When do you move on to another keyword?

In this week’s Office Hours we spent a lot of time talking strategically: what do you do after you “rank” for a phrase? What comes next?

Before we got into our core topic, someone asked another question about on-page optimization:

Is it a problem to have multiple h1 tags on a website?

The short answer: Google doesn’t care. This used to be a pet peeve of mine until I read that Google simply doesn’t care about multiple h1s as an on-page ranking factor. However, it’s important to note the reason for h-tags: to semantically organize the content on your page. Think of your h-tags as an outline that organizes your content.

When you’re showing up for a query, should you keep working on it or start on something new?

Congratulations! You “rank” well for something. What should you do now? First of all, remember that ranking doesn’t necessarily mean success. You rank for a lot of things that your customers never search for- which can never bring you new customers. Be careful about putting too much weight into ranking.

However, this should remind you that there are many other things for which your customers could search to find you. It’s time to start putting effort into those other things- and not just focus on “ranking” for one phrase.

If you follow the process, you’ll make sure to distribute your effort among several key phrases (discovered by keyword research) for which your customers might find you. This includes returning to previously optimized pages, now and then, to see if you can improve them further.

How should you present your secondary Call-to-Action?

While every website has a main call-to-action (“contact us” or “buy” for instance) it’s a great idea to have a secondary call-to-action. When you do this the question becomes: how do you present this without distracting from your main call-to-action. This is all part of conversion rate optimization. In this week’s office hours we work through a live example from one of our member’s websites.

Can you re-publish an article on other websites?

Creating content is hard. This makes it tempting to recycle your content on other websites. This isn’t the best idea. Not only will this not help you but you will not be helping them- since your content is on other websites as well. It would be better to take time and produce unique content on each website.

Transcript

You ranked for a keyword. What’s next?
So, you ranked at the top of the Google Search results for a keyword, and you feel like that’s the final authority-related SEO goal? Not so fast. We used this Office Hours session to talk about the other options you can turn to to keep increasing your authority.

