With Google Analytics, one can divide site visitors into very granular segments including, but not limited to visitors by: device (Mobile visitors), Language, Hour of the Day, and even Days Since Last Visit. These metrics can be combined, mixed, and matched to create very specific audience segments.

Creative Design from Google Analytics

Analytical data from Google provides insights into regional consumer preferences. Examining Custom Segments of site visitors by country, state, or city, and then overlaying which products were most viewed and purchased by those segments, can guide print design. For example, if visitors from City A repeatedly view and purchase one product, then media placements in City A should feature that product. Google Analytics City segments are so localized that ad placements in City A can feature one product, while ads placed in Suburb of City A can feature another.

Another way Google Analytics can guide creative is through keywords. Keywords provide a wealth of information into how potential customers reach a website. Consumers using ‘branded keywords’ to reach a site indicate their decision to use that brand. Category keywords driving purchases on a site indicate successful SEM efforts, well structured landing pages, and weaker brand loyalty. These insights can guide offline creative by identifying where to place the creative emphasis – on the product, price, or brand.

Media from Google Analytics

Google Analytics can also guide media decisions. As previously mentioned, the device used by consumers to access your site is trackable through Google Analytics. Research may indicate a strong mobile audience that might be better reached through mobile ads, apps, or other majority-mobile outlets such as Twitter. Likewise, poor search engine traffic numbers may suggest the need for increased SEO or Paid Search efforts. How consumers reach a website is as important as what they do once there.

Clearly, Google Analytics provides a plethora of data regarding website use. However, it is the analysis of that data that generates actionable insights into consumer behavior and gives the data value. These insights are not limited to recommending modifications to a website, as they can also be used to drive a variety of decisions regarding the presentation and media mix of a brand.

More Information on Google Analytics.

Communication is a very simple, yet endlessly complex process.  At its most basic level, communication is simply an exchange of information.  The complex part is to find effective ways to transmit information from one point to another without a breakdown, and doing so can be the key to success.

Listen up

At Mudbug Media, one of our top priorities is establishing and maintaining effective lines of communication with our clients near and far.  Everything we do – at every level – relies almost entirely on effective communication techniques.

Most client relationships begin on a very basic level – with a meeting.  We sit down with our prospective clients to build a foundation of information.  We have to determine what type of marketing service, website or application the client wants and what the budget parameters are before we can create a rough timeline for the deliverability of whichever services we are providing.

After asking questions, listening to answers, asking more questions and repeating the process until every detail is clear, we can begin working toward a finished product.  From there, the communication shifts gears as Mudbug Media employees convert all the information gleaned from the client into the desired end result.

Inside out

Internal communications at Mudbug Media run the gamut from old fashioned face-to-face meetings to securely stored data on internal servers.  In addition to a weekly company-wide meeting, each department meets individually every week to keep informed on every ongoing project.

A single job will work its way through the marketing, design and programming departments several times, with communication flowing freely every step of the way.  Once we understand the goals of the project and how our work fits into the overall business plan and long-range goals of the client, we can move forward with the task at hand.

Once a job is complete, the follow up service begins.  If you are a Mudbug Media customer, our phones are always on and our inboxes are always open.  A real live person will gladly pick up the phone and talk any of our customers through whatever problems may arise, and there’s a really good chance the person handling the fix also wrote the code or designed the application.

In a similar vein, our account executives and client service specialists take pride in keeping up to date on every development.  We have challenged ourselves to make sure we are doing everything we can for each and every customer, and that all depends on communication.

While communication is essential, it can also get lost in the shuffle as things progress.  It’s worth revisiting basic methods of communication and paying attention to the flow of information going into and out of every client interaction.  That’s what Effective Communication Month is all about.

Google’s old algorithm would take around two weeks to index a site, while Caffeine gets the job done in minutes.  To test out Caffeine’s speediness, I4U News made up a gibberish word, and included it in the title of a post.  That new word, “cyberreblaus,” was indexed in a little over a minute, and speed that was previously impossible to achieve.

