SEO « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

19 Tips for Building an SEO Strategy for Ad Agency New Business

January 4, 2012

SEO, ad agency blogs, agency new business

Photo credit: marciookabe

Having a search engine optimization strategy, or SEO, is important to support lead generation for ad agency new business.

Most agency business development directors have a marketing strategy and are becoming competent with an inbound lead generation strategy that has as its centerpiece – content marketing. Understanding search engines is an important part to content marketing and blogging. Therefore, it is important for business development directors to become familiar with how search engines work and keep up with what is going on.

Recent changes to Google’s search engine ranking algorithms are already having an impact. Google’s own site, www.blogger.com, has seen a 20% drop in search traffic.

How do you become more knowledgeable, reduce the impact of these inevitable changes and create an SEO strategy for new business?

1. By understanding Google’s bottom line. It is important that you be natural and authentic so you will be less likely affected by Google’s ongoing improvements to its algorithms.

Over 90 % of all Internet users are using search engines and they are the main sources of online traffic. The primary search engine is Google. Google’s goal is, they want their users to find specifically what they are looking for because if they don’t, they will be looking for alternatives.

“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want,” Google’s cofounder and CEO, Larry Page

2. You can also decrease the impact of these inevitable changes, as Google strives to get better, by focusing your content marketing efforts on the basic elements of SEO. These are the key elements of SEO that also will be less likely affected by Google’s changes.

Here are some basic blog SEO tips to help get you started:

Start with a benchmark. Know what your current page rank is and continue to monitor it with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.
Your blog’s theme/template can help or hurt your SEO, so review and choose carefully. Most designers are more concerned with good design and less concerned about SEO. The navigation structure of your blog’s template plays a critical role in how it is indexed and crawled by the search engines. Use a navigation structure that enables every page reached within three clicks.
Check your blog’s referer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they are using to find your site.
Find your ‘niche’ key words. Choosing the most popular search terms will make it nearly impossible to get to the top spot in search. Instead use niche key words that are relevant to your target audience. Place these keywords throughout your blog site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Note: the title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords. You can use Google keyword tool to find keywords relevant to your blog. Just be sure not to overdo by stuffing key words, a Black Hat SEO technique that search engines do not approve and will get your site penalized.
You should make it standard to build internal links back to your archives when creating new content. I invite readers to check other articles that might be of interest, at the bottom of almost every post article that I write. Also remember to always link back to sources cited in your post articles as it is bad etiquette not to do so. You will build quality ‘back-links’ by creating link-worthy content.
Choose a meaningful title and add a descriptor statement that is included in the metadata and under the description title. Mine is “Fueling ad agency new business through social media.”
Pick the right domain name. Try to pick a domain name that says something about your blog site’s content.
The single most important thing you can do is to consistently provide high-quality content on your blog. Google has become good at weeding out poor quality web pages.
Add URL to Google. Improve your site’s visibility in Google search results. It’s free. To get started, simply add and verify your site and you’ll start to see information right away.
Be sure and send a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. A site map is a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site and makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
Make your URLs more search-engine friendly by naming them with clear keywords.
Be sure to include the alternative text descriptions for all photos, images and videos. Spiders can only search text, not text in your images. Start with your image names: adding an “ALT” tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site.
Take the time to include blog post tags. Tags are one or two words that briefly describe what your article is all about. I also include any person, entity or publication mentioned in a post. Search engines use tags to index and find your posts faster.
SEO and social media marketing have become intrinsically intertwined so be sure you are utilizing social media. You should grow your social media community and using social media platforms and tools to ‘push-out’ new content and pull-in website traffic.
Your content should be fresh. Updating your content regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic. The more recent Google update, dubbed the “Freshness” update, designed to rank newer content higher in search results.
Google has started adding Google+ brand pages in search results and some predict that Google will make it harder to do SEO without Google + . I would recommend that you get started by setting up your Google + account and take part.

It would be helpful for you to know how Google finds web pages matching a search query and determines the order of the results.

How does Google find web pages matching your query, and decides the order of search results? Check out this helpful summary of Google Basics. Another helpful resource is Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to help Google find, index, and rank your site. Here’s also a handy, downloadable Search Engine Optimization Startet Guide. Look up unfamiliar SEO terms using the Search Engine Marketing Glossary

This is an excellent guide for WordPress bloggers: Must See SEO Guide for All WordPress Bloggers

Additional articles that might be of interest:

Photo credit: marclookabe

5 Comments | Content Marketing, New Business Tips, SEO, Social Media | Tagged: Ad Agencies, business development, CEO Larry Page, content marketing, Google, Michael Gass, new business, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Strategy | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ten Toughest Content Marketing Challenges for Ad Agency New Business

August 28, 2011

Original content is by far the most difficult and important tactic to fuel ad agency new business through social media.

