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Where’s my new website?

Posted on by Phil

So you’ve built a brand new website, made it pretty, and filled it full of great content and information about your business. Then, you go and type it into Google to see it live. And… Nothing. You can’t find it. Your site couldn’t hide better if it was the child of Where’s Wally and Carmen Sandiego. Don’t worry–you aren’t alone! In this article we’ll cover some reasons why you might not be able to find your new website.

How-Long-Does-SEO-Take-to-see-results

A new website takes time to index

Indexing is the process of adding a website to Google’s database. If Google doesn’t know the site exists, they can’t show it to people. This process takes time, so you might not be able to find your website from a Google search for a little while. Google also ranks new sites lower than existing sites, so it could be that your site isn’t high enough in the results yet. The rankings will naturally improve over time as long as you follow SEO best practices.

You can still find your site directly

Thankfully, if you’re having trouble finding your new site through a Google search, you can still access it by typing in the full URL directly. Often, you’re also able to type that URL into Google and get your site to show up that way, although that isn’t much use to someone who’s looking for it. In the meantime, you can wait–or invest into Google ads to at least show up as an ad in the search results.

Why is there even a wait at all?

One reason why your brand new site won’t show up instantly is because of the sheer number of websites and pages that exist. There is an estimated 1.5 billion websites that currently exist and over 1 quadrillion individual pages. That’s more than 10 times the amount of all the money that exists in the world! A million isn’t even a drop in the bucket when you’re dealing with quadrillions, though a million dollars would still be nice to have!

Search engines like Google process this sheer volume of sites through crawling and indexing. “Crawling” is when a web “spider” goes through websites searching for new information–like the existence of your new site. Once Google’s itsy bitsy spider finds your site, the site is indexed, or read over to make sure that the site has quality content and the information the crawler is looking for. If you’ve registered your site in Google Webmaster, you can request it to be indexed manually, but it will still take some time to appear in the results, especially when it’s brand new.

Isn’t there a way to speed up the process somehow?

While you can’t really do anything to speed up the indexing process, there is something you can do to make your site appear sometimes in the search results while you wait. Get an AdWords account and run some ads on Google. AdWords is still a good idea when your site is indexed as it has shown to be an effective tool for increasing revenue when done well, but it can be a huge boost to those first few weeks when you aren’t showing up in searches.

However, the ads can drain your budget quickly if you’re unfamiliar with the platform and don’t know how to use it’s many tools. Google offers free training you can go through to learn the basics, or you can always get the help of our knowledgeable team to manage the accounts on your behalf! We also have a certified Google Ads team here at Back9. Find out more on our article 9 Key Reasons to use Google Ads, or get in touch today!

 

Brand vs Logo

Posted on by Allison Robinson

Have you ever wondered what the difference between Brand vs Logo? A lot of times, the two terms are used interchangeably. But brand and logo aren’t the same thing, and just because you have a logo doesn’t mean your brand is all good.

Aren’t brand and logo the same thing?

All squares are rectangles. But not all rectangles are squares. And there you go! The same thing applies to brand vs logo. Your logo is a part of your brand, but your brand includes much more than simply the logo.

So then what’s a brand?

A brand is the set of core values and beliefs of your business and what you represent. It’s not only your products and services, but how you treat customers and even employees. So if people walk inside and instead of “Hello”, you say “Welcome to Pizza Pete’s, the Petest Pizza south of Santa’s House”, then your weird greeting is part of your brand.

All brands have beliefs and values, whether they’re written down or not

It might seem silly to write down what you believe as a business, but customers are going to make the judgment for themselves anyway, so why not give them a push in the right direction? You certainly don’t want to be known as “The one that cheats people” because someone spread bad information and you have nothing to counter it!

Back9 - Brand vs LogoBut beyond that, customers want to know that they’re in good hands. They want to know why you went into businesses. “I saw a discrepancy I could take advantage of to make a lot of money.” Sure, maybe that’s true. But if you were successful, there was still a need that you fulfilled. And you probably learned a lot along the way too. Talk about that!

The logo doesn’t matter then?

No no, that’s not true at all! Just because your brand is more than your logo doesn’t mean the logo doesn’t matter. Your logo is the visual representation of your brand. It’s what people associate with your product or service. If you have a logo that you’re attached to and people can recognise, then great! Avoid major changes with it or you risk having to regain some of your audience.

But what if you’re a new business or your logo is Meh at best? Professional designers put in a lot of hours into designing a logo – from type to colour theory – because of how important it is. Sometimes, a painful amount of hours for something so small. But they look at sizing, colour schemes, symbolism, mood, and a whole lot more. People see it and think of your business, so it’s crucial that it gives off the right impression!

