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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/see-your-comments-surrey-county-13688150

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/mother-organises-newlands-corner-hopewalk-13662265

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/haslemere-crash-elderly-man-seriously-13699153

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bagshot-grove-end-crash-motorists-13698973

Missing man Daniel Bethell from Claygate found after failing to turn up for work

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/missing-man-daniel-bethell-claygate-13699064

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-stabbed-stomach-during-vicious-13698804

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/missing-daniel-bethell-from-claygate-13698482

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-kebab-shop-been-nominated-13653822

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/council-remains-tight-lipped-camberleys-13656296

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-police-incident-body-found-13697677

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bagshot-grove-end-crash-man-13697777

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-police-incident-death-man-13697263

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/asda-recalls-baby-microwave-meal-13697167

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/chloe-ayling-kidnap-suspect-face-13695743

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-police-incident-investigation-under-13696883

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/firefighters-called-four-car-crash-13696820

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/suspect-charged-attempted-murder-appears-13695645

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/crackdown-boozing-drugs-vehicles-across-13694682

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/tunsgate-shop-owner-ben-darnton-13690052

Things to do in Surrey in October 2017 - check out our guide to local events and and places to go

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/things-surrey-october-2017-check-13693687

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/thorpe-park-fright-nights-2017-13696359

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/dramatic-photo-shows-smoke-pouring-13696450

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/camberley-soldier-celebrates-incredible-journey-13688840

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-station-incident-false-alarm-13696361

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/new-surrey-forensics-lab-help-13696426

Woking station cordoned off as fire crews investigate 'unknown chemical spillage'

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-station-cordoned-fire-crews-13696063

Man accused of entering woman's property after approaching strangers in Reigate

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-accused-entering-womans-property-13695770

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/queen-helping-acm-uncover-next-13659736

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/thousands-line-dorkings-streets-mole-13695524

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/second-suspicious-incident-woking-area-13695257

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/go-forth-conker-how-make-13656380

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/plan-add-extra-lane-m23-13694956

Weather forecast: Surrey could see more heavy showers on Sunday afternoon

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weather-forecast-surrey-could-see-13694651

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/frimley-green-woman-hospitalised-after-13694635

'Stolen' car crashed into pond on 14th hole of Lingfield Park Golf course

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/stolen-car-crashed-pond-14th-13691383

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/new-surrey-advertiser-tabloid-first-13691234

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/new-50p-coin-celebrating-birth-13688988

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/oval-crossbow-bolt-incident-cause-13693338

Ask Yoast case study: SEO for a property inspector

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bill-bellerby-death-private-funeral-13692936

This is the poorly parked caravan that brought Chertsey to a standstill - and roadworks didn't help either

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/poorly-parked-caravan-brought-chertsey-13691724

Royal Surrey County Hospital postpones blue badge parking charge launch - but only by two weeks

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/royal-surrey-county-hospital-postpones-13692440

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/coral-reef-waterworld-tickets-information-13689730

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/hampshire-news/blackbushe-airport-incident-accident-investigators-13686722

Elderly woman 'died through lack of care at St Peter's Hospital' after contracting sepsis, inquest told

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/elderly-woman-died-through-lack-13691133

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-left-metal-plates-head-13673510

Elderly woman cruelly shoved the ground and robbed of gold necklace

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/hampshire-news/elderly-woman-cruelly-shoved-ground-13691348

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-behind-those-amazing-poems-13684489

Did you know you could get paid to drink beer?

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/you-know-you-could-paid-13683777

Paid Social for Content Marketing Launches - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KaneJamison

Stuck in a content marketing rut? Relying on your existing newsletter, social followers, or email outreach won't do your launches justice. Boosting your signal with paid social both introduces your brand to new audiences and improves your launch's traffic and results. In today's Whiteboard Friday, we're welcoming back our good friend Kane Jamison to highlight four straightforward, actionable tactics you can start using ASAP.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Kane. I'm the founder of a content marketing agency here in Seattle called Content Harmony, and we do a lot of content marketing projects where we use paid social to launch them and get better traffic and results.

So I spoke about this, this past year at MozCon, and what I want to do today is share some of those tactics with you and help you get started with launching your content with some paid traction and not just relying on your email outreach or maybe your own existing email newsletter and social followers.

Especially for a lot of companies that are just getting started with content marketing, that audience development component is really important. A lot of people just don't have a significant market share of their industry subscribed to their newsletter. So it's great to use paid social in order to reach new people, get them over to your most important content projects, or even just get them over to your week-to-week blog content.

Social teaser content

So the first thing I want to start with is expanding a little bit beyond just your average image ad. A lot of social networks, especially Facebook, are promoting video heavily nowadays. You can use that to get a lot cheaper engagement than you can from a typical image ad. If you've logged in to your Facebook feed lately, you've probably noticed that aside from birth announcements, there's a lot of videos filling up the feed. So as an advertiser, if you want to blend in well with that, using video as a teaser or a sampler for the content that you're producing is a great way to kind of look natural and look like you belong in the user's feed.

So different things you can do include:

• Short animated videos explaining what the project is and why you did it.
• Maybe doing talking head videos with some of your executives or staff or marketing team, just talking on screen with whatever in the background about the project you created and kind of drumming up interest to actually get people over to the site.

So that can be really great for team recognition if you're trying to build thought leadership in your space. It's a great way to introduce the face of your team members that might be speaking at industry conferences and events. It's a great way to just get people recognizing their name or maybe just help them feel closer to your company because they recognize their voice and face.

So everybody's instant reaction, of course, is, "I don't have the budget for video." That's okay. You don't need to be a videography expert to create decent social ads. There's a lot of great tools out there.

• Soapbox by Wistia is a great one, that's been released recently, that allows you to do kind of a webcam combined with your browser type of video. There are also tools like...
• Bigvu.tv
• Shakr
• Promo, which is a tool by a company called Slidely, I think.

All of those tools are great ways to create short, 20-second, 60-second types of videos. They let you create captions. So if you're scrolling through a social feed and you see an autoplay video, there's a good chance that the audio on that is turned off, so you can create captions to let people know what the video is about if it's not instantly obvious from the video itself. So that's a great way to get cheaper distribution than you might get from your typical image ad, and it's really going to stick out to users because most other companies aren't spending the time to do that.

Lookalike audiences

Another really valuable tactic is to create lookalike audiences from your best customers. Now, you can track your best customers in a couple of ways:

• You could have a pixel, a Facebook pixel or another network pixel on your website that just tracks the people that have been to the site a number of times or that have been through the shopping cart at a certain dollar value.
• We can take our email list and use the emails of customers that have ordered from us or just the emails of customers that are on our newsletter that seem like they open up every newsletter and they really like our content.

