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Since her arrival as Chief Executive Officer to Yahoo, Inc. almost a year ago, Marissa Mayer has been struggling to end their 10 year search deal with Microsoft, which started in 2010, for a more lucrative partnership with search giant and former employer Google, but Microsoft has no intentions of letting Yahoo out of their deal.

Under the terms of their contract, Yahoo is obligated to utilize Microsoft’s Bing search engine for search Yahoo Bing search dealresults on Yahoo sites. Yahoo and Microsoft also have a revenue guarantee which expired and was extended for an additional 12 months (U.S. only) on March 31, 2013.

This arrangement allocates 12% of the revenue received from Yahoo’s search advertisements to Microsoft. In return, Microsoft guarantees Yahoo a set amount of revenue for every search query made on a Yahoo site. Although Microsoft’s revenue guarantee is worth $12-$15 million a quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s revenue per search has been its worst since they partnered with Microsoft.

In February, Mayer said the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft was not delivering. “One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.

In a recent regulatory filing, Yahoo disclosed their desire to terminate their arrangement with Microsoft, but will either have to wait until 2015 (the halfway mark of the contract), the sale of Bing to another company by Microsoft, or revenue-per-search dipping below their agreed threshold to make any moves.

If Yahoo and Google do eventually partner, this partnership could have a tremendous impact on search as we know it.

Leverage Digital Media is a Tampa SEO company. If you would like more information on search engine optimization, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

In Kenshoo’s recent Global Search Advertising Trends report, it was found that global paid search ad spending continues to rise. So much so, that year over year growth for global paid search ad spend in Q1 2013 reached 15%, and in the U.S. alone paid search ad spending grew 24%. A majority of the increases in paid search ad spending can be justified by the fact that consumers are increasingly looking to their smartphone or tablet for search and purchases instead of their laptop or desktop, which has forced marketers to invest a greater portion of their ad spending into mobile.

Kenshoo also found that in the U.S., there is a significant gap between paid search ad spending and distribution of clicks. In Q1 2013, tablets and smartphones accounted for 20% of paid search clicks but only accounted for 14% of total paid search ad spending. Smartphones in particular accounted for 9% of paid search clicks, but only made up 5% of total paid search ad spend.

In the U.S., desktop search still commanded the most ad spend and clicks by a healthy majority at 86% and 81%, respectively.

Leverage Digital Media is a PPC company in Tampa. For more information on paid search advertising, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Early last week, Facebook released their new targeted ad feature, “Partner Categories.” This new feature allows advertisers to zero in on a target audience based on their purchase behavior by utilizing information from large data companies including Acxiom, Blue Kai, Datalogix, and Epsilon. This new partnership has better positioned Facebook to offer advertisers the opportunity to fine tune their campaigns and get more relevant advertisements in front of the right audience.

With partner categories, Facebook is able to deliver highly targeted ads based not only on the information provided in users’ profiles, but also based on users’ online and offline buying habits.

For example, a local grocer wanting to promote a new line of cereal for children can now show ads to users who have shown to be likely buyers of children’s cereals.

This benefits both users and advertisers. For users, this presents a better experience because they are provided with ads that are highly relevant to both their interests and buying habits. For advertisers, this allows delivery of ads that are more targeted, and should theoretically provide a better return on investment.

Want to learn how to enhance your social media marketing efforts? Give us a call at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Bullish on Mobile

Mobile is growing so fast that analysts are having to revise their predictions. Why is this? The need for more convenience due to our busy, on-the-go lifestyles combined with increasing demand for instant access to information, products, and services.

In fact, because of the increases in mobile device usage, many U.S. businesses are feeling the pressure to step up their mobile advertising efforts, which in turn, has forced analysts to revise their original predictions only 4 months into the year. In December of 2012, eMarketer projected U.S. mobile ad spend to reach $4.4 billion in 2013, a far cry from their recently released projection of $7.29 billion. These numbers keep rising, and analysts have predicted that mobile ad spend will reach $27.17 billion by 2017.

What This Means to Your Business

Implementing a mobile marketing strategy is no longer an option for most businesses. It has become a necessity. If you have yet to adopt a mobile marketing strategy, here are three reasons why you’ll want to start now:

1. Low Cost

With relatively low costs, mobile advertising provides the opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

2. Large Audience

As of December of 2012, in a survey conducted by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, it was found that nearly half of U.S. adults own a smartphone device and over 50% of them use it to access the Internet. According to BIA/Kelsey, mobile local search will surpass traditional local desktop search in 2015, which presents a huge opportunity for local businesses.

3. Competitive Advantage

Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, and has the potential to grow astronomically. If the above predictions come to fruition, the future of web usage will be dominated by the mobile industry. So instead of trying to play catch-up in a few years, investing in mobile advertising now will give your business an advantage over your competitors.

In sum, the mobile industry and the number of U.S. consumers that use mobile devices to conduct searches and make purchases is growing, and growing fast. With relatively low costs, the potential to attract a large, highly targeted audience, and the competitive advantage of getting in early, business owners and marketing professionals can no longer afford to ignore mobile.