Redefining Relevance

While Google was built on a foundation of relevant search results, the factors that determine relevance have shifted as Internet usage has evolved. With Caffeine, Google recognizes that “relevant” also means up-to-date. According to Google, Caffeine offers 50 percent “fresher” results, which translates to more timely updates from news sources and credible bloggers.

With the advent of constantly updating sites like Twitter, Internet users have become accustomed to a real time flow of information. Caffeine is an attempt to bridge the gap between what is traditionally relevant or authoritative and timely results.

Google search results are drawn from over 100 million gigabytes of storage – the largest collection of web content ever offered.  Before the Caffeine update, web searches pulled data from the most recent Google index of every site deemed relevant.  With Caffeine, that information is seconds old, not days or weeks.

The old Google index updated information one layer at a time, analyzing the entire web before any single layer could be updated.  Think of this as Google running a lap around the entire Web before updating its results. Caffeine takes a radically different approach, with spiders analyzing the web in smaller chunks and updating as they go, bringing the Internet closer to real time than ever before.

With all layers being updated simultaneously, users can find new content that was published seconds ago rather than days ago.  From the user’s perspective, this amazing leap forward in indexing and retrieval means users can pull up the most timely news stories with any query.

Focusing on Fresh Content

Google’s new indexing algorithm comes down to one lesson for websites: fresh content is now more important than ever.  Google already placed an emphasis on timely information, but it’s now become the focal point of the search engine.  In this sense, Google will reward more aggressive SEO tactics for continuous updates on the Web. This puts enormous pressure on websites to increase the flow of original content.

Uploading a new blog every other week or once a month used to supply Google with enough new content to keep your site bobbing along in the middle of the pack, but not anymore.  Web publishers are going to have to start paying much more attention to the way Google views output on the Web, because Caffeine’s spiders will move on within a few seconds of arriving at a site if the information is not deemed fresh enough.

RSS Wrinkle

Another interesting aspect of the index overhaul is that right around the same time Google first announced Caffeine, they also introduced an open-source RSS technology called PubSubHubbub, or PuSH.  This new RSS technology brings RSS feeds closer to real time, so when a blog or website with an RSS feed publishes something, that update reaches subscribers within seconds.

Inspired by how we work with and use the Internet, Google is constantly pushing the boundaries on how the Internet works with us. With Caffeine’s innovations in crawling and indexing, the Google Dance is a thing of the past. While it’s always great news when Google revolutionizes the way we interact with the Internet and the way it interacts with us, every change comes with a new set of rules and requirements.  Keeping up with Google is the fun part.  Making sure Google doesn’t pass you by is where the work begins.

Search engines like Google actively search out websites with the most pertinent information possible on any topic.  If someone types in “mountain bike New Orleans,” and you are in the business of selling mountain bikes in New Orleans, it is in your best interest for that search to turn up your website as the top result.

All about the Algorithm

Now, how does this happen?  It’s all about the algorithm Google uses to find websites.  Google sorts through the thousands of websites that are related to the search terms to find the one that most closely fits the words used in the search.  The Google algorithm will look at about 200 factors to determine a site’s ranking, and while much of the algorithm’s mechanics remain a closely guarded mystery, several important elements have been sorted out.

Here are five simple fixes for improving your website’s search engine standing:

1. Proper URL structuring – write them for humans, not for robots.
2. Title tags – what specific search does that page target? If it’s “mountain bikes in New Orleans,” then that search term should be in the title.
3. Headers – outlines the web page – what is the overall document about? What are sub-sections about? Think semantically.
4. Meta descriptions – the snippet Google includes in its search results – weighted with importance, and also an opportunity to pitch to your potential.
5. Meta-geotags – 1/5 of all searches online are for local services/products – associate your website with your physical location.

