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Website maintenance and updates are just as important as computer operating system and software updates, but are often overlooked or not taken as seriously. Sometimes it is assumed that ‘someone else is taking care of it’. That’s dangerous logic for a website developer or agency who is hired to support business clients, as failing to perform maintenance updates to a client’s website on a regular basis can lead to vulnerabilities that can be easily accessed by hackers. This can cost the business time, money and potentially the company’s reputation.

You are probably familiar with notifications announcing that an update is available for the operating system on your computer. Many of these updates improve functionality, fix known problems, and patch holes in the code that can be exploited and lead to security breaches. Sometimes these can be set to happen automatically, and sometimes we need to use these notifications as prompts to manually go in and perform the updates. This also happens with the software installed on our computers.

Microsoft and Adobe, for example, regularly send out notices of new patches and performance updates. With other programs and applications, you don’t see the new update availability until you log into a program or visit an App Store and see the notification. It is crucial to regularly perform this basic computer maintenance to keep your operating system and software programs up to date and secure.

Security updates, performance updates, code updates, etc. aren’t automatic on websites. Some developers don’t understand the critical nature of regular maintenance updates, and some aren’t as detailed in their work, which can cause major problems for business owners who are unaware and assume that their website developer/agency is doing all that is needed on their behalf.

A True Story

Several years ago, a new client contracted with us to oversee the management of their website, along with other services. When we checked, it had been three years since the theme and plugins – or unique packages of code that extend the functionality of a basic WordPress site – had been updated. No one had updated the site’s security, renewed important security licenses, or even checked “under the hood” of the site for years! We began the onboarding process and discovered that the website had been hacked and that information had been exposed.

The situation could have been avoided if the initial developer had communicated the importance of regular, scheduled updates and maintenance with the client. The client then would have had the knowledge needed to make an informed decision to contract for website maintenance services once the site was launched. With the right resources and support in place, the breach could have been prevented.

Why Are Updates Important?

There are several critical updates that should be completed on a regular basis. These include security, coding, and performance updates. Every website has several systems and code languages that all work together to deliver a good website experience for your viewers. Like any well-built structure, each layer builds upon the layers below to function properly and stay secure.

This starts with your hosting company. Their systems and frameworks house your website files and databases and provide the conduits to deliver your website to your viewers’ screens. Depending on the hosting company and plan that you have, your hosting company may be responsible for keeping all aspects of the hosting server up to date, or you may be responsible for some of it. It’s important to have a reputable and quality host for your website.

Layered on your host’s server is your website, which is made up of many files of code and databases. If you use a content management system such as WordPress, they are continually improving and updating the code and releasing new updates regularly. Sometimes your hosting company will automatically install these updates for you, and sometimes you need to do the updates. It’s important to know who is responsible and ensure that updates are made soon after release, as they often include security updates.

Your WordPress installation may have a purchased or custom-built theme on top of it. It too, has potential updates available, and checks should be made to ensure that the code in the theme stays up to date and compatible with the current version of WordPress on which it is running.

Your website may also have a series of Plugins installed. These are unique packages of code that extend the functionality of a basic WordPress site. These could be things like a slideshow, forms for your viewers to fill out, a specialized calendar of events, a company directory, or items that work in the back end like one that performs security checks. All of these plugins need to have code that works with the current version of the theme and core WordPress Core versions. It’s critical to make sure that only current quality plugins from reputable authors who are actively maintaining them, are used. Abandoned plugins from authors who no longer update the code are one of the biggest entry points for breaches.

All updates, including security updates, on website frameworks, themes and plugins are vital to keep your site out of the hands of hackers and cybercriminals. With each new virus, trojan, or malware released, companies and code authors work hard to figure out a counter attack and defense. Security code updates provide you with these virtual shields to protect your site. Cybercriminals and hackers know that many people don’t login to their websites regularly, or even know what to look for in abandoned themes and plugins when they do login occasionally. These hackers are on the lookout for coding loopholes and send out their bots to find sites with outdated code – they are easy targets to infiltrate. They can place malicious code on your site, hack into it, or disable it. Then you are left with an expensive and frustrating problem to fix.

When update alerts appear, take action. It only takes seconds to perform an update but hours to fix problems caused by ignoring update notifications.

At Dashboard Interactive, we take your website’s security and maintenance seriously.

The following are some of the maintenance tasks we perform each week on the client sites we maintain:

• Review all notifications.
• Create backup according to schedule (database backup each week, monthly backup of entire file structure).
• Download and store backup off-server.
• Perform updates on any plugins whose author has sent notice of updates, and then test.
• Perform updates on theme files needed, test.
• Update any core platform versions available, test. (If the host has auto-updated the core version, perform testing.
• Look at new form entries, remove any spam.
• Review Users and permissions to ensure none were created or altered without us knowing.
• And much more.

