Hello and Happy Tuesday!
This week in Internet marketing, we've gathered a selection of helpful and interesting articles from across the web. This week we're looking at tips to convert your organic traffic, as well as Analytics tools that can help save you money, and the real goals of link building campaigns. We're also looking at SEO tools to help you succeed and the science behind why we share content online.
5 Quick Tips to Convert Organic Traffic and Drive Lead Generation
The first task of internet marketing is to drive traffic to your site. But you need to make the most of that traffic once it arrives. For example, be sure to provide a clear and focused call-to-action—it's important to avoid overwhelming your visitors with too much choice. Also, make the most of the content you're working so hard to create. Use your blogs to develop a weekly or monthly newsletter, and package your other content into high value assets that can be downloaded as e-books or reports.
Don’t Lose Money: 5 Analytics Tools to Help You Fix Your Leaky Sales Funnel
If you're not measuring the success of your campaigns and monitoring the analytics of your work, how can you predict your ROI, set conversion goals, or pinpoint problems with your strategy? Figure out exactly how your sales funnel works on your site, and then enter it into Google Analytics to identify successes and find leaks in the funnel. You can also set up a report in GA that will help you compare the behaviour of returning visitors to new visitors, which can help you develop a strategy for nurturing leads and building trust with new visitors. You can also use CrazyEgg to track user behaviour on your site and identify where visitors are clicking, scrolling and where they're spending the most time on your site.
What are the true goals of link building campaigns?
A great link-building campaign is about quality over quantity. It's not a matter of getting links simply for the sake of it, but to actually build relevant links from authoritative, influential sites. The links you gain should increase your site's reach, visibility and network. In link building, there are lag measure (rankings), and lead metrics (all the hard work you do, from creating shareable content to crafting outreach strategies to maintaining positive relationships with influencers). It's important to manage your expectations about how your lead metrics will impact your lag, set realistic and attainable goals, and factor in the time it takes to bring those links back to your site.
9 SEO Tools You Need to Achieve Success From Day One
60% of B2B marketers say that when it comes to generating leads, SEO is the most important component of their marketing campaign. There's a lot of research and leg work that goes into SEO, but there are certain tools that will help to simplify and streamline your SEO efforts. For example, Authority Spy helps you identify the top influencers you should reach out to when building backlinks. Buzzstream is great for anyone getting started with link building—the program handles a lot of the spreadsheets and organization work so you can focus on building personalized, non-spammy links.
The Science Behind Shareable Content
There is a series of rapid thoughts and decisions when a person decides to share content, and psychologists are starting to dissect what makes something shareable. The New York Times released a study showing that 94% of participants focused on whether the content would be valuable and entertaining to others before deciding whether to share it. People are also likely to share content that promotes awareness of a cause or issue, or that helps to develop their social relationships and connections. Also, don't underestimate the benefit of an impactful, emotional and inspiring headline—these qualities can go a long way to building your shares.
Check out these additional articles for more Internet marketing news!
Infographic: The ultimate guide to SEO-friendly URLs
How ignoring online reputation can destroy your PPC campaign
How to Use BigQuery for Large-Scale SEO (Or Whenever Excel Fails)
