digital-marketing

Publishers no longer providing backlinks and traffic

Article Written by :  Internet Marketing Showtime

There was a time when guest posting was a great way to get backlinks to your site. Some changes by Google made that less productive. However, if the
site was big enough, there was still enough benefit to go through the hard work and toil to write amazing content for another site. Sadly, it appears that the larger publishers have begun taking steps to limit that exposure, most likely to hoard PageRank.

The first tactic that publishers use is to add the nofollow tag to articles by guest authors. This denies a backlink to the author and preserves any inbound link authority for the publishing site. Fortunately, if the page generates enough traffic, there is still a link back to the author’s site.

The second and slightly more extreme tactic is to noindex the guest post. This means that only visitors to the site will find the article, as it will not appear in search engine results. This method was adopted by the Huffington Post recently.

The third method in use is the complete removal of any attribution on the page to the author. Instead, the author gets a profile page on the site which contains a link back to his page. The only thing a visitor would see is a byline that indicates who wrote the article which links to the profile.

It looks like these changes accomplish only one thing, which is to limit link authority and traffic to the publisher’s site.

digital-marketing

Two common mistakes to avoid when pursuing customer success

Article written by :  The Great American Small Business Challenge

Customer success is often confused with customer service. In fact, it is a separate process designed to increase the value of the customers we serve by making them more successful with our products. This aligns with the business goals of the customer while it enhances the revenue of the organization. Here are two common mistakes organizations make when pursuing customer success:

Customer success is not a function of customer service

Customer service should be a key objective of any professional organization. What many do not understand is that the skills required to create and maintain customer success are different from customer service. Often organizations assign customer success as a performance indicator for the customer service department. Customer success is a proactive task while customer service is a reactive one.

Customer satisfaction and customer success are not the same things

Another point of confusion because people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably. When in reality there are times when there is high customer satisfaction but low success. This is not what an organization should strive for. The opposite is more important. With low levels of customer satisfaction and high customer success, the customer is more successful and is unlikely to consider a change of vendor.

Customer success is not easy to achieve. However, when proactive engagement results in high levels of customer service, revenue growth is guaranteed. Both due to higher customer retention along with better referrals.

digital-marketing

The most useful reports in Google Analytics

Article written by : Top SEO Software Reviews

Google Analytics is probably the most powerful analytics tool available for web traffic. The best part is that it is free to use. The problem is that most webmasters simply plug the code into the website and just look at how much traffic comes in and from where. It is so much more powerful than that. Set up properly, the reports provided can be extremely useful. Here are some reports to consider using:

Landing pages’ report

This report shows the traffic and more importantly conversions for all the landing pages on the site. That is the first page they arrived on that lead to the conversion. When you find a page that converts more than others, a quick analysis can show how that success can be replicated to other content/channels.

Acquisition channels

Another report that is extremely useful for marketers. This shows a high-level view of whi
ch channels generate the most leads and conversions. You can see which ones converts the best and worst.  This is particularly useful for larger organizations where decisions need to be justified using data that management can understand. For example: when the data shows that social media traffic converts the worst, convincing management not to invest more in social gets easier when such a report clearly shows the conversion rates.

Source/medium

This is as useful as the landing pages report. In this report you will where the traffic to the various channels comes from and how well it converts. This can be isolated by each individual goal.