Two common options are email marketing and SEO, and each has its distinct advantages. Email marketing offers outstanding scalability and reach for a low initial investment, while SEO provides vital SERP success with compounding results that keep offering value after you’ve finished your campaign work.

But what really matters to most businesses trying to budget smartly is ROI — so which of these marketing approaches delivers the most reliable returns? Let’s break it down to see which one comes out on top.

How they compare for driving relevant traffic

A solid level of relevant traffic is vital for bringing leads through your sales funnel, so it’s a good place to start when taking an in-depth look at ROI. Email and SEO both have the ability to massively increase traffic, but in different ways. Let’s directly compare them:

SEO

SEO is directly linked to search, obviously — the clue is in the name. As you might expect, it’s the broadest and most consistent tool for boosting organic traffic. Here are just some SEO-focused actions you can take to bring in more visits:

• Regularly post engaging and relevant content to your site. By meeting your audience’s needs, it will reinforce your brand value and get you ranking for a wider variety of terms, thus bringing in more traffic. Blogging is one of the best (and cheapest) ways to do this. 
• Optimize your existing content with relevant keywords. If you already have valuable content that is lacking in some big SEO areas, just a small amount of work could significantly increase its ranking potential.
• Get your brand name out there through distributing authoritative content and building associations with experts in your field. As your brand name starts to be linked to relevant terms and positive remarks (aim to build up some strong reviews), it will be given more priority by search algorithms.

As long as you focus on the right terms and stay patient, SEO work will pay off, and the results will stick around long after you’ve implemented the changes.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has a far more direct effect on traffic, since you send out your emails with CTAs and many of the clicks you’ll get from them will occur within a fairly short span of time. The big advantage of email is that you can exercise a lot of control over the process and the targeting, allowing you to make rapid adjustments. Here’s what you can do with email:

• Drip-feed useful emails based on where customers (or prospective customers) are in your sales funnel. This will not only get more of them to stick around, making the traffic you receive more consistent, but it will also provide traffic opportunities that can bring back visitors after they’ve ended their initial visits.
• Personalize your marketing emails based on user data. While SEO-driven traffic will invariably be generic, email traffic can be keenly personal, based on a user’s specific circumstances and preferences.
• Get a more granular idea of your traffic sources. SEO referrals are often unclear because search engines don’t want to release too much information, but you can be as detailed as you want with email CTAs, resulting in traffic streams that can clearly be attributed to particular actions.

Email marketing produces faster and more targeted traffic, but the moment you stop doing it, you lose the effects. As such, it’s something to be done periodically when needed.

How they compare for affordability

Now we know how suited they are for driving traffic, we should look at their affordability. How much does it cost to bring in visits through marketing emails, or through SEO improvements? Let’s find out.

Email Marketing

One of the most obvious benefits of email marketing is that it’s cheap, particularly in comparison to other forms of marketing. There are no posting or printing costs, and no hosting fees. But you will have to invest in some good email marketing software or a CRM to help you scale and automate. Often, you will be charged monthly fees to use an email marketing platform, with fees spanning a wide range depending on subscribers and features. Choosing your email software can be a lengthy task, so scope out your options before you dive in.

Any business, large or small, can implement email at little cost, but with potentially substantial returns. In fact, email marketing has consistently been identified as one of the key motivators for business revenue. As email grows in popularity (the number of email users is expected to hit 251.8 million by 2019), brands will be able to reach even wider audiences, which means more potential sales.

SEO

SEO, on the other hand, is virtually free – at least initially. Your keyword research can be conducted online for free using tools like UberSuggest or Keyword Tool. Similarly, your content production can be handled in-house, though it will require a lot of time to create good content and optimize your landing pages. In truth, you will probably have to invest in both copywriters and SEO strategists if you’re going to make the most of SEO. 

SEO is always a worthwhile investment, but it’s particularly valuable if you have a limited budget and unoptimized content. Instead of investing in PPC ads to boost visibility, you can simply optimize your site and focus on your content output. The results won’t be as fast, but they’ll be cheaper and more stable — plus you’ll have a better website to produce more conversions in the event that you pursue PPC advertising down the line.