It takes this level of detail to properly manage a website and if your development resources go to this level of detail, you’re in good hands. If not, your website could be at risk.

Everyone Is a Target – Take Action

The FBI states that computer crimes, including removing spyware, malware, and malicious code, costs businesses $67 billion. Small businesses and nonprofits tend to be criminal targets because they lack the resources to fight back when attacked.

Don’t be a statistic. Find knowledgeable website maintenance and development support. If you don’t know of qualified resources, feel free to contact Dashboard Interactive. We are happy to help. Updating and maintaining all aspects of your website is too important to be left for another day.

Are you only using contact form completions and gauging how often the phone rings to determine if your marketing efforts are working? Are you making marketing and advertising budget decisions based only on these two metrics?

If so, maybe it’s time that you closed the loop with Call Tracking. You’re missing out on valuable data that can increase your company’s revenues and profitability, while reducing waste.

What Is Call Tracking?

Call tracking enables you to track the details associated with phone calls. This is significant considering phone calls drive 10x more sales than contact forms. If you aren’t tracking your calls, you may be guessing on 90% of prospect inquiries.

It’s important for the phone to ring and for potential new customers to fill out contact forms, but at best, you may only have part of the picture and at worst, you may be wasting money by spending it in the wrong areas. It’s not uncommon for advertisers to believe that a certain campaign is a top performer when in fact most of their inquiries come from another digital marketing initiative.

Call Tracking includes telephone call tracking, real-time reporting, the application of metrics associated with your customer interactions over the phone, and the marketing efforts that led to those phone calls. You can determine if a call came in as a result of your SEO efforts, your Pay per Click advertising campaign or from Facebook or another Social Media platform. You can also determine which website pages, keywords and types of devices are driving phone calls and conversions and which ones aren’t. You can even determine who makes the call and their telephone number and location. Please see below:

In addition, many call tracking software platforms integrate with Google Analytics and with CRM systems such as Salesforce. Imagine being able to track a prospect from initial introduction to your business to close and do so for pennies on the dollar. You can also listen in on calls to evaluate key customer requirements and your inside sales efforts.

Customer sales cycles are complex. Potential new customers interact with brands and products online and off. They can come via organic or paid search, social media and email campaigns, etc. by bouncing in and out of landing pages, with phone calls, mobile apps, and any number of other channels. It’s a lot to track and can be difficult to make accurate decisions without complete data.

Yet gaining a complete and accurate picture of your marketing attribution (which channels are truly producing qualified leads and conversions) is crucial to getting the biggest return on your marketing dollars.

If you’re not using Call Tracking, you may be making less than ideal digital marketing and budgetary decisions. We occasionally find that a campaign is generating an acceptable return on investment, when in fact, additional data could lead to better decision making and increased profitability. Call tracking is a tool that can enable you to make such decisions.

For additional information on Call Tracking, please contact us. When you want to know which digital marketing initiatives are working and what isn’t working, as well as what is important, call tracking is a must.

Have you heard the term local search citations? Perhaps you’ve heard the term local online directories instead. These listings of local businesses provide people with a list of potential businesses to contact for services. They may list all of the restaurants in an area, or dentists or plumbers. They act like the phone books of old by providing simplified listings of businesses within a given industry.

In addition to helping shoppers find the right match to their needs, behind the scenes local search directors also help search engines find and rank businesses favorably for local search.

Here’s how your business can use local search citations to boost search rankings and gain greater visibility in search engine results.

Local Search Citations Defined

A local search citation or local online directories (the terms may be used interchangeably) is any online mention of the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a local business. It may come in the form of a directory such as the “10 Best Med Spas in Minnetonka” or the “5 Best Chinese Restaurants in Madison”. Or, you can find local search citations on sites like Yelp and Angie’s List™, which also provide places for customers to add their reviews about your business.

How Local Search Citations Improve Local Search Rank

Search engines scan the internet looking for contextual clues on how to improve the user experience or how to list search results in order of relevance to a user’s query. A search engine’s job is to match your inquiry to the best results. If you are looking for a local business, search engines want you to find businesses close to your location, not ones halfway across the state or country. Local search citations help search engines verify the business and its pertinent information.

Search engines also trust certain sites more than others. A well-known listing site for service providers such as Angie’s List™, carries more weight with search engines than “Joe’s List” which started yesterday (We just made that up but you get the idea). Getting your business included on popular and well-regarded listing sites can boost your local search profile, provided that your NAP is consistent from one directory to the next.

Make Local Search Citations Work for You

Consistency is the key to make local search citations work for you. While Google has evolved over the years and can tell the difference between 123 Main St. and 123 Main Street, if you have multiple phone numbers associated with the business, combined with old locations lingering on local directories, this can hurt your local search rankings. To a search engine, these are all unique addresses. If your business has changed locations multiple times, Google might even create a new Google My Business (GMB) listing that competes with your main listing and seriously impacts your local search positioning! Be sure that local search profiles include consistently presented information for each location.

