commercials, etc. I expect to see and hear the same thing.

We all like the familiar, so if your brand new product or service is brand consistent, people are more likely to apply the feelings they already have about you to that new product or service.

So yes, this has been a fun way for me to grill my boss on some common questions and provide extra details to anyone whose interest was peaked. I hope you enjoyed this and that you learned something new, and don’t forget to come back to see more content like this!

Of course, we want to provide you with valuable content, so please send me an email letting me know what you’d like me to talk about (or how you’d like to see me torture my boss in the name of education).

Thanks!

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