David: Hello and welcome to Office Hours. Today is Wednesday, the 10th of March. I literally just looked at my watch to find out what day it was, and it totally scaped me, but it is the 10th, and we’re here to talk about SEO and all kinds of stuff. We’ve already covered the important topic, which is what he had for lunch, and now we’re on to the less important topic, which is SEO.
I asked Tricia to kind of give us a report. She got to attend a quick meet-up today about Google Data Studio, and I asked her to give us a brief synopsis of that.
Tricia: Yes. Sure. Google Data Studio is basically a reporting tool that you can connect… I was using it today to connect with Google Search Console. There are so many of the same. So, Google Data Studio is the platform, and you connect it to your Google Search Console. You can connect it to others, but that’s what we were focusing on. Once that video is up, I’ll post the link for you guys because there’s also a base report that you can copy and use yourself, which is what he is basically showing us. The neatest thing is you basically can go into that report and edit some of the search terms so it would be for your city and your keyword, and then you can look and use that. It gives the same information as you would get from Google Search Console. Still, it’s a little bit in a better and clearer way so you can quickly look at it and say, “This is something… this is a term that I’m doing good for, but if I do another blog or something, maybe I’ll move up.” So, that’s kind of the key. It’s good for content. You would go and put your things, your city, and your keyword in and look at things over the last year, and then you could say, “Oh, ok.” He said anything less than a 20 would mean that you were probably on the first page or so and that you could do a blog post and bump yourself up. I think it’s really good and kind of an easy way to see, “Oh, this is something that I need to focus on to boost myself up.” It was very helpful and very good.
David: Great. I look forward to seeing it. Thank you for sharing.
So, now we’re going to go ahead and jump to… You had the first question of the day. Do you recall your question?
Tricia: Sure. It’s about the h1 tags. I think I might know the answer to my question now, but I’ll make sure that I’m right. Basically, in my website, sometimes, when you look at it on mobile versus desktop, it obviously looks different. I had to change some of the hero images. Typically my hero images have the h1 tag on the h1 wording on it, the heading, so my h1 is actually twice when I do that. Still, you only see it once because you’ve got it once for desktop. Then the other one gets served up to the mobile viewers, so when I run a report, it’ll say, “You have two h1s on this page, and you really should only have one.” So, my thought is: in Google’s searching mobile view, they are not seeing the desktop view, so that’s ok and vice versa?
David: I used to have a really big pet peeve about multiple h1s on a page, and then I realized that Google literally says they don’t care.
Tricia: Ok.
David: So, then it just became a pet peeve, not an SEO issue.
Tricia: Ok. I had kind of heard of it as an SEO issue, so it’s more… ok.
David: For a while, it was like a rumor. I think, from the best practice perspective, if you can do one… because the real issue is these “htags” as a way of organizing the content of your site in almost like an outline… If you took an outline of your side, the htag should follow it, so: one h1, which is your main summary, and it should be unique to each page, ideally. That’s hard to do. Most themes don’t do that. Most themes will put the brand as the h1, which is unfortunate. It’s almost not worth rebuilding a theme, so if I build a theme from scratch, I’ll have them put the h1 as whatever is unique to that page, not the company name. Then, h2s should be the secondary headlines; h3s should go under h2s. Old school designers will sometimes think of it and say, “Oh, I want a really big text, so I’ll use the h1” or “I want a smaller text, I’ll use the h4.” That’s not how it’s supposed to be. They should be semantically connected.
Tricia: Also, for accessibility. That’s a big thing for accessibility.
David: Accessibility and SEO go really well together. In fact, I’ve heard some people claim that accessibility is a new SEO factor. Number one: it’s not new. Number two: it’s just because accessible sites are well SEOed. It’s not that you get an advantage from accessibility. It’s that if you do accessibility things, you’ve done really good SEO on your page.
I wouldn’t worry about it. If it’s done responsibly, I would argue that the website does not need to have two h1s, but I wouldn’t use a theme because it happened to have two h1s. I wouldn’t really worry about it. I really wouldn’t worry about it. I think it’s going to be fine.
I’ve seen people try to say, “I’m going to h1 the entire page and then use style sheets to make it look like it’s not one h1.
Tricia: Oh, no.
David: That’s stupid. That’s just silly.
But yeah, this one would be totally fine. I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
Tricia: Ok.
David: Good question.
Alright, Ali, you had a question about finding some authority stuff and what to do with it.