Need help with your logo or brand?

If all of this brand and logo stuff seems a little too much and you’d rather focus on just doing high quality work, we can help. Our dedicated team has specialists for everything from graphic design to writing these blogs, and everyone does what they’re good at! We can help manage your brand and create a new logo that you’ll be sure to love–after all, you have the final say! Get in touch with us today to get started.

What is the buyer’s journey?

Posted on by Allison Robinson

As a buyer, do you want to be prospected, or demo’d, or closed? The answer is almost always no. This is because it depends on which stage of the journey you’re in. The buyer’s journey is the series of steps a buyer makes before making a purchase. It is a crucial part of understanding your ideal customer and your inbound strategy. There are 3 stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

For awareness, these steps add zero value to a buyer. Buyers are looking for additional information about your product that can’t be found online.

As a business owner or a salesperson, you can personalise your sales process to the buyer’s context by understanding the buyer’s journey. Whether you’re selling directly to customers or you’re b2b, in this blog post, we’ll define the buyer’s journey, and show you how to think through it when attracting new prospects – from leads to customers and to being delighted.

Why does the buyer’s journey matter?

The buyer’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service.

The journey consists of a three-step process:

  1. Awareness Stage: The buyer realises they have a problem.
  2. Consideration Stage: The buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it.
  3. Decision Stage: The buyer chooses a solution.

The graphic below illustrates a sample buyer’s journey for the simple purchasing decision of a doctor visit during an illness.

 

Buyer's Journey Stages

How to Define Your Company’s Buyer’s Journey

If you don’t have an intimate understanding of your buyers, conduct a few interviews with customers, prospects, and colleagues to get a sense of the buying journey. Here are some questions you should ask to put together the buyer’s journey for your business.

Awareness Stage

During the Awareness stage, buyers identify their challenge or an opportunity they want to pursue. They also decide whether or not the goal or challenge should be a priority. In order to fully understand the Awareness stage for your buyer, ask yourself:

  1. How do buyers describe their goals or challenges?
  2. How do buyers educate themselves on these goals or challenges?
  3. What are the consequences of inaction by the buyer?
  4. Are there common misconceptions buyers have about addressing the goal or challenge?
  5. How do buyers decide whether the goal or challenge should be prioritized?

Consideration Stage

During the Consideration stage, buyers have clearly defined the goal or challenge and have committed to addressing it. They evaluate the different approaches or methods available to pursue the goal or solve their challenge. Ask yourself:

  1. How do buyers educate themselves on the various categories?
  2. What categories of solutions do buyers investigate?
  3. How do buyers perceive the pros and cons of each category?
  4. How do buyers decide which category is right for them?

Decision Stage

In the Decision stage, buyers have already decided on a solution category. For example, they could write a pro/con list of specific offerings and then decide on the one that best meets their needs. Questions you should ask yourself to define the Decision stage are:

  1. What criteria do buyers use to evaluate the available offerings?
  2. When buyers investigate your company’s offering, what do they like about it compared to alternatives? What concerns do they have with your offering?
  3. Who needs to be involved in the decision? For each person involved, how does their perspective on the decision differ?
  4. Do buyers have expectations around trying the offering before they purchase it?
  5. Outside of purchasing, do buyers need to make additional preparations, such as implementation plans or training strategies?

The answers to these questions will provide a robust foundation for your buyer’s journey. Once you know these answers, you can tailor your content and website to meet your users’ needs. The next step is to create content like blog articles, videos, and images.

SEO vs. SEM: The Ultimate Showdown

Posted on by Phil

Quick, in a fight between SEO and SEM – who would win? Are you going to put all your money on the reigning champ? Or do you think the rising star will steal the title match? Choosing the wrong option can make it so that you don’t get the best possible results for your business. So before placing that wager, it might be helpful to know a little bit about the contenders.

SEO – The Veteran

SEO has been around for a long time, enough that it usually doesn’t bother using its full name. Search Engine Optimisation is a series of best practices that search engines such as Bing and Google use to decide who goes on the first page and who goes on page 1,546,242. And as the name suggests, the closer you rank to Number 1, the better. But how does your site get that coveted spot through SEO? If you remember how complicated the periodic table was in Chemistry, the folks over at Search Engine Land created one about SEO with a whopping 35 factors.

Search Engine Land SEO Factors Periodic Table (50%)

Each of these factors is taken into account when a user types in a simple search, such as “Best pizza in the world”. If you type that in and see a whole bunch of local places pop up. Then you might be shocked to find several results that are right down the street. The best pizza in the world, right down the road, and you never even knew!