We can upload those into a custom audience in the social network of our choice and then create what's called a lookalike audience. In this case, I'd recommend what's called a "one percent lookalike audience." So if you're targeting people in the US, it means the one percent of people in the US that appear most like your audience. So if your audience is men ages 35 to 45, typically that are interested in a specific topic, the lookalike audience will probably be a lot of other men in a similar age group that like similar topics.

So Facebook is making that choice, which means you may or may not get the perfect audience right from the start. So it's great to test additional filters on top of the default lookalike audience. So, for example, you could target people by household income. You could target people by additional interests that may or may not be obvious from the custom audience, just to make sure you're only reaching the users that are interested in your topic. Whatever it might be, if this is going to end up being three or four million people at one percent of the country, it's probably good to go ahead and filter that down to a smaller audience that's a little bit closer to your exact target that you want to reach. So excellent way to create brand awareness with that target audience.

Influencers

The next thing I'd like you to test is getting your ads and your content in front of influencers in your space. That could mean...

• Bloggers
• Journalists
• Or it could just mean people like page managers in Facebook, people that have access to a Facebook page that can share updates. Those could be social media managers. That could be bloggers. That could even be somebody running the page for the local church or a PTA group. Regardless, those people are probably going to have a lot of contacts, be likely to share things with friends and family or followers on social media.

Higher cost but embedded value

When you start running ads to this type of group, you're going to find that it costs a little bit more per click. If you're used to paying $0.50 to $1.00 per click, you might end up paying $1.00 or $2.00 per click to reach this audience. That's okay. There's a lot more embedded value with this audience than the typical user, because they're likely, on average, to have more reach, more followers, more influence.

Test share-focused CTAs

It's worth testing share focus call to actions. What that means is encouraging people to share this with some people they know that might be interested. Post it to their page even is something worth testing. It may or may not work every time, but certainly valuable to test.

Filters

So the way we recommend reaching most of these users is through something like a job title filter. Somebody says they're a blogger, says they're an editor-in-chief, that's the clearest way to reach them. They may not always have that as their job title, so you could also do employers. That's another good example.

I recommend combining that with broad interests. So if I am targeting journalists because I have a new research piece out, it's great for us to attach interests that are relevant to our space. If we're in health care, we might target people interested in health care and the FDA and other big companies in the space that they'd likely be following for updates. If we're in fashion, we might just be selecting people that are fans of big brands, Nordstrom and others like that. Whatever it is, you can take this audience of a few hundred thousand or whatever it might be down to just a few thousand and really focus on the people that are most likely to be writing about or influential in your space.

Retarget non-subscribers

The fourth thing you can test is retargeting non-subscribers. So a big goal of content marketing is having those pop-ups or call to actions on the site to get people to download a bigger piece of content, download a checklist, whatever it might be so that we can get them on our email newsletter. There's a lot of people that are going to click out of that. 90% to 95% of the people that visit your site or more probably aren't going to take that call to action.

So what we can do is convert this into more of a social ad unit and just show the same messaging to the people that didn't sign up on the site. Maybe they just hate pop-ups by default. They will never sign up for them. That's okay. They might be more receptive to a lead ad in Facebook that says "subscribe" or "download" instead of something that pops up on their screen.

Keep testing new messaging

The other thing we can do is start testing new messages and new content. Maybe this offer wasn't interesting to them because they don't need that guide, but maybe they need your checklist instead, or maybe they'd just like your email drip series that has an educational component to it. So keep testing different types of messaging. Just because this one wasn't valuable doesn't mean your other content isn't interesting to them, and it doesn't mean they're not interested in your email list.

Redo split tests from your site

We can keep testing messaging. So if we are testing messaging on our site, we might take the top two or three and test that messaging on ads. We might find that different messaging works better on social than it does on pop-ups or banners on the site. So it's worth redoing split tests that seemed conclusive on your site because things might be different on the social media network.

---

So that's it for today. What I'd love for you guys to do is if you have some great examples of targeting that's worked for you, messaging that's worked for you, or just other paid social tactics that have worked really well for your content marketing campaigns, I'd love to hear examples of that in the comments on the post, and we'd be happy to answer questions you guys have on how to actually get some of this stuff done. Whether it's targeting questions, how to set up lookalike audiences, anything like that, we'd be happy to answer questions there as well.

So that's it for me today. Thanks, Moz fans. We'll see you next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/see-whats-offer-guildfords-street-13682212

This is why The Original Factory Shop in Dorking is still closed

There has been speculation that the store was closing for good - but the company has set the record straight

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/original-factory-shop-dorking-still-13685049

Billy Monger: Status Quo signed guitar up for auction in aid of Surrey racing driver who lost his legs in horror crash

Billy Monger, 18, had both legs amputated after a high-speed crash at Donington Park race track

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/billy-monger-status-quo-signed-13686203

Will Cranleigh get its hospital beds? New plans to be publicly displayed after 16-year wait

Cranleigh Village Hospital Trust has been working to bring hospital beds back to the village since 2001

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/cranleigh-village-hospital-beds-plan-13654712

Revealed: Online map shows there were nearly 200 crashes on the M23 in 2015 and 2016

Following a fatal collision on Wednesday night we looked at the number of accidents on the M23 in a two-year period

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/revealed-online-map-shows-were-13688262

West Byfleet smell: Cause of latest 'Surrey Stink' remains elusive as foul odour baffles residents

Muck-spreading by farmers may be responsible for stench that pervaded the county on Tuesday - but no-one really knows

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/west-byfleet-smell-cause-latest-13687915

This is why Reigate was completely gridlocked at lunchtime

Parts of Reigate were experiencing heavy traffic over lunch

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/reigate-completely-gridlocked-lunchtime-13688222

Richmond Lock 'dead body' might actually have been 'large seal' says RNLI

Emergency services received reports of a dead body in the water on Wednesday (September 27) but found nothing

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/richmond-lock-dead-body-might-13687208

Runnymede has highest rise in crime in north Surrey, new figures reveal

Burglaries and reports of anti-social behaviour have both seen sharp increases this year compared with the same period in 2016

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/runnymede-highest-rise-crime-north-13676695

'Pedantic in the extreme': CAMRA slams council as Knaphill Anchor pub loses asset of community value status AGAIN

The developers said the Anchor will be refurbished and reopened, and threatened to ban a local CAMRA member from the pub for life

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/knaphill-anchor-pub-community-asset-13672870

A320 Woking Road crash: Moped rider taken to hospital and road closed following three-vehicle smash

Police closed a stretch of the A320 between Guildford and Woking after two cars and a moped collided on Thursday morning (September 28)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/a320-woking-road-crash-moped-13687457

How to improve WordPress search

Driver taken to hospital after crash on Gatton Park Road in Redhill

Two police cars and an ambulance were called to the scene

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-taken-hospital-after-crash-13685710

Petition launched to save Weybridge Walk-in Centre following catastrophic fire which left hospital in ruins

The two alternative walk-in centres at St Peter's Hospital and Woking are "overstretched and difficult to reach", says petitioner

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weybridge-walk-in-centre-petition-13684445

Statue of 'Mr Guildford' Bill Bellerby should be considered, says council leader

Paul Spooner praises the "quite frankly extraordinary" service to the community of Hon Freemen Bill and Doreen Bellerby

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-bill-bellerby-statue-plan-13672920

Check out this quirky home for sale with railway carriages INSIDE it

It looks normal from the outside but this bungalow is made up of two old train coaches with a ‘station platform’ hallway

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/property-news/check-out-quirky-home-sale-13686320

M23 fatal crash: Man in his late 20s died at the scene, police confirm

The M23 southbound was closed for approximately seven hours as police investigated

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m23-fatal-crash-man-late-13686259

Essential oils on towels caused fire to break out at Cobham dry cleaners

Fire crews were at the scene for more than three hours

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/essential-oils-towels-caused-fire-13685901

The M25/M23 slip road was closed for a reason - so why did this happen?