Ali: Something we’ve talked about in past office hours is that our authority on generalization in our field is very high. We have a blog that consistently gets over 20 visits a week. Last week, after we talked about Search Console a little bit, I looked into Search Console, at our ranking, for those related terms. So, consistently, for generalization-related searches, we are the number one, or in the top 3 ranked positions, so we have been producing more content based on that. Still, at this point, now I’m wondering… We already ranked top for that, so we are then considered an authority on the subject. Is it worth dedicating more time to it if we’re already ranked highly for that particular subject? Or is it kind of like, “Ok, you did what you could do with that topic, move on to something different”?
David: Ok. There’s a lot packed into this question, and I think it’s a great question because I think it should give us some clarity. So, number one is a good job.
Ali: Thank you.
David: This is great. We all wish we had this. This is great. Let’s not avoid an opportunity to celebrate. This is really good news. Yay! You’re consistently showing on the top of the search results. Number 2: I kind of caution you because just because you rank at the top of the search results doesn’t really make you an authority. It makes you an authority in terms of the people who are making those particular search queries. Google consistently showing you up top is great. Still, if that’s not producing new clients, customers, then we could be really engaged in a real vanity metric here. “Oh, aren’t we cool? We’re number one.” If it’s not producing new customers, then having a rank, even a really high rank, might not be really beneficial. What we really want to focus on is ranking for things that our customers are searching for. This is where we can cut when SEO goes. I never report on rank, and I never report to mi client’s rank and barely look at it because it can be a real distraction from producing new customers.
Ali: This particular topic is most likely not something our customer base is searching for a lot. It’s more professionals. It’s something that would lead to our authority in that sense, like in a professional sense, which is also one of our goals. If I had to make an educated guess, I would say most people searching for these terms are not becoming customers. It’s most likely professionals in the field that are either already BCPAs, or they’re preparing to take their exam. They are looking for material and things like that. That is another reason I thought we should keep dedicating time to producing additional content on this topic. If we’ve already kind of shown success in what we have published?” At the end of the day, I don’t think there is a lot of procurement happening from that.
David: This goes back to: What is the goal? What is the goal of this site for the business? And there may be several goals. You are going to kind of get into this as we do the Google Analytics thing. We’re going to start to ask ourselves, “What’s the ultimate goal of our site?” and once we know the goal, then we can reverse into what we’re supposed to be doing. Yeah, a goal is establishing yourselves and your practice as an authority in your space. From that, you get the respect that you need, people turn to you; there’s a lot of great advantages from that, and that’s a wonderful goal to have, but let’s not end with that goal. Ultimately, the goal is going to be to have new clients and those new clients signing up.
Ali: Yeah. I would say the main motivator in getting new clients is increasing our authority because there are a ton of providers to choose from. Because we’re also an out-of-network provider, we are often more expensive than an in-network provider, so the way we justify that… and in our opinion rightly so, is that we are better and that’s why, so it’s like… it kind of goes hand in hand in that “Yes, we want a customer and that’s the ultimate goal” but also showing that authority and showing professional material that may be a parent is not going to really understand, but sees that we’re producing and sees that it’s there. Not only do we have the education to produce this content, but we’re also working with our employees for continuing education and promoting within, and those kinds of things. Those are all motivators for our customer base, so it sounds easy to say, “The goal is more customers.” Still, it is really… especially because it’s more of a health care field. It’s a very complex way to procure those customers.
David: Right. If we think about the big picture, someone doesn’t always just come to your site and become a customer. They may be doing research in the area. They may learn about different options and come to your site several different times. Eventually, they will come and become a customer. Still, in that process, they might be doing other researches and find these other things “Oh, I keep seeing these people come up” or “Oh, these people clearly are the experts in this particular area. That really makes me want to start…” It is more complicated than that. You’re thinking about it right, so I’m going to push back to the process. So, the process starts with measurement analytics and keyword research to understand how our potential customers are searching for our services. Once we understand how our customers are searching for our services, we go to the process of keyword research for a specific page. We’re really delving into how customers are looking for a particular service that we offer. Then, in that, there’s a process of optimizing the page for the services. Part of that process is to literally go back to that every 2 or 3 months to see things like, “Are we showing up? What phrases are we showing up for? What can we further do to optimize that page?” So, I think what I’m saying is kind of what you are saying too, which is, “It’s great that those were showing up for these things. Let’s keep our eyes on that, but let’s not focus and obsess on that thing. We’re not going to the other opportunities for which we could show up.”
