- Talk to us!
- 306.535.9697
- info@strategylab.ca
- Visit us at Path Cowork
- 200 – 1965 Broad St, Regina, SK
Tag Archive for: online strategy
The Largest Google Analytics Study We’ve Ever Done
This blog was originally published on Cupcakes & Websites website here: The Largest Canadian Google Analytics Study Ever Done
For this study we wanted to compare data from 2015 to 2016. Over those, only 57 qualified (had enough traffic over a two year period) to make the cut. If the website wasn’t setup until after 2015 we didn’t include the data as it is incomplete. Next years study (or later this year, we’ll see) will be even bigger!
What did we find?
Average number of visits to a website:
2016 – 14,267
2015 – 15,700
A decrease of 10%
A decrease in average traffic would indicate you can’t have the “build it and it will come” attitude. You have to be doing something on your website that gets people to come back again and again. No you don’t need SEO (search engine optimization) if you’re creating amazing content for your intended audience.
Monitor you traffic. One past almost client (they never said yes) asked if they could talk to us about their “new” website and why they lost 80% of their traffic. Get a monthly report from your website provider at the very least just to ensure someone is reading what you publish!
Average number of visits from search (traffic from Google):
2016 – 7,513
2015 – 6,150
An increase of 18%
Ever since we’ve been measuring websites in Google Analytics it’s always been an anomaly about how much traffic comes from search. And not just our website, EVERYONE’S, yes yours too! You just need to understand better what Google is looking for. Search in powerful, if someone if looking for what you sell, the odds are they will search for it eventually. Make sure when your potential customers search for what you provide, you come up!
Everyone needs a Google Strategy.
The average growth (loss) of traffic:
Total traffic – (10%)
Organic traffic – 18%
Facebook traffic – (.08%)
Traffic fluctuates. Google gives you some tools on seeing what the average search volume is for specific terms over the twelve months of the year to see when search peak.
The Dark Side of Social Media; A Modern Day Addiction
Stop listening to your fans. “Your enemies know information your friends won’t tell you.”
I’ve heard a lot of this lately… “I’m at 15,000 followers, why would I do anything different?!”, “I just got 500 likes on one post, amazing!”, or a personal favourite; “We’re doing a give away at 20,000 followers, like, share, comment, slay your first born to be entered!”. Maybe we’re over thinking it, and that’s not a good thing. “Fans” on social media networks aren’t necessarily real relationships. Sure some are, but most are superficial social passings by, meaningless in the
When validation has gone too far
I heard a story of high school students posting on Instagram and if they don’t receive over a certain amount of likes within the first 15 minutes they delete it and try again later.
Wow.
Could you imagine testing your creative in real time, then when not performing you pull it immediately? Are these students getting feedback and acting upon in hyper-speed without even knowing it?
I instantly said, “We should be doing that with clients!”
Or should we?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy For Beginners
SEO is an ugly topic. Lots of hearsay floating around with little evidence based opinion. Many assumptions, rarely facts that you can trust. It’s not my intention to tell you how to do SEO, no no, like they say, there are many ways to skin a cat! This is simply my findings over the past five years.
First of all we’re going to simplify what you’re doing with your website. Set one goal, one page must be more important than every other page. Pick three keyword phrases in your industry, those are your first three goals. Then develop your outreach strategy (how other websites will link back to your websites). Determine what you’ll update your website will ongoing forever and ever amen, and you got yourself a perfect little search engine optimization strategy.
- Set one main goal
- Pick three main phrases you want to come up for in Google search
- Why will people want to link to your website?
- Update your website weekly
- Measure relentlessly
If it isn’t as easy as described above than come along for the ride, you aren’t alone!
First, you don’t need traditional SEO if you are;
- A major corporation, simply changing how your website is structured will do wonders!
- If you have an amazing social media presence (e’hem, Wheel House, The Riders, Hard Pressed do NOT need SEO help)
- If you publish content (stories, photos, videos) weekly to your website you most likely have no use for SEO
For everyone else here are a few starting points to give you enough information to piss off your I.T. manager at the office.