A slip road closure was "breached" during heavy M25/M23 congestion following a fatal crash during the early hours of Thursday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m25m23-slip-road-closed-reason-13685643

M23 fatal crash: Lengthy motorway closure after collision near Gatwick Airport

It was almost eight hours after the incident when all routes and slip roads were fully reopened

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m23-fatal-crash-lengthy-motorway-13685600

How do smart motorways work? Report reveals few drivers understand what to do if they break down

This is a handy read if you travel along the M3 smart motorway...

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/how-smart-motorways-work-report-13683940

'There was so much blood': 'Brave' school girl describes helping man moments before cardiac arrest outside Leatherhead station

16-year-old Ruby Brown was on her way to school when she discovered the man seconds before collapsing

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/there-much-blood-brave-school-13685288

See inside the all-new Walton Regent Pub after £325,000 investment

The pub was put on the market last year by JD Wetherspoons

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/see-inside-new-walton-regent-13683312

Oxted fire: White smoke seen spilling from canister turned out to be extremely flammable gas

The container was found to contain extremely flammable oxygen gas

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/oxted-fire-white-smoke-seen-13684976

Woman hurt after two-car crash on Succomb's Hill in Warlingham

Firefighters rushed to the scene following reports of smoke coming from one of the cars

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woman-hurt-after-two-car-13684939

Recycling centre opening times: See when yours will be open or closed under new operating hours

The new Surrey County Council proposals will be implemented on January 10 - but how will it affect you?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/recycling-centre-opening-times-see-13682994

Weybridge property agency director disqualified after diverting rental income into his personal account

The Insolvency Service found that the Weybridge property agency director had failed to deal with rental income in the correct manner

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weybridge-property-agency-director-disqualified-13680652

Road closed in Shackleford after car appears to plough into bush

Luckily no-one was injured in the incident

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/road-closed-shackleford-after-car-13684678

Weybridge town map designed by Brooklands art student unveiled at railway station

The designer said she wanted to create a "fun and appealing" map of railway station in relation to town centre

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weybridge-town-map-designed-brooklands-13681957

Royal visit for Dorking community gardening project

The Patchworking Garden Project, based at the Pixham Lane sports ground, was visited by HRH The Duke of Gloucester

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/royal-visit-dorking-community-gardening-13678540

Queen guitarist Brian May blasts culls after seeing 'pitiful' images of badger 'left to bleed to death in a trap'

WARNING DISTRESSING IMAGE: The famous animal rights campaigner from Windlesham said the government's "case for killing wildlife... is incredibly weak"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/queen-guitarist-brian-blasts-culls-13647587

Poll: Is Woking really the happiest place in Surrey?

Woking is the eighth happiest place in the UK, but what do you think?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/poll-woking-really-happiest-place-13681407

Surrey County Council set to quadruple number of days recycling centres are closed

New proposals will see some community recycling centres closed for four days a week from January 2018

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-county-council-set-quadruple-13682012

Former Oxted rector Guy Bennett found not guilty of all charges

Mr Bennett, 84, of Lewes Road, East Grinstead was facing 24 charges of indecent assault and one charge of outraging public decency

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/former-oxted-rector-guy-bennett-13684186

Schools 'crisis' as more than 90% of Year 7 places in Surrey are full or oversubscribed, new figures reveal

The figures come in the week Surrey County Council's cabinet recommends secondary schools in Ashford and Caterham for expansion

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/schools-crisis-more-90-year-13681194

Wisley Airfield inquiry: East and West Horsley Parish Council's expert planning witness 'concerned over the wider area'

Wisley Property Investments has appealed against Guildford Borough Council's decision to reject its planning application for more than 2,000 homes

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/wisley-airfield-inquiry-east-west-13682801

Blackbushe Airport incident: Two people escape injury after light aircraft undercarriage problem

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has been informed and is deciding whether to investigate the incident

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/hampshire-news/blackbushe-airport-incident-two-people-13684061

Surrey street lights switch-off, recycling centre closures and fire service cuts - how Surrey County Council has tried to balance the books amid 'unprecedented' demand for savings

The authority has been tasked with finding £100m savings this year alone - here's just some of the schemes it has proposed

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-street-lights-switch-off-13677672

Sheer House regeneration: Council approves plans for controversial high-rise development despite fears it will 'destroy village feel'

Residents fear the seven-storey towers will harm West Byfleet's "village feel"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/sheer-house-regeneration-council-approves-13681744

Southern staff praised for quick actions after accident at Leatherhead Station which caused some witnesses to faint

A man suffered a heart attack and cut his head open as he fell at Leatherhead Station

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/southern-staff-praised-quick-actions-13683534

Plans to cut Spelthorne fire cover in wake of Grenfell Tower fire branded 'unbelievable' by campaigners presenting petition to council

Campaigners believe that cutting the number of full time crews in Spelthorne from two to one will put lives at risk

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/plans-cut-spelthorne-fire-cover-13679835

South Western Railway: Commuters to receive free breakfast, coffee and jelly beans

Coffee, breakfast and jelly beans... swoon!

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/south-western-railway-commuters-receive-13682928

Banning tackling in schools rugby would be a dangerous move

Children should be taught how to tackle safely while they are small enough not to seriously hurt each other

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/banning-tackling-schools-rugby-would-13678400

Superstorm might be heading towards the UK - but how will it affect the south east of the country?

