Search engine optimization (SEO) budgets are increasing as marketing executives gain knowledge of how SEO can benefit advertising and marketing campaigns.  eMarketer is reporting that SEO budget allocations are expected to rise in the coming years as compared to other search marketing strategies.

With the decline in the economy, customer acquisition is becoming more and more vital.  As the focus on customer acquisition increases, SEO becomes a more vital part of the overall marketing strategy.  Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

“Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” reports that SEO growth will grow from 17.7% to 20.3% while paid search will decline from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013.  When searching for information, consumers find more value in organic search results than pay per click (PPC) advertising.  The value placed by consumers on organic search results garners more clicks on these results thus making SEO a valued part of the marketing plan.

SEO Market Growth

Combining SEO and PPC marketing efforts may result in higher search engine result rankings.  Paid search engine advertising offers more immediate results, but in order to see results in the search engine arena advertising must be consistent.  SEO marketing results occur over a longer time frame, but result in organic search results more valued by consumers.

In order to gain the most information and knowledge of your results, Web analytics is necessary.  Having solid feedback regarding your SEO and PPC marketing efforts will allow you to gage how successful your campaign is.  More traffic is only positive if the cost of the search ad relative to the conversion doesn’t reduce your bottom line.

SEO is a bit like a good public relations strategy; it helps to bring top of mind awareness to your site.  SEO gets them in the door, so you can complete the deal.

Integrating Telephone Leads and Live Chat for Increased Results

Get more from your marketing budget and increase ROI by combining the power of Google Analytics with telephone tracking and live chat interactions. Each of these powerful marketing tools, when combined with Google Analytics, can provide you with better results and more information about your customers.

Telephone Leads and Google Analytics

Combining telephone calls and Google Analytics allows you to track each phone call made by your customers to your company resulting in new valuable information about you customers. All of this is easily accomplished when you work with a company like Mongoose Metrics. Purchasing bulk toll free numbers from Mongoose Metrics, allows you to use unique phone numbers for individual marketing campaigns or product lines at a very reasonable price. By assigning each number to a hidden web page on your site including the Google Analytics tracking code, each phone call will trigger a visit to the hidden web page. This will then trigger Google Analytics to register the phone call as an event in its tracking system. By combining the numbers being tracked with your account in Google Analytics, you can see results including the phone number called, duration and date of the call. All of this information can help you to refine your marketing and increase ROI.

Live Chat and Google Analytics

Having the capability to chat with your customers while they are on your website is invaluable. Aside from the personal touch this provide, it allows you to get a better handle on what is working or not working on your site, with your marketing and how your customers are responding to your company. Using the services of a company like LivePerson, allows you this real time interaction. Combining LivePerson’s services with Google Analytics gets you a wealth of knowledge not before available. Some of the information available to you includes:

* volume and quality of live chats by geographic area
* the source and keywords that lead to the chat
* navigation paths that drive chats

The more you know about your clients the more successful you will be. By garnering this type of detailed information from telephone and live chat interactions, you will be able to modify your future messages and increase ROI.