Month: January 2017

Search engine marketing (SEM) is known to produce far more rapid results than even the most effective SEO campaign. Though SEM cannot take the place of diligent and ongoing SEO, it is definitely an effective supplement. However, small business owners who’ve opted to handle SEM on their own should take care to avoid these 5 costly mistakes that can undermine these efforts and cause unnecessary spending.

1. Designing Poor Landing Pages

Your landing pages should be clean, clear, and easy to navigate, and they should also be wholly in line with the needs of the people using the keywords you’re targeting. If web users cannot instantly find the information they’re looking for, you’ll be paying for wasted clicks.

2. Making It Difficult to Purchase a Product

Though getting a person to opt in to your email marketing campaign can be an additional benefit of a productive click, it should never be your foremost concern. Don’t make it difficult for people to complete their purchases. If buyers can’t get what they want without a ton of hassle, they may set out in search of more accommodating platforms. Install a “Buy Now” button on your website and give visitors the option of opting in on your checkout page.

3. Targeting the Wrong Keywords

There are many factors that must be considered when choosing keywords for your SEM campaigns, including per-click costs, relevance to targeted buyer personas, and the frequency at which these search terms are being used. If you don’t have the right skills or resources for doing effective keyword research on your own, think about outsourcing these efforts to a professional San Diego SEO agency. Targeting the wrong keywords can leave you paying for clicks that don’t result in sales, which will eventually exhaust your marketing budget.

4. Overlooking the Need for Mobile-Friendly Landing Pages

Make sure your landing pages are mobile-friendly. If they aren’t, more than half of the site visitors from your SEM campaigns will bounce right back to the search results. A mobile-friendly landing page will have limited text, plenty of high-quality images, and an intuitive and easy-to-navigate layout. Make sure to hire a trusted San Diego web development company to create mobile-friendly landing pages for your site.

5. Not Tracking Campaign Results

Failing to track SEM campaigns is the top cause of excess spending, and it also eliminates the ability to streamline campaigns for better results in the future. Once your campaign is live and active, start checking analytics regularly and begin tweaking these efforts for increasingly better returns.

Saba SEO is here to help your company avoid making these and other common SEM mistakes. Get in touch with us at 858-951-1717, and we can help you come up with a strong and effective SEM campaign. We hope to hear from you soon.

According to SEO experts in San Diego, search engine marketing (SEM) has one main purpose: placing your content in front of the right set of eyes online. Achieving this goal means preparing content for both humans and search engines, preferably in that order. There are a handful of SEM techniques that are not only popular, but consistently effective for both big and small businesses looking to attract attention and get conversions.

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In general terms, SEO refers to how any of your online content naturally ranks based on specific criteria applied to every website, blog, or social media page. This is the approach to SEM where keywords or phrases come into play. Organic search also includes the quality of links on your website, page load time, and other factors.

2. Local Search

If your business is based on local customers, this approach to SEM will likely benefit you. Local search often involves the use of online directories and maps as well as customer comments and reviews. Maintaining a consistent business name, address, and phone number is important with local search because it ensures potential customers can find and contact you.

3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC is a form of SEM where you bid for how much you are willing to pay when someone clicks your ad or link. The higher you bid, the more prominently your ad will appear on search engine results pages. According to Saba SEO in San Diego, PPC campaign management can be highly effective and provide immediate results, but the campaigns can also be expensive if you’re not mindful of your budget.

Despite claims of certain approaches to SEM being “the best,” an assertion often made about organic search, you may also see positive results with local search and PPC. The good thing about search engine marketing is the ability to precisely track results. If something’s not working, adjustments can easily be made and campaigns can be tested prior to a full-scale launch.

To learn more about SEM techniques your company can use, get in touch with Saba SEO, a leading SEO company in San Diego. We can help you determine the most effective plan of action for driving more traffic to your company’s website, and we can also take care of your website’s design. Give us a call today at 858-951-1717 to schedule an appointment.

The last thing you want to do when planning a marketing or paid advertising campaign is just cross your fingers and hope it resonates well with your intended audience or gives you a return on your investment. SEO stat tracking can reduce some of this uncertainty. You’ll get a better picture of where you stand if you focus on several important pieces of information. Here are 6 essential SEO stats you’ll want to keep in mind as you plan your campaign.

