When it comes to increasing traffic to your mission critical websites and web stores, marketers have two very different options to work with: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC).  Before determining which combination is best for you, it is important to define and understand the unique advantages and disadvantages of each.

SEO – (search engine optimization) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results.

• SEO Advantages
  • Longer lasting results
  • Produces greater credibility from organic search results
  • Requires no daily marketing budget
• SEO Disadvantages
  • No guarantee of results
  • Takes longer to see results
  • Keywords limited to site size and current content
  • Requires changes to content

PPC – (pay-per-click) is an internet advertising model used to promote and attract direct traffic to websites, in which website owners pay search engines for clicks on promoted or sponsored search results.

• PPC Advantages
  • Produces immediate results
  • Unlimited keywords regardless of site size and content (more keywords  = more $)
  • No content changes necessary
• PPC Disadvantages
  • Requires a daily marketing budget
  • Can be expensive to maintain long term

Now that you know the differences between SEO and PPC, it’s time to get to work.  At Bridgeline Digital, we have assembled a team of digital strategists known as iSG (iAPPS Support Group) that will work directly with your marketing team to assist in identifying your specific goals as well as your PPC budget.  After meeting with your team, iSG will complete a comprehensive site analysis consisting of a current SEO, analytics and content review to determine a SEO and PPC strategy designed with your specific goals and budget in mind.

It is important to note that iSG’s approach to PPC is unique to the industry and unlike most agencies.  Once your PPC budget is established, iSG will manage your daily bids for you.  But, rather than charging a percentage of the overall buy, iSG charges only a nominal fee based on the hours necessary to identify and deliver keyword maps, ad copy and the testing strategies designed to ensure that the right ads are being shown to the right audience at the right place and time.  This means we are committed to developing strategies that aligns with your paid search goals, whether that’s increased paid search traffic or decreased ad spending.

Your questions and comments are welcome.

Seth Rich is a Digital Services Sales Specialist and member of iSG (iAPPS Support Group) at Bridgeline Digital.  You can contact him on LinkedIn or by email.

Last winter, our Quarterly Vertical Webinar Series featured guest speakers, case studies and research on profound ways a Health Care organization’s website can drive Patient Activation. The Vertical Webinar series educates audiences on ways your organization can assimilate to an increasingly Digital World, tailoring specific information on common industry needs and context.

CLICK THE IMAGE: Register to Attend Bridgeline Digital's Latest Webinar

On April 3oth, at 2:00 pm, we’ll broadcast our latest webinar, “Guilty By Association: Five Mistakes Associations Make While Developing Their Digital Strategy,” focusing on what types of digital strategies marketers in the Association Industry can adopt to improve Member Relationship Management (MRM).

As a primer, or an appetizer if you will, we’ve decided to preview three of the mistakes, right here, on the Bridgeline Blog. You’re about to be a smarter person than you were 10 minutes ago. Get excited.

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Mistake: Using Association Management Software (AMS) that doesn’t play nicely with third-party tools.

One of the vital conclusions of the Lehman Associates annual industry study report, entitled ”Association Management Software Use and Satisfaction“, was about something that haunts every digital strategy: Synergy between solutions.

An excerpt from the report:

Associations are adopting third-party applications to take advantage of new engagement models and to tap into specialized capabilities. This is evident in new areas such as social media and mobile services as well as enhanced capabilities for email marketing and communications, meeting management and registration, e-learning, and others. AMS providers build into their products many of these capabilities but may offer fewer options than dedicated third-party applications and are likely to upgrade them less frequently. They do have a potential advantage of automatic integration with the other functions of the AMS, but surprisingly, some are not well integrated within the vendors AMS platform.

Look, technology moves fast, often leaving organizations always playing catch up. That’s no secret. And an AMS is a system that provides Associations with basic database features to run its operations, such as member services, dues, event management, and fundraising. It’s critical software for Associations to properly harness to develop a marketing strategy, yet according to surveys from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), 24% of Associations implemented their AMS over 10 years ago.

We can say here, with general confidence, that any technology dated 10 years is either obsolete or on the brink of it. Fear not, according to that same survey, 4 out of 10 Associations are currently shopping for a new AMS. It’s important, however, to choose an AMS that can work concurrently with the rest of the tools arming your digital marketing strategy. Integration is between technologies is key.

Solution: In our Webinar, we’ll discuss paramount technologies necessary to augment a good AMS solution in order to take your Association to new heights.

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Mistake: Ignoring the use of Smart Devices in the marketplace.

LIONS! AND TIGERS! AND BEARS! OH MY!!! …. In 2013, it’s more like: TABLETS! AND SMART PHONES!! AND PCS! OH MY!!!

We’ve written about and covered the Mobile Revolution at an unhealthy obsession. Almost enough so that you could make the case we’re spearheading the movement. To review: an eBook, Infographic, and, oh yeah above is our video that we just produced. Did we mention we have a video now? HEY GUYS! LOOK WE HAVE A VIDEO NOW TOO! Check it out. Pretty cool stuff.