Content Counts

There’s a lot of speculation as to what the Google algorithm specifically looks at when it comes to content, whether it scans the first 80 words or 100, but one thing is certain – what matters is content.  It may be the case that no human will ever take the time to read the 100-word introduction to your business on your website’s homepage, but Google sure will.

A lot of “industry experts” claim that links back to a site are the most important part of the search algorithm. As Google’s spider literally crawls your site and the rest of the Web it peeks at your links, and uses the link text as a description of what that site is. Since someone on the web voted that your site is relevant to mountain bikes in New Orleans, Google will take this into account when it’s arranging search results. While it’s imperative to write great content, it’s just as important to shop that content around online: in blog comments, relevant web directories and all the appropriate social media outlets.

Loading your website with as much pertinent information as possible is a proven tactic to increase the site’s profile, but this isn’t a one time effort.  Good SEO practices require constant updating.  Google responds much better to fresh content than information that has been up on a website for months or even years.  Keeping your website as high as possible in Google search rankings requires continued effort and vigilance.

Finding Dr. Z

A prime example of good SEO in action is the website we developed for Specialty Orthopaedics.  We’ve been working closely with director Dr. Steven Zelicof since November to improve the website’s online profile.

In that time, the number of daily visitors to the site has risen significantly, from 40 per day in November to over 100 in January.  Since that peak, the number of daily visitors has leveled off at around 80 – twice as many as when we started.

This increased traffic is a direct result of our strategic and continuous implementation of SEO best practices.  We found out what search terms were most common among the site’s visitors and worked those keywords into the website content, and we made sure each service that turned out to be popular in keyword searches was prominently displayed and explained.

The keys to this process are communication, research and adaptation.  Dr. Zelicof has kept in close contact with Mudbug Media since his site went live.  Instead of forgetting about his website as soon as it became functional, Dr. Zelicof made sure we knew what he wanted his practice to be known for online, and we were able to make that happen by adapting the content.

Information changes constantly, as does Google’s algorithm.  It is vitally important to make SEO implementation an ongoing part of any website.  No matter how big or small the business, SEO best practices can make a huge impact on any website.

That’s why television networks live and die by their ratings.  It’s simply not enough to broadcast a show to 3 million homes nationwide, people have to actually turn on their TVs and watch the program.

In the same way, focusing only on the number of emails sent out during an email marketing campaign is missing the most important part – whether or not the emails actually got to the intended inboxes.

There are several steps that can be taken to make sure an email marketing campaign isn’t derailed by emails that are lost or flagged as spam, and it takes a concerted effort to achieve a successful deliverability rate.

Delivering the goods

An email campaign’s deliverability rate is calculated by dividing the total number of delivered messages by the total number of messages sent.  As a general rule of thumb, if you have a high deliverability rate, more people are being reached successfully and therefore your email campaign can be considered a success.

In 2009, the average deliverability rate for email marketing campaigns was around 90%.  There are certain things that can land you in that unwanted 10%, but avoiding those pitfalls is easy once you know what to do.

Roadblocks

Before anyone can ever open an email, several important steps must be taken to ensure the email lands in the correct inbox.  The first thing to be taken into account when planning an email campaign is how Internet Service Providers view your efforts.

ISPs tend to block emails from Internet Protocol addresses that they don’t recognize.  A common technique used by spammers is to constantly shift IP addresses to cover their tracks.  Having a static IP address will let your ISP know that you mean business and aren’t out to flood anyone’s inbox with email scams, so your reputation and the reputation of your email service provider matters.

As an email marketing campaign matures and evolves without any spam, your static IP address will become more trusted, allowing for higher deliverability rates.  Once you have designated a single IP address from which your emails will originate, setting up a forward and reverse Domain Name System will further legitimize your efforts.

Forward DNS basically meets the ISP halfway by telling it who you are and that your IP is trustworthy, while reverse DNS takes the IP address that is trying to make the connection and checks to see if there is a registered domain associated with it.  Both are essential steps to ensure your legitimate email efforts don’t end up getting your IP blacklisted by ISPs based on the sheer number of emails sent.