Working with a company that specializes in Local Search

Many local business owners attempt to add their companies to local search directories, often with mixed or poor results. Why?

• They don’t have the time to commit to finding and updating their search listings
• They have no way of knowing which search directories rank favorably with Google and other search engines
• They do not have the attention to detail needed to ensure that 50 local addresses are consistent.
• They have no way of tracking the results of their work, so even if they do devote the time and resources to updating all of the local search engines, they don’t know if they were successful or not.

Does this sound like your business? Have you tried local search citations and failed because you just didn’t have the time to do it right?

If that’s the case, then it’s important to work with a company like Dashboard Interactive. We have the expertise and personnel to ensure that your local search citations are handled correctly. Plus, we can report back to you on the results of our work so you can see how your money achieved your marketing ROI.

Local search citations are vital for small businesses who cater to a specific geographic area. The next time you’re craving Mexican food in St. Paul or need a plumber in Plymouth, and you type a query into your favorite browser, think of how local search plays an important part in which businesses you choose to visit. We’re guessing it’s the businesses that appeared near the top of your search results, and we’d also put money on the fact that local search citations probably had something to do with why those companies appeared at the top of the results. Local search engine optimization truly benefits from local search citations.

You Can With Google Beacons

Beacons are one-way transmitters that are used to mark important places, such as your Local business. Typically, a Beacon is visible to a user’s mobile device from a range of up to 230 feet, allowing you (the business owner) to target potential new customers within range. By utilizing existing Bluetooth low energy (BLE) hardware technology, Beacons communicate with nearby smart devices. Devices enabled with what’s known as “Eddystone” technology are capable of receiving and transmitting data to smartphones, including Apple and Android devices. Beacons may be able to help your business in the following ways:

Impromptu Sales or Special Offers

Are you running a special today-only? Stores or other consumer businesses can advertise deals and promos through a Google Beacon broadcast to encourage nearby customers to purchase your products or services.

Reputation Management

Encourage users to leave a review using Google Beacon messages or notifications. After someone has been at your location for a set amount of time, prompt them to submit feedback. Reputation management is a valuable resource for improving your local search visibility.

Engagement Signals

The more engaged users are with your business, website, and services, the higher Google will value your pages. Engagement signals are important ranking factors for search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you would like to learn more about Google Beacons and see if it might be a fit for your business, please contact us. Beacons can be a great tool to assist in growing Local businesses.

Ever wonder if your Google Ads or other Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing efforts are paying off or coming close to reaching their potential? Are you concerned that you may be spending too much money or not reaching the right people? Have you tried PPC in the past, but you gave up because you felt it wasn’t working? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, a Pay-per-Click audit may be warranted.

Why should you invest in a Pay-per-Click (PPC) audit?

Most pay-per-click advertising campaigns have room for improvement. This is even more valid for small and medium-sized businesses because they have fewer resources and less expertise. We evaluate and optimize Pay-per-Click and other paid search campaigns on a daily basis and usually find opportunities that were either overlooked or the person managing the campaign was unaware of.

This is due to a number of reasons, but it boils down to knowledge, expertise and execution. There’s usually a reason that a PPC campaign isn’t performing up to expectations. Today PPC is more complicated than ever due to continued Google enhancements and the numbers of options and variations available. Even the legacy term Google AdWords is no longer used because Google has rebranded. The appropriate term is now Google Ads, partially due to the options available.

What do we evaluate in a PPC Audit?

At Dashboard Interactive, we evaluate a number of components of your Google Ads or other PPC campaigns. Each is important and each can determine if your pay-per-click efforts are successful or not. Let’s take a look.

Campaign and AdGroup Setup

Are the AdGroups set up properly? Are your Campaigns set up in a way that attempts to accomplish too much or should they be set up differently? Are you using the appropriate daily budget and how is it being allocated? The set-up of your campaigns and AdGroups can determine your effectiveness, efficiency and costs.

Ad Copy

How many characters are being used in your ads? How many ads are you running, how is your ad copy structured and is there a correlation between your ads and where your ads point? These questions can determine the number of potential customers who click on your ads and how many go elsewhere.

Landing Pages

Are the ads taking visitors to the right pages and are they designed in a way that connects with campaign visitors? What are your bounce rates and how do they compare? How about the conversion rate? A poor landing page or no landing page can potentially cost you money.

Goal Tracking

What conversion metrics are you attempting to measure? Are your campaigns set up in a way that you can measure if your goals are being met, based on quantitative data? If not, you may be making decisions based on partial information or the wrong information.

Keyword Match Types

Are you using the correct types of keyword phrases and are they set up properly? There are lots of options available. What are the quality scores for the keywords that you are using and what about negative keyword phrases? All these and more can determine how much you spend and how often your ads are served.

