Below are some of the most commonly asked Digital Marketing questions.
I had some questions about the SEO and META management on the website.
Ok, let's see what we can answer for you!
How in control of that are these?
You are in control of what you put on your website, and Google looks at what you add but can often change things to make it more relevant for a searcher. For example, you can say your website is located in Sioux Falls, but Google may show it as being located near Harrisburg to someone searching from Harrisburg.
Best practice for your store would be to use local search terms and names to improve your local SEO, giving Google the best information possible to display to searchers. Also, the more specific you can be, the better; example "bracelets" is too broad, but if you write in "women's lab grown diamond bracelets in Sioux Falls", that is much more relevant to your local audience.
Do we have the option to do it ourselves?
Absolutely! Our SiteManager allows a high degree of customization with title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page optimizations. We'd recommend always following Google's latest best practices. And we are working on an updated version of SiteManager that will allow even more customization and automation in the future (stay tuned early Q1!).
Or do you manage that, and if so how often will it be reviewed?
We do manage SEO for our clients, and for ecommerce sites we'd recommend doing quarterly or half-yearly SEO updates. Not many things change for product or category pages, it is literally impossible to "game the system" and try to adjust things on the fly to outwit Google, so we tailor our SEO approach to what best fits our client's needs and the industry we both are in. Same with location pages and company pages, they will and should remain largely static.
For non-product and non-category pages such as blog posts, we recommend creating regular new content, either bi-weekly or monthly, addressing different long-tail phrases that your customers may be searching for. "Best Mother's Day Jewelry Gifts Under $500", "Your Holiday Guide to Lab-Grown Diamonds", "What Rings Do the Sioux Falls Storm Wear After Games?", etc. This should be brand new content 80% of the time, and 20% of the time updating and optimizing "evergreen content", such as buyer's guides or holiday posts.
How will switching from our current site, to rolling out with this new one hurt our Google rankings and search results?
It won't but it may if that is the goal.
For the majority of our clients with established websites, launching a new website retains rankings and search results and even improves them once you are on a modern mobile-first website and modern speedy hosting environment that Google rewards.
But for some of our clients who are new to digital or have gone through many website iterations, we WANT to change your Google rankings and search results, so that you are now ranking for what your store, your website, and your customers actually care about.
Rankings are neutral. If you aren't ranking for the right things, there is no harm in changing them. But if you are ranking for the right things, we improve them.
If you expect a dip, how fast can you get us re-ranked?
See above! But rankings take time, like all organic traffic. It could be days, weeks, or months to see ranking growth, because there is a lot of competition, others are creating brand new pages and content, sending paid search and paid social traffic to their site, maybe your competition just relaunched on a new platform too, all sorts of things. This is why Punchmark includes three months of free organic and content digital marketing services with all new website launches, so we can identify and improve your organic rankings before and after your website launch.
We also strongly recommend all of our clients invest in paid search and paid social. With only 50% of all organic searches ending in a click in 2020, using targeted Google Ads to send visitors directly to the product they are in the process of searching for, rather than to the home page and asking them to "find their way through the store", is a very cost effective way of converting a good percentage of traffic in your local area (and it also has the added value of earning customers from your local competition too).
Does Punchmark offer digital marketing?
Glad you asked! Yes, Punchmark offers digital marketing services to all of our website and ecommerce clients exclusively. Right now we are running a post-JCK Show special for our Market Leader program which starts at $4,200 per month ($3,000 minimum ad spend to Google Ads, $1,200 Punchmark strategy, management, and reporting).
What do you get with Market Leader?
One Google Search Ads Brand campaign
One Google Search Ads Services campaign
One Google Search Ads Products campaign
One Google Search Ads Competitor campaign
And one Google Ads website traffic remarketing campaign
...all tailored to your specific city, county, or state (depending on population). In your case, all 24-45 year olds living 25-35 miles around Sioux Falls.
Plus a live reporting dashboard, monthly reports, and quarterly consulting calls. And 180 quarterly credits for social media creative work, new banner images, and SEO optimizations with additional credits at a discounted rate. (Want monthly calls? Let's talk!)
And through the end of Labor Day, we will waive the $2,000 Google Ads account setup fee.
Hope all of that helps answer your questions! We love digital marketing and incorporate best practices into all of our campaigns and website platform updates.
Nathan, a final question: would you be willing to let us use this information in a Facebook post or blog post? We can remove any personal or store identifiers if you'd prefer, or we could do a shoutout to you and link back to your store and site, send some Punchmark referral traffic to you.