The other SPF

Once you have established yourself as a reliable source of emails, the next step is protecting your IP address from spammers trying to co-opt the reputations of reliable publishers.  Sender Policy Framework is a more specific DNS entry that lists which IP addresses are approved to send mail for your domain.

This system was created to help prevent spammers from using your legitimate IP address for nefarious purposes.  Of the many systems proposed to prevent forgeries, it’s the most widespread and the most easily implemented.

By using a static IP address, having both forward and reverse DNS set up for your domain name and adding SPF information to your record, you’re letting the ISPs know that you’re one of the “good guys,” which makes it far less likely that your email will be mistaken for spam.

A lot of work goes into making sure an email marketing campaign isn’t mistaken for spam and isn’t taken over by spammers, and while it may seem like a lot of effort, every step is essential to ensure deliverability rates are as high as possible.

The Mudbug Media team took full advantage of our proximity to French Quarter Fest this year, and we plan on taking Jazz Fest by storm on opening day.  With so much great food, music and culture floating around, there’s no way we’re going to miss the party.

Ernie Vincent Funks up the Fest

This year Mudbug Media sponsored New Orleans funk guitar mainstay Ernie Vincent and the Top Notes at French Quarter Fest. Vincent and company kicked things off on April 9^th with a great show in the courtyard of the Old U.S. Mint.

It was a little bit early in the day for funky guitar and smooth sax solos, but Vincent delivered a great set, getting the crowd moving as the afternoon began to warm up and the beer began to flow.

Check out his latest CD at the Louisiana Music Factory.

French Quarter Fest is always amazing with its perfect weather, solid lineup of great local acts, Abita beer, tons of crawfish and general celebration of everything New Orleans.  A perfect opening act for Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest oozes “only in New Orleans” moments.

The Main Event

Friday, April 23 will be Mudbug Media Day at Jazz Fest…at least that’s what we’re calling it.  Mudbug Media president Scott Zeitzer is a die-hard Jazz Fest fan, so much so that he buys a ticket for every one of his employees every year and gives us all a free vacation day to enjoy the fest.

We had a direct connection to French Quarter Fest this year through our sponsorship of Ernie Vincent, but we know a guy at Jazz Fest too.  Project Coordinator Bertha Chicas’ boyfriend George Gekas will be making his Jazz Fest debut this year as his band The Revivalists, and you can bet the entire Mudbug Media team will be front and center.

You can download The Revivalists’ Live at Tipitina’s album for free here.

We are also pitching in to help Café Reconcile staff the Strawberry Lemonade booth during the second weekend of Jazz Fest.  In addition to donating our time and skills to build a website for Café Reconcile, we like to help out in any way we can, either in the board room or at the Fair Grounds.

So while it’s a good time for music fans in New Orleans, it’s an even better time for Mudbug Media employees.  The only drawback is that April only happens once a year.

If your business advertises online, the clear choice for pay per click ad campaigns for much of the last decade has been Google, but competing search engine Bing could end up giving Google a run for its money.

But it’s Not Google

When you compare the success of online ad campaigns on Google and Bing, the well-established Google really holds some major advantages over Microsoft’s Bing, which will celebrate its first birthday on May 28.

First of all, Google has become a verb.  How often does someone tell you to “Just Google” something at work?  Has anyone ever told you to “Just Bing” it?”  Unless people start “Binging” things on a regular basis, I just don’t see Google’s domination of the search engine market ending anytime soon.

What this means for businesses is Bing may not be the most effective choice for PPC advertising. One of our major clients has an extensive PPC campaign going on right now, and the results tracked by Google’s AdWords service and Bing’s AdCenter speak for themselves.

Over a four-week period, the campaign wracked up 421,456 impressions and 5,743 clicks on Google.  During that same time period, Bing only generated 202,041 impressions and 503 clicks.  Despite the fact that half as many people saw the ads on Bing and less than a quarter of one percent of the Bing impressions led to clicks, the Bing ads cost on average three cents less than Google.

