The Three Fundamental Forces That Drive SEO Performance

The World's Shortest Guide to SEO

SEO is the process of improving your website or brand equity to increase your site's visibility in Google and other search engines. As your SEO performance improves, your website will rank higher and receive more visitors. If you want to know how Google and other search engines work, <a href="https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/">this is a great place to start</a>, but you don't need to know that. Unless you're actually doing SEO, you need to know the high-level factors that impact SEO performance.The activities that improve SEO can be categorized into three primary areas: website configuration, website content, and brand equity. In this article, we'll discuss what these categories are, how to measure them, and who is responsible for performance.

What is SEO?

The forces that drive SEO performance are brand equity, content, and configuration. If you have strong brand equity, the right content, and your website is properly configured, you're going to see strong SEO performance.<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/seo_fundamental_forces_e3cf9f57d3.jpg" alt="seo-fundamental-forces.jpg">

The Fundamental Forces That Drive SEO Performance

Our simple definition of brand equity is the product of brand awareness and brand reputation. Awareness is a good place to start, but awareness and a positive reputation is obviously better.&nbsp;Google doesn't have a direct measure of brand equity. They have to approximate it based on data they collect from user behavior and from the internet. Below are some of the signals Google uses to approximate brand equity:<ul><li>Brand search volume: When users search for "Home Depot", Google knows that this is a brand name search and the user will likely click on and navigate to homedepot.com. If millions of people are searching for "Home Depot", Google can interpret this as brand equity.</li><li>Backlinks: When authoritative websites link to your website, Google sees this as a vote or citation. Websites and companies with strong brand equity usually have more links from authoritative websites.</li><li>Reviews: The quantity and average rating of your Google business profile reviews are used as a ranking signal.&nbsp;</li></ul>How to Measure It: A great KPI for this is organic traffic to your website from your brand keyword. If more people find you by searching for your brand name, that's a clear indication you're gaining awareness. To measure your reputation and customer attitudes, use reviews on Google, G2, Amazon, and other review sources.Who is Responsible: SEO practitioners don't have a lot of impact on a company's brand awareness and reputation. The people most responsible for this are the CMO and CEO.How to Improve It:<ul><li>Make a better product and deliver more value to customers.</li><li>Make brand image and messaging a higher priority.</li><li>Increase your paid advertising budget.</li><li>Change marketing leadership.</li></ul>

Brand Equity

Users perform a wide variety of searches before selecting a product or service. A lot of these searches are informational. Below are the factors that give your website more opportunities to capture this traffic.Relevance: If users are performing a lot of different searches when researching your industry and company, you're going to need a lot of pages to answer these questions. For example, if a user searches for the term "term life vs. whole life insurance," you're going to need a specific page focused on this topic to rank for that keyword.Quality: For a specific search term, there will be hundreds or thousands of relevant web pages. Which one has the best answer? Which one is the most comprehensive, well-designed, and most authoritative? Quality is about delivering the best answer for a user's search query.How to Measure It:<ul><li>Organic search traffic to articles and content marketing resources.</li><li>Engagement rate for articles and content marketing resources.</li><li>Organic search traffic to new content written in the past 9 months.</li></ul>Who is Responsible: Whoever is making the decisions about what gets written and approving content to go live.How to Improve It: Perform <a href="https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/home/tools/keyword-planner/">keyword research</a> to find search terms relevant to your products and services. Then, <a href="/services/content-marketing">create pages or write articles</a> that offer comprehensive answers to these search terms. Dedicate enough time to each piece of content to produce something that is better than the competing results.

