Frequently Asked Questions
Search Engine Optimization Questions
General SEO
SEO is a very complex and time-intensive process. It’s not for everyone. It takes focus and attention, even when you know what you’re doing. As a business owner, seeking an SEO company or agency is in your best interest because of the processes and connections we as a marketing company already have. Having years of experience and the relationships we do, you’ll find that we can not only strategize precisely what you need to move up in rankings, but we can also proficiently execute them in a timely and accurate manner that would otherwise take a lot of time to learn and do. Besides, you could potentially make a lot of mistakes that could harm your websites chance to rank well in the search engines. This would reduce the chance people would find you with some of the desired keywords you would want to rank for as well as reduced traffic or revenue. Hiring the right SEO company can save you time, money, and most importantly, worry. Besides, wouldn’t you want to focus on your other business aspects and not worry about the website?
It helps to know your potential return on investment. Keep in mind that each strategy you might want to employ can produce different results in different time frames. Typically you need to determine who your main competitors are and what the differences are between your website and theirs. That will help you determine what kind of strategy to pursue. From that point, you have to determine how quickly you want the results to come. The more aggressive the budget, the more activities can happen, which in turn will bring results and get closer to your goals more quickly. The lower the budget, the less activity you’re paying for, and less will happen at a time. This can make the process take more time.
You can learn more about how to determine your SEO budget here.
The single most important reason why you need to invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is because your competition is! You can’t just optimize your website (on-page) once and expect to get results from that one-time effort. SEO is an ongoing, evolving, ever-changing entity, and as long as the search engines have your customers searching for your products and services, the longer you have to stay relevant on the internet. That entails keeping your SEO efforts fresh. If you don’t, you lose, and your competition wins.
Organic results are the results that appear in search engines, for free, based on an algorithm that the search engines create. Certain actions rank websites higher over time. Paid (or inorganic) search results appear at the top or side of a search engine page. These ads are what advertisers pay for to appear on different search engines for relevant keywords to whatever it is they are trying to sell.
When search engines look through the content on your website, they are crawling your site. Think of it as a spider crawling along each page of your website. As the spider crawls, it starts to pick up or index content that will appear in the search engine. Keep in mind that not all content is indexed. The search engines only pick up what they want to and pass up what they don’t while in the crawling process.
Local SEO
Local SEO encompasses a range of techniques meant to improve your online presence in your local area. That means improving your rankings for searches with specific geo qualifiers like your city, state, and zip code. For example, we create as many local listing directories as possible and make sure all of the information – name, address, phone number, business description, etc. – is filled out and consistent. We ensure your metadata – title tags and meta descriptions, for example – contain local keywords. We optimize your website with content that’s relevant to your location and the demographics therein in order to attract a local audience.
Local SEO also means getting your Google My Business listing completely filled out and using the Posts feature religiously in order to advertise special offers and deals you may have going on.
Monitoring your online reviews – on Google My Business and Yelp, for instance – is also important. While we have no control over what people say about your business online, we can help you with responding to negative reviews. We also have a good reputation management service called BirdEye that can help you in getting more positive reviews.
According to Forbes, 95% of smartphone users perform local searches on their device – 61% call the business and 59% visit the business using the same method.
70% of mobile users use Google search results to find a business and directly click-to-call that business, according to SearchEngineWatch.
It’s beginning to look like your Google My Business/Google Maps profile is just as important as your website, especially when it comes to mobile users who are searching for your business or products and services that you offer.
Don’t forget about Google’s Local 3-Pack – this is one of the most coveted spots a local business can have in their search results.
Of course, it’s incredibly important to have all of your on-page work covered, including having all of your title tags and meta descriptions filled out, setting up internal links, and optimizing your content in a way that attracts a local audience.
As opposed to local search, organic search involves no local intent in the search (at least none that the search engine can recognize). For instance, a searcher is looking for information as opposed to products or services offered at a specific location.
Thus, a brick-and-mortar store offering Thai food will want to rank high in local search, but a website dedicated to providing users with recipes for Thai food would want to rank high in organic search.
Organic SEO is all about getting your website ranking high for certain searches that match the information on your website without the focus on an address, phone number, or other location identifier. Examples of websites that would benefit from organic SEO, as opposed to local SEO, would be alternative news media, blogging sites, sites providing recipes or instructional information, and related sites.
The answer to this question depends on a number of factors – your budget, your local competitors, how much work needs to be done on your website, and many other things.
The thing to remember about SEO is that it’s like diet and exercise – it’s unrealistic to expect to reach your ideal fitness goals after only two or three weeks; however, with hard work and consistent dedication, you will eventually reach your goals.