On the other hand, true SEO expertise (especially of the technical kind), is expensive. It’s worth paying for though — big sites especially benefit from SEO housekeeping and audits, and the ROI can be immense.

How they compare for conversion consistency

Email Marketing

Good email CTAs are clearly actionable, well crafted, and offered to viable customers in the most appropriate circumstances — that’s a recipe for conversions. In addition, email marketing allows for very targeted work in steadily improving sales funnels, so it makes it possible to achieve some potent conversion rate optimization (CRO) results.

As part of the email marketing package, you have superlative access to important metrics that can give you vital information about when, how and where conversions occur. This puts you in a position to rapidly discontinue any campaigns that aren’t converting at a strong rate and experiment until you find the magic formula.

For all of these reasons, email marketing is excellent for conversion consistency. You just need to put in the work on a consistent basis.

SEO

Since it’s much harder to glean when SEO work has produced conversions, it’s standard to value search engine rankings themselves — securing a position in the top three options on the first page of results for an actionable term is considered very valuable. But then you must factor in the likelihood that a given term will produce a conversion on your site specifically.

For instance, agencies often make the mistake of thinking that ranking for short-tail keywords that get a lot of traffic will be great for revenue, but such terms often lead to high bounce rates (users clicking and then quickly clicking away). This is because the more broad the term you rank for, the less relevant the average visit will be.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, tend to appear in more specific searches. Someone searching for “shoes” might just want to look at some shoes, while someone who searches for “white Adidas trainers mens” is far more likely to have the intention of placing an order. While long-tail keywords don’t get as many searches, you face much less competition in trying to rank for them, and the visits you do receive from them will be valuable.

Consequently, a thoroughly-researched SEO strategy with targeted long-tail keywords can provide a lot of value — but as we’ve seen, it will take time. Search engines crawl pages slowly and assess them even more slowly, so it can take months for SEO changes to be recognized. Patience is a virtue.

So which is better for ROI?

Deciding between email marketing or SEO for return on investment is tricky. These two methods aren’t mutually exclusive, focusing as they do on very different things. One reaches out to bring traffic in, and the other aims for internal improvement. Overall, if used correctly, each one can bring in a level of ROI that far exceeds what can be achieved through paid options like AdWords or social ads.

Neither is without its downsides, though. Email marketing can get lost in spam filters or simply deleted, and relies on well-crafted strategy with highly-polished content, while SEO requires a lot of time to become effective and can be difficult for small businesses to understand.

Having considered everything, the only sensible conclusion to reach is that neither method is inherently superior for ROI. If ROI is your main objective, you should use email marketing and SEO in tandem, focusing on basic SEO improvements first and bringing in email marketing later. 

By bringing in more relevant traffic and providing the visitors with a superior website experience, you’ll achieve a level of ROI that you couldn’t get by focusing on just one.

The post Email Marketing vs. SEO: Which One Will Bring You Better ROI? appeared first on SiteProNews.

Google Maps is a valuable service that helps billions of us get to work each day, meet up with friends, or get immediate local help whenever we need it.

Google has found that over 30% of smartphone searches are done with the intent to find a business that is local.

To make the most of localized search, you have to make sure you are out-performing other local business with your company listing.

This post will run you through the top changes you need to take note of moving forwards into 2018 and beyond.

‘Permanently Closed’ Listings Removed From Results

If you have not already, set up Google My Business and ensure that 100% of the details are filled out for your company listing. You will be able to see how complete your profile is within the progress display bar.

Businesses that were not keeping up-to-date with their business information were previously listed towards the end of the local search results. They included the classification of ‘permanently closed.’ Google has, over the last year, removed most of these ‘dud listings’ from their results, making the results more relevant to internet users looking for immediate help.

