After much planning and excitement, the team kicked off 435 Digital Seminars with talks on Paid Search (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — the first of many digital marketing seminars in 2013. These two- to three-hour seminars are designed to help businesses in Chicago understand all areas of digital marketing. It would only make sense to start with an Introduction to Digital Marketing seminar, focusing on PPC and SEO. In case you missed the first seminar, I will share a recap of the topics covered by our own Rich Funk and Carolyn Shelby.
Carolyn Shelby, Director of SEOFirst to present was PPC Specialist, Rich Funk. Here are the four main topics he covered:
Effective Keyword Lists
Keywords are the most important to your account because that is how you choose where your ad is seen. Having the wrong keyword list is usually worse than having no keyword list; consider it a better investment to throw money down the drain.
Advanced Targeting
The people you target and where they are can be just as important as your keyword list. Efficiency is key here. Putting your ad in front of people in the wrong place or the wrong time can be wasteful. Effective geographic targeting is important to the campaign.
Proper Account Structure
Make it easy on yourself. If you have an account that is messy and disorganized, any changes you make will take longer and work less effectively. Being organized will help you make quick changes to your campaigns and give you more time to optimize.
Effective Ad Copy
Your ad copy is how you present yourself to your potential customers. If you have the wrong message you could alienate potential clients. Ad copy testing will help determine the most effective messaging. You can do this by creating A/B tests on a regular basis.
Here’s what Director of SEO, Carolyn Shelby, covered:
What Search Engines Do
Search engines want to refer each user to websites most relevant to the user’s search query. This relevancy is determined by a number of factors – all designed to ensure authenticity. Search engines do not support underhanded tactics and tricks to get to the top.
Multichannel Optimization
We can’t always control what types of results appear (blended/universal, news, images, video, etc.), so we need to optimize all of our digital assets. We also need to keep our messaging (the voice and style of our brands) unified across all channels (social media channels, web, print, broadcast, etc.). Every time a consumer is exposed to our brand, we want that exposure to reinforce our message. Unified messaging builds and reinforces branding and helps train the customers to search for you by the terms YOU want to be found under.
Business Considerations
Before getting submerged in SEO, your business needs to determine its goals on the web and make sure your web development/marketing team understands your business model. The most important question (that everyone on the team should be able to answer is): How do we make money? Do we sell impressions? Do we only make money on conversions? How do we define a conversion? Who are our customers?
Build out the right type of website functionality and content to suit your business needs.
On-Page SEO Best Practices
Many factors go into SEO and their value collectively can improve your search rankings. Carolyn discussed metadata, good and bad coding, how to brainstorm for keywords, and the importance of developing quality content for your website.
Yes, there was a lot of information covered in the Intro to Digital Marketing seminar. If you were unable to attend, we hope you will join us at an upcoming seminar in April. We will be covering Social Media, Advanced PPC, and Advanced SEO. So whether your business is just getting started in digital marketing or your team has successful experience, we are here to provide the most recent updates and strategies for success.
In his role as New Business Account Manager, Austin focuses on business development for 435 Digital. He is dedicated to helping businesses understand how digital marketing is a necessary component of the marketing mix by hosting educational seminars at Tribune Tower. Connect with Austin on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Tags: paid search, search engine optimization, Training Seminars435 Digital helps businesses build brands on the web. Visit here for inspiration on how to stand out and grow your business.
If you’ve been looking ahead to next year’s marketing goals and think that it’s probably time that you focused some energy on digital marketing (hint: It’s been time for several years now), we have some good news for you. 435 Digital’s SEO Director, Carolyn Shelby, will be teaching the Search Engine Optimization portion of an upcoming class entitled “Introduction to Digital Marketing” for 312 Digital on January 22nd, 2013.
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