The south east could potentially be hit by strong winds and rain from Friday (September 29) onwards

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/superstorm-might-heading-towards-uk-13681093

Disused offices in Leatherhead which have been vacant for almost three years could be transformed into dozens of flats

Developers hoping to turn the building into 41 apartments say there has been "a lack of interest in office occupation" since 2014

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/disused-offices-leatherhead-been-vacant-13678306

11 gyms in Surrey and Hampshire to help you get fit

See our handy guide to gyms in Surrey and Hampshire

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/national-fitness-day-surrey-gyms-12361859

Epsom shoppers and motorists facing FOUR months of roadworks disruption in town centre

The roadworks will take place in South Street and Ashley Avenue and will last for approximately 16 weeks

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/epsom-shoppers-motorists-facing-four-13678241

Distraught pet owner blasts Sainsbury's after beloved dog falls ill from eating free promotional chocolates sent in post

Cocker Spaniel Jarvis had to be flushed through with fluids and was forced to be sick after devouring the chocolate bars

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/hampshire-news/distraught-pet-owner-blasts-sainsburys-13682979

SEO for non-profits

Man taken to hospital in 'serious condition' after suffering cardiac arrest outside Leatherhead railway station

Witnesses reported seeing the man collapse and hit his head outside the station at around 7.50am on Wednesday morning (September 27)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-taken-hospital-serious-condition-13681956

Highways England is considering installing speed cameras along the A3 past Guildford to ease congestion and boost safety

Speed cameras along the A3 past Guildford could help ease congestion and reduce the risk of accidents, Highways England has said

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/highways-england-considering-installing-speed-13677823

Weather forecast: Heavy rain, murky leaden skies, low cloud and fog - Surrey is about to get ALL the weather

The wet weather front, coming in from the Atlantic, will spread across Surrey on Wednesday afternoon into the night (September 27)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weather-forecast-heavy-rain-murky-13681319

Asda is selling these amazing Harry Potter costumes for just £15 for Halloween

You can become Harry, Dumbledore and even Professor McGonagall

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/asda-selling-amazing-harry-potter-13678276

Ashford Tesco cash-in transit raid leaves security guards 'shaken but physically unhurt'

Police believe a 'considerable' amount of money was taken in the robbery during the early hours of Sunday morning (September 24)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ashford-tesco-cash-transit-raid-13680879

Guy Bennett trial: Former Oxted vicar used 'every opportunity and created opportunities' to exploit young girls as 'complaints fell on deaf ears', court hears

Prosecutor Eloise Marshall summed up the claims against Guy Bennett to the jury following a trial at Guildford Crown Court

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guy-bennett-trial-former-oxted-13680425

England rugby star Marland Yarde signs for Guildford cancer charity

The Prostate Project has been raising money to build a world-class urology centre at Royal Surrey County Hospital

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/england-rugby-star-marland-yarde-13658365

Great British Bake Off: Surrey's Sophie crowned star baker in pudding week

Trainee stuntwoman Sophie, from West Molesey, impressed the judges with her perfect puds - especially her "pink sausage"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/great-british-bake-off-surreys-13679926

Masked raiders caught trying to break into van 'goaded' owner by ripping number plate off getaway car

The reportedly suspects ripped the number plate off their getaway car to avoid detection

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/masked-raiders-caught-trying-break-13678148

Council announce plans to introduce parking charges for visitors to Norbury Park near Leatherhead

A public consultation was launched at the start of this week

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/council-announce-plans-introduce-parking-13677438

Man collapses and hits head outside Leatherhead Station

Emergency services were called to the scene with paramedics attempting to resuscitate the man

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-collapses-hits-head-outside-13680625

Thorpe Park Fright Nights: Gruesome Terminus Burger - complete with blood clot relish - launched for Halloween

Are you daring enough to try the limited edition burger at Thorpe Park? It comes with 'blood clot relish'

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/thorpe-park-fright-nights-gruesome-13649476

Ascot Racecourse beer festival returns with flat racing, real ales and ciders on tap

The famous Ascot venue will once again host two days of Oktoberfest fun for beer and horse racing fans alike

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/ascot-racecourse-beer-festival-returns-13653649

Guildford set for street food takeover at The Village

Be tempted by jerk chicken, gourmet burgers, burritos, Indian street food, chips, paella, slow cooked meats and more

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/guildford-set-street-food-takeover-13670080

Ash Manor Road burst water main: Primary school shut following second burst in as many weeks

It was a familiar sight for Ash residents as they woke up to localised flooding on the roads and in their gardens

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ash-manor-road-burst-water-13680272

Wrecclesham crash: Safety concerns over large lorries 'toppling' under bridge following death of dog walker as locals recall 'four crashes in nine months'

Wrecclesham residents say lorries squeezing under the Wrecclesham Road bridge are putting pedestrians and motorists at risk

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/wrecclesham-crash-safety-concerns-over-13678673

Guy Bennett trial: Former Oxted vicar claims past convictions spurred untrue sex assault allegations involving 11 young girls

Guy Bennett, 85, was previously jailed in 1999 for sex assaults on young girls, jurors heard on Tuesday (September 26)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guy-bennett-trial-former-oxted-13679146

How to Track Your Local SEO & SEM: A Guide

Posted by nickpierno

If you asked me, I’d tell you that proper tracking is the single most important element in your local business digital marketing stack. I’d also tell you that even if you didn’t ask, apparently.

A decent tracking setup allows you to answer the most important questions about your marketing efforts. What’s working and what isn’t?

Many digital marketing strategies today still focus on traffic. Lots of agencies/developers/marketers will slap an Analytics tracking code on your site and call it a day. For most local businesses, though, traffic isn’t all that meaningful of a metric. And in many cases (e.g. Adwords & Facebook), more traffic just means more spending, without any real relationship to results.

What you really need your tracking setup to tell you is how many leads (AKA conversions) you’re getting, and from where. It also needs to do so quickly and easily, without you having to log into multiple accounts to piece everything together.

If you’re spending money or energy on SEO, Adwords, Facebook, or any other kind of digital traffic stream and you’re not measuring how many leads you get from each source, stop what you’re doing right now and make setting up a solid tracking plan your next priority.

This guide is intended to fill you in on all the basic elements you’ll need to assemble a simple, yet flexible and robust tracking setup.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is at the center of virtually every good web tracking setup. There are other supplemental ways to collect web analytics (like Heap, Hotjar, Facebook Pixels, etc), but Google Analytics is the free, powerful, and omnipresent tool that virtually every website should use. It will be the foundation of our approach in this guide.

Analytics setup tips

Analytics is super easy to set up. Create (or sign into) a Google account, add your Account and Property (website), and install the tracking code in your website’s template.

Whatever happens, don’t let your agency or developer set up your Analytics property on their own Account. Agencies and developers: STOP DOING THIS! Create a separate Google/Gmail account and let this be the "owner" of a new Analytics Account, then share permission with the agency/developer’s account, the client’s personal Google account, and so on.

The “All Website Data” view will be created by default for a new property. If you’re going to add filters or make any other advanced changes, be sure to create and use a separate View, keeping the default view clean and pure.

Also be sure to set the appropriate currency and time zone in the “View Settings.” If you ever use Adwords, using the wrong currency setting will result in a major disagreement between Adwords and Analytics.