Content

Most of the popular CMSs that are used to build websites today are 'SEO friendly' out of the box. However, as content editors rush to add content, delete content, and make updates, mistakes are often made. Over time, those mistakes mount up and need to be resolved before they negatively impact your SEO performance. Below are some of the activities that need to be performed to keep your technical SEO in good condition.<ul><li>Cleaning up broken links.</li><li>Deleting (and redirecting) old pages with outdated content.</li><li>Making sure the site's pages load quickly.</li><li>Configuring your server and routing to make sure you're not errantly generating duplicate content.</li></ul>How to Measure It: Site auditing tools from <a href="https://demandstack.io/categories/search-engine-optimization">SEO software platforms</a> provide scores of a website's overall technical health. You also need to track a KPI for the average load time of the site's pages.Who is Responsible: This is the responsibility of your in-house SEO or an agency/contractor you partner with to ensure your technical SEO is in good condition.How to Improve It: Resolve any errors found by technical SEO professionals or reported in SEO auditing tools.

Configuration

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SEO in 5 Minutes

Bare Minimum SEO Services for Small Business

These are the essential tactics that every website needs to take care of in order to have a decent shot at ranking for their targeted keywords.

Good SEO starts with choosing the right content management system (CMS). If you don't have any development resources, you need to use one of the well-known no-code CMSs to build your website. These tools are user-friendly, have basic SEO features, and are broadly supported. Here are the CMSs I would recommend:<ul><li>Squarespace</li><li>Wix</li><li>WordPress</li><li>Shopify - for ecommerce sites</li></ul>All of these CMSs have a library of prebuilt templates to choose from. You can simply pick a template and automatically apply it to your site. When choosing a template, go for clean, simple, and easy to read. Don't try to win a design award.

Picking The Right CMS

Because you're a scrappy, resourceful entrepreneur, there are a few SEO tasks that you can take care of yourself. Here are the DIY SEO tasks for you:<ul><li>Add at least 500 words of content on the homepage and primary product/service pages. It's better if you can get closer to 1,000, but that's not always realistic. If you don't like to write, use <a href="https://chat.openai.com/">chatGPT to help</a>, but read the content before you publish it.</li><li>Create a <a href="https://www.google.com/business/">Google My Business Profile</a>, and be thorough when you're creating your profile. Add everything you can - your hours, images, product categories, and whatever else makes sense.&nbsp;</li></ul>These are the items someone with SEO expertise needs to take care of.<ul><li>Light keyword research</li><li>Keywords in title tags</li><li>Lightly sprinkle your keywords into your content</li><li>Google Analytics configured for basic tracking</li></ul>If you have a brochure website with 5 to 10 pages on it, a good SEO can easily knock all of these out in 5 hours. Maybe less. You can hire a good SEO for $75 to $100 per hour.&nbsp;New businesses don't need to pay a monthly fee for SEO services. The majority of the time, small monthly SEO packages are a waste of money.&nbsp;

The Bare Minimum

Once you have your SEO essentials taken care of, there are some ongoing tasks you'll need to keep up with to improve your SEO performance.&nbsp;<ul><li>Get customers to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile</li><li>When it makes sense, ask other websites to link to your website. For example, <a href="https://member.olathe.org/Financial-Planning">this page on the Olathe Chamber of Commerce website</a> links to a bunch of financial planners. Those links are helping their SEO performance.</li><li>Add your business to websites like YellowPages.com, G2, or ClearlyRated. Your listing on these websites can help your SEO performance.</li><li>Get your business added to local and industry directories.</li><li>Taking advantage of public relations opportunities helps your SEO. Some press articles will include links to your website.</li></ul>You can hire someone to do some of the tasks above, but that doesn't require a monthly retainer. We believe that small and new businesses should only pay for individual SEO projects.If you follow this guide, have a good product or service, and make your customers happy, you'll see your SEO performance steadily improve.

Your Ongoing SEO Todo List

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Budget SEO

How Much Should You Pay for SEO in 2023?