While local SEO is one of the easier areas of SEO, at least on the surface level. Creating a Google My Business listing for your business is easy and intuitive, but there are tons of other factors and metrics that decide how it’s going to rank. You want it in the Local 3-Pack, after all.
Arcane Marketing knows how to create landing pages that not only represent your business, but also correspond to what Google is looking for in deciding how it’s going to rank that page.
Writing about your own business can be fun, but our staff knows how to write content that’s search-optimized to the fullest extent.
Social Media Questions
Optimizing your business for maximum online exposure is made up of several ingredients. Many companies in the past believed a keyword-rich website was all that was needed for a website to skyrocket to the first page of Google. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, especially now. Much like baking a cake, there are a lot of key ingredients that go into effective internet marketing with social media being one of those key ingredients.
Consumers are all about transparency, so having a business that is open to public discussion and engages with their consumers makes a brand look like they have nothing to hide, are open to answering questions, and are willing to talk to the people that keep their business open.
Social Media Marketing is one facet of Search Engine Marketing. Social Media Marketing focuses on interaction with your niche, sharing content with your loyal customers, and creating brand awareness.
Search Engine Marketing is a much broader term, which encompasses many different aspects of Internet Marketing. Some of those aspects include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, content marketing, Local SEO, email marketing, and much more. A Search Engine Marketing campaign should always include Social Media Marketing, as it is an important component in the overall success of a digital marketing strategy.
Social Media Marketing is the practice of utilizing Social Media platforms in order to publicize and promote a brand, product or service. Though Social Media Marketing has many of the same goals as traditional advertising and marketing principles, the rules and best practices are very different.
Social Media Marketing allows brands to harness the power and reach of Social Media platforms, reaching countless potential customers every day. In a report released by Nielsen, studies have found that of the world’s Internet users, two-thirds use a social network or blogging Website.
Social Media attracts an accessible audience much more significant than most other media outlets offer and at a much lower price, as opposed to advertising on television or radio. Not only are those large numbers of people looking for information and connections through Social Media networks, they are also expecting to see brands they recognize.
93% of Social Media users believe a company should have a presence in the social media networks they use.. An overwhelming 85% of Social Media users think a company should interact with its consumers via Social Media. Additionally, 56% of Social Media users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in these environments. When used correctly, Social Media Marketing establishes a direct connection to potential and existing customers.
Brands can promote, gather feedback, connect, persuade, and educate the users quickly and effectively.
Though the potential for success with Social Media Marketing is huge, there is an even bigger chance for disaster. Social Media users want information, not sales pitches. Social Media Marketing, when done correctly, doesn’t slam users with advertisements and offers. THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE A COMPANY CAN DO!
Think of it like this; if a new customer came into your coffee shop, would you run up to them and shove a large sign in their face advertising your latest most exceptional coffee flavor? Or worse yet, would you repeat yourself over and over and over? This is precisely what you will be doing when you misuse social media! Social Media Marketing informs users about brands, connects companies with their audience in a meaningful and natural way so that when purchasing decisions are made, users will have positive associations with your brand – they will understand your company better and feel a connection with your brand.
Not all social media sites are created equal. Each of the top platforms have their own benefits, and although it’s pretty easy for us to figure out which ones will serve you well, it may be hard for you to figure it out.
That’s what we are here for.
We will discuss with you what your social media needs might be, what your ultimate goals are, and we will help determine where your audience is and target only the social media sites that we feel will be most effective for you.
Granted, most of the time Facebook will be recommended. However, if you have a younger audience (teens to twenty-somethings as your customer base), Instagram would be a must to add to the list.
If you have a highly visual type of company, product or service, Pinterest, and Instagram, as opposed to a site like LinkedIn, would be more appropriate. We will help you determine the correct platforms to use to market your products and services as well as to develop and amplify your brand.
We take pride in helping each and every one of our clients determine what social media marketing strategy is right for them. We constantly stay up to date on the latest trends in social media and are constantly conforming to the changes that social media companies are making.
When you hire Arcane Marketing to help with your social media marketing, you will be with professionals that understand the importance of integrity, professionalism and brand reputation.
Pay Per Click Questions
PPC stands for Pay Per Click, which is exactly what you are doing when you place an ad on a search engine or social media site. The most common places to place ads are Google and Bing.
PPC marketing, paid search marketing, or pay per click marketing refers to the practice of using ads to attract traffic to a website or a specific webpage.