Goals

Once your basic Analytics setup is in place, you should add some goals. This is where the magic happens. Ideally, every business objective your website can achieve should be represented as a goal conversion. Conversions can come in many forms, but here are some of the most common ones:

• Contact form submission
• Quote request form submission
• Phone call
• Text message
• Chat
• Appointment booking
• Newsletter signup
• E-commerce purchase

How you slice up your goals will vary with your needs, but I generally try to group similar “types” of conversions into a single goal. If I have several different contact forms on a site (like a quick contact form in the sidebar, and a heftier one on the contact page), I might group those as a single goal. You can always dig deeper to see the specific breakdown, but it’s nice to keep goals as neat and tidy as possible.

To create a goal in Analytics:

1. Navigate to the Admin screen.
2. Under the appropriate View, select Goals and then + New Goal.
3. You can either choose between a goal Template, or Custom. Most goals are easiest to set up choosing Custom.
4. Give your goal a name (ex. Contact Form Submission) and choose a type. Most goals for local businesses will either be a Destination or an Event.

Pro tip: Analytics allows you to associate a dollar value to your goal conversions. If you can tie your goals to their actual value, it can be a powerful metric to measure performance with. A common way to determine the value of a goal is to take the average value of a sale and multiply it by the average closing rate of Internet leads. For example, if your average sale is worth $1,000, and you typically close 1/10 of leads, your goal value would be $100.

Form tracking

The simplest way to track form fills is to have the form redirect to a "Thank You" page upon submission. This is usually my preferred setup; it’s easy to configure, and I can use the Thank You page to recommend other services, articles, etc. on the site and potentially keep the user around. I also find a dedicated Thank You page to provide the best affirmation that the form submission actually went through.

Different forms can all use the same Thank You page, and pass along variables in the URL to distinguish themselves from each other so you don’t have to create a hundred different Thank You pages to track different forms or goals. Most decent form plugins for Wordpress are capable of this. My favorite is Gravityforms. Contact Form 7 and Ninja Forms are also very popular (and free).

Another option is using event tracking. Event tracking allows you to track the click of a button or link (the submit button, in the case of a web form). This would circumvent the need for a thank you page if you don’t want to (or can’t) send the user elsewhere when they submit a form. It’s also handy for other, more advanced forms of tracking.

Here’s a handy plugin for Gravityforms that makes setting up event tracking a snap.

Once you’ve got your form redirecting to a Thank You page or generating an event, you just need to create a goal in Analytics with the corresponding value.

You can use Thank You pages or events in a similar manner to track appointment booking, web chats, newsletter signups, etc.

Call tracking

Many businesses and marketers have adopted form tracking, since it’s easy and free. That’s great. But for most businesses, it leaves a huge volume of web conversions untracked.

If you’re spending cash to generate traffic to your site, you could be hemorrhaging budget if you’re not collecting and attributing the phone call conversions from your website.

There are several solutions and approaches to call tracking. I use and recommend CallRail, which also seems to have emerged as the darling of the digital marketing community over the past few years thanks to its ease of use, great support, fair pricing, and focus on integration. Another option (so I don’t come across as completely biased) is CallTrackingMetrics.

You’ll want to make sure your call tracking platform allows for integration with Google Analytics and offers something called "dynamic number insertion."

Dynamic number insertion uses JavaScript to detect your actual local phone number on your website and replace it with a tracking number when a user loads your page.

Dynamic insertion is especially important in the context of local SEO, since it allows you to keep your real, local number on your site, and maintain NAP consistency with the rest of your business’s citations. Assuming it’s implemented properly, Google will still see your real number when it crawls your site, but users will get a tracked number.

Basically, magic.

There are a few ways to implement dynamic number insertion. For most businesses, one of these two approaches should fit the bill.

Number per source

With this approach, you'll create a tracking number for each source you wish to track calls for. These sources might be:

• Organic search traffic
• Paid search traffic
• Facebook referral traffic
• Yelp referral traffic
• Direct traffic
• Vanity URL traffic (for visitors coming from an offline TV or radio ad, for example)

When someone arrives at your website from one of these predefined sources, the corresponding number will show in place of your real number, wherever it’s visible. If someone calls that number, an event will be passed to Analytics along with the source.

This approach isn’t perfect, but it’s a solid solution if your site gets large amounts of traffic (5k+ visits/day) and you want to keep call tracking costs low. It will do a solid job of answering the basic questions of how many calls your site generates and where they came from, but it comes with a few minor caveats:

• Calls originating from sources you didn’t predefine will be missed.
• Events sent to Analytics will create artificial sessions not tied to actual user sessions.
• Call conversions coming from Adwords clicks won’t be attached to campaigns, ad groups, or keywords.

Some of these issues have more advanced workarounds. None of them are deal breakers… but you can avoid them completely with number pools — the awesomest call tracking method.

Number pools

“Keyword Pools,” as CallRail refers to them, are the killer app for call tracking. As long as your traffic doesn’t make this option prohibitively expensive (which won’t be a problem for most local business websites), this is the way to go.

In this approach, you create a pool with several numbers (8+ with CallRail). Each concurrent visitor on your site is assigned a different number, and if they call it, the conversion is attached to their session in Analytics, as well as their click in Adwords (if applicable). No more artificial sessions or disconnected conversions, and as long as you have enough numbers in your pool to cover your site’s traffic, you’ll capture all calls from your site, regardless of source. It’s also much quicker to set up than a number per source, and will even make you more attractive and better at sports!

You generally have to pay your call tracking provider for additional numbers, and you’ll need a number for each concurrent visitor to keep things running smoothly, so this is where massive amounts of traffic can start to get expensive. CallRail recommends you look at your average hourly traffic during peak times and include ¼ the tally as numbers in your pool. So if you have 30 visitors per hour on average, you might want ~8 numbers.

Implementation

Once you’ve got your call tracking platform configured, you’ll need to implement some code on your site to allow the dynamic number insertion to work its magic. Most platforms will provide you with a code snippet and instructions for installation. If you use CallRail and Wordpress, there’s a handy plugin to make things even simpler. Just install, connect, and go.

To get your calls recorded in Analytics, you’ll just need to enable that option from your call tracking service. With CallRail you simply enable the integration, add your domain, and calls will be sent to your Analytics account as Events. Just like with your form submissions, you can add these events as a goal. Usually it makes sense to add a single goal called “Phone Calls” and set your event conditions according to the output from your call tracking service. If you’re using CallRail, it will look like this:

Google Search Console

It’s easy to forget to set up Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools), because most of the time it plays a backseat role in your digital marketing measurement. But miss it, and you’ll forego some fundamental technical SEO basics (country setting, XML sitemaps, robots.txt verification, crawl reports, etc.), and you’ll miss out on some handy keyword click data in the Search Analytics section. Search Console data can also be indispensable for diagnosing penalties and other problems down the road, should they ever pop up.

Make sure to connect your Search Console with your Analytics property, as well as your Adwords account.