Speakers for Content Marketing World 2011, recently shared some of their biggest content marketing challenges in a pre conference Q&A orchestrated by Content Development Director of the Content Marketing Institute. I’ve pulled some of the best challenges and insights from among these speakers.

Here are the top 10 to help with your content marketing challenges:

1. Quality Content

‘The very act of staying focused on quality is one of the most important things you can do if you’re serious about your craft.” Susan Blue, @susangrayblue.

Lots of agencies soon become lazy in content creation. If you can’t see the value and won’t commit the time you won’t have success with content marketing for new business.

2. Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your customers well enough to develop content that is useful and relevant for them. Allison Bolen, @alisonbolen.

One of the first things you MUST do is to identify who your audience is. Most agencies are generalists. They want to appeal to EVERYBODY. If you try appealing to everyone you won’t appeal to anyone. No appeal, no online traffic = no new business leads.

3. Keeping Your Objective Top of Mind

It is critical to always keep your business objectives top of mind and use them to guide your content strategy. Cam Brown, @CamBrown1.

If you want to greatly boost agency network and referral business, social media is key and the cornerstone for your social media initiatives should be in content development. If not, social media can be a great waste of time.

4. Empowering the Time and Resources

Being allowed by their superiors to take the time, energy, and resources to do it right. CC Chapman, @cc_chapman.

Agency principals must first be convinced of the value of content creation for agency new business, then be willing to commit the right person(s), time and resources toward it.

5. Resources and Focus

Unless a marketing organization has the resources and focus to get content created, it will always be difficult to accomplish content marketing goals. Pawan Deshpande, @TweetsFromPawan.

The tighter your niche, the easier content creation will become. Less time, a better focus and a greater return on the time invested.

6. Creating an Internal Process

With content, and the evolving forms of content for customer engagement, it’s critical that there’s a process internally that enables successful creation and delivery. Barbara Gago, @BarbraGago.

Content creation will require a system for your agency to have success. Create and implement a plan of action: One person who is responsible, realistic goals and objectives set, resources gathered and organized, plan your work and work your plan.

7. Having an Initial Base of Content

It’s incredibly difficult to develop interesting and relevant campaigns if you’ve not built a library of content that you can pull from throughout the fiscal year. Nate Riggs, @nateriggs.

When I consult with agencies, creating a new business program fueled through social media, the first thing I have them do is create 60 blog posts in 60 days. It then gives us our library of content that we can repurpose through many other channels and have a base that fresh content is consistently being added. Also, when you create this initial library of content within a short time frame, helps to work out the bugs of your internal processes.

8. Writing Content that Will Relate

Learning to write and communicate in a way that is completely and utterly on the level of their audience, not the level of the industry professional.Marcus Sheridan, @TheSalesLion.

Agency’s are bad about using agency speak, when talking and presenting to prospects. Agency speak doesn’t resonate with prospects and isn’t very appealing. They tend to carry over this habit when creating online content. They will need to learn to write in a manner that is reflective of the audience you are trying to reach.

9. Just Doing It

Most people seem to know what they should be doing; the trouble is actually getting it done. Consistency counts for everything.Todd Wheatland, @ToddWheatland.

If you can’t be consistent, your efforts are going to be in vain. As you create a program for content creation you should think in terms of “what is sustainable when our agency is at its busiest”. So begin this process with an action plan, using the K.I.S.S. principle. A plan is just a plan until its executed, so set dates and get started.

Consistency is much more important than perfection. It will be much easier to make changes if you get the process moving.

10. Presenting the Right Content, to the Right Audience in the Right Ways

Consistently coming up with new, timely, interesting ways to present the right content to the right audiences. Arnie Kuenn, @ArnieK

Currently an agency blog is one of the best platforms for delivering content to your prospective client audience. This will evolve and change over time. Other ways that you can disseminate content landing pages, email newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +, etc.

For additional information and helps, click on the following link to read Michele Linn’s article, Content Marketers Reveal Their Toughest Challenges, written for the Content Marketing Institute. I would also encourage you to explore the Content Marketing, a great resource for how-to of content marketing.