Anyway, it’s not overkill when the startling statistics back up the amount of attention we’re giving it. If you’re digital strategy doesn’t involve mobile then you don’t really have a digital strategy. Get on board. Remember, 685.6million smartphones worldwide were sold in 2012 - 45% increase over 2011. People don’t hope you have a mobile friendly website, they expect it. In the study entitled, “What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today,” Google found 72% of consumers expect brands to have a mobile-friendly website.

According to the ASAE survey, despite these trends, 93% of organizations are spending more on websites than mobile.

Solution: Well, you already know, we’re big proponents of Responsive Design, but we’ll talk at great lengths of its importance as it pertains to MRM.

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Mistake: Discounting the Importance of an Effective SEO Strategy

If Content is King, great Search Engine Optimization strategy is both the keys and the road map to the village. It’s simple, Search Engine Optimization tactics bring visitors to your virtual doorstep. Awesome SEO won’t happen over night, it takes time to develop.

Solution: There’simply not enough space here to dive in but our latest Webinar will detail basic and advanced SEO techniques and tools to drive better search engine rank.

Interest piqued? We thought so. Find out more about these topics — and more!! — by registering for our latest webinar today.

Excellence takes time! Good things come to those who wait!

These are both well-known axioms. While somewhat hackneyed, clichés are known as clichés for a reason: They are widely accepted as true. Becoming the best at anything requires starting at the beginning… often with nothing. And Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the practice of adjusting websites to rank better on search engines such as Google and Bing, is no different.

In iSG Digital Services, we work with customers who need SEO improvements for websites in competitive markets. Frequently the major search engines consider our clients’ competitors to be authoritative for their industry. Best practices for improvement in well-staked search results territory require that brands must take the time to rise organically.

We start by reviewing a brand’s current efforts – typically adequate work, they include meta data (behind-the-scenes information stored within the HTML of a page); unique page titles are used throughout their website; they use <h1> tags to denote the page’s HTML headline; and most importantly, the pages include high volume (determined by the number of searches per month) terms that help search engines categorize and rank their content.

These efforts in a vacuum help, but they can only get a brand so far. Following these practices, a page will usually rank in the top five pages of results, but that’s a problem: it’s rare for users to dig that deep into search results.

To move the needle, we recommend a holistic SEO approach which requires patience. At Bridgeline, this starts with a persuasive content strategy, of which one of the most critical deliverables is a keyword universe: a master list of those high search volume terms. Several SEO tactics depend on this list. Each keyword must be evaluated for competitiveness (how many companies are vying for placement on that term), how frequently the target audience searches for that phrase per month, contextual significance of the term in the search engines, PPC action in the search engine results page (SERP), as well as relevance to the site’s core business. Folder/article labels within the site’s taxonomy should be adjusted to these terms; additionally page titles, headlines, and readable page content all should reflect the keyword universe. For iAPPS customers, there are built-in features, such as 301 redirects or canonical tagging, either of which can serve to improve search performance.

All of these efforts may be in vain if they aren’t supported by a link building campaign to point other external websites, blogs, social media, etc. to your site. Link popularity is still the backbone of how search engines determine the rankability and “relevance” of your content. Persuasive content which compels readers to click through, interact, and share your content is critical to the success of your SEO campaign. It is imperative that care is taken to include link building in your plans.

Once we’ve got all of these tactics holistically aligned, we add the final ingredient: time. We provide periodic SEO performance reports, typically monthly. All the while, we tweak our efforts to continually improve ranking and related performance KPI’s as they relate to traffic generated from SEO. In general it takes about 3-4 months for optimized pages to really begin to achieve their full potential.

We’ve seen this “excellence takes time” philosophy prove itself countless times, and we believe these SEO best practices are the ideal way to achieve lasting performance improvements in organic search. That said, there are some tactics that may speed that timeframe up, including the following services (all of which iSG provides):

• Content management: regularly adjusting site content encourages search engines to re-crawl your site.
• Link building: authoritative websites linking to your site increase your search rank.
• Social media management: brands often have presence on social venues that can help their SEO effort.

Search engines routinely adjust their algorithms, and no two projects perform the same way so results cannot be guaranteed. Nonetheless we have seen these tactics work for our customers time and time again. The trick is to always remember that good SEO takes time.

Franchisees, like all small business owners, seem to face the same issue when it comes to search engine optimization: How do we beat the competition to the top of the results list for local searches?

The impact a strong search ranking has on a company is omnipotent. Whether it’s an auto repair shop or accounting services, franchisees can quickly go from survival to growth with the right search strategy.

Unfortunately, many franchise owners simply don’t have the time to devote their attention on SEO or they focus on the wrong search terms. Too many owners fool themselves into thinking that branded search terms (i.e. searches involving their franchise name) should be the focus of their SEO efforts. But what they fail to realize is that people searching for their company already know about them. This is a mix of existing customers, potential customers that have already done buying research on their industry.