With all the basics of your tracking setup in place, the next step is to bring your paid advertising data into the mix.

Google Adwords

Adwords is probably the single most convincing reason to get proper tracking in place. Without it, you can spend a lot of money on clicks without really knowing what you get out of it. Conversion data in Adwords is also absolutely critical in making informed optimizations to your campaign settings, ad text, keywords, and so on.

If you’d like some more of my rantings on conversions in Adwords and some other ways to get more out of your campaigns, check out this recent article :)

Getting your data flowing in all the right directions is simple, but often overlooked.

Linking with Analytics

First, make sure your Adwords and Analytics accounts are linked. Always make sure you have auto-tagging enabled on your Adwords account. Now all your Adwords data will show up in the Acquisition > Adwords area of Analytics. This is a good time to double-check that you have the currency correctly set in Analytics (Admin > View Settings); otherwise, your Adwords spend will be converted to the currency set in Analytics and record the wrong dollar values (and you can’t change data that’s already been imported).

Next, you’ll want to get those call and form conversions from Analytics into Adwords.

Importing conversions in Adwords

Some Adwords management companies/consultants might disagree, but I strongly advocate an Analytics-first approach to conversion tracking. You can get call and form conversions pulled directly into Adwords by installing a tracking code on your site. But don’t.

Instead, make sure all your conversions are set up as goals in Analytics, and then import them into Adwords. This allows Analytics to act as your one-stop-shop for reviewing your conversion data, while providing all the same access to that data inside Adwords.

Call extensions & call-only ads

This can throw some folks off. You will want to track call extensions natively within Adwords. These conversions are set up automatically when you create a call extension in Adwords and elect to use a Google call forwarding number with the default settings.

Don’t worry though, you can still get these conversions tracked in Analytics if you want to (I could make an argument either for or against). Simply create a single “offline” tracking number in your call tracking platform, and use that number as the destination for the Google forwarding number.

This also helps counteract one of the oddities of Google’s call forwarding system. Google will actually only start showing the forwarding number on desktop ads after they have received a certain (seemingly arbitrary) minimum number of clicks per week. As a result, some calls are tracked and some aren’t — especially on smaller campaigns. With this little trick, Analytics will show all the calls originating from your ads — not just ones that take place once you’ve paid Google enough each week.

Adwords might give you a hard time for using a number in your call extensions that isn’t on your website. If you encounter issues with getting your number verified for use as a call extension, just make sure you have linked your Search Console to your Adwords account (as indicated above).

Now you’ve got Analytics and Adwords all synced up, and your tracking regimen is looking pretty gnarly! There are a few other cool tools you can use to take full advantage of your sweet setup.

Google Tag Manager

If you’re finding yourself putting a lot of code snippets on your site (web chat, Analytics, call tracking, Adwords, Facebook Pixels, etc), Google Tag Manager is a fantastic tool for managing them all from one spot. You can also do all sorts of advanced slicing and dicing.

GTM is basically a container that you put all your snippets in, and then you put a single GTM snippet on your site. Once installed, you never need to go back to your site’s code to make changes to your snippets. You can manage them all from the GTM interface in a user-friendly, version-controlled environment.

Don’t bother if you just need Analytics on your site (and are using the CallRail plugin). But for more robust needs, it’s well worth considering for its sheer power and simplicity.

Here’s a great primer on making use of Google Tag Manager.

UTM tracking URLs & Google Campaign URL Builder

Once you’ve got conversion data occupying all your waking thoughts, you might want to take things a step further. Perhaps you want to track traffic and leads that come from an offline advertisement, a business card, an email signature, etc. You can build tracking URLs that include UTM parameters (campaign, source, and medium), so that when visitors come to your site from a certain place, you can tell where that place was!

Once you know how to build these URLs, you don’t really need a tool, but Google’s Campaign URL Builder makes quick enough work of it that it’s bound to earn a spot in your browser’s bookmarks bar.

Pro tip: Use a tracking URL on your Google My Business listing to help distinguish traffic/conversions coming in from your listing vs traffic coming in from the organic search results. I’d recommend using:

Source: google
Medium: organic
Campaign name: gmb-listing (or something)

This way your GMB traffic still shows up in Analytics as normal organic traffic, but you can drill down to the gmb-listing campaign to see its specific performance.

Bonus pro tip: Use a vanity domain or a short URL on print materials or offline ads, and point it to a tracking URL to measure their performance in Analytics.

Rank tracking

Whaaat? Rank tracking is a dirty word to conversion tracking purists, isn’t it?

Nah. It’s true that rank tracking is a poor primary metric for your digital marketing efforts, but it can be very helpful as a supplemental metric and for helping to diagnose changes in traffic, as Darren Shaw explored here.

For local businesses, we think our Local Rank Tracker is a pretty darn good tool for the job.

Google My Business Insights

Your GMB listing is a foundational piece of your local SEO infrastructure, and GMB Insights offer some meaningful data (impressions and clicks for your listing, mostly). It also tries to tell you how many calls your listing generates for you, but it comes up a bit short since it relies on "tel:" links instead of tracking numbers. It will tell you how many people clicked on your phone number, but not how many actually made the call. It also won’t give you any insights into calls coming from desktop users.

There’s a great workaround though! It just might freak you out a bit…

Fire up your call tracking platform once more, create an “offline” number, and use it as your “primary number” on your GMB listing. Don’t panic. You can preserve your NAP consistency by demoting your real local number to an “additional number” slot on your GMB listing.

I don’t consider this a necessary step, because you’re probably not pointing your paid clicks to your GMB listing. However, combined with a tracking URL pointing to your website, you can now fully measure the performance of Google My Business for your business!

Disclaimer: I believe that this method is totally safe, and I’m using it myself in several instances, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that it won’t impact your rankings. Whitespark is currently testing this out on a larger scale, and we’ll share our findings once they’re assembled!

Taking it all in

So now you’ve assembled a lean, mean tracking machine. You’re already feeling 10 years younger, and everyone pays attention when you enter the room. But what can you do with all this power?

Here are a few ways I like to soak up this beautiful data.

Pop into Analytics

Since we’ve centralized all our tracking in Analytics, we can answer pretty much any performance questions we have within a few simple clicks.

• How many calls and form fills did we get last month from our organic rankings?
• How does that compare to the month before? Last year?
• How many paid conversions are we getting? How much are we paying on average for them?
• Are we doing anything expensive that isn’t generating many leads?
• Does our Facebook page generate any leads on our website?

There are a billion and seven ways to look at your Analytics data, but I do most of my ogling from Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. Here you get a great overview of your traffic and conversions sliced up by channels (Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, etc). You can obviously adjust date ranges, compare to past date ranges, and view conversion metrics individually or as a whole. For me, this is Analytics home base.

Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium can be equally interesting, especially if you’ve made good use of tracking URLs.