Ali: Yeah, because part of our challenge too, with the keyword research… When customers are looking for a provider, their search terms vary very little. It’s like “ABA provider New Jersey” whatever. So, there’s really not a way for us to optimize that more. Hence, our pivot on that is, “We need to become an authority in other ways to then increase the site’s overall rank and searchability and whatnot.” Because it’s not like we could just go through the website and just say “ABA Provider, New Jersey” over and over again. You know what I mean? That’s an interesting thing too. In retrospect, looking back to when I first did the keyword research to now and seeing… how do we increase that rank without being able to directly optimize for the exact search terms that people are using?
David: Hopefully, during the keyword research process, you identified several ideas, so one of them might be ABA therapy in New Jersey, but another one may be for adults, another one might be for children, and those are going to be totally different pages, and they are going to have different topics, and you are going to say different things on those things on the pages, so, to look for those additional opportunities for… For example, services for school kids are one of the things that you guys offer as well. Make sure that you have a focus page. You’re going back to that every couple of months and saying, “How is this page performing? Is there something more we could do about this page? Is it doing really well? Great; we’re going to keep an eye on it.” because sometimes these things will slip, or a competitor will slip in before you or whatever. So, following the process means saying, “We’ve identified which pages we’re focusing on and we’re going back to them every couple of months and saying “Do we now understand better how customers might be searching for us?” If they are, can we improve this page even further?” and just kind of keep going back over and over again.
Ali: Maybe that’s something that we could do in a future Office Hours: Kind of revisit that keyword research and how to optimize it with a greater overall understanding of SEO, because I think, when I first did it, obviously… I think we both know I haven’t done it since I first did it, so…
David: That’s why that spreadsheet exists. Do you remember the spreadsheet?
Ali: Yeah.
David: The spreadsheet exists to say, “Every 6 months, you should redo the keyword research.”
Ali: I do have that spreadsheet saved in my Drive. Do I visit it a lot…?
David: I know…
I put that in there, honestly, because sometimes I won’t go back to do it even though I know it’s really valuable to do it again. It’s a reminder for me to say, “You know what? Don’t just do the keyword research once and walk away.”
Ali: At least my personal style, I guess, is: when I understand something more completely, then I’m better. When I did it the first time, and that’s only a piece of the puzzle, I don’t know how well I did it. In contrast, now I have a better understanding of SEO as a whole, and marketing, and all these different things, so I think it would be more beneficial to go back and revisit that and kind of get into the nitty-gritty as to the why and the how, instead of the surface of doing it.
David: I like to do it again and again, not just because I’m learning about SEO every day as well, and not just because Google changes the rules all the time, but simply because I understand my clients a little bit better every day too, and 6 months ago, I understood several of my clients in a totally different way than I know them now, so to take that time and to say “Oh, I thought they meant this, but don’t think they mean that, I think they mean this instead.” Or “Oh, here’s a phrase that I didn’t even think someone could search for.” I would recommend… The thing with the spreadsheet, which kind of guides you through the processes, is that it’s designed in a way in which you can literally go back to it and pick it up at any time. I would just go back and pick it up, sort it in order, sort it by the last time you did it, and do it again, and just see, “Oh, I can do this again.” And follow that. Just start over, and that’s ok, because sometimes…The key to all this working is just being organized and making sure you know what to do. It’s really easy to be overwhelmed with all the things we could be doing for SEO or even marketing our site. Still, the plan is really organized to help you say, “Ok, this is what I should do next,” and keep you focused.
I think we’re thinking about the same thing. Go back. It would be very beneficial. And then, make sure you’re not overlooking some of the other service areas that we can provide and don’t just focus on ABA, for instance. Think about other ways that people might think about it. We’ll use the data. After all, we have more data because we have all these tools now that we’ve been running, like Search Console, for months. That’s been accumulating… in almost a year for you. I mean, accumulating all this wonderful data… Let’s use it, and we might have some better decisions.