Leverage Digital is a web design and SEO company in Tampa. If you would like more information on mobile web design or need help with your mobile marketing strategy, give us a call to speak with a digital marketing consultant at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

It is often perceived that content should be optimized for search engines, but in fact for better rankings and a greater ROI, content should be optimized for your target audience. We call this customer centric SEO.

Customer Centric SEO

Customer centric SEO is used to not only increase search rankings, but also attract, engage, and motivate your target audience to perform a desired action through your website.

How is this done? Here are 4 steps to walk you through the process of how to employ an effective customer centric SEO strategy.

Step 1: Identify.

Are you aware of your customers’ needs and wants, and are you providing content that addresses them? If not, you may want to take a few moments to step back and evaluate what your customers truly desire. Identifying your customers’ needs and wants will enable you to put together a content strategy that will provide potential customers with information they find useful, such as why your business can fulfill their needs better than your competitors.

Step 2: Attract.

To attract your target audience, determine which keywords are the most effective. Questions like, “what do my customers care about?” or “what are some of the concerns that my customers have?” are good examples of where to start off. Remember, your choice of keywords should be directly correlated with what your customers are looking for. After you’ve chosen the right combination of keywords you can then provide information that your customers will find of interest.

Step 3: Engage.

Once you’ve captured your target audience’s interest and understand their needs, you then have the ability to provide them with valuable and useful information that keeps them engaged. In providing your audience with compelling and useful information, they will start to view your brand as an authority or thought leader in your industry. As a result, you will gain their trust and help to build your brand’s credibility, and when your audience can trust your brand, they will be more inclined to do business with you.

Step 4: Motivate.

Calls to action (CTAs) are great tools for your business to use to help motivate potential customers to perform an intended action, such as to schedule an appointment, fill out a contact request form, or make a purchase. Whatever the desired action may be, CTAs are absolutely necessary to motivate your customers to act.

Whether you’re looking to improve an existing SEO campaign or looking for tips to create one, these 4 steps will help your business employ an effective customer centric SEO strategy.

Have more questions about customer centric SEO in Tampa? Call us at (866) 611-6287, or complete our contact request form for more information.

The New Year is a time to turn over a new leaf and reflect on the changes we would like to see in the coming year. This time of year is also a good time to reflect on the changes you would like to see in your website. Whether your resolve is to increase brand awareness, drive more traffic, generate more leads, or all of the above, these four improvements will help get your website in tip-top shape for the coming year.

Go Mobile

If you’re like most companies, you have a website but it isn’t mobile-friendly. If your website is not yet mobile-friendly, on top of damaging your reputation it could be costing you quite a bit of new business. With mobile local searches on a steady rise, it has never been more important for businesses to have a mobile-friendly website.

Update Your Look

If it’s been a few years since your website’s design was updated, it may be time for a facelift. Consider hiring a professional Tampa web design company to update your design. Your website’s design is one of its most important aspects. Dated and unprofessional designs can leave a bad impression on prospective customers, and can also contribute to a very unpleasant user-experience.

Trim Down

Has your website gotten a little “big” over the years? Lose the extra baggage and become more appealing to your target audience by cutting out unnecessary and outdated content that is not relevant to prospective customers. This simple improvement can also help increase rankings, as the search engines learn that searchers find your content useful.

Keep It Simple

Take a fresh look at your website. Are you able to easily decipher what actions you want visitors to take? Are your pages stuffed with lots of content and images? Do you find it difficult to find what you’re looking for? One quick and easy improvement is to clean up cluttered pages on your website. Try to avoid cramming a lot of images or too much information on any single page. Information is good, but too much can be overwhelming and turnoff prospective customers.

Now that you know how to begin improving your website for the coming year, keep in mind that your website is not static and should be improved continuously. Use traffic metrics and user-feedback to learn which elements of your site are helping you reach your objectives, and which elements need improvement.

Looking for a Web design company in Tampa to help give your website the improvements it needs for success? Give us a call at (866) 611-6267, or complete our contact request form to speak with one of our digital marketing consultants today.

Engagement Metrics: Beyond Rankings

When it comes to SEO, most companies focus on rankings as a measure of success. While rankings can provide a relative measure of success, engagement metrics can provide much more insight into your SEO campaign’s overall performance than rankings alone. There are a number of engagement metrics a Tampa SEO company should use to analyze and monitor your SEO campaign. Three of the most important of these metrics include your bounce rate, average time on site, and conversion rate.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of users that are directed to a landing page on your site and “bounce” or leave without visiting any other pages. Your bounce rate is a good indicator of how well or poorly your landing pages are performing, and is very useful in determining the quality of traffic being directed to those landing pages.

A high bounce rate is not good. This means that the traffic being directed to your site is, a.) not finding what they are looking for, b.) not engaged enough to venture onto other pages within your site, or c.) not part of your intended target audience. When looking to increase the quality of traffic to your site, this metric is a great tool for evaluating how well your site engages users, and if those users fall within your target audience.