Make some sweet SEO reports

I can populate almost my entire standard SEO client report from the Acquisition section of Analytics. Making conversions the star of the show really helps to keep clients engaged in their monthly reporting.

Google Analytics dashboards

Google’s Dashboards inside Analytics provide a great way to put the most important metrics together on a single screen. They’re easy to use, but I’ve always found them a bit limiting. Fortunately for data junkies, Google has recently released its next generation data visualization product...

Google Data Studio

This is pretty awesome. It’s very flexible, powerful, and user-friendly. I’d recommend skipping the Analytics Dashboards and going straight to Data Studio.

It will allow to you to beautifully dashboard-ify your data from Analytics, Adwords, Youtube, DoubleClick, and even custom databases or spreadsheets. All the data is “live” and dynamic. Users can even change data sources and date ranges on the fly! Bosses love it, clients love it, and marketers love it… provided everything is performing really well ;)

Supermetrics

If you want to get really fancy, and build your own fully custom dashboard, develop some truly bespoke analysis tools, or automate your reporting regimen, check out Supermetrics. It allows you to pull data from just about any source into Google Sheets or Excel. From there, your only limitation is your mastery of spreadsheet-fu and your imagination.

TL;DR

So that’s a lot of stuff. If you’d like to skip the more nuanced explanations, pro tips, and bad jokes, here’s the gist in point form:

• Tracking your digital marketing is super important.
• Don’t just track traffic. Tracking conversions is critical.
• Use Google Analytics. Don’t let your agency use their own account.
• Set up goals for every type of lead (forms, calls, chats, bookings, etc).
• Track forms with destinations (thank you pages) or events.
• Track your calls, probably using CallRail.
• Use "number per source" if you have a huge volume of traffic; otherwise, use number pools (AKA keyword pools). Pools are better.
• Set up Search Console and link it to your Analytics and Adwords accounts.
• Link Adwords with Analytics.
• Import Analytics conversions into Adwords instead of using Adwords’ native conversion tracking snippet...
• ...except for call extensions. Track those within and Adwords AND in Analytics (if you want to) by using an “offline” tracking number as the destination for your Google forwarding numbers.
• Use Google Tag Manager if you have more than a couple third-party scripts to run on your site (web chat, Analytics, call tracking, Facebook Pixels etc).
• Use Google Campaign URL Builder to create tracked URLs for tracking visitors from various sources like offline advertising, email signatures, etc.
• Use a tracked URL on your GMB listing.
• Use a tracked number as your “primary” GMB listing number (if you do this, make sure you put your real local number as a “secondary” number). Note: We think this is safe, but we don’t have quite enough data to say so unequivocally. YMMV.
• Use vanity domains or short URLs that point to your tracking URLs to put on print materials, TV spots, etc.
• Track your rankings like a boss.
• Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels is your new Analytics home base.
• Consider making some Google Analytics Dashboards… and then don’t, because Google Data Studio is way better. So use that.
• Check out Supermetrics if you want to get really hardcore.
• Don’t let your dreams be dreams.

If you’re new to tracking your digital marketing, I hope this provides a helpful starting point, and helps cut through some of the confusion and uncertainty about how to best get set up.

If you’re a conversion veteran, I hope there are a few new or alternative ideas here that you can use to improve your setup.

If you’ve got anything to add, correct, or ask, leave a comment!

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How and Why to Do a Mobile/Desktop Parity Audit

Posted by Everett

Google still ranks webpages based on the content, code, and links they find with a desktop crawler. They’re working to update this old-school approach in favor of what their mobile crawlers find instead. Although the rollout will probably happen in phases over time, I’m calling the day this change goes live worldwide “D-day” in the post below. Mobilegeddon was already taken.

You don’t want to be in a situation on D-day where your mobile site has broken meta tags, unoptimized titles and headers, missing content, or is serving the wrong HTTP status code. This post will help you prepare so you can sleep well between now then.

What is a mobile parity audit?

When two or more versions of a website are available on the same URL, a "parity audit" will crawl each version, compare the differences, and look for errors.

When do you need one?

You should do a parity audit if content is added, removed, hidden, or changed between devices without sending the user to a new URL.

This type of analysis is also useful for mobile sites on a separate URL, but that's another post.

What will it tell you? How will it help?

Is the mobile version of the website "optimized" and crawlable? Are all of the header response codes and tags set up properly, and in the same way, on both versions? Is important textual content missing from, or hidden, on the mobile version?

Why parity audits could save your butt

The last thing you want to do is scramble to diagnose a major traffic drop on D-day when things go mobile-first. Even if you don’t change anything now, cataloging the differences between site versions will help diagnose issues if/when the time comes.

It may also help you improve rankings right now.

I know an excellent team of SEOs for a major brand who, for severals months, had missed the fact that the entire mobile site (millions of pages) had title tags that all read the same: "BrandName - Mobile Site." They found this error and contacted us to take a more complete look at the differences between the two sites. Here are some other things we found:

1. One page type on the mobile site had an error at the template level that was causing rel=canonical tags to break, but only on mobile, and in a way that gave Google conflicting instructions, depending on whether they rendered the page as mobile or desktop. The same thing could have happened with any tag on the page, including robots meta directives. It could also happen with HTTP header responses.
2. The mobile site has fewer than half the amount of navigation links in the footer. How will this affect the flow of PageRank to key pages in a mobile-first world?
3. The mobile site has far more related products on product detail pages. Again, how will this affect the flow of PageRank, or even crawl depth, when Google goes mobile-first?
4. Important content was hidden on the mobile version. Google says this is OK as long as the user can drop down or tab over to read the content. But in this case, there was no way to do that. The content was in the code but hidden to mobile viewers, and there was no way of making it visible.

How to get started with a mobile/desktop parity audit

It sounds complicated, but really it boils down to a few simple steps:

1. Crawl the site as a desktop user.
2. Crawl the site as a mobile user.
3. Combine the outputs (e.g. Mobile Title1, Desktop Title1, Mobile Canonical1, Desktop Canonical1)
4. Look for errors and differences.

Screaming Frog provides the option to crawl the site as the Googlebot Mobile user-agent with a smartphone device. You may or may not need to render JavaScript.

You can run two crawls (mobile and desktop) with DeepCrawl as well. However, reports like "Mobile Word Count Mismatch" do not currently work on dynamic sites, even after two crawls.

The hack to get at the data you want is the same as with Screaming Frog: namely, running two crawls, exporting two reports, and using Vlookups in Excel to compare the columns side-by-side with URL being the unique identifier.

Here's a simplified example using an export from DeepCrawl:

As you can see in the screenshot above, blog category pages, like /category/cro/, are bigly different between devices types, not just in how they appear, but also in what code and content gets delivered and rendered as source code. The bigliest difference is that post teasers disappear on mobile, which accounts for the word count disparity.

Word count is only one data point. You would want to look at many different things, discussed below, when performing a mobile/desktop parity audit.