I don’t know if this even answers your question.
Ali: Yeah, it does. I mean, it means: put the book down on that topic and move on, then. Exploring other ways.
David: Yeah, go back and keep an eye on it too. I think it’s ok to say, “Hey, we’ve achieved a pinnacle on this one. We’re going to keep an eye on it because we don’t want it to slip. We’re not going to neglect it. We’re going to definitely put our efforts into other efforts too.”
Cool.
Alright, Tricia, you had another question for us. Let me see what it says. Oh, it’s about tag manager.
Tricia: I do. Yes. Google Tag Manager. So, I have installed the Google Site Kit plug-in on my website. When I did that, it said “Connect to Google Search Console,” so I did that. I have my Google Tag Manager account, but now I’m like, how does Google… because Google Site Kit connected to Google Search Console, how… and I don’t know if I connected to something else. Still, I didn’t see a Google Tag Manager. Let me see.
David: It’s a little bit buried-inside kit.
Tricia: Ok. So, it is an inside kit.
David: So, it is an inside kit. Let me ask you this question first: have you used Tag Manager previously?
Tricia: I have not used it previously. This is new for me. That’s why I’m like…
David: Do you want to share your screen? Would you be willing to do that?
Tricia: Yeah.
David: Let me give you permission to do that.
Tricia: I apologize ahead of time. I’m using Edge, which I do not like because, on my new computer, Chrome won’t let me log in to my WordPress site and edit it. There’s some extension that is blocking it.
David: Really?
Tricia: And I’ve got to figure it out, but I just haven’t had time to.
Ok. I’ve got Google Search Console…
David: Ok. Go to settings under Site Kit. Ok, then to Connect More Services.
Tricia: Let me minimize my little thing because our images are in my way.
So, I go to Connect More Services… There it is!
David: Alright. We’re going to follow this process here. This is going to give you access to Tag Manager. It’s going to pull the Tag Manager account… If you already got one credit for…
Tricia: I set one up. Yes.
David: There you go. Is that the right one?
Tricia: Yeah.
David: Done.
Tricia: So, I have Search Console, I don’t have ads, I have Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, and Tag Manager.
David: Click the downward-facing arrow next to analytics for a second. Alright. Close that. You can close that, I think. Now, go and open up Tag Manager. I thought there was a way to actually tell Site Kit to use Tag Manager to serve your analytics, and I might be wrong. Go to the top of the screen, in Admin Settings. There you go.
Tricia: So, I guess the only other two things I could do with Site Kit are Adsense and Optimize.
David: I wouldn’t do Adsense unless you’re definitely going to sell ads.
Tricia. I’m not connecting either one of these unless there’s a reason to.
David: And Optimize might be something you would consider later because it’s a really good A/B system where you can test out things like “What color of button works better” or “What if I made this change to my site? Would I get more conversions or people to my blog or whatever?” That is a really good system, but you’ve connected all the major services, so…
Tricia: So, Google Tag Manager… So, I set up that account… I don’t know what I really did with it, but I’ll probably put my Facebook pixel in there. Still, because I have Analytics connected here, I don’t put Analytics in it?
David: Exactly.
Tricia: Because it would get it twice, right?
David. Right. Exactly.
Tricia: Ok. Let me make a note of that.
David: So, Tag Manager… the analogy I’d like to use is a bucket. A bucket you’ve put on your website that can hold different tracking codes, like your Facebook Pixel, Linkedin Pixel… Sometimes I use a system called Hot Jar and throw it in the Tag Manager. What was another system I used? Oh, Active Campaign. The tracking pixel gets served through Tag Manager, Call Rail serves it through Tag Manager. In that way, if I turn on and off Hot Jar and turn it off on Tag Manager, I have to change the code and have to break the code of my site. That just solves a lot of problems, and adding your Google Analytics and/or your Tag Manager using the Site Kit plug-in on your WordPress site just solves so many, many problems. It used to be… We’d have to modify the header.php code and add it in there, and then sometimes, when you’d update the site, it would break it and all that jazz.
Tricia: I did update my functions.php, but for something else. I can be dangerous when I work on that stuff. When I updated the functions.php code, it all worked fine, and then I worked all day Saturday on my new site, and then I touched WooComerce and broke it and lost my Saturday work.
David: Do you use Child Themes when you make those changes?
Tricia: No. When I did the functions.php, I used the Child Speak theme, but I didn’t break it when I broke my site. I messed it up. That was nothing to do with functions.php. That was just simply WooCommerce. I clicked it and looked at the shop, and the whole thing went haywire, so I wasn’t even going into functions. It was crazy because I’m like, “Yeah, I can go into the functions.php and make changes.” but when I touched WooCommerce, everything went berserk.
