SEO & Social Media to Capture ZMOT

We continuously receive questions about the position of SEO within the internet marketing space.  It is true that the waters between SEO and Social media have been merged to some degree, but the result is still relevant results within the search engines.  Also, the mentality of users is still roughly the same: a stimulus-like an email campaign and search for more information.  The recent eBook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) by Jim Lecinski provides further insight into the new mental model. 

Shifting the focus to the mentality of the user has come full circle.  The ability to align SEO and Social Media within your marketing plan will help you attract customers at the ZMOT, but doing so takes a solid strategy and communication from your SEO & Social Media teams.  It’s not enough to implement SEO & Social Media into the plan; what’s more important is that these elements align to attract customers.

Internal Site Search Usage: Gateway into the Visitor’s Mind

The main goal of virtually every single marketing strategy is to understand what the target market wants. Whether your particular strategy involves generating more leads or increasing sales, it is common marketing knowledge that you must know what your customer is looking for. In the wide world of web design, internet marketing, and web analytics, there are many avenues of data and insights that can lead to more targeted marketing.

In particular, internal site search is a very important aspect of your website that should be tracked and analyzed carefully. If your website supports this functionality, visitors can use it to find specific products, services, or other pages on your site quickly and easily. Just as monitoring the top-performing keywords and phrases visitors used to find your website organically on search engines is very important, paying close attention to how your visitors search your internal site is also crucial. It can raise the following questions:

What are visitors searching for the most?

Are they able to find what they’re looking for? If not, is it a product or service you can carry or offer in the future?

Are visitors searching for pages more than using the actual navigation menu?

Paying attention to the internal site search report for your website can yield some interesting results you may not have anticipated before. It may indicate that people are looking for products or services you don’t currently offer. It could also point out detrimental holes into the structure, navigation, and optimization of your website that could negatively affect conversion rates. Monitoring this aspect of your website can help streamline your overall web presence and internet marketing approach, as well as provide a look into the minds of your visitors.

Google Analytics: New Site Speed Report Measures Page Load Time

We all know that using web analytics is key to running successful internet marketing and search engine optimization campaigns. It is always good to know what content on the website is driving conversions and where those visitors are coming from. The quest to improve your visitors’ website experiences doesn’t end there, however. With the latest version of Google Analytics, you can now monitor the average page load time via the new Site Speed Report. This new report comes along with the latest version of Google Analytics.

So why bother monitoring your website’s load times? Here are a few reasons:

• Browser Compatibility: Ensure that your website performance is top-notch for all of the most widely-used browsers.
• Search Engine Optimization: Make sure your landing pages not only have optimized content, but are also performing to the best of their ability.
• Goal Conversions: Increase goal conversions by ensuring your visitors are receiving the best possible performance and load times from your website.

Search engine optimization and internet marketing efforts don’t stop at optimizing content and online advertising. Monitoring website performance through the Site Speed Report of Google Analytics benefits both you and your visitors, and results in higher conversion rates.