How The Golden Rule Applies To Your Social Media Strategy // eps 45 #InTheLab
How The Golden Rule Applies To Your Social Media Strategy
Common sense is not so common when it comes to social media. “Businesses act too much like businesses online” – Conrad Hewitt
Conrad shares with us why he thinks a lot of companies get it wrong with it comes to social media and their online marketing presence. Running accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram he sees it all right now and from the sounds of it he’s not happy! It’s easy to sound professional and to echo “business jargon”, it’s hard to create a personality that people come to like and trust.
It’s hard to argue against developing a personality online with so many local examples (@ReginaPolice, @KiltedBroker, @Eric_Dillon, @BradWall, @Nenshi). All these folks don’t exactly “follow the rules” when it comes to social and their fans absolutely adore it. Don’t take yourself (or your business) to seriously online.
With the amount of options we all have to buy what you are selling from someone else, you have to figure out a way to cut through the clutter. Being different is now the safest thing your brand can be.
You Don’t Have to be Goofy to be Different // eps 43 #InTheLab
Being Different Doesn’t Mean Being Goofy
It’s bothered me for a while now. I give people my business card or a lottery ticket, they smile and the first thing they say is, “Oh we can’t be goofy like that!!” Well no $!%& Sherlock!! I don’t expect you to outright copy what we do, it’s the thought that matters. It’s the intention of being a little bit different in a lot of little ways. Read more
How We Measure Your Website || Episode 32 of #InTheLab
Warning, Jeph gets nerdy in this one!!
The slides I go through in the video are included in the Slideshare below. Some of the images aren’t the highest quality in the presentation, if you want to look at the specific reports referenced, scroll down I’ve included them in this post!
1. Open Site Explorer
You have to start somewhere with measurement, Open Site Explorer is a good place to start. It’s also a Free SEO tool you can use. We use Domain Authority as a central metric to compare websites to each other. If you want to learn more about Domain Authority check out this blog here (What is Domain Authority? And why do we use it?). Read more
How To Combat Bad Online Reviews
On sites such as Yelp, Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, Google Reviews, a few bad reviews can ruin your company entirely. At the same time you can use these tools to give your company an unfair advantage.
So how do you ready yourself for the troll attack?
1. Kill em with kindness – if you’re a great company people will want to share your story.
Your employees should be brand ambassadors. They should be the ones promoting you and your story to everyone. “But Jeph, they aren’t, what do I do?”. If people aren’t sharing your story enough you have one of two problems, a) you have the wrong people on the bus* or b) your story isn’t good enough to share. Go back to the drawing board. If you story isn’t interesting enough let your staff come up with it. I love the quote from David Kelly, founder of the innovation firm IDEO “In a world filled with so much creative potential, it is dangerous to assume that all good ideas are found at the top.” -David Kelly, IDEO.
2. Make it everyones job to say nice things about your organization.
If your own staff don’t want to tell people about how amazing you are you have a problem. Why isn’t coming up with an internal word-of-mouth strategy not done by more companies? If your staff are excited about what you’re doing, if everyone that comes into your store feels that excitement, sooner than later the word-of-mouth will spread.
Why don’t more people come up with word-of-mouth strategies Jeph?!? Well I’m glad you asked. Few companies focus on word-of-mouth because its hard. It’s hard to come up with a viable plan, it’s even harder to execute it. Once you’ve executed it it’s still hard to hold your staff accountable for something that’s very difficult to measure. If you’re still have trouble with a word-of-mouth strategy move on to point 3…
3. Encourage word-of-mouth by offering an incentive.
If you’ve read any of Stephen Dubner’s or Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics series of books, shows or podcast you would completely understand why offering an incentive may be your best bet. If you offer an incentive people will keep it top-of-mind, they’ll be much more likely to share your message. Don’t assume people want to talk about you, assume you need to make it worth their while to spread your message.
*Wrong People On the Bus was an analogy coined by Jim Collins in Good to Great. Getting the right people on the bus is critical to any organizations success.
How to be Awesome Online [workshop] – July 18, 2013
On July 18 in Regina, we hosted the How to be Awesome Online workshop. A morning of not only learning from the best, but meeting, tweeting, talking and asking questions to a panel of four expert minds on marketing and social media. It was like the world series of Regina’s Twitteratti.
The quotes that were playing throughout the morning: