PERMANENT!! Power links TF 15-30 DA 15-40 PBN

I will provide 2 links in an article.  The article will get a related video and most often an authority link somewhere. My pbn’s have a minimum of TF 15 DA 15.  If you request a niche I will do … Continued

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New Study: Data Reveals 67% of Consumers are Influenced by Online Reviews

Posted by Dhinckley

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Google processed over 1 trillion search queries in 2014. As Google Search continues to further integrate into our normal daily activities, those search results become increasingly important, especially when individuals are searching for information about a company or product.

To better understand just how much of an impact Google has on an individual’s purchasing decisions, we set up a research study with a group of 1,000 consumers through Google Consumer Surveys. The study investigates how individuals interact with Google and other major sites during the buying process.

Do searchers go beyond page 1 of Google?

We first sought to understand how deeply people went into the Google search results. We wanted to know if people tended to stop at page 1 of the search results, or if they dug deeper into page 2 and beyond. A better understanding of how many pages of search results are viewed provides insight into how many result pages we should monitor related to a brand or product.

When asked, 36% of respondents claimed to look through the first two pages or more of search results. But, looking at actual search data, it is clear that individuals view less than 2% of searches below the top five results on the first page. From this, it is clear that actual consumer behavior differs from self-reported search activity.

Takeaway: People are willing to view as many as two pages of search results but rarely do so during normal search activities.

Are purchasing decisions affected by online reviews?

Google has integrated reviews into the Google+ Local initiative and often displays these reviews near the top of search results for businesses. Other review sites, such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, will also often rank near the top for search queries for a company or product. Because of the prevalence of review sites appearing in the search results for brands and products, we wanted a better understanding of how these reviews impacted consumers’ decision-making.

We asked participants, “When making a major purchase such as an appliance, a smart phone, or even a car, how important are online reviews in your decision-making?”

The results revealed that online reviews impact 67.7% of respondents' purchasing decisions. More than half of the respondents (54.7%) admitted that online reviews are fairly, very, or absolutely an important part of their decision-making process.

Takeaway: Companies need to take reviews seriously. Restaurant review stories receive all the press, but most companies will eventually have pages from review sites ranking for their names. Building a strong base of positive reviews now will help protect against any negative reviews down the road.

When do negative reviews cost your business customers?

Our research also uncovered that businesses risk losing as many as 22% of customers when just one negative article is found by users considering buying their product. If three negative articles pop up in a search query, the potential for lost customers increases to 59.2%. Have four or more negative articles about your company or product appearing in Google search results? You’re likely to lose 70% of potential customers.

Takeaway: It is critical to keep page 1 of your Google search results clean of any negative content or reviews. Having just one negative review could cost you nearly a quarter of all potential customers who began researching your brand (which means they were likely deep in the conversion funnel).

What sites do people visit before buying a product or service?

Google Search is just one of the sites that consumers can visit to research a brand or product. We thought it would be interesting to identify other popular consumer research sites.

Interestingly, most people didn't seem to remember visiting any of the popular review sites. Instead, the brand site that got the most attention was Google+ Local reviews. Another noteworthy finding was that Amazon came in second, with half the selections that Google received. Finally, the stats show that more people look to Wikipedia for information about a company than to Yelp or TripAdvisor.

Takeaway: Brands should invest time and effort into building a strong community on the Google+, which could lead to receiving more positive reviews on the social platform.

Online reviews impact the bottom line

The results of the study show that online reviews have a significant influence on the decision-making process of consumers. The data supports the fact that Internet users are generally willing to look at the first and second page of Google search results when searching for details about a product or company.

We can also conclude that online review sites like Google+ Local are heavily visited by potential customers looking for information, and the more negative content they find there, the less likely they will be to purchase your products or visit your business.

All this information paints a clear picture that what is included in Google search results for a company or product name will inevitably have an impact on the profitability of that company or product.

Internal marketing teams and public relation firms (PR) must consider the results that Google displays when they search for their company name or merchandise. Negative reviews, negative press, and other damaging feedback can have a lasting impact on a company’s ability to sell their products or services.

How to protect your company in Google search results

A PR or marketing team must be proactive to effectively protect a company’s online reputation. The following tactics can help prevent a company from suffering from deleterious online reviews:

• First, identify if negative articles already exist on the first two pages of search results for a Google query of a company name or product (e.g., “Walmart”). This simple task should be conducted regularly. Google often shifts search results around, so a negative article—which typically attracts a higher click-through rate—is unfortunately likely to climb the rankings as individuals engage with the piece.

• Next, monitor and analyze the current sentiment of reviews on popular review sites like Google+ and Amazon. Other sites, like Yelp or Trip Advisor, should also be checked often, as they can quickly climb Google search results. Do not attempt to artificially alter the results, but instead look for best practices on how to improve Yelp reviews or other review sites and implement them. The goal is to naturally improve the general buzz around your business.
• If negative articles exist, there are solutions for improvement. A company’s marketing and public relations team may benefit by highlighting and/or generating positive press and reviews about the product or service through SEO and ORM efforts. By gaining control of the search results for your company or product, you will be in control of the main message that individuals see when looking for more information about your business. That's done by working to ensure prospects and customers enjoy a satisfying experience when interacting with your brand, whether online or offline.

Being proactive with a brand’s reputation, as viewed in the Google search results and on review sites, does have an impact on the bottom line.

As we see in the data, people are less likely to make a purchase as the amount of negative reviews increase in Google search results.

By actively ensuring that honest, positive reviews appear, you can win over potential customers.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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SEO case study Update

So I haven t updated anything about the plumbing case study in a bit, its been steady in the teens and slowly creeping up. I ve been sending a PBN link weekly to it sometimes a bit more. I have a buffer Continued
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SEO case study Update

So I haven’t updated anything about the plumbing case study in a bit, its been steady in the teens and slowly creeping up. I’ve been sending a PBN link weekly to it sometimes a bit more. I have a buffer … Continued

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A Beginner's Guide to Google Search Console

Posted by Angela_Petteys

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

If the name "Google Webmaster Tools" rings a bell for you, then you might already have an idea of what Google Search Console is. Since Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) has become a valuable resource for so many different types of people besides webmasters—marketing professionals, SEOs, designers, business owners, and app developers, to name a few—Google decided to change its name in May of 2015 to be more inclusive of its diverse group of users.

If you aren't familiar with GWT or Google Search Console, let's head back to square one. Google Search Console is a free service that lets you learn a great deal of information about your website and the people who visit it. You can use it to find out things like how many people are visiting your site and how they are finding it, whether more people are visiting your site on a mobile device or desktop computer, and which pages on your site are the most popular. It can also help you find and fix website errors, submit a sitemap, and create and check a robots.txt file.

Ready to start taking advantage of all that Google Search Console has to offer? Let's do this.

Adding and verifying a site in Google Search Console

If you're new to Google Search Console, you'll need to add and verify your site(s) before you can do anything else. Adding and verifying your site in Search Console proves to Google that you're either a site's owner, webmaster, or other authorized user. After all, Search Console provides you with all sorts of incredibly detailed information and insights about a site's performance. Google doesn't want to hand that kind of information over to anybody who asks for it.

Adding a site to Search Console is a very simple process. First, log into your Search Console account. Once you're logged in, you'll see a box next to a red button which says "Add Property."

Enter the URL of the site you're trying to add in the box and click "Add Property." Congratulations, your site is now added to your Search Console account!

Next, you will be asked to verify your site. There are a few different ways you can go about this. Which method will work best for you depends on whether or not you have experience working with HTML, if you have access to upload files to the site, the size of your site, and whether or not you have other Google programs connected to your site. If this sounds overwhelming, don't worry—we'll help you figure it out.

Adding an HTML tag

This verification method is best for users and site owners who have experience working with HTML code.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage Property," then "Verify this property." If the "HTML Tag" option does not appear under "Recommended method," then you should click on the "Alternate methods" tab and select "HTML tag." This will provide you with the HTML code you'll need for verification.

Copy the code and use your HTML editor to open the code for your site's homepage. Paste the code provided within in the <Head> section of the HTML code. If your site already has a meta tag or other code in the <Head> section, it doesn't matter where the verification code is placed in relation to the other code; it simply needs to be in the <Head> section. If your site doesn't have a <Head> section, you can create one for the sake of verifying the site.

Once the verification code has been added, save and publish the updated code, and open your site's homepage. From there, view the site's source code. The verification code should be visible in the <Head> section.

Once you're sure the code is added to your site's homepage, go back to Search Console and click "Verify." Google will then check your site's code for the verification code. If the code is found, you will see a screen letting you know the site has been verified. If not, you will be provided with information about the errors it encountered.

When your site has been verified by Search Console, do not remove the verification code from your site. If the code is removed, it will cause your site to become unverified.

Uploading an HTML file

To use this method, you must be able to upload files to a site's root directory.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If "HTML file upload" is not listed under "Recommended method," it should be listed under the "Alternate method" tab.

When you select this method, you will be asked to download an HTML file. Download it, then upload it to the specified location. Do not make any changes to the content of the file or the filename; the file needs to be kept exactly the same. If it is changed, Search Console will not be able to verify the site.

After the HTML file has been uploaded, go back to Search Console and click "Verify." If everything has been uploaded correctly, you will see a page letting you know the site has been verified.

Once you have verified your site using this method, do not delete the HTML file from your site. This will cause your site to become unverified.

Verifying via domain name provider

The domain name provider is the company you purchased a domain from or where your website is hosted. When you verify using your domain name provider, it not only proves you're the owner of the main domain, but that you also own all of the subdomains and subdirectories associated with it. This is an excellent option if you have a large website.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Domain name provider" option listed under "Recommended method," look under the "Alternate method" tab.

When you select "Domain name provider," you will be asked to choose your domain name provider from a list of commonly used providers, such as GoDaddy.com. If your provider is not on this list, choose "Other" and you will be given instructions on how to create a DNS TXT record for your provider. If a DNS TXT record doesn't work for your provider, you will have the option of creating a CNAME record instead.

Adding Google Analytics code

If you already use Google Analytics (GA) to monitor your site's traffic, this could be the easiest option for you. But first, you'll need to be able to check the site's HTML code to make sure the GA tracking code is placed within the <Head> section of your homepage's code, not in the <Body> section. If the GA code is not already in the <Head> section, you'll need to move it there for this method to work.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Google Analytics tracking code" option under the "Recommended method," look under the "Alternate method" tab. When you select "Google Analytics tracking method," you'll be provided with a series of instructions to follow.

Once your site has been verified, do not remove the GA code from your site, or it will cause your site to become unverified.

Using Google Tag Manager

If you already use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for your site, this might be the easiest way to verify your site. If you're going to try this method, you need to have "View, Edit, and Manage" permissions enabled for your account in GTM. Before trying this method, look at your site's HTML code to make sure the GTM code is placed immediately after your site's <Body> tag.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Google Tag Manager" option listed under "Recommended method," it should appear under "Alternate method."

Select "Google Tag Manager" and click "Verify." If the Google Tag Manager code is found, you should see a screen letting you know your site has been verified.

Once your site is verified, do not remove the GTM code from your site, or your site will become unverified.

How to link Google Analytics with Google Search Console

Google Analytics and Google Search Console might seem like they offer the same information, but there are some key differences between these two Google products. GA is more about who is visiting your site—how many visitors you're getting, how they're getting to your site, how much time they're spending on your site, and where your visitors are coming from (geographically-speaking). Google Search Console, in contrast, is geared more toward more internal information—who is linking to you, if there is malware or other problems on your site, and which keyword queries your site is appearing for in search results . Analytics and Search Console also do not treat some information in the exact same ways, so even if you think you're looking at the same report, you might not be getting the exact same information in both places.

To get the most out of the information provided by Search Console and GA, you can link accounts for each one together. Having these two tools linked will integrate the data from both sources to provide you with additional reports that you will only be able to access once you've done that. So, let's get started:

Has your site been added and verified in Search Console? If not, you'll need to do that before you can continue.

From the Search Console dashboard, click on the site you're trying to connect. In the upper righthand corner, you'll see a gear icon. Click on it, then choose "Google Analytics Property."

This will bring you to a list of Google Analytics accounts associated with your Google account. All you have to do is choose the desired GA account and hit "Save." Easy, right? That's all it takes to start getting the most out of Search Console and Analytics.

Adding a sitemap

Sitemaps are files that give search engines and web crawlers important information about how your site is organized and the type of content available there. Sitemaps can include metadata, with details about your site such as information about images and video content, and how often your site is updated.

By submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console, you're making Google's job easier by ensuring they have the information they need to do their job more efficiently. Submitting a sitemap isn't mandatory, though, and your site won't be penalized if you don't submit a sitemap. But there's certainly no harm in submitting one, especially if your site is very new and not many other sites are linking to it, if you have a very large website, or your if site has many pages that aren't thoroughly linked together.

Before you can submit a sitemap to Search Console, your site needs to be added and verified in Search Console. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and do that now.

From your Search Console dashboard, select the site you want to submit a sitemap for. On the left, you'll see an option called "Crawl." Under "Crawl," there will be an option marked "Sitemaps."

Click on "Sitemaps." There will be a button marked "Add/Test Sitemap" in the upper righthand corner.

This will bring up a box with a space to add text to it.

Type "system/feeds/sitemap" in that box and hit "Submit sitemap." Congratulations, you have now submitted a sitemap!

Checking a robots.txt file

Having a website doesn't necessarily mean you want to have all of its pages or directories indexed by search engines. If there are certain things on your site you'd like to keep out of search engines, you can accomplish this by using a robots.txt file. A robots.txt file placed in the root of your site tells search engine robots (i.e., web crawlers) what you do and do not want indexed by using commands known as the robots Exclusion Standard.

It's important to note that robots.txt files aren't necessarily guaranteed to be 100% effective in keeping things away from web crawlers. The commands in robots.txt files are instructions, and although the crawlers used by credible search engines like Google will accept them, it's entirely possible that a less reputable crawler will not. It's also entirely possible for different web crawlers to interpret commands differently. Robots.txt files also will not stop other websites from linking to your content, even if you don't want it indexed.

If you want to check your robots.txt file to see exactly what it is and isn't allowing, log into Search Console and select the site whose robots.txt file you want to check. Haven't already added or verified your site in Search Console? Do that first.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you'll see the option "Crawl." Click on it and choose "robots.txt Tester." The Robots.txt Tester Tool will let you look at your robots.txt file, make changes to it, and it alert you about any errors it finds. You can also choose from a selection of Google's user-agents (names for robots/crawlers) and enter a URL you wish to allow/disallow, and run a test to see if the URL is recognized by that crawler.

If you make any changes to your robots.txt file using Google's robots.txt tester, the changes will not be automatically reflected in the robots.txt file hosted on your site. Luckily, it's pretty easy to update it yourself. Once your robots.txt file is how you want it, hit the "Submit" button underneath the editing box in the lower righthand corner. This will give you the option to download your updated robots.txt file. Simply upload that to your site in the same directory where your old one was (http://ift.tt/1iHdc5m). Obviously, the domain name will change, but your robots.txt file should always be named "robots.txt" and the file needs to be saved in the root of your domain, not http://ift.tt/1hb5sfW.

Back on the robots.txt testing tool, hit "Verify live version" to make sure the correct file is on your site. Everything correct? Good! Click "Submit live version" to let Google know you've updated your robots.txt file and they should crawl it. If not, re-upload the new robots.txt file to your site and try again.

Fetch as Google and submit to index

If you've made significant changes to a website, the fastest way to get the updates indexed by Google is to submit it manually. This will allow any changes done to things such as on-page content or title tags to appear in search results as soon as possible.

The first step is to sign into Google Search Console. Next, select the page you need to submit. If the website does not use the 'www.' prefix, then make sure you click on the entry without it (or vice versa.)

On the lefthand side of the screen, you should see a "Crawl" option. Click on it, then choose "Fetch as Google."

Clicking on "Fetch as Google" should bring you to a screen that looks something like this:

If you need to fetch the entire website (such as after a major site-wide update, or if the homepage has had a lot of remodeling done) then leave the center box blank. Otherwise, use it to enter the full address of the page you need indexed, such as http://ift.tt/1WPMHPX. Once you enter the page you need indexed, click the "Fetch and Render" button. Fetching might take a few minutes, depending on the number/size of pages being fetched.

After the indexing has finished, there will be a "Submit to Index" button that appears in the results listing at the bottom (near the "Complete" status). You will be given the option to either "Crawl Only This URL," which is the option you want if you're only fetching/submitting one specific page, or "Crawl This URL and its Direct Links," if you need to index the entire site.

Click this, wait for the indexing to complete, and you're done! Google now has sent its search bots to catalog the new content on your page, and the changes should appear in Google within the next few days.

Site errors in Google Search Console

Nobody wants to have something wrong on their website, but sometimes you might not realize there's a problem unless someone tells you. Instead of waiting for someone to tell you about a problem, Google Search Console can immediately notify you of any errors it finds on on your site.

If you want to check a site for internal errors, select the site you'd like to check. On the lefthand side of the screen, click on "Crawl," then select "Crawl Errors."

You will then be taken directly to the Crawl Errors page, which displays any site or URL errors found by Google's bots while indexing the page. You will see something like this:

Any URL errors found will be displayed at the bottom. Click on any of the errors for a description of the error encountered and further details.

Record any encountered errors, including screenshots if appropriate. If you aren't responsible for handling site errors, notify the person who is so they can correct the problem(s).

We hope this guide has been helpful in acquainting you with Google Search Console. Now that everything is set up and verified, you can start taking in all the information that Google Search Console has for you.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Consumer Survey Reveals the Efficacy of Inbound vs. Outbound

Posted by KelseyLibert

We've all heard the decades-old myth that the average consumer is bombarded with up to 5,000 ads a day. But if someone wanted to, he or she could get that number closer to zero. Just search for "how to block ads" and you'll find more than 700 million answers.

Ad-avoidance is a growing issue for marketers and advertisers; recent data from Adobe made a stir due to their finding that 198 million people are blocking ads. Since ad blocking is mostly a desktop browsing phenomenon, there's a lot of room for it to become commonplace across all devices. For example, Apple's upcoming iOS9 will include support for ad-blocking extensions in Safari, so we may see a lot of people adopting ad blockers as part of their mobile browsing experience too.

Additionally, a recent survey by Fractl and Moz found that 58% of respondents were using some form of ad-blocking software.

With the growing resistance to interruptive marketing, it's clear that consumers are fed up with low-value, high noise marketing. But are some of these tactics and channels still an effective ingredient within a holistic marketing approach? Better yet, is inbound marketing any better in the eyes of the consumer?

Fractl and Moz have once again teamed up for exclusive research, examining various marketing tactics' efficacy and efficiency.

The first part of our research focuses on marketing efficacy. For this, we'll share consumer survey results regarding different traditional and digital marketing and advertising channels' ability to gain awareness, drive action, and influence purchasing decisions. For the second part, we'll look at the efficiency of these same media by breaking down what a $10,000 spend can achieve across several different channels.

I. Efficacy: What Gets Results?

Survey Methodology

For this study, we went straight to the source: the consumer. In July 2015, we conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 people. Participants were asked 13 questions regarding their opinions on and recent engagement with various marketing and advertising media as well as tactics, including traditional advertising (TV, radio, print, billboards), direct mail, social media, content marketing, online search, display ads, ad retargeting, email marketing, paid search ads, mobile app ads, and sponsored story links.

A few considerations:

• Within the survey questions, "traditional advertising" was defined as TV, radio, billboards, and print ads.
• We provided participants with visual examples of terms they may not have been familiar with, such as pay-per-click ads in the SERPs, retargeting, and sponsored story links.
• Participants skewed young; the majority were between 18 and 34 (73.2%).
• A majority of respondents were male (58.4%).

Survey Overview

Before we dive into the full survey results, here’s a glimpse into our findings:

• Most likely to have a positive influence on buying decisions: Customer reviews, search, online articles, traditional advertising, and direct mail
• Most likely to have a negative influence on buying decisions: Mobile app ads, display ads, paid search, and email marketing
• Most effective for attracting business: Direct mail, content marketing, and appearing in search results
• Popular methods for self-education: Search, visiting a company’s website, and customer reviews
• Most-noticed digital ads: Display ads, media ads, and mobile app ads
• Best outbound channels for grabbing attention: Traditional advertising, email marketing, and social ads

The resulting findings are not an all-encompassing, all-knowing guide to which types of marketing people want. Rather, these insights may give you a new perspective on approaches you may not have considered before or may have believed to have dubious efficacy. For example, you may be just as surprised as we were to see how effective consumers find direct mail. Furthermore, these findings may simply reinforce the efficacy of your current marketing mix or what you already know about consumer behavior, especially the section about online discovery preferences.

1. Awareness of online advertising is high, but more than half of respondents are not engaging with these ads and/or actively preventing them from showing up.

The majority of survey respondents are aware of and notice the various online ad formats. Around three-quarters noticed display ads within 30 days of being surveyed. The majority had noticed all of the ad formats we asked about.

More than half (53.8%) reported they had not clicked on any ads within a week of being surveyed.

• Nearly a quarter (24.4%) clicked on a social media ad in the last week, the highest of any online ad.
• Somewhat surprisingly, sponsored story links were the second-most clicked, at almost 18%.
• More than 16% clicked on a display ad, which seems high considering a majority of respondents are using ad blockers (57.5%).
• Under 10% of respondents clicked on PPC ads.

2. Out of outbound and paid channels, traditional advertising, email marketing, and social media ads are most effective at grabbing attention.

More than half of our respondents rate traditional advertising high for grabbing their attention. There is arguably no better way to reach a mass audience than through traditional advertising. Plus, studies show it remains effective for not only awareness but driving other KPIs. A study by Nielsen found that radio commercials are effective at driving brick-and-mortar traffic, with advertisers gaining an average $6 return for every $1 spent. And a recent MarketShare study rated TV as the most effective ad medium, citing "TV is a major driver of indirect outcomes such as inbound calls, organic search query volumes, and website visits."

With a direct line to consumers' virtual centers of attention – their inboxes – promotional emails were next best for grabbing users' attention, at 41.3%. Social media ads were the third-most attention-grabbing, catching the eye of 35.8% of respondents.

Which ad formats aren't particularly attention-grabbing?

• PPC ads were found attention-grabbing by just under 10% of respondents.
• 16.5% found that mobile app ads grabbed their attention.
• Sponsored story ads were attention-grabbing for about 18%.

3. More than 88% use online search to seek out more information about a company, and greater than 93% had done so within a week's time.

Online queries are a ubiquitous part of daily life, so it's not surprising that 88.3% of respondents use online search to research a product or company. Just over 85% visit a company's website and 81.9% read customer reviews to learn more.

Other self-education methods are significantly less popular than using search, visiting a company's website, and reading reviews. More than a quarter (27.4%) follow a company's social media accounts to learn more about it, and 10.7% learn about a company by downloading content from its website.

Asking respondents about their online behavior within the last week gave insight into how often they're seeking out information online – allowing companies to market to them – and consuming online content.

A whopping 93.2% – almost the entire survey sample – used online search to find information about a company or product within the last week. Also within a week's time:

• 89% read an online article.

• More than half (50.8%) downloaded content from a website and gave a company their email address (50.2%).
• Over a quarter (28.5%) followed a company on social media.

Notice almost just as many people downloaded content from a website as gave a company their email address, which may signal a relationship between handing over their email address in exchange for the content they downloaded.

4. Customer reviews, online search, and online articles have a positive effect on buying decisions for a majority of respondents.

About 85% are positively influenced by customer reviews. 45% are significantly more likely and 40% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via customer reviews.

More than three-quarters (77%) are positively influenced by online search. 25.7% are significantly more likely and 51.3% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via online search.

More than half (56.7%) are positively influenced by online articles. 9.3% are significantly more likely and 47.4% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via online articles.

Interestingly, email marketing was most likely to negatively impact buying decisions, with about 44% of respondents slightly less likely (22.9%) or significantly less likely (21.4%) to buy something they hear about via email marketing.

Feelings tend to be neutral toward a company's social media posts and press releases, which don't affect purchasing decisions for 42.8% and 48.6% of respondents respectively.

5. Compared to other outbound and paid tactics, traditional advertising has the most positive effect on buying decisions, followed by direct mail.

Traditional advertising has a positive effect on purchasing decisions for about two-fifths (42%) of respondents. 6.2% are significantly more likely and 35.8% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via traditional advertising.

Direct mail positively impacts buying decisions for just over 30 percent. 4.2% are significantly more likely and 27.7% are slightly more likely to buy something advertised via direct mail.

Still, it's worth noting traditional advertising and direct mail are significantly less impactful than hearing about a company or product through other sources such as customer reviews, online search, or online articles:

• Customer reviews are two times more likely to positively influence buying decisions than traditional advertising.
• Online articles' positive effect on buying decisions is 56% greater than direct mail.
• Hearing about a company through online search is 1.8 times more likely than traditional advertising to have a positive impact on purchasing decisions.

On the other end of the spectrum, some ads have a negative effect on a person's likelihood to buy something. Mobile app ads, display ads, and paid search ads are more likely to have a negative effect on buying decisions, compared to other methods:

• More than half (54.3%) say mobile app ads have a negative influence. 31.4% are significantly less likely and 22.9% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via mobile app ads.
• Nearly half (48.1%) are less likely to buy something advertised in display ads. 25.7% are significantly less likely and 22.4% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via display ads.
• Paid search has a negative effect on just under half (49.4%). 25.3% are significantly less likely and 24.1% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via pay-per-click ads in search engine results.

6. Direct mail, online content, and search are the most effective ways to attract customers.

Direct mail and content marketing come out on top, with more than half of respondents rating these as smart ways to attract their business. Nearly half (48.3%) say showing up in search results when they have a want or need can help attract their business.

Additionally:

• Well over a third of respondents consider traditional advertising (37.6%) and email marketing (34.6%) effective ways to win them over.
• About a quarter of respondents rate social media posts (27.4%) and social ads (24.8%) as smart tactics for attracting their business.
• Only 6.6% of respondents consider mobile app ads an effective tactic for earning their business.

While our survey results tip in favor of inbound (search, content) and third-party endorsements (customer reviews), our respondents do find several outbound tactics effective, especially traditional advertising, for grabbing their attention and direct mail for attracting their business. But efficacy is only part of the marketing equation ...

II. Efficiency: What's the Best Value?

In addition to efficacy, the cost of getting results, or efficiency, should be given significant consideration for what to include in your marketing mix. Marketers are continuously tasked with doing more with less, so finding the most cost-effective methods for getting the greatest results is the holy grail for marketers.

Cost Comparison of Various Marketing Channels

Cost is typically touted as a large benefit of inbound marketing while being a barrier for choosing more costly outlets like TV and print media. To get a better sense of the efficiency of different channels, let's look at the potential costs of a campaign designed to generate awareness.

CPM (cost per mille) is commonly used across a variety of ad mediums to measure the cost of a thousand impressions.

CPM = (Cost of Ad x 1,000)/Audience Size

In the ad-buying world, this is used to measure the efficiency of an ad medium. Focusing on this CPM makes sense for campaigns that want to achieve high awareness by getting a message in front of a substantial audience.

Since so many variables impact the actual CPM rate you would pay for a given medium, the chart below should be used for informational purposes only. However, these figures do give an idea of the huge difference in the price you will pay to reach a certain audience size across various advertising and marketing channels.

Direct Mail Pricing

You'll notice direct mail is missing from the chart above. With a CPM of $583 for a letter-sized envelope direct mail piece, it didn't exactly fit nicely in our chart.

Paid Search Pricing

Although CPM is used in paid search, cost-per-click (CPC) is the more commonly used measurement, so we'll use that as our benchmark rather than CPM.

Paid search costs can vary greatly depending on vertical, keywords, and targeting. While some keywords may only cost a handful of change per click, extremely competitive keywords can cost more than $5 per click. The chart below shows average CPC pricing data across nearly 700,000 keywords for a variety of verticals during 2014.

Based on the figures above, the lowest CPC is $0.38 and the highest CPC is $4.41. This puts our median CPC at $2.40. The average CPC for this data set is $1.70.

A note on CPC vs. CPM: Both are typically offered as options for paid search, display, and social ads. The chosen pricing model depends on campaign goals and budgets. CPM is often chosen for awareness-based goals and CPC is better for performance-based goals like traffic or conversions.

What a $10,000 Budget Can Buy

Based on the above pricing, let's look at how far a $10,000 budget would get you.

Extremely High CPM: Direct Mail

With a CPM of $583, for $10,000 you could send a letter-sized direct mail piece to 17,152 households. According to the Direct Marketing Association, the median ROI for direct mail campaigns using a prospect list is 12–14%, so this type of return on investment may be worth the high upfront costs.

High CPM: Local Market Primetime TV

A primetime spot TV commercial has the highest median CPM, at $33.85. (Spot TV means your commercial only plays for a local market, not a national market.) With a $10,000 budget, you can reach almost 300,000 local market viewers at that CPM rate. That's actually not such a bad deal – but keep in mind, it's for a one-time, 30-second spot and this is just the price to air the ad. Other cost considerations include producing the commercial, which may include script writing, editing, voiceover or acting talent, etc.

Mid-CPM: Magazines

Magazines fall somewhere in the middle of the pack, with a median CPM of $14.00. With a $10,000 budget, you could afford an ad in a magazine with a circulation of about 715,000 readers. Pricing varies based on the size of the ad, color or black and white, page position, and position within the magazine. Also consider the cost of the ad creative, such as copywriting and design.

Low CPM: Facebook Ads

With a CPM of $1.54, Facebook advertising is the most budget-friendly of the bunch. At that rate, $10,000 can pay for almost 6.5 million impressions. This budget would allow you to reach a ton of Facebook users at once or target the same people with multiple ads over a long period of time. Keep in mind, Facebook ad CPMs and CPCs typically become more expensive the more granular your targeting becomes.

CPC: Paid Search

A $10,000 campaign with a CPC of $2.40 would guarantee at least 4,167 clicks. The same amount spent for a $1.70 CPC would yield 5,882 clicks. For some perspective on how many people would see the ad, assuming a 5% click-through rate, the ad with a $2.40 CPC would get about 83,330 impressions and the $1.70 CPC ad would get about 117,640 impressions.

The CPM of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a little trickier to cost out since there's no industry-wide standard unit of measurement for things like impressions and costs-per-click, which makes an apples-to-apples comparison between the cost of outbound, paid, and inbound difficult. However, we do have a recent, relevant example of the price of content marketing versus TV.

Content marketing can garner viewership similar to a sizable TV audience – but for a fraction of the price. We recently had a Fractl client campaign placed on BuzzFeed that achieved more than 3.2 million views within several days of publication.

According to the rates above, you would have to pay around $75,000 for a 30-second TV spot on a primetime network TV to reach a similarly-sized audience.

Add the additional viewership from syndications and social sharing, and the equivalent in terms of viewership is probably similar to what more than $200,000 would buy you for a TV commercial. Not to mention the SEO value derived from the content.

With a Fractl campaign of this scope averaging $10,000 for end-to-end strategy, production, and promotion, that makes the CPM roughly $3.13.

While a $10,000 Facebook ad spend can garner the most impressions, the same budget going toward a large-scale content marketing campaign can include benefits beyond exposure to a huge audience, such as increased rankings, syndication, and long-term visibility.

Key Takeaways

Choosing the right marketing mix depends not only on how well a given channel and tactic are for the KPIs you want to achieve, but also your available budget. Striking a balance between efficacy and efficiency is crucial for a long-term, sustainable marketing strategy.

In summary, below are some of the main takeaways from our findings:

Awareness:

• Traditional advertising Loudmouths digital advertising when it comes to grabbing attention. Email marketing and social media ads came in second and third, respectively, for grabbing viewers' attention.
• The majority of respondents used search engines and or read online content within a week of being surveyed, making these effective avenues for getting in front of your target audience.
• To learn more about a company, a majority of survey participants turn to search, the company's website, or customer reviews.
• Display ads were the most-noticed digital ads, but had low engagement.

Conversions:

• More than half had downloaded content or given a company their email address within a week of being surveyed, which may be due to opting-in for content offers in exchange for their email.
• Customer reviews, search, and online articles have the most positive effect on buying decisions.
• Of the outbound channels, traditional advertising and direct mail were most likely to have a positive effect on buying decisions.
• Respondents rated direct mail as the most effective way to attract their business.
• Survey participants also said offering them free content or appearing in search results are some of the best ways to win their business.

Cost:

• Based on our cost analysis, content marketing and Facebook advertising are the most cost-friendly ways to reach a wide audience.

Want to see more data from our consumer survey? We've also filtered out the Millennial segment within the survey responses (18- to 34-year-olds) to extract additional insights. For our findings on how Millennials feel about various marketing tactics, be sure to download our free white paper.

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Traffic and Engagement Metrics and Their Correlation to Google Rankings

Posted by Royh

When Moz undertook this year’s Ranking Correlation Study (Ranking Factors), there was a desire to include data points never before studied. Fortunately, SimilarWeb had exactly what was needed. For the first time, Moz was able to measure ranking correlations with both traffic and engagement metrics.

Using Moz’s ranking data on over 200,000 domains, combined with multiple SimilarWeb data points—including traffic, page views, bounce rate, time on site, and rank—the Search Ranking Factors study was able to measure how these metrics corresponded to higher rankings.

These metrics differ from the traditional SEO parameters Moz has measured in the past in that they are primarily user-based metrics. This means that they vary based on how users interact with the individual websites, as opposed to static features such as title tag length. We'll find these user-based metrics important as we learn how search engines may use them to rank webpages, as illustrated in this excellent post by Dan Petrovic.

Every marketer and SEO professional wants to know if there is a correlation between web search ranking results and the website’s actual traffic. Here, we’ll examine the relationship between website rankings and traffic engagement to see which metrics have the biggest correlation to rankings.

You can view the results below:

Traffic correlated to higher rankings

For the study, we examined both direct and organic search visits over a three-month period. SimilarWeb’s traffic results show that there is a generally a high correlation between website visits and Google’s search rankings.

Put simply, the more traffic a site received, the higher it tended to rank. Practically speaking, this means that you would expect to see sites like Amazon and Wikipedia higher up in the results, while smaller sites tended to rank slightly worse.

This doesn't mean that Google uses traffic and user engagement metrics as an actual ranking factor in its search algorithm, but it does show that a relationship exists. Hypothetically, we can think of many reasons why this might be the case:

• A "brand" bias, meaning that Google may wish to treat trusted, popular, and established brands more favorably.
• Possible user-based ranking signals (described by Dan here) where uses are more inclined to choose recognizable brands in search results, which in theory could push their rankings higher.
• Which came first—the chicken or the egg? Alternatively, it could simply be the case that high-ranking websites become popular simply because they are ranking highly.

Regardless of the exact cause, it seems logical that the more you improve your website’s visibility, trust, and recognition, the better you may perform in search results.

Engagement: Time on site, bounce rate, and page views

While not as large as the traffic correlations, we also found a positive correlation between a website’s user engagement and its rank in Google search results. For the study, we examined three different engagement metrics from SimilarWeb.

• Time on site: 0.12 is not considered a strong correlation by any means within this study, but it does suggest there may be a slight relationship between how long a visitor spends on a particular site and its ranking in Google.
• Page views: Similar to time on site, the study found a small correlation of 0.10 between the number of pages a visitor views and higher rankings.
• Bounce rate: At first glance, with a correlation of -0.08, the correlation between bounce rate and rankings may seem out-of-whack, but this is not the case. Keep in mind that lower bounce rate is often a good indication of user engagement. Therefore, we find as bounce rates rise (something we often try to avoid), rankings tend to drop, and vice-versa.

This means that sites with lower bounce rates, longer time-on-site metrics, and more page views—some of the data points that SimilarWeb measures—tend to rank higher in Google search results.

While these individual correlations aren’t large, collectively they do lend credence to the idea that user engagement metrics can matter to rankings.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean to imply that Google or other search engines use metrics like bounce rate or click-through rate directly in their algorithm. Instead, a better way to think of this is that Google uses a number of user inputs to measure relevance, user satisfaction, and quality of results.

This is exactly the same argument the SEO community is currently debating over click-through rate and its possible use by Google as a ranking signal. For an excellent, well-balanced view of the debate, we highly recommend reading AJ Kohn’s thoughts and analysis.

It could be that Google is using Panda-like engagement signals. If a site’s correlated bounce rate is negative, that means that the website should have a lower bounce rate because the site is healthy. Similarly, if the time that users spend on-site and the page views are higher, the website should also tend to produce higher Google SERPs.

Global Rank correlations

SimilarWeb’s Global Rank is calculated by data aggregation, and is based on a combination of website traffic from six different sources and user engagement levels. We include engagement metrics to make sure that we’re portraying an accurate picture of the market.

If the website has a lower Global Rank on SimilarWeb, then the website will generally have more visitors and good user engagement.

As Global Rank is a combination of traffic and engagement metrics, it’s no surprise that it was one of the highest correlated features of the study. Again, even though the correlation is negative at -0.24, a low Global Rank is actually a good thing. A website with a Global Rank of 1 would be the highest-rated site on the web. This means that the lower the Global Rank, the better the relationship with higher rankings.

As a side note, SimilarWeb’s Website Ranking provides insights for estimating any website’s value and benchmarking your site against it. You can use its tables to find out who’s leading per industry category and/or country.

Methodology

The Moz Search Engine Ranking Factors study examined the relationship between web search results and links, social media signals, visitor traffic and usage signals, and on-page factors. The study compiled datasets and conducted search result queries in English with Google’s search engine, focusing exclusively on US search results.

The dataset included a list of 16,521 queries taken from 22 top-level Google Adwords categories. Keywords were taken from head, middle, and tail queries. The searches ranged from infrequent (less than 1,000 queries per month), to frequent (more than 20,000 per month), to enormously frequent with keywords being searched more than one million times per month!

The top 50 US search results for each query were pulled from the datasets in a manner that did not account for location or personalization in a location- and personalization-agnostic manner.

SimilarWeb checked the traffic and engagement stats of more than 200,000 websites, and we have analytics on more than 90% of them. After we pulled the traffic data, we checked for a correlation using keywords from the Google AdWords tool to see what effect metrics like search traffic, time on site, page views, and bounce rates—especially with organic searches—have upon Google’s rankings.

Conclusion

We found a positive correlation between websites that showed highly engaging user traffic metrics on SimilarWeb’s digital measurement platform, and higher placement on Google search engine results pages. SimilarWeb also found that a brand’s popularity correlates to higher placement results in Google searches.

With all the recent talk of user engagement metrics and rankings, we’d love to hear your take. Have you observed any relationship, improvement, or drop in rankings based on engagement? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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