1. Keyword Rankings

Checking how your selected keywords rank lets you know if you’re using the right keywords for your target audience. For instance, you may be using keywords that are too competitive to be effective for you. If this is the case, opting for less competitive variations may be better for achieving a return on your investment.

2. Link Authority

Google cares if backlinks to your site are from credible sources. Launching or adjusting a campaign without knowing this information could result in a surprise SEO penalty. Pay particular attention to any new links you acquire, as well as older ones that may no longer be active or valid.

3. Organic Search Traffic

Before you can plan any SEO campaign, San Diego SEO experts recommend having a good understanding of how much traffic your existing content is generating. Google Analytics will provide all your organic search details in the form of several useful graphs accessible from your main dashboard.

4. Traffic by Device

Further dive into your traffic stats as you plan your SEO campaign to learn how people are finding you online. There are differences in how you’d plan a campaign for desktop visitors, social media users, and people who are coming to your site after checking out your blog.

5. Bounce Rate

San Diego SEO marketing experts recommend rethinking your SEO strategy for your next campaign. One way to do this is by looking at your bounce rates. Clickers who don’t stay long on your site may be bailing because your meta descriptions aren’t an accurate reflection of your content.

6. Page Load Times

Though it may seem like a technical matter, page load time can have an impact on SEO results. Pages that take longer than 5 to 10 seconds to load aren’t going to get much love from click-happy visitors. Page speed can also affect rankings, so it’s definitely something you’ll want to test before you launch your campaign.

At Saba SEO, we believe there are many layers to helping a company plan a successful SEO campaign. If you need help with web design, mobile app development, or AdWords, San Diego is home to an SEO firm you can trust and rely on. Give us a call at 858-951-1717 today to learn more.

In many ways, Search engine optimization certainly seems easy enough. Site owners simply need to register their URLs, target the right keywords, generate and publish high-quality content, build a few organic, inbound links, and wait for things to happen. However, SEO is an incredibly involved process. Moreover, it’s an ongoing effort with requirements that are constantly changing. Following are just a few of the many reasons why you should seriously consider outsourcing this task to a qualified SEO consultant.

RankBrain Has Changed Everything

Google’s artificial intelligence system RankBrain may not have assumed the entire responsibilities of the Google algorithm, it is among the top 3 factors that determine how sites rank. Conceptually, it’s easy to perceive RankBrain as a software with limited, humanlike abilities. However, this AI is designed to constantly increase its capabilities through exposure, which means every time someone uses Google to run a search, RankBrain learns something new and becomes more proficient in organizing search results according to human needs and preferences. RankBrain has changed the SEO game entirely, and it will take knowledgeable and seasoned SEO professionals to devise campaigns that continue to bode well for businesses well into the future.

Black Hat SEO Is Soon to Be Gone Forever

A lot of business owners think black hat SEO techniques are glaringly obvious and easy to avoid. In reality, the definition of black hat SEO is always evolving in relation to Google, Bing, and Yahoo’s increasing commitment to providing quality results. Now that AI technologies are a part the algorithms for determining the order of search engine results pages (SERPs), black hat tactics like scrapping and rewriting content, purchasing social media likes, and solely using web directories to build link profiles are becoming easier to spot and penalize. There’s simply no tricking the system now. Though today’s SEO campaigns can certainly have automated components, smart SEO consultants are diligently integrating these with a much more hands-on approach. The process of optimizing for search engines is therefore becoming a more time-consuming effort, and one that requires individualized and integrated solutions for each website.

You Need Efficient Tracking to Control Your Spending and Calculate Your Returns

Tracking is a vital reason to hire a trusted SEO firm in San Diego County. Without it, you’ll never know just how much money you’re spending or what your cash is doing for you. In fact, many business owners who opt to tackle this process on their own end up spending way more than they mean to and never have a clear understanding of which investments are bringing them closer to their goals.

Good SEO Always Entails Proactive Reputation Management

Reputation management is a critical part of the search engine optimization process. With more online attention, there is always an increased risk of reputation damage. SEO professionals implement several proven tactics for bolstering brands against unwarranted attacks, which allows businesses to preserve their hard-won commercial images by positioning themselves as industry experts and actively building trust across their markets.

SEO Has an Important Technical Component

Unless you’re a technical expert, you’ll definitely need to hire a professional web development company in San Diego. One large part of optimizing a site is making sure it’s coded properly, easy to navigate, and capable of loading quickly. You also have to ensure your web pages are visible and accessible on a broad range of devices, no matter how large or small their screen sizes may be.