One Big Step for Bing?

But don’t rule out Bing just yet.  As Mudbug Media Marketing Specialist Tara Curtis cleverly pointed out in this recent blog, Google’s long running domination of the United States internet market ended earlier this month when Facebook became the most visited website in the country for the week ending March 13^th.

While Bing has fluctuated between the 16^th and 23^rd spots this week, Yahoo has held steady at the number three spot.  With the announced merger of Microsoft and Yahoo, the nascent search engine will get a huge boost, exposing Bing advertisements to millions more people nationwide.

More Bing for Your Buck

With Bing potentially riding that merger to the top of the charts, advertisers will find themselves in an interesting situation.  Like all things Google, AdWords is an extremely user-friendly system.

AdWords allows for constant and easy manipulation of all aspects of a paid search campaign, while Microsoft’s AdCenter is not nearly as user friendly.  Making changes to ongoing campaigns in AdCenter is a time consuming process, and since Bing is only one year old, few people have had the time to get acquainted with its ins and outs.

So if Microsoft’s alliance with Yahoo brings Bing into more direct contention with Google as one of the top search engines in the world, online marketing professionals like myself are going to find it necessary to know how to optimize paid search campaigns for Bing with the same expertise as they do Google campaigns.

What This Means to You

While it may be too early to abandon AdWords and focus all your energy on AdCenter, it would certainly be a wise move to be proficient with both systems.  Paid search campaigns are dynamic and can fluctuate as market values and economic landscapes change.

Online marketing is an evolving but necessary facet of today’s advertising landscape requiring constant attention and adjustments.  If you are doing everything on your own or if the marketing firm you contracted for the campaign isn’t on top of new developments or possible market shifts, you can end up with ads that no one sees.

Google is already a powerful search engine and Bing could become one soon.
Use your advertising dollars wisely.

If your business doesn’t have a presence on Facebook, you may be missing the greatest free advertising opportunity on the Internet.

The numbers don’t lie

For the week ending March 13^th, Google accounted for 7.03 % of the country’s web traffic, while Facebook grabbed a 7.07 % market share.  As this article points out, the difference may be small, but Facebook has been growing at a rate that far outpaces Google.

Google’s year-over-year growth rate of 9 % is dwarfed by Facebook’s 185 % increase in traffic compared to this time last year.  In a strange twist of fate, Google enjoyed its position as most popular site since becoming king of the hill in September 2007 after dethroning once-popular social networking site Myspace.com.

Social networking is back and here to stay.

Take advantage

Big ticket retail outlets from Victoria’s Secret to the Gap and Bath and Body Works have all created a significant presence on Facebook.   While these pages may at first seem more fun than functional, they can have serious marketing advantages over traditional advertising.

With almost 300,000 fans on Facebook, Bath and Body Works has a built in audience of dedicated customers.  Most people use their status updates to talk about plans for the weekend or to post a witty comment, but Bath and Body Works uses it as a platform to advertise weekly specials to hundreds of thousands of repeat customers.

For free.

Follow our lead

Mudbug Media recognized the advantage of having a Facebook page early on, so we created one. What Facebook allows you to do is show a bit of personality.  Instead of working with a faceless corporation, most consumers today want to know who they are dealing with, and Facebook is all about making personal and professional connections.

It’s a great way to go to your clients instead of waiting for them to go to you.  Think about this: how many of your employees log on to Facebook every day?  How many of your clients do the same?  Wouldn’t it be great to connect to your audience in a way that they are used to and comfortable with?

People only connect to a certain number of websites every day, and Facebook is definitely one of them.

Join the club

Like all websites, Facebook pages are only as good as the effort and skill put into designing them.  Once a business reaches 1,000 fans, greater customization options are available, but figuring out which ones work best for your business can be tricky.

What has become clear is the overall importance of establishing a presence of Facebook.  If you think your business would benefit from a Facebook page, contact us and our marketing experts will help you every step of the way.