There are 3 primary models SEO agencies and freelancers use to price their services.&nbsp;<h3>Hourly Rates</h3>In this model, fees are based on the number of hours worked. These fees typically range from $75 to $150 per hour with an average of around $85.&nbsp;<h3>Project-Based Pricing</h3>Some SEO firms charge for a specific project to be completed. This might be a site migration, an internationalization project, or a large audit. These projects typically range from $2000 to $5,000.<h3>Monthly Retainer&nbsp;</h3>In this model, a client pays a monthly fee for SEO each month. The SEO company completes tasks each month based on hours, an approximation, or an agreed-upon plan. Monthly retainers typically range from $500 to $2000 per month but can be as high as $20,000 per month.<h3>Other, Less Common Models</h3>Some agencies offer a pay-for-performance model, but this isn't very common, and clients need to pay close attention to the details here. Performance in these arrangements should be defined in terms of increased traffic and leads from SEO, not ranking position. If you are interested in a pay-for-performance model, we recommend setting a baseline projection for organic traffic and leads, and paying for performance that exceeds the baseline projection.

SEO Pricing Models

Companies at different stages of growth should approach SEO very differently. What makes sense for a large, mature enterprise won't make sense for a startup. Below are our SEO pricing recommendations for different business stages.<h3>Startups</h3>Our recommendations here are for startups that don't have heavy external funding and super-aggressive growth goals. There are some basic SEO practices that every website needs. We have an article that covers the minimum essentials for SEO:<a href="/articles/bare-minimum-seo">Absolute Bare Minimum SEO</a>To summarize the article above, cash-challenged startups can get their essential SEO tasks completed with 5 hours of work at $100 per hour. A lot of startups should only pay a one-time fee of $500.<h3>Small Businesses</h3>At this stage of business growth, it makes sense to invest in SEO on a monthly basis. As mentioned earlier, regardless of the pricing model, you should assess the value in terms of an hourly rate. The primary SEO tasks that are needed on an ongoing basis are linkbuilding, content creation, and content promotion. If you plan for how much of these activities are needed on a monthly basis, it's easy to arrive at a reasonable approximate price for the services.For example, a less expensive monthly plan might look like this:<ul><li>3 hours of linkbuilding at $85 per hour</li><li>4 hours of content creation for one blog post at $65 per hour</li><li>1 hour of outreach to promote the content at $85 per hour</li></ul>On a monthly basis, these activities would cost $600 per month.A more aggressive plan might look like this:<ul><li>8 hours of linkbuilding at $85 per hour</li><li>12 hours of content creation for two high-quality, 2,000-word blog posts at $65 per hour</li><li>4 hours of outreach to promote the content at $85 per hour</li><li>2 hours of analysis and reporting</li></ul>On a monthly basis, these activities would cost $2000 per month.<h3>Medium-Sized Businesses</h3>As your business grows, you're likely to plan for more hours of SEO. As more tasks and hours are added, you can see how SEO campaigns can reach $5,000 or $10,000 per month. It depends on how fast you want to grow. It also depends on the SEO firm. If you're seeing positive results, and trust the company, it makes sense to invest aggressively.