While it’s important to be a top result for someone searching your brand name in your area, it shouldn’t be the focus of search optimization. Instead, owners should be going after non-branded search terms that show customer intent. A franchise owner, like any small business owner, needs to work on finding the potential customers that are performing “buying” searches for the products and services they offer.

Here are tactics for franchisees to consider when implementing a search strategy:

Every Page is a Chance to Get Found – Instead of cramming every piece of information about your franchise location on one page, you need to add pages. Every page is a new opportunity to target a different search phrase, so add a new page for every product or service. Don’t confuse the search engines talking about “shipping services” and “notary” on the same page – highlight each offering on its own page. As your brand adds new offerings, you’ll need to add pages. This type of flexibility will likely require a web content management solution.

Think About How Your Customer Searches – Every industry has its own vocabulary. The auto shop’s staff knows the difference between rotors, discs, and drums; but does their customer? Probably not, instead they are searching for “brakes”, “brake jobs”, or “brake repair”. When optimizing to attract new customers, think about how they’ll be searching for what you offer.

Go Local – The biggest advantage to being a franchisee is being able to have an established brand name on your signage. The disadvantage is that there could be another franchise location two towns away. When trying to get found online, make sure to target your local search area. More than half of all searches have some sort of location qualifier; use this to make sure you’re found when someone is searching for your city or zip.

Control the Experience – While this isn’t necessarily search related, it’s critical that your web presence gives the visitor the best experience, regardless of what device they’re using. Leveraging Responsive Design will trigger a site to automatically adjust its screen size and resolution to deliver the desired experience to someone on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device. Consumers have come to expect an easy web experience, no matter their screen size. Not providing the desired browsing experience will frustrate visitors and send them back to the search engine. They’ve found you, now you need to make sure they call you.

By using these tactics, a franchisee can start channeling their brand online to get found by new customers as they are conducting their buying research. This type of visibility in the early stages can often help to capture a prospect before they’ve made a decision.

Google is the most common way current and prospective patients find more information about your practice. Ask yourself the following question: Do you know what’s in the first page of your search results?

Not sure? Don’t think it’s a big deal? Consider this: Research shows that less than 10 percent of searchers look beyond the first page.

If you’re not ranking well enough to appear on these results, don’ t worry — we’re here to help!

Software Advice, a firm that reviews medical software and provides business advice for physicians on their profitable practice blog, recently published an article on how physicians can improve rank. Here are a few of their tips to consider when developing an online reputation management strategy to help own the first page of Google:

1. Find Blog Topics – Blogging helps your search ranking immensely. Blog posts should be compelling and well-written. The first step is finding content that people want to read. Since a physician’s audience is typically made up of current and potential patients, the content should be engaging, educational, and most importantly, easy to understand.

Think of your blog as that same conversation you have with a patient during a preliminary check-up. Maybe start by blogging about frequently asked questions or the best preventative measures for patients.

2. Edit Your Work – Google can penalize a website for poorly written content. No matter how good you are at writing, have a second set of eyes look over your work to ensure the ideas make sense and are easy to understand.

Ask a colleague who is familiar with the material to edit the content, and then someone else who’s unfamiliar with the subject for a second perspective. This ensures you’re getting your point across both from a perspective of authority, but also catering to visitors who may not understand the complexities of the medical field.

3. Avoid Repetition – People do not want to keep reading the same things, so keep the topics focused but specific to the different areas of healthcare you offer services for. Also, if you are listed on different websites, write a different bio for each one and focus on what you do for each organization.

4. Share Your Content – Spread the word about your new content. When you first begin writing, be sure to promote your content to individuals that will enjoy it. Additionally, ask friends, family, patients and colleagues to share your work with their connections and social media channels.  The more content you produce and the more regularly you send it out, the easier it will be to build a following.

5. Ask Others to Share Your Content – When others link to your content, it’s like a high-five in the eyes of Google. Ask affiliates, medical associations, colleagues and other credible sources to link to your material. It will further demonstrate authority to Google and will assist in building a larger following for others to read your material.

6. Be Relevant and Avoid Spam - Share your content on websites that are relevant to your material. If a website seems “spammy” and you suspect its owners are participating in suspicious activity, stay clear of that website. A mention on a relevant website, such as a top association in your specialty, will increase your credibility in the eyes of both readers and Google.

Building your online reputation is an ongoing process. But if you take action with these tips, you will begin to see improvements. Monitor your progress and check your Google searches weekly. By taking control of what people see about you online, you are securing your success for the new year and beyond.

We’ve already previewed our killer eBook, “7 Reasons to Consider Responsive Design for Your Company’s Next Generation Website,” on the blog last month. But guys, mobile is VITAL to your eCommerce success: A recent study showed that 20% of all eCommerce traffic came from a mobile device. Time to get on board!

And hey, because we understand everyone learns differently, we put together this fantastic Infographic with selected highlights from the eBook. Consider yourself visually stimulized! Enjoy!

To learn more about Responsive Design download the FREE eBook and visit our website to find out how we can help you take your web presence into the mobile era.