David: I heard a rumor that Mr. Matt himself suggested that WordPress should never be used for e-commerce ever, which basically suggests that WooCommerce should never be used ever.
Tricia: What?
David: Because of WooCommerce’s pretty terrible system.
Tricia: Since that’s still up here… let me log out, and I’ll show you.
I do have my site, and I don’t have a shop. The only thing I use WooCommerce for is for a couple of things: “Google My Business Management,” “My virtual business cards” and “Citations,” so, for example, if you are going to go here and purchase that, you would click it, and then it just opens up the cart, so now obviously, if you view the cart, and then you go and click on it, you can get to the page, but I kind of hide it because I don’t like their pages, so I have WooCommerce, but it doesn’t look like WooCommerce would normally look like.
David: Sometimes, it is the best solution. You wouldn’t want to support an entire Shopify site just to do that.
Tricia: Yeah, exactly. Ok. I’ll stop sharing my screen. My new site is live. I’m going to be sharing soon on social media, one day this week. Tomorrow is Thursday. Wow. Probably tomorrow.
David: We all know that we don’t put as much time into them as we could because of all of our own sites. We all know how hard it is.
Tricia: It’s soft-launched now. It’s out there, but I haven’t really announced it. That’s because I’m fixing the tweaks to it. I would launch a client on a Sunday, get everything worked out right then and there.
David: How’s your new site coming, LaVonya?
LaVonya: It’s good.
David: Are you ready to release it to us yet?
LaVonya: Oh, it’s already up.
David: Oh!
LaVonya: It is already up, still LDJ Web Design. It’s up, but I’ll probably change the title of the opt-in I have. It says grab freebies, but then there’s a post I have tied to it that you can get if you sign up opt-in. I might change that.
Tricia: I’m actually having the same issue. On mine, I’m going to be changing what I call it, but I just can’t… What I think grabs attention will be too long for where I’m going to put it. I’m not happy with how I’m wording it, so I’m actually having that same bit of a question issue.
It looks nice.
David: Any other questions we can tackle today? We had 3 questions, and we’re done quickly. Otherwise, I’m going to ask you about Google Analytics.
Tricia: Huh? Google Analytics? That’s not for me to study until this weekend.
David: Oh, you’re waiting until this weekend. Ok.
Tricia: I can’t. I only am because my site just went live, and I now got to get back to business, so… But you can ask.
David: How’s everybody else? Is everybody else waiting for this weekend?
LaVonya: I started, but I don’t have any questions right now.
David: I started, and I actually thought it went a lot faster than I remember.
LaVonya: It’s a lot to read and the videos…
David: It is a lot to read. There’s a lot of good stuff, though.
Ali: It will surprise no one that I have not started yet, so…
It’s been a time over here.
David: Well, is there anything else we want to talk about today? I don’t know if you can hear the banging on the wall behind me.
Ali: I cannot.
David: Good. It’s really loud, and I can feel it in my spine.
Ali: I had to mute because someone was whining a little bit.
Tricia: That’s why I just had two 30:30 going in and out. He keeps scratching up the door to come in and scratching to go out.
Ali: This is not SEO-related, but he was left home for two and half hours yesterday and didn’t destroy anything.
David: Wow, that’s great.
Ali: So, then I took him to the dog park as a reward.
David: That’s very good.
Ali: I’m extremely happy.
Tricia: Mine. I’ve been walking every evening at 5 o’clock. I’ve been stopping right at 5:00, of course, because I’ve been so busy, I have been working a little bit after that, but 5:00 because it’s nice out. I go take moxie for a walk.
Ali: He sleeps standing up like that. If you were wondering, yes, that is Jeff Goldblum on that pillow. It’s one of those sequin reveal pillows, and it’s him in Jurassic Park when he is lying on the table.
David: I’ll leave you with that one. I’m not going to touch that one.
Ali: It’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever bought. It’s amazing. It was 10 dollars on Amazon. I mean… It’s like my most prized possession.
David: Wow.
Well, if we don’t have any additional questions, I’m going to give you extra time to go through Google Analytics.
Tricia: Now you want us to go through Google Analytics?
David: Yeah. I was going to shut down Office Hours early, so you have time for Google Analytics study, but if you have another question…
Tricia: Mine is more of a personal site question. Can I share my screen again?
David: Yeah.
Tricia: Sorry, y’all, dealing with not having Chrome is really making me…
Here is my little freebie, “Get the 5 biggest Google My Business Mistakes and how you can avoid them.” That’s here, but what I want to do is have a little link to it so people can see it. I’ll probably add it right here, a button because right now I have this, so what I’ll do is remove that and then move something over here, and I’ll probably make it purple, so it doesn’t quite… I don’t know. Anyway, I’m trying to figure it out… That’s a long thing for a button, and I feel like this isn’t enough for a button.
Any thoughts as a user?
David: LaVonya, you were going to say something?
LaVonya: I just want to say not everybody knows what GMB means.
Tricia: That’s one of the things that I do. You’ll notice that, on each page, I’ll have Google My Business and then have GMB there. Here I say “Google My Business,” and I’m thinking I was shortening it up there simply for space. Still, I’m thinking I probably need to spell it out, which will make it even bigger.
David: I’d be careful about using that very, very valuable real estate at the very top right of the website for your secondary call to action. Your main call to action is to book a call. That’s where, I presume, you make the biggest amount of money.
Tricia: That, I’m a little bit conflicted on because I go back and forth between it.
David: You could sacrifice “Contact” for “Book a call.”
LaVonya: Or she can move… or put it twice like it is on my website, but she can maybe move the opt-in up a little bit. I had mine at the very bottom, so I was like, “What if they are ready to…”
Tricia: That’s what the button is for. I was going to add the button here to then take them to where they fill out the information, so it would be like a button, and then it would say, “Ok, then you fill in your information.”
LaVonya: If you move that button-down, maybe, instead of having it… Then you can make it bigger or spell it all the way out. Yeah, move that button further, maybe under one of those… You see where that lady is? Under that or…
Tricia: Here?
LaVonya: Oh, no… Maybe between “Local Marketing and Search Engine Optimization” and those 2 pictures, if you want to keep it up there.
David: You don’t have to put what you are receiving in the text of the button. You could have a sub-headline: “5 Google My Business mistakes you should avoid,” and the button could be “Get them now.” So, the button is the call of action, the headline describes what you are getting at the call of action. That will allow you to say a lot more because I agree that “Avoid these 5 GMB mistakes” … I don’t know what that means. Most people don’t know what that means.
Tricia: Yeah. I agree.
Ali: Like “Learn more here” “Get more info” I do that a lot in blogs, too, especially if I’m linking with something else.
Tricia: This specification is for my freebie to get their email addresses.
LaVonya: Would she leave it there? Or would she just move it and then have the subline somewhere else?
David: I would move “Book a call” to the upper right-hand corner. Number one: because that is the bigger call to action. It’s also the broader call to action. I don’t know if I need you, Tricia. I want that main call to action in the… The convention says, “Upper right-hand corner is how to do that.” You can take off contact and say, “Book a call,” and you’ll have space for that and move that up there.
LaVonya: Yeah. That’s what I did.
David: And then, your secondary call to action, which is “Here are these big mistakes everybody always makes. Here’s what you need to do to void them.” Have a really super brief headline, and then, maybe it takes a sentence to explain what they’ll be getting and the button, but if you go to the button where you actually have the form… When I do these calls to action, I would call “secondary call to action,” which is what you will call them after taking the Google Analytics exam… I would use as little information as absolutely possible to do it. In this case, I would only ask for an email address and not their names. I would like to have their names, but I don’t need their names because you want it to be low a barrier for entry as possible. If all I got to do is type in my email address, in fact, Google has probably autosaved it in my Chrome, then it’s really easy, but if it is name… Even though that’s not even hard to give, it’s just one less barrier to entry, so all you really need is their email addresses. Just make it that much easier for them.
Ali: In the behavior field, we call that “Low response effort.” You want to make it as little to do as possible. That’s why, when we send out surveys and stuff, especially with staff, everything is multiple choice. You make everything as simple as possible because you increase your odds of actually getting a response that way when the response effort is lower.
David: And if you do that, if you have just a form and a button, then you don’t have to have a button to get down there, because if you are taking up such a little real estate, you can go ahead and have that two times on the page: One near the top, one at the bottom. And it’s not taking a ton of real estate. I think that could be a real… a double win, because, first of all, it would be kind of an annoying experience to say, “Oh, I do want these 5 mistakes, and I want to avoid them.” I click a button, thinking I’m going to get it. “No, it takes me to a form. So, now I’ve been baited and switched.” Even though it’s not a real bait and switch, it still kind of feels like… “Oh, I thought I was going to get these. Now I got to give my email address.”
Ali: You think you are going to an article and really is…
David: Right. I’d almost just reuse the form super abbreviated up top, so they know that you will ask for their email addresses to get them. You are telling them what the exchange is.
Ali: I know that for me, personally, if I’m looking for information, and if before it gives me the info, it’s making me enter my email, I’m like, “Oh, no.”