In this marketing model, a client usually bids for keywords related to their business model or topic within an advertising platform. The advertising platform uses algorithms to match the advertiser with a relevant audience who are searching for information associated with the ad placed. Once an individual searches for the keywords chosen by the advertiser to bid on, they will be automatically shown the ads written by the advertiser along with the search query results.
The advertiser, in this case, will only be charged if the person clicks on one of the ads and visits his website or webpage.
By-and-large, this results in a positive outcome for all the parties involved as the advertiser gets targeted traffic for their website, and the searcher can find the product/service related to their search query easily by clicking on the ad. For the most part, almost all of our clients can benefit from using PPC marketing as a revenue source. If managed well, PPC marketing is a fantastic source of revenue.
Tackling campaign structure, segmentation, click-models, and ad copy are some of the hardest parts of PPC marketing to master successfully. So, if you are not great or confident at this, or don’t have the time to really set it up and manage it well, then you need to hire a professional… like us!
Primarily, there are 2 main ad network platforms to run a PPC campaign. Google and Bing. Google’s platform is known as Google Ads. Bing is known as Microsoft Ads Network.
There are actually many other sites and ad networks that offer PPC ads platforms, but all of them combined might account for less than 10% of the market share. This is the case for search engines and their ad networks.
We like to help our clients get the most attention for the least amount of cost if possible. Sometimes, depending on your specific campaign goals, it makes sense to utilize and market on these other networks. Additionally, the typical cost-per-click is much less on other ad networks, so the cost-per-engagement goes down. However, this is because there is not nearly as much traffic on other ad networks outside of Google and Bing.
It should also be noted that it’s common to run ad campaigns similar to Google Ads in social networks – like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Pinterest, etc.. However, these networks work a little differently than what we’re describing here on this page. You’ll want to view the Social Media Marketing page to find out more specifics on Social Ads and how they work.
There is quite a bit of work that goes on in order to build a successful PPC campaign. A lot of factors to consider.
First, we need to research and select the right keywords that are relevant to the search a potential client will make, as well as relevant to your website. Then those same strategically selected keywords are organized and sorted into segmented campaigns and ad-groups which consists of ads and keywords. From the ads that are placed, we lead a click from a search to a landing page that may be optimized for conversions of one type or another.
A conversion is typically someone who completes a specified action, perhaps a purchase on a website, or filled out a contact form, or even made a phone call or text chat.
Search engines reward advertisers that create relevant, intelligently targeted campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks that perform well. In other words, if your ads seem useful as well as relevant to the search query made… You are getting good traffic/or clicks, and users seem satisfied based on if they are converting or completing a goal, the search engine will reward you by charging less per click. This helps your profit margins and increases your efficiency to get your marketing dollars further to reach a wider audience for a lower budget.
Google uses its own system called Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords). Google Ads is the single most popular PPC advertising system in the world. This system allows businesses to create text or display ads that appear on Google’s search engine and other Google properties.
Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of Ads advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the valuable ad space on its search results page. The “winners” are chosen based on a combination of factors, including the quality, relevance, and performance of their keywords and ad campaigns, as well as the amount of their keyword bids. More specifically, who gets to appear on the page is based on an advertiser’s Ad Rank, a metric calculated by multiplying two key factors – your Maximum cost per click bid and Quality Score.
Quality Score is a value, determined by Google, that takes into account your click-through rate, keyword relevance, and landing page quality. This entire system allows winning advertisers to reach potential customers at a cost that fits their budget.
To simplify it, PPC ads are basically run similar to an auction.
There is no specific figure when it comes to the cost of a PPC campaign as you have the freedom to choose your budget and PPC ad platforms also allow you to choose your bid for each keyword, along with a daily budget of an ad group or a PPC campaign.
The cost of an actual click in a PPC ad campaign depends upon the bid and quality score of an ad.Positioning your ad in the right place can make quite a difference in the performance. Better positioning of your ad will impact how many clicks you might receive.
Be aware, that among other factors like Ad Rank or Quality Score, the maximum bid price for your ad will help determine what rank your ad may appear when a search query is made. If you have a high-quality score, then you may be able to get a better position on search engine results pages with a lower bid, but if you have a low-quality score, then you will need to bid higher, and this will increase the cost of each click on your PPC campaign.
Some industries have high competition, and this leads to higher costs per click bids as there are keywords which will cost you $50 or more for a single click. Although, in most cases, you can get a decent amount of traffic for a bid of less than $2 per click. So, the cost of a PPC ad campaign will vary and depend on several factors which may be different from one advertiser to another.