You’ll Need One Full-Time, In-House IT Person to Handle It All

In addition to developing a good website, sourcing or writing quality content, building links, and finding the best keywords to target, you’ll also have to keep all of your social networking profiles up to date with timely and insightful posts, track and respond to customer reviews, and constantly refine your campaigns based on your known spending and the results your investments are supplying. The demands are virtually guaranteed to become more complex and stringent as learning machines like RankBrain assume greater control in determining which sites rank well and which do not. In fact, you’ll need to have at least one full-time, in-house IT person to head these efforts up if you don’t outsource. There’s simply no way for small business owners to juggle it all and still stay on top of their normal operations. If you want to practice good SEO that succeeds in driving your website to the top of SERPs, hiring a seasoned consultant is the most cost-effective decision.

Saba SEO is a leading provider of SEO marketing services. We have a proven track record of helping companies across the world grow and thrive by boosting their SEO rankings. Give us a call today at 858-951-1717 to learn about the services we offer and how they can help your business.

Whether crafting new content for your website or blog or gearing up for a new PPC campaign, having the right topics and keywords is essential. This is especially true in the fast-paced and highly competitive real estate industry. The staff at Saba SEO, a leading San Diego SEO firm, has put together a list of 10 topics and keywords that can help you garner more attention from your market while fostering greater levels of engagement.

1. Real Estate Rent

“Real estate rent” gets thousands of searches every month, and yet there is very low competition for it. This means you can affect a high-interest PPC campaign while paying a very small amount of money for every click you get. When using this key phrase as part of your site’s content or for the benefit of your SEO campaign, make sure it’s relevant to the topic you’re discussing so the traffic you lure in isn’t disappointed and your bounce rate stays low.

2. Best Real Estate Agent Near…

One of the most effective strategies for getting excellent returns from your SEO or PPC campaigns is to make your keywords hyper-local. Instead of merely adding in the city and state for location, think about referencing a major landmark. People always want to know how to find the top agents in their area.

3. How to Find a Real Estate Agent

This is a fairly obvious topic, but the addition of Google’s AI RankBrain has made it increasingly effective. You can craft content around finding a reputable agent, an experienced agent, or one who deals with low-credit buyers. Going for long-tail keywords allows you to target consumers who have a clear understanding of what they want and are committed to seeing their transactions through.

4. What Is Real Estate?

You might be surprised to learn there are still people who are actually asking this question, but this key phrase gets several thousand searches worldwide each month. Best of all, other site owners are equally surprised, which means this term has low-interest from marketers and reasonable PPC rates.

5. Local Real Estate Prices

This phrase has generated a medium amount of interest from marketers, and a high amount of interest from the public. This means you can use it for your PPC campaigns at an affordable cost while connecting with people who are likely still in the formative stages of the purchasing process.

6. Pros/Cons of a Short Sale

More consumers are becoming interested in the profit potential of properties that are being quickly offloaded by debt-addled homeowners. Keywords relating to the benefits and drawbacks of short sales are not just of interest to sellers, they are also garnering the attention of prospective investors. You may be able to divert this attention to your own business.

7. Tips to Get the Best Offer

When managing a PPC campaign, using keywords related to getting the best offer will likely result in reasonable per-click prices because they tend to generate only a moderate amount of interest among PPC marketers. If using this keyword for content and SEO, you’ll be able to capitalize on a high amount of interest from consumers and the potential to build trust and establish yourself as an industry authority.

8. Sell a Home Fast

There are many people attempting to offload their homes right away. However, keep in mind you’ll have to share the PPC market for this one with short sale companies targeting people who are largely interested in information pertaining to these transactions.

9. Real Estate MLS

This term has very limited competition, and yet it gets over 20,000 queries worldwide each month. Find a way to insert it into your content or use it as part of a PPC campaign, and you’ll likely see a noticeable increase in site traffic.

10. House Staging Tips

Just like there are more people looking to turn their properties over fast, there are also more consumers who want an active hand in the marketing process. This key phrase generates a high level of interest while maintaining a medium-to-low level of competition among PPC marketers.

Real estate agents aren’t the only people who need to rank high in local and organic SEO. San Diego marketing experts believe all businesses should focus on the highest quality topics and keywords to boost their rankings. At Saba SEO, we can develop a strategy to help your company grow. Give us a call at 858-951-1717 to learn how.