Additional articles to help with your agency’s content creation:

Image credit: Hubspot

8 Comments | Best Practices, Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media | Tagged: ad agency, Content Marketing Institute, Content Marketing World, Michael Gass, Michele Linn, new business | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agency Websites: An Important Tool for New Business

March 30, 2011

Research shows websites influence 97% of clients’ purchasing decisions.

Your agency’s website is your online brochure, the place to present credentials, capabilities and most importantly your agency’s creative work. Not only is it the place prospects and clients go to learn more about your agency and its services, but it has a huge impact on their ultimate purchase decision.

For professional services firms, “74% of buyers report the service provider’s website holds at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider.” – Raintoday.com

An agency’s website provides the opportunity for your prospective clients to look under-the-hood, kick the tires and check out the upholstery on their own timetable.

With well-designed websites prospects should be able to:

Establish capabilities and professional credentials: through professional design, writing, and arrangement of content.
Establish that your agency is worthy of consideration: through an overview of your services, client list, biographies of staff, case studies that show how you’ve helped clients and a sampling of your creative work.
Establish your agency as an authority: through a clear point of differentiation and expertise, essential elements for creating an appeal and a necessity of winning new clients beyond your local market.

Your agency’s website is the place for:

Press releases – Announcements about new hires, new client acquisitions, awards and other agency news.
Current clients and work experience.
Staff profiles.
Highlight case studies, testimonials, advertising and marketing campaigns.
Resources such as articles, white papers, research findings and presentations.
Agency services. Provide a clear understanding of what services your agency provides.
Show casing your agency’s creative capabilities.
Job postings, staff recruitment highlighting your agency’s culture.
Highlight your agency’s associations such as with the 4As, MAGNET, TAAN or other agency affiliations.
Links to your agency’s social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Facts about your agency. Provide a link to an easy to print, downloadable PDF Agency Fact Sheet on your agency.
A call-to-action. Provide a path to engagement for your visitors. Include information about first steps for a prospect, such as a brand or market audit.
Contact information. Make sure that prospects know who to contact for new business other than info@.

Remember also that usability is a critical success factor for websites. If yours isn’t easy to use it is a very poor reflection of your agency and prospects will simply leave it. Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.

A final tip that I hope you find helpful: Businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

2 Comments | Agency Leadership, Digital, New Business Tips, SEO | Tagged: advertising agencies, Blog, business development, fact sheet, interactive, Michael Gass, websites | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

25 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Ad Agency’s Blog

April 9, 2010

Your ad agency’s blog should be a central component to your social media strategy for new business. It is the site that you want to bring your prospective client audience to, the gateway and face of your agency.

“Build it and they will come,” is not the answer to generate traffic to your agency’s blog. You must employ proactive tactics to create awareness and interest among prospective clients. The more traffic that you can generate, from among your target audience, the more inbound new business leads that will follow.

Denise Wakeman, Online Marketing Advisor and Founder of The Blog Squad, has created an excellent list of tips to generate traffic to you blog. I would encourage you to create a list of “to dos” from her suggestions. For more details, be sure to check out her article,“19 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog”

Here are the 19 tips:

Publish as frequently as possible
Pay attention to the headlines (blog post titles)
Send an email broadcast
Add a link in your email signature
Include multiple subscription options on your blog
Try article marketing
Comment on blogs in your industry
Do some guest posting
Conduct surveys and polls
Submit your blog to directories
Make a Google profile
Syndicate to Twitter
Syndicate Facebook
Syndicate to LinkedIn
Use Hootsuite
Distribute your video
Add the retweet button to your posts
Consider share buttons
Use social bookmarking

Denise’s list isn’t an exhaustive list of tactics but these are the core that you need for your own list. Just be sure that someone from your agency is charged with implementing it.

I would add at least six additional tips:

Make your target audience crystal clear. If you can’t clearly and narrowly define your audience you wont build significant traffic.
Optimize your posts content for search. Identify and dominate a few key words that your target audience will most likely use to find you. Use these words consistently in your posts titles and copy.
Knowledge is power. Get in the habit of checking your blogs analytics frequently. Keep it simple, but know at least daily the number of unique visitors, page views, top posts, how people got to your blog, search terms and incoming links.
Don’t be afraid to repurpose older blog content through multiple social media channels. Posts that I’ve written 3 years ago is still pertinent and continues to generate traffic to my blog.
One thing to not do that will impact traffic. Don’t sell! The moment you start to sell on your blog is when you will most likely LOSE your audience.
Identify who your audience is in your post titles. This is especially helpful when you repurpose your content on Twitter and an important part of SEO for your blog.