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Now, if you’re asking about how much Arcane Marketing charges to run a PPC campaign… we can only narrow down the answer slightly. In about 99% of all campaigns that we either take over or start, there’s immediate work we can easily point out that needs to be fixed or improved. Sometimes, it means scrapping the campaign structure you might already have and rebuilding based on historical data that exists. Sometimes it’s just a few tweaks and updates. The point is that there will almost always be a campaign development charge. These start out around $600 and go up from there. A typical campaign development for the bulk of our clients falls around $1,000-$1,500 depending on the size and complexity of the set up needed. Additionally, if we need to build a few PPC specific landing pages, the price could potentially go up. It all depends on the structure and size of your campaign and your goals.
For on-going services, it should noted that WE DO NOT COLLECT YOUR AD SPEND FUNDS. You pay those funds directly to the platform advertiser (i.e. Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…). All that we collect are the service fees for us to actively manage and optimize your campaigns. This starts around $400/mo and will increase depending on your total ad spend budget. Our most common client spends between $600 – $1,000/mo for us to manage their PPC campaigns. It is typically not a percentage (%) of your budget like most companies or agencies offer (hint: that is a more expensive way to pay for your PPC management!)
Our incentives are not to increase your ad spend, unless it makes sense to scale up a winning and profitable campaign to increase volume. Some other agencies are motivated to increase your ad spend simply so that they can charge more for what they do. We like to think our fee structure is the most fair. After all, it’s taken us a few years to build and develop our pricing, based on experience.
Do you want to see our pricing structure? Give us a call and ask – we’d be happy to send it to you!
Video Production Questions
There are a lot of video styles that you’ll think up and want to create. That’s excellent, first and foremost, we want to give you something you can be proud of. What’s even more fun than being proud of a video that’s well produced and edited, is watching it in marketing action. This is where Arcane Marketing excels, but it doesn’t stop there. Take a look at our specialty digital marketing services that will compliment your new video idea!
However, the follow are the most common types we produce right now (because they’re in demand):
- Promotional
- Educational
- Explainer
- PodCasts
- Training
- Social Media Videos
- Branding
- Product Demos
- Aerial Drone Footage
The truth is, that it really depends on how well organized you are in your content, script, set up and set ideas. We’ve been successful at keeping the shooting and editing time to a minimum.
In most situations, you will have a final deliverable from the day we shoot to delivering a well edited video within 4 weeks. Although, we do all in our power to expedite the process!
It’s important to note that we LOVE communication. That goes both ways. You’ll know the full expectations before we even get started.
We’ve experienced more success with video, single-handedly, than just about any of our other successful digital marketing strategies. When you get video involved, it’s always a win. Stats and research data tell us that people would much rather watch a video than read the lengthy content on a page.
As stated earlier, video is the KING of media! Video is the secret sauce to landing pages, social engagement, and buying decisions. Here are a few stats you might like that support the video idea: The average user spends 88% more time on a website that uses video. (Forbes, 2018) and it’s estimated that in 2022, 86% of internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads. (Citco, 2019)
Feel free to contact us and ask about all of the video production details. You’ll find out in short order that video is critical for any brand or marketing campaign.
Arcane Marketing isn’t just good at video production – we’re phenomenal. The reason? Nothing is started or executed without a reason. Strategizing about what videos you need, why you need them, and where they’ll be used is more important than doing the video itself!
How your video will help you reach your business goals (long term or short term) will help us know what to produce, how to produce it, and then what should be done with it after it’s produced.
The name of the game is helping determine what your goals are and how we can take you step-by-step to reaching those goals. Video is almost always a part of that solution; as it should be – it’s working!
Nothing we do is intended for us to keep from you. We look at all of our services as development. It’s your product, it’s your strategy, and it’s your video. Unless we make a special arrangement, it’s assumed that everything we produce for you as a service, is owned by you.
This is a great question to ask any other company you might be considering working with. If you don’t get to set up, keep, and continue to own the rights to the development (in this case, for video) you pay for, then it’s probably not worth working with that company.
Web Design/Development Questions
No, we prefer clients to tell us what they want their site to look like through a series of extensive questions and by providing us examples of features they like from other websites. We have our preferred theme and toolsets to built it to suit!
Of course! We want clients to be as self-sufficient as they wish to be, and we try to ensure that their websites are simple to make updates.
Yes! We build our websites on a strong foundation, and there are limitless features that can be added at any time!
There are constant updates to all parts of the website to add new and improve upon existing features, but more importantly to patch and prevent security exploitations. Ensuring that the website backed up daily and is always up to date through a proactive maintenance plan is a recommended and critical necessity to counter any attacks.
Yes! We can add Google Analytics to help track a wide variety of statistics for visitors on your website!