For now, there does NOT appear to be an SEO tool on the market that crawls a dynamic site as both a desktop and mobile crawler, and then generates helpful reports about the differences between them.

But there's hope!

Our industry toolmakers are hot on the trail, and at this point I'd expect features to release in time for D-day.

Deep Crawl

We are working on Changed Metrics reports, which will automatically show you pages where the titles and descriptions have changed between crawls. This would serve to identify differences on dynamic sites when the user agent is changed. But for now, this can be done manually by downloading and merging the data from the two crawls and calculating the differences.

Moz Pro

Dr. Pete says they've talked about comparing desktop and mobile rankings to look for warning signs so Moz could alert customers of any potential issues. This would be a very helpful feature to augment the other analysis of on-page differences.

Sitebulb

When you select "mobile-friendly," Sitebulb is already crawling the whole site first, then choosing a sample of (up to) 100 pages, and then recrawling these with the JavaScript rendering crawler. This is what produces their "mobile-friendly" report.

They're thinking about doing the same to run these parity audit reports (mobile/desktop difference checker), which would be a big step forward for us SEOs. Because most of these disparity issues happen at the template/page type level, taking URLs from different crawl depths and sections of the site should allow this tool to alert SEOs of potential mismatches between content and page elements on those two versions of the single URL.

Screaming Frog

Aside from the oversensitive hash values, SF has no major advantage over DeepCrawl at the moment. In fact, DeepCrawl has some mobile difference finding features that, if they were to work on dynamic sites, would be leaps and bounds ahead of SF.

That said, the process shared below uses Screaming Frog because it's what I'm most familiar with.

Customizing the diff finders

One of my SEO heroes, David Sottimano, whipped out a customization of John Resig's Javascript Diff Algorithm to help automate some of the hard work involved in these desktop/mobile parity audits.

You can make a copy of it here. Follow the instructions in the Readme tab. Note: This is a work in progress and is an experimental tool, so have fun!

On using the hash values to quickly find disparities between crawls

As Lunametrics puts it in their excellent guide to Screaming Frog Tab Definitions, the hash value "is a count of the number of URLs that potentially contain duplicate content. This count filters for all duplicate pages found via the hash value. If two hash values match, the pages are exactly the same in content."

I tried doing this, but found it didn't work very well for my needs for two reasons: because I was unable to adjust the sensitivity, and if even only one minor client-side JavaScript element changed, the page would get a new hash value.

When I asked DeepCrawl about it, I found out why:

The problem with using a hash to flag different content is that a lot of pages would be flagged as different, when they are essentially the same. A hash will be completely different if a single character changes.

Mobile parity audit process using Screaming Frog and Excel

Run two crawls

First, run two separate crawls. Settings for each are below. If you don't see a window or setting option, assume it was set to default.

1. Crawl 1: Desktop settings

Configurations ---> Spider

Your settings may vary (no pun intended), but here I was just looking for very basic things and wanted a fast crawl.

Configurations ---> HTTP Header ---> User-Agent

2. Start the first crawl

3. Save the crawl and run the exports

When finished, save it as desktop-crawl.seospider and run the Export All URLs report (big Export button, top left). Save the export as desktop-internal_all.csv.

4. Update user-agent settings for the second crawl

Hit the "Clear" button in Screaming Frog and change the User-Agent configuration to the following:

5. Start the second crawl

6. Save the crawl and run the exports

When finished, save it as mobile-crawl.seospider and run the Export All URLs report. Save the export as mobile-internal_all.csv.

Combine the exports in Excel

Import each CSV into a separate tab within a new Excel spreadsheet.

Create another tab and bring in the URLs from the Address column of each crawl tab. De-duplicate them.

Use Vlookups or other methods to pull in the respective data from each of the other tabs.

You'll end up with something like this:

A tab with a single row per URL, but with mobile and desktop columns for each datapoint. It helps with analysis if you can conditionally format/highlight instances where the desktop and mobile data does not match.

Errors & differences to look out for

Does the mobile site offer similar navigation options?

Believe it or not, you can usually fit the same amounts of navigation links onto a mobile site without ruining the user experience when done right. Here are a ton of examples of major retail brands approaching it in different ways, from mega navs to sliders and hamburger menus (side note: now I’m craving White Castle).

HTTP Vary User-Agent response headers

This is one of those things that seems like it could produce more caching problems and headaches than solutions, but Google says to use it in cases where the content changes significantly between mobile and desktop versions on the same URL. My advice is to avoid using Vary User-Agent if the variations between versions of the site are minimal (e.g. simplified navigation, optimized images, streamlined layout, a few bells and whistles hidden). Only use it if entire paragraphs of content and other important elements are removed.

Internal linking disparities

If your desktop site has twenty footer links to top-selling products and categories using optimized anchor text, and your mobile site has five links going to pages like “Contact Us” and “About” it would be good to document this so you know what to test should rankings drop after a mobile-first ranking algorithm shift.

Meta tags and directives

Do things like title tags, meta descriptions, robots meta directives, rel=canonical tags, and rel=next/prev tags match on both versions of the URL? Discovering this stuff now could avert disaster down the line.

Content length

There is no magic formula to how much content you should provide to each type of device, just as there is no magic formula for how much content you need to rank highly on Google (because all other things are never equal).

Imagine it's eight months from now and you're trying to diagnose what specific reasons are behind a post-mobile-first algorithm update traffic drop. Do the pages with less content on mobile correlate with lower rankings? Maybe. Maybe not, but I'd want to check on it.

Speed

Chances are, your mobile site will load faster. However, if this is not the case you definitely need to look into the issue. Lots of big client-side JavaScript changes could be the culprit.

Rendering

Sometimes JavaScript and other files necessary for the mobile render may be different from those needed for the desktop render. Thus, it's possible that one set of resources may be blocked in the robots.txt file while another is not. Make sure both versions fully render without any blocked resources.

Here’s what you need to do to be ready for a mobile-first world:

1. Know IF there are major content, tag, and linking differences between the mobile and desktop versions of the site.
2. If so, know WHAT those differences are, and spend time thinking about how that might affect rankings if mobile was the only version Google ever looked at.
3. Fix any differences that need to be fixed immediately, such as broken or missing rel=canonicals, robots meta, or title tags.
4. Keep everything else in mind for things to test after mobile-first arrives. If rankings drop, at least you’ll be prepared.

And here are some tools & links to help you get there:

• Mobile/Desktop Mismatch Reports by DeepCrawl
• Mobile-First Index Prep Tool by Merkle (Build on this please Merkle! Great start, but we need more!)
• Mobile-First Indexing, Google Webmaster Central
• Varvy Mobile Friendliness Tool

I suspect it won't be long before this type of audit is made unnecessary because we'll ONLY be worried about the mobile site. Until then, please comment below to share which differences you found, and how you chose to address them so we can all learn from each other.

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