Here are some resources to help you further create an agency blog for new business:

5 Comments | Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, Metrics, New Business Tactics, New Business Trends, SEO | Tagged: Agency Blogs, blog traffic, Denise Wakeman, Michael Gass, new business, SEO, Social Media Examiner, The Blog Squad | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

How to generate traffic to and new business leads from your ad agency’s blog

September 4, 2009

First: Ad Agencies Need to Answer One Question Before They Blog

I believe ad agencies need an integrated social media strategy for ad agency new business. An agency blog is the central platform. The place you can drive targeted online traffic through SEO, Twitter, email newsletters, Facebook and LinkedIn. The blog becomes the “gateway” to your agency.

To create an agency blog that will be successful in generating traffic and a consistent flow of leads, you first will need to answer one simple question.

The very first question you must answer, before you create your agency’s blog is, “who is our best target audience?”

Without answering this question you will find it extremely difficult to generate traffic. If your blog has not traffic, no audience, no community … then you will have NO leads.

If you don’t know who your target audience is you will also find it difficult:

Deciding what to write about
Where to find resources
What search terms to use for SEO
Where to locate your online audience

It is a fruitless exercise without having a target audience identified. I can provide dozens, and dozens of examples of agency blogs that have not identified their target audience. They are like ships without rudders. Aimless. I would list some of these for your but I don’t want to embarrass anyone.

But I will provide some examples of agencies that have clearly identified their audience:

Blue Collar Branding (From boots, bowling balls to boats. Manufacturers who need to reach blue collar workers)

She-conomy (male advertisers who should be marketing to women)

Healthy Conversations (health and healthy lifestyle brands)

Marketing Home Products (home product manufacturers)

A Brighter Shade of Green Marketing (companies interested in having an environmental component to their advertising/marketing)

Tech Marketing Blog (high technology companies)

TV Is Not Dead (retailers who should be using TV as a major part of their marketing mix)

Tradesmen Insights (B to B companies who target professional tradesmen)

We Play in Traffic (retailers)

Why Moms Rule (companies who should be targeting moms)

Additional articles that may be of interest:

5 Comments | Agency Blogs, New Business Trends, Promotion, SEO, Social Media | Tagged: Ad Agency Blogs, list of agency blogs, Michael Gass | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Social Media: How to Generate Leads for Ad Agency New Business

February 6, 2009

I recently read and interesting blog post article written by Chad Levitt, titled, “Cut Your Marketing Budget to Zero and Still Generate Leads.” Chad interviews the VP of Marketing at Hubspot.com, Mike Volpe. Mike shares why traditional outbound marketing is dying and inbound marketing is growing.

Below are some nuggets from that interview that I hope will be of help as you evaluate your ad agency’s new business initiatives.

Outbound Marketing - “Cold calls, TV ads, email list rentals – is becoming less and less effective because people are becoming better at blocking out those channels with tools like caller ID, TiVo, and spam blockers.”

Inbound Marketing - ”Marketing analytics are critical because you need to know what is performing and what is not performing so you can optimize and improve your overall results.”

“Outbound marketing still works. But every day it gets more difficult and more expensive. It’s just a frustrating, dead-end experience.” Regarding inbound marketing he says, ”At HubSpot, if you fired the entire marketing team and cut the budget down to zero, we’d still generate a couple thousand leads per month because of the presence we have built over the past couple years.”

Blogging a Top Source for Inbound Leads – Mike says that their blog is one of the top 5 sources for leads because:

The articles written are an important part of their SEO efforts. They have over 400 articles that show up for all kinds of searches.
The articles are also an important part of their social media efforts because they give them a variety of interesting things to talk about.
Blog articles are a great way to nurture leads.

Hubspot has built an audience of about 9,000 people that regularly read their blog post articles.

Their blog analytics, poll, surveys, comments all provide invaluable insights to their target audience. They understand what works and what doesn’t. What messages resonate and are appealing to their target audience.

Inbound lead generation is much faster, more efficient and affordable than outbound lead generation. Plus much less frustrating and easier to sustain.

Make sure to visit the New Sales Economy.com blog to read the entire interview and follow it’s author Chad Levitt on Twitter.

Additional articles of interest:

11 Comments | New Business Tips, New Business Trends, SEO, Social Media | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, Chad Levitt, Hobspot, lead generation, Mike Volpe | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Jeff Johnson: Traffic Generation Resource for Agency New Business

May 23, 2008

To generate inbound new business leads you have to generate targeted online traffic.

Jeff Johnson’s web sites provide common sense, step-by-step social marketing tactics. This is an excellent resource for your agency’s blog and increasing blog traffic.