Tricia: That’s the only reason that I’m doing this. It’s for the email. That’s the only reason.
Ali: I think it’s just a matter of… what David said: making it clear that that’s what you are signing up for, that it’s not just like “Oh, well, if you want access to this, you have to send an email.” Make it clear that these mistakes are part of the program, part of an email, or whatever because it doesn’t feel as… It feels different when you know you are signing up for something versus when you feel you’re exchanging it for information.
LaVonya: I had a question. When you give Tricia your email address, she’s going to send you the information. I have mine set up like that, but the same information… I have two other people that want to post it on their sites. Can I do that?
Tricia: Post what on their sites?
David: The form?
LaVonya: My article.
Tricia: The sign-up?
LaVonya: I’ve written a blog, and I want to share it on two other people’s platforms. I asked: can I do that and have it on my website for you to get if you sign up?
Tricia: Yeah, because they have to search….
David: You could, but… “If I could get it off the other websites, why would I give you my email?”
Tricia: But they’d have to search and find it, though.
David: They would, but also, by putting it on those other websites… those websites aren’t getting the benefit from having the content because it’s on another website. So, let’s say there are 3 websites in play: your website, partner 1, and partner 2; so, for your website, you have to give an email address, and you get it. Ok, great. Google can’t get it because Google is not going to get your email address. Google’s bot doesn’t have an email address to give you, so then it’s on the other website. Ok, that’s helpful to their site because the only place that Google can see it is this site, your partner A. If you give it to partner B, now that same content is in two pages. And, because of that, Google devalues the content because it’s on a couple different websites. Google doesn’t know which of the sites to send people to, to show “Hey, here’s the stuff.” So, partner A and partner B don’t benefit from your content because it’s on two different pages. So, you are not helping your partners out by giving them the same article.
LaVonya: Ok.
David: You could write unique articles on the same topic for each of those sites. Now, they each have a unique article, and it helps both of them, and it helps you because they will cite you as the source and link to your website. So, that would be the way to maximize it. Otherwise, just put it on one of those sites. Tricia is right: people might not know that they could get that content for free, but on the other side, what if you found out… what if you were on partner A’s site, read the article, and said, “Wow, this is a brilliant article by LaVonya. I’d like to work with LaVonya. I go to Lavonya’s website, and now I have to give an email to get the same article? So, now they know…
Tricia: She could definitely change it up.
David: Well, there’s probably something better you could do, like give it a different focus, something like that…
LaVonya: …Create another article?
David: You could create another article, maybe.
Tricia: Another one, or maybe just make it a bit different, add some things. Maybe not 100% different, but different enough, so it’s noticeable.
David: Let’s just pretend like it’s the same content that Tricia has here. Maybe, to get all five tips, you need to go download the free copy, but you give each partner a different tip.
Tricia: Oh, yeah. That’s a good idea.
David: If you’d like additional tips, come to my website, and I’ll give you 5 or 4 additional tips.
David: Now, you’ve incentivized them to come to your site.
Tricia: That’s a good idea, David. I like that.
LaVonya: So, I give my other 2 platforms, maybe 1 tip, and then direct them over to my website to get all 5 tips?
David: Yeah “Get 4 more tips.” “If you thought this was helpful, there’s a lot more you need to know. Go to my site, and I’ll give you 5 tips, or 4 more tips, or 10 more tips.” Whatever you got, but then you can give each of your partners a different tip. Now, each of them has a unique tip. They are benefiting from it. You’re not giving away the farm, and if one of those 2 people says, “That’s a really great tip. This person is smart. I need some more information. I am going to go to their site and get the rest of these tips.” Now, they’ll come and fill out the form to get the rest of the tips.
LaVonya: Ok.
David: And you get the link from their site to yours, and you get the email address because you’ve invited them to sign up. You are going to email them the tips.
These are all really great questions about calls to action. In the Google Analytics course, they’ll talk about primary and secondary calls to action and making sure you can measure them and how you determine what the most important ones are, and which are the nice-good-ones to have, but not the money-making ones. These are all the things you’ll learn in the Google Analytics course.
Alright, well, I was about to shut this down early, but now we ran out of time. Good questions.
Tricia: Sorry.
LaVonya: Thanks.
Tricia: I’m sorry, I was still sharing, and I didn’t realize it.
David: That’s alright, we were using it as an example.
LaVonya: Thanks.
Tricia: Thanks.
David: Good to see you, everybody. Thank you. See you soon.
All: Bye.