• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.

        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.

        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.

        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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Are Your Landing Pages Built For PPC?

Jared Stanton

May 23, 2019

If you run your own marketing campaigns, then you probably are already aware of the importance of landing pages. Often these pages are responsible for creating a good first impression with a potential new customer. Most landing pages are built with a specific goal in mind such as getting a visitor to fill out a form and download something, but keeping in mind how a new customer gets to the landing page is just as important as the end goal. This is especially true when you are using PPC advertising to drive traffic to a landing page.

What is a Landing Page?

When I started working in marketing, I understood a landing page to be a page designed to capture potential new leads. This meant that the page should offer something interesting to someone and in exchange for that interesting something the website visitor would fill out a form giving us some information about themselves. With that information we can then determine if they would be a good potential lead or not.

More often than not a landing page would offer a visitor the chance to download a PDF with information they want, but in some cases it might result in a phone call or a video download. Honestly, you can offer whatever you want but if you ask for a lot of personal information in exchange for a simple PDF you will find that very few people are willing to make that exchange.

Landing Pages for PPC

The issue with everything I’ve said to this point is that the extent of most people’s knowledge of landing pages ends here. In fact, most people design landing pages with only these concepts in mind which results in landing pages being tailored to one goal, get people to download the offer. The problem with this is that if you plan on using PPC advertising, such as Google Ads, to drive traffic to these pages you are setting yourself up for failure.

As you might already know, Google grades all of the landing pages that Google Ads direct traffic to. A large part of the score is experience and relevance. A bad score can result in your ad costing you more to run or in some cases, your ad won’t run at all.

So how might this impact you? Well, let’s say you own Jim’s Shoe Store. It wouldn’t be unusual for you to have a landing page directing people to download a PDF entitled, “Best Sneakers for People With Back Pain.” However, you know what that landing page won’t help you with? A lot of your PPC. Think about it, you own a shoe store, so you are going to want your paid ads to target keywords like:

  • Shoes
  • Local shoe store
  • Sneakers
  • Running shoes
  • Dress shoes
  • Types of shoes
  • Black shoes
  • Designer shoes
  • Shoes for people with back pain
  • Shoes for people with knee problems

Your landing page is only going to be a good experience for people who search for one of those ten keywords and Google understands this.

My suggestion is leave the landing pages you are happy with alone and make new landing pages with PPC in mind. These new pages should feature general information about your business so that they will work with most keywords associated with your business. However, you can also opt to make 3-5 PPC specific landing pages focused on a narrower set of keywords and break up your Google Ads campaigns into groups built around those landing pages. There are a lot of ways to approach this and the only thing that is truly important is that you understand the overall concept and act accordingly.

With one client we recently suggested creating a mini-site featuring 3-5 landing pages. Each page covers an overview of the business and they all connect to each other. Yes, they will all have a form to download and offer so this client can still capture leads, but the pages won’t be entirely about the offer. When this process is complete, and we have had ample time to collect data I will be coming back to post an update.

In the case of Jim’s Shoe Store, I would recommend creating a landing page for athletic shoes, dress shoes, and casual shoes. Each page would have a relevant offer, but the page would talk broadly about each topic and not focus in on only the offer. In this scenario you can assume that person who searches for sneakers, or running shoes, or athletic shoes would have a good experience on the athletic shoe landing page. Thus, we’ve covered more possible search terms with one page.

If all of this is feeling a little complicated, do not worry. The amazing team at SMA is here to help. We cover everything from keyword research to landing page construction, and will even build and run your PPC campaigns. Reach out today to find out how we can help you.

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Jared Stanton

Jared Stanton joined the SMA team in April 2017. He has worn a lot of hats during his time at SMA but has found his permanent niche running the company’s paid-per-click advertising campaigns. PPC allows Jared to make data-driven decisions in the best interest of his clients.

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