And while you’re at it, become a fan of Mudbug Media.

But email marketing is both a standout and a risk for marketers and there are right and wrong ways to approach email marketing campaigns.  Through email, Internet service providers and marketers have tested, measured and learned through trial and error what works and what doesn’t, ultimately creating best practices and laws that govern email marketing today.

The key to online marketing success is creating relevance for the recipient or viewer. In the case of email marketing, that means getting explicit permission from the email recipients before sending them email marketing messages, and personalizing the offers as much as possible.

Spreading the News

Email Newsletters are sent on a consistent basis to subscribed customers interested in timely information about your business.  One-off email campaigns are also useful but are generally built around one time offers or targeted email as part of a larger marketing campaign effort.

Mass email sent to your customers should be treated the same as if you are sending one email to one customer.  Mass email marketing campaigns should ideally drive traffic to your website to create more business opportunities and therefore make you or your company more money.

Email deliverability isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a must have

In the late 90s and the early part of the 21st century, email messages were deployed with little to no concern about whether they were actually delivered.  In its relative infancy email marketing was more about getting the message out the door than it was about worrying if the email made it to the desired recipients.

Email deliverability is one of the most important aspects of email marketing. Not only do we now know that email messages cannot be acted upon if they aren’t delivered and read, but we also know that a company’s online reputation is the foremost reason why email messages are delivered or not.  And, perhaps more importantly, a company’s online reputation is heavily weighted by how email subscribers do or do not interact with its email messages.

Measure the results, not just the indicators

The primary objective in most businesses is generating qualified sales leads.  The ability to measure the number of opened email messages and clicks shows an automatic conversion. For several years, many marketing professionals still used those same metrics to determine the success or failure of their email marketing campaigns.

But time and technology have shown us that open and click-through rates, while valuable, are really just indicators. They highlight important information such as whether an email subject line or offer was appealing, and if a list is growing stale.

But what they do not tell us, in most cases, is if an email marketing campaign generated results against a defined objective.

Smaller marketing budget = more email reliance

Email customer acquisition is generally the top priority when companies come to us asking for help with email marketing.  Acquisition should always be part of the mix but more balance between acquisition and retention is now a requirement given today’s real-time social Web.  Being mindful of this balance can enable very powerful word-of-mouth, and loyalty results in a return on your investment.

Email ROI is measured not in opens and clicks but in conversions.  You can look at a list of customers who opened your email and clicked on a link, but then what?  What does that tell you?  Analysis of this behavior can mean the difference between a bounce and a sale.   Finding the answers to these questions can make dynamic content and personalization possible for future emails.  That means retention of email customers, repeat business and ROI.

Email marketing campaigns can get the word out about your product, service or business while collecting valuable information about your customer base and what parts of your message aren’t working.  But you really shouldn’t stop there.  In order to get a return on your investment of time, effort and money, the information gleaned from the email campaign needs to be analyzed and put to good use.

Otherwise you’re really just sending out SPAM.

But this year Pepsi has left conventional logic on the ground wondering why it didn’t retire last year (…oh no wait that was Bret Farve after the Saints were done with him) by abandoning television commercials during the big game for a $20 million Pepsi Refresh Project online marketing campaign.

Check out the Pepsi Refresh Project here.

The big question is will this gamble pay off?  Will Pepsi, which at one time spent millions on Super Bowl commercials featuring big name celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Britney Spears, see this year’s unconventional jump to online marketing generate more revenue than the cost of a Super Bowl ad campaign?

People are certainly talking about Pepsi right now.  You can read articles about their gamble here.

What do you think?  Does this move help or hurt Pepsi?  Or is this much ado about nothing, like the Pepsi Clear debacle?

Oh, and Pepsi awarded New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees a $100,000 grant The American Cancer Society Patrick F. Taylor Hope Lodge this afternoon, so they’ve certainly got the Who Dat vote…not that any of us are actually going to watch the commercials this year.