Testing

Are you testing each component of your campaigns and AdGroups? If not, it’s highly unlikely that you’re reaching your potential. It’s also highly likely that you’re wasting money.

More

These are just a few of the items we evaluate in a PPC audit and there are many more. Other items include Extensions, Geographic Targeting, Bid Strategy, Competition and more. The above elements can comprise hundreds of combinations tested over time, which is why properly managing PPC is in no way as easy as some PPC vendors make it out to be.

If you’d like to learn more about a PPC audit, contact Dashboard Interactive at 800-807-1852 or 763-242-2454. We’ve been specializing in pay-per-click advertising for over a decade and we are a Google Certified Partner. We’re good at what we do and we enjoy doing it. Maybe you need an additional set of eyes to take your pay-per-click and online marketing efforts to the next level.

 

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If your website is ever hacked, the attack can dramatically impact your business, especially if Google identifies the breach. The infographic shows the impact of a website hack as it relates to lead generation and e-commerce efforts. See how a breach can put the brakes on your digital marketing strategy while wasting valuable time and money. Unfortunately, the threat is real as over 32,000 websites are breached each day. Take a look at the steps associated with a website hack.

(click image for larger view)

(click image for larger view)

 

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If you’re not using Attribution Modeling, you’re probably making less than ideal digital marketing decisions.

Many business owners, agency personnel and marketing executives may not be familiar with Attribution Modeling, but this very important feature in Google Analytics can provide insight to help you determine the effectiveness and efficiency of your overall marketing and digital marketing strategy.

Measurement and attribution are the foundation on which fact-based marketing decisions are made, yet with today’s customer acquisition process being highly fragmented across multiple channels and devices, this creates complexity and additional challenges that must be overcome.

What is Attribution Modeling?

Attribution modeling assigns credit for sales and conversions to touchpoints in conversion paths. Think of an attribution model as a rule, or set of rules, that dictate how credit for sales and conversions are assigned. This is important as some touchpoints may be worth more than others.

Attribution modeling example (images, courtesy of Google)

A potential new customer finds your site by clicking one of your Google Ads. He returns one week later by clicking over from Facebook. That same day, he comes back a third time via your eNewsletter, then a few hours later, he returns again directly and request a call via the contact form on the website.

What Does it Mean?

If you set up and evaluate data based on the appropriate attribution model, you’re positioned to make knowledgeable big-picture decisions based on accurate data.

If the wrong attribution model is utilized, you may receive a partial picture or evaluate data that’s inconsistent with your original goals and make less than ideal marketing decisions. This could lead to budgets being cut for initiatives that are working or overspending on tactics that may not be performing as hoped.

With proper measurement and interpretation, marketers can track each step in the sales process – even if the user interacts with multiple channels via different devices. It’s important for marketers to know how much credit to assign to each touchpoint along the way. Proper allocation yields accurate data which can be used to make more informed strategic and budget-related marketing decisions.

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We tweet, we like, we share and pin…but which social media websites should you use for your
business? The answer, like most things in life, is really, “It depends.”

Each social media website offers various pros and cons. Depending on your business’ needs and
your target audience, some sites may be better at reaching your potential audience than others.

Where Are Your Customers or Prospects?

The first question to ask before setting up any social media account is, “Where does your audience
enjoy spending time?” If you’re posting to social media accounts in order to acquire customers or
engender loyalty among existing customers, you need to be sharing on platforms where your
audience enjoys spending their time.

Ask yourself:

• Who are my core customers and prospects?
• What do I know about them? How old are they, and what do they like to learn about my products and services?
• What needs do they have, and how can I help them?

What Are You Selling?

Let’s take a deeper look. If your customers love do it yourself (DIY) projects and you own a hardware store, sites such as Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook may be great places to share project details and photos of your products in action to entice customers back into your store. If you have a busy local dental office, however, you won’t get far showing photos of root canals and tooth fillings on Pinterest! Sharing links to articles on Twitter and Facebook may be better for you.

Each social media site offers unique pros and cons. Photo-based sites such as Instagram and Pinterest are great for companies that sell heavily based on pictures of their items. Others find that professional networking sites such as LinkedIn offer them the best advantage for their business. It all depends on what you’re selling and your goals for social media.

Get Help with Social Media Marketing

The social media marketing landscape changes quickly. Some sites are gaining in popularity, while other sites decrease in popularity. A good social media marketing plan works in concert with an overarching internet marketing strategy, a well-designed website, and a great content marketing plan.

Dashboard Interactive can help you develop a robust social media marketing plan that offers cost effective, measurable social media marketing. We have a team of content strategies, social media marketers, internet marketing specialists and more to help you acquire, retain and create loyal customers. Call us at 1-800- 807-1852 for a consultation today.