SEO Pricing and Business Size

Let's Talk SEO

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SEO Pricing

The 10-Minute Google Ads Audit for Marketing Executives

Google Ads is a fantastic platform that automates a lot of tedious tasks, but they don't automate everything. Not yet. As a paid media practitioner, I can attest to the tendency to get complacent and let campaigns run too long without analyzing them. After spending 6 hours buried in code and ad interfaces, it's hard to remember to go to Google and check the end-user ad experience. This happens a lot and leads to a poor user experience and wasted ad spending. This is a great opportunity for marketing executives to gain valuable insight into their industry, customers, and competitors.&nbsp;<h2>The 10-minute Google Ads Audit</h2>Step 1: Close your eyes and empathize with your customer. Be the customer. Now, use Google the way your prospects would. Try to find your company's ads. Use the <a href="https://ads.google.com/anon/AdPreview?">Google Ads preview tool</a> to see results for different locations and devices.Step 2: Look at the search results. Does your company show up? If so, is it a good ad?&nbsp;Yes? Give praise for a job well done.No? Scream at your PPC specialists until their faces melt.&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-side"><img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/idiot_sandwhich_29e5c967aa.jpg" alt="idiot-sandwhich.jpg"></figure>Repeat that process for a few other keywords.<h2>Let's Look At An Example</h2>All it took was one search to find a great example. The search below is for "track loader rental near me." If I was the head of marketing for Sunbelt Rentals, I wouldn't be pleased with the ad below. The word "track loader" isn't anywhere in the ad copy. And that's a picture of an excavator, not a track loader.&nbsp;<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/track_loader_rental_near_me_Google_Search_c9224c716a.jpg" alt="track-loader-rental-near-me-Google-Search.jpg">You don't need a Google Ads Gold-level certification to know that a better headline for this ad would be "Track Loader for Rent in &lt;Location&gt;", and a picture of an actual track loader.If you find some poor ad experiences, it's likely a problem in other parts of the account.<h2>How Does This Happen?</h2>If you find a few crappy ads you'll probably picture a giant pile of money on fire.<figure class="image image-style-side"><img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/its_all_automated_v2_c80cfb6a35.jpg" alt="its all automated v2.jpg"></figure>But, don't. It happens to every paid media specialist. We spend 95% of our time looking at ad interfaces and code. The Google Ads interface obfuscates the end-user ad experience and some of this is intentional. It gives Google opportunities to push more automation and drive up profits. Take a minute and breath deep before you discuss poor ad experiences with your team.This is a great opportunity for you to see your marketing from the prospect's perspective, check out your competition, and help your team by acting as a quality check.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The 10 Minute SEO & PPC Audit for CMOs

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Search Marketing

Send Next.js Form Data to a Zapier Webhook API

After you've built a functioning contact form with Next.js, you need to send that data somewhere. The advantage of sending form data to Zapier is that you have a lot of options for where to send the data next. Once your data is in Zapier, you can send it to your CRM, database, or Google Sheets using Zapier apps.Below is the basic contact form we'll be using to send requests.<h3>Basic Contact Form</h3><pre><code class="language-javascript">&lt;form onsubmit="{handleSubmit}"&gt;
 &lt;input label="First Name" id="firstName" type="text"&gt;
 &lt;input label="Last Name" id="lastName" type="text"&gt; 
 &lt;!-- more fields here --&gt;
&lt;button mt="8" variant="blue500" type="submit"&gt;Submit&lt;/button&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;</code></pre>When the form above is submitted, our handleSubmit function will be executed. Here is what that function looks like for our use case.<h3>The handleSubmit Function</h3><pre><code class="language-javascript">const handleSubmit = async (e) =&gt; {
 e.preventDefault();


 const data = {
 firstName: e.target.firstName.value,
 lastName: e.target.lastName.value,
	 // etc..
 }

 // Send the data to the server in JSON format.
 const JSONdata = JSON.stringify(data);

 // API endpoint where we send form data.
 const endpoint = 'YOUR ZAPIER WEBHOOK URL';

 // Form the request for sending data to the server.
 const options = {
 method: 'POST',
 body: JSONdata,
 };

 // Send the form data to our endpoint url
 const response = await fetch(endpoint, options);
 
 // Get the response data from server as JSON.
 // If server returns the name submitted, that means the form works.
 const result = await response.json();
 
 }</code></pre>First, we create our data object using the data submitted in the form and assign it to the variable 'data', then convert that to a string using JSON.stringify. Then we define our endpoint and our options.&nbsp;This is where I had issues arise. I was adding 'application/json' content-type headers to the options and this was producing 'failed to fetch' errors. I removed the headers from the options and everything worked great after that.After all of this, we execute our fetch and post the data to Zapier.<h2>Zapier Configuration</h2>To configure Zapier to catch the payload from your form, just follow the steps below.<ol><li>Create a new zap.</li><li>Add the trigger called Webhooks by Zapier (this is a premium app).</li><li>Select the 'Catch Hook' event and leave the 'Pick off child key' field blank</li></ol><h3>Testing the webhook</h3>The test section provides your webhook URL. In the handleSubmit function above, you need to replace the text 'YOUR ZAPIER WEBHOOK URL' with the provided webhook URL.Once you've done that, you can submit a test lead on your form. If you don't already see a "We found a request" message, click 'Test Trigger'. If the test results in finding a request with the data you submitted (see screenshot below), you're done.&nbsp;<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/zapier_test_eee953f493.jpg" alt="zapier-test.jpg">&nbsp;