Average Time On Site

The average time on site metric is pretty self explanatory. This metric measures the average amount of time users spend on your Web site. The longer, the better. If users find your Web site to be easy to navigate and the content to be of significant value, they will be more likely to stay on it longer. The longer users stay on your site, the more opportunity your Web site has to convert them.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of your landing pages is one of the most important indicators when determining the quality of traffic on your site. A high conversion rate means that a high percentage of users fall within your target audience, find your site’s content to be useful and relevant, and understand your call-to-action (CTA).

Conversions lead to sales, and sales lead to profit. In order to see a positive impact on your bottom line, your Web site needs to be able to convert visitors into customers. To increase your site’s conversion rate, consider making your Web site more attractive to users by making your site more user friendly and incorporating content that is compelling for your target audience. Also, if you have a competitive advantage, make sure users are aware of it, and draw attention to calls-to-action by using vibrant colors like bright red or orange.

In summary, when evaluating the success of your SEO efforts, rankings are just the beginning. Look to these three engagement metrics for deeper insight into your campaign’s overall success.

Leverage Digital Media is a local SEO company in Tampa. If you need help with your search marketing campaign, please call us at (866) 611-6267, or complete our contact request form.

A More Complete Strategy

Search marketing strategies, such as SEO and paid search, and traditional marketing strategies, such as T.V., print, and radio are often perceived as mutually exclusive, when in fact, combining these marketing strategies often generates better results. Each of these strategies can be looked at as two puzzle pieces that make up a more complete marketing solution. By putting these two puzzle pieces together, they can complement each other and be more effective than one strategy alone at promoting your business and increasing sales.

Traditional marketing and search marketing can work together to push a prospective customer further along in the purchase process, from becoming aware of your company to becoming a customer.

Awareness Increases Conversion Probability

Let’s take the following example. It’s Monday night and Jim’s at home relaxing, watching his favorite T.V. show. During one of the breaks, he sees a commercial for a traffic attorney. In that moment, he doesn’t think anything about it. The following morning he’s running late to work and doesn’t realize he’s speeding until he hears the sirens of the police car about to pull him over. Jim can’t afford anymore points on his license. So, he decides to hire a traffic attorney. He remembers seeing a commercial for just such an attorney the night before, but doesn’t remember the name of the law firm. So, he does a quick Google search for “traffic attorney tampa,” and a list of law firms that specialize in traffic law show up in the search results. He recognizes one of the listings near the top of the page, because it’s the law firm whose commercial he saw the night before. He decides to give them a call.

So, what happened here? It’s simple. Jim saw a brand he recognized that provided a service he needed at that moment. Had he not seen the law firm’s commercial the night before, he wouldn’t have recognized it when performing a Google search. In addition, if the law firm did not have a search marketing strategy in place that ensured a first page ranking, Jim most likely would not have found the law firm’s Web site. In this scenario, the law firm had a traditional marketing strategy in place that made Jim aware of the law firm’s existence, and a search marketing strategy that allowed Jim to find them easily when he needed them.

When developing your marketing plan, consider a balanced combination of traditional marketing to create awareness and recognition, and search marketing to act as a catalyst for converting prospective customers into paying customers.

Want more information on our Tampa SEO services? Give us a call at (866) 611-6267, or complete our contact request form.

If you would like your Web site to generate sales for your business, you should treat it like a salesperson. What are some of the more important characteristics you would want in a salesperson? Hopefully, you would want someone who is professional, communicates effectively, and can close the deal. The same characteristics should hold true for your Web site.

Professional

It all starts with design. Would you allow your salesperson to interact with your customers in jeans and a t-shirt? Probably not. Why then, would you allow your Web site to interact with customers with the same lack of professionalism? Since your Web site’s design is likely to be the first impression a new customer has of your business, you want your site to enhance your credibility and professionalism, not detract from it. This can only be accomplished with a professionally designed Web site.

Effective Communicator

The best salesperson is one who can effectively communicate with your customer. Your salesperson should be able to listen to your customer and match their needs with an appropriate solution. The only way to communicate with your customer through your Web site is with content. Just like a sales pitch, the content on your site should be easy to understand, concise, and persuasive. Most importantly, the content should answer your customers’ questions, and tell them how you are able to meet their needs. Using professionally written content by an experienced copywriter is the best way to accomplish this task.

Deal Closer

Since your site cannot physically run your customer to the cash register, it must have a way to convert your visitor into a sale. After your site’s professional design has enhanced your credibility, and well-written content has your visitor hooked, how will they know what to do next? This is where a clearly defined call to action becomes essential. Whether your call to action is “Call to schedule an appointment” or “Click here to buy,” a call to action will encourage your customer to take the appropriate steps that ultimately convert them into a sale. Again, a professional copywriter will know how to incorporate the appropriate calls to action into your content, and a Tampa Web design company will know how to design your site to encourage conversions.

Professionalism, effective communication, and the ability to close deals are all characteristics of a great salesperson and should also be the characteristics that define your Web site.

Want to learn how our Tampa web design services can help your website generate more sales? Give us a call at (866) 611-6267, or complete our contact request form for more information.