This could end up being a blessing for your brand, as there may be fewer options to compete with in the search results. At the same time, users are becoming ever more demanding when it comes to brands displaying correct information, down to holiday closures. Ensure that yours is entirely up to date with all of the latest features, pictures videos, etc.

User-Generated & Visual Content for the Win

Adding photos of your location adds legitimacy for those using local search to find your business, and it’s nice to have something branded rather than an awkward shot of a tree or uninspiring business park! Try going 360 and creating a more immersive photographic experience. You can even get your friends and customers to share their own pictures of the exterior and interior of your premises.

Google is heavily investing in user-submitted content for 2018, dishing out ‘badges’ and ‘goodies’ to its community managers and ‘Local Guides’.

Through 2018 and beyond, you should also consider adding video to your Google My Business listing. Adding video can make for a more engaging experience for potential visitors. To add a video, head to your Google Maps app and add a 10-second clip. Alternatively, you can upload 30 seconds of footage taken from your smartphone’s camera roll. (Make sure you comply with their terms of service for video).

In the following example, this restaurant owner is using a 30-second clip to talk viewers through one of their most popular dishes. You can also show off your venue’s atmosphere or use the airtime to promote any aspect of your business you wish.

Alter Your Primary and Secondary Listing Functions

In 2017, Google redesigned their Maps app to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for with visual coding. Locations that may be of interest to the users may be highlighted in a different color.

Previously, if you were looking to get noticed ahead of your competition, you may have reconsidered your primary and secondary categorization in an attempt to make your business more relevant for precise searches.

As an example, you may be a coffee shop owner in a small town with over 10 competitors in a small area. To appear as ‘fresh’ in your localized listing, you may have listed yourself as a ‘coffee roasting’ business that sold its own coffee blend as a product. The ‘cafe’ listing, in contrast, may have appeared as a secondary categorization for your brand.

With the color-coded update, it may now make more sense for you to reconsider your listing to brand yourself as a ‘cafe’ rather than a retailer, moving forward.

Here’s what Google says:

“Papa John’s” offers pizza takeout and delivery but does not offer on-premises dining. It should use the category “Pizza Delivery” and additional category “Pizza Takeout” (instead of the less specific “Delivery Restaurant” or “Takeout Restaurant”). (source).

It’s all about being as specific as possible, and not trying to stuff or overuse categories like keywords. Your best bet is to focus on fewer core categories and just have really quality listings.

Make sure you bear your category color-coding in mind when setting up your Google local search ads through Google Maps. Promoted pins especially take into account query context and locality, so the more accurate and comprehensive you are the better your conversion rates will be.

Customers Can Ask You Questions

On Google Maps, there’s now an option for Maps users to ask businesses questions about their services. If you scroll down to the listing, customers can quickly submit their inquiries in an input box. This means that it is essential that business owners install the Google Maps app on their smartphones. You must ensure you make the effort to submit timely and helpful responses whenever they occur.

The benefits of doing this are building ‘social proof’ over time with local searchers. They may have similar questions on services and will be looking for your answers for reassurance. Make sure your responses are detailed and helpful if you want to have a positive impact.

The Return of Google Street View

Ten years ago, Google first introduced Street View to its map application. This provided 360-degree views to users to help them plan their journeys.

Earlier this year, Google announced that it will be re-booting this feature. Anyone can now contribute Google Street View panoramas. However, 360-degree images have to be submitted using the Insta360 Stitcher software (RRP $3,499).

It is hoped that this latest addition will help Google get more detailed views of previously uncharted territory. Further, updates to the environment, ten years on, will also need to be captured to enhance listings. This helps ensure the application stays up to date and relevant to the search results. If your business would benefit from a spectacular 360-degree street view, consider investing in the tools and updating your Street View listing.

There you have some of the latest Google Map updates to look out for for 2018 and beyond. Make sure you are maximizing your listings — don’t turn your back on local searchers in 2018, and make the most of the Maps community features too.

The post Your Guide to Google Maps for Early 2018 appeared first on SiteProNews.