Well, that’s because along with the factors from the periodic table of SEO, some search engines such as Google track various user metrics as well. These include factors such as:

  • The type of the device the person searched from.
  • The location they want to search for.
  • And their current location while doing that search.

This is why the Maps results tend to show what’s nearby instead of places on the other side of the world. That’s because few people are probably willing to hop on a plane for lunch, no matter how good the pizza.

An endurance fighter

SEO prefers to wear down and outlast its opponent, which is why many new sites won’t start ranking immediately. Proper SEO is more of a marathon than a sprint. Hurrying to the goal will only tire you out. And if your business is like most companies, you plan on being around for the long haul. Of course, that means that you’ll want to plan for SEO to work accordingly. Important factors such as creating useful content take time to analyse. Moreover, search engines like Google need data to know if your blog “The Best Blog Ever in This and All Other Realities” lives up to its name or if that’s only true for you.

Because SEO doesn’t go for the one-hit knockout, companies that promise the top spot on Google for your keywords can’t be taken at their word. If they aren’t outright lying, they may use Black Hat SEO—the performance-enhancing drug of the digital world—that may potentially have short-term results but come with hefty penalties when Google the referee finds out. This is why established marketing companies let clients know upfront to treat SEO as an investment. Often, this means rebuilding your website, making new content, and getting positive reviews, things that can’t be done overnight. All of this makes for a better-performing long-term site. Both for search engines and for the customer, which is why SEO is so important and shouldn’t be ignored.

 

SEO may not attack quickly, but it doesn’t go down easy either.

 

SEM – The Newbie

SEM, short for Search Engine Marketing, works a little bit differently than SEO. Instead of focusing on building organic results through long-term investment, SEM works on a faster scale through paid advertising to feature as a top result. Like SEO, there are several factors that go into proper SEM that ultimately decide if your campaign will be successful. It’s more than simply paying more than everyone else. Otherwise, we would probably have a lot more scammers using SEM to spread viruses!

 

A precision fighter

Google Ads is easily the most popular SEM method because of its enormous range of options—and because Google is used for searches worldwide over 80% of the time. Google ads can be extremely broad or extremely specific, from targeting users all around the world to a specific group that lives within a few kilometres of a specific location. This range of options is incredibly useful… If you have any idea which ones you should be using.

Google Ads Interface

Many people have heard of PPC or pay-per-click advertising, but AdWords can work in many other methods as well. Along with PPC, there are options for CPA (Cost per acquisition such as a call or buying from the website), CPV (Cost per view), and many more. There is even the option of doing call-only ads that can also work as a stand-in for businesses that don’t have a website. These create ads that have a brief message and a link to call the business directly from the search results.

 

Google Ads uses an Ad Rank score to determine which position your ad will show; or if it will show at all. Ad quality and the quality of your landing page—the page the user goes to on your site after clicking the ad—and the bid amount all go into ad rank. Better quality ads and landing pages mean you can have your ad shown with a lower amount, but also means if you want faster results you can opt for a higher bid while you work on your website.

 

SEM zeroes in on a weakness with precision and hits hard to get the results it wants fast.

So who wins?

It’s the age-old battle of strength vs. speed, power vs. endurance. None is inherently better than the other. Do which one will work better for you depends on your goals and timeline. Imagine if they could work together instead… But who says they can’t?

The tag team: The Digital Dynamic Duo!

A combination of SEO and SEM methods tends to have the best overall results. However, putting both powerhouses in your corner costs more upfront but has a much greater chance of a high return on investment. SEO helps your site to be found on organic searches and makes it more accessible and useful to users. SEM helps your site by targeting a subset of users through advertising that can put you at the top of search results. By betting on both, you maximise your chances of winning the fight.

SEO + SEM

Can’t I just learn the marketing techniques and do it myself?

If you’re thinking of jumping in the ring yourself, then well done! However, keep in mind that there is a lot to learn and digital marketing is a full-time job in and of itself. It’s like learning a foreign language. Once you get the basics down you might feel like you have a handle on it. That’s until you talk with the native speakers and realise you have much more to learn. Only in this language, the rules are constantly changing. Several times a year, Google makes major changes to its algorithms. And some of the old rules get KO’d overnight.

 

That’s why many local businesses choose to work with a professional digital marketing company— Like us! Get in touch now if you want some help from the pros. Keeping up with the latest changes and best practices is what the best SEO companies in New Zealand do best. And that can leave you to focus on what you do best – Running your business!

Most businesses that leave the marketing to the pros find they have more time to do what they love, which often makes everyone come out a winner in the long run – instead of getting knocked down in every round – if not knocked out in the first.