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Marketing Cheat Sheet for Common KPI Formulas

Our marketing KPI cheat sheet is designed to provide a simple resource that alleviates the need to dig through articles for common formulas. This isn't meant to be a template for a marketing dashboard. There are useful metrics like engagement rate and conversion rate that don't require calculation. This just includes metrics that we find ourselves referencing periodically.We plan to update and improve this resource over time and appreciate any ideas or feedback.<h2>The Marketing KPI Cheat Sheet</h2>No forms to fill out, no subscriptions. Just a simple PDF download.<a href="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/demand_stack_marketing_kpi_cheat_sheet_f84fcd4c26.pdf">Marketing KPI Cheat Sheet PDF</a><a href="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/demand_stack_marketing_kpi_cheat_sheet_f84fcd4c26.pdf"><img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/demand_stack_marketing_kpi_cheat_sheet_2f5ddc47ab.png" alt="Marketing KPI Cheat Sheet PDF"></a><h3>Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)</h3>At the most basic level, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is multiplying a customer’s total revenue by the customer’s lifespan.&nbsp;CLV = Customer Revenue * Customer LifespanThe formula in the cheat sheet takes this basic formula and breaks customer revenue out into average purchase value and the avg number of transactions.&nbsp;CLV = Average Purchase Value * Avg # of Transactions * Avg Customer LifespanThe cheat sheet also incorporates Gross Margin, but if you don't know your company's gross margin, you can use the formula above instead.<h3>Incorporating Gross Margin</h3>If you know the gross margin for your company, it’s a good idea to incorporate this value into your CLV calculation.&nbsp;Here is the formula for CLV that includes Gross Margin (GM):CLV = Average Purchase Value * Avg Number of Transactions * Avg Customer Lifespan * Gross MarginThis is the method we included in the cheat sheet.<h3>Incorporating Your Company’s Capital Costs</h3>When we assign a value to a new customer based on CLV, we’re projecting future cash flows. Money received in the future isn’t as valuable as having that same amount of money today. The discount rate helps to account for the diminished value of future cash flows.CLV = GM * (RR / (1+Discount Rate - RR))<h3>Acquisition Margin</h3>Acquisition margin is a metric that incorporates both CLV and CAC. This metric measures the gross profit margin of acquiring new customers and the overall financial performance of marketing's acquisition efforts.&nbsp;Acquisition Margin = CLV / CACA higher number suggests that your acquisition efforts are profitable and your company needs to aggressively invest in this area. A lower number is a sign that something needs to be addressed. The cause could be a variety of factors including poor acquisition strategy, unnecessarily high operating costs, bad pricing strategy, and other factors. Some of these factors are out of marketing's control.<h3>Net Promoter Score (NPS)</h3>This metric is used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers a simple question: "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?" Based on their responses, customers are categorized into promoters, passives, or detractors. Promoters are customers who rate you as a 9 or 10. Detractors are customers who rate you between 0 and 6. Companies with a high percentage of promoters are more likely to see organic growth through reviews and word-of-mouth referrals. NPS is commonly expressed as a ratio:&nbsp;NPS Score = % of Promoters / % of DetractorsAn important part of measuring this is establishing a systematic process of collecting and storing the data. Collecting this information might involve email, surveys, or one-on-one interviews.&nbsp;<h3>Retention Rate and Churn Rate</h3>Retention rate is a metric used to measure the percentage of customers your company retains over a specified period of time. It is a valuable indicator of customer loyalty and satisfaction. If your company implements a loyalty program or service enhancement, this is the metric that will show the impact of the initiative on customer satisfaction. The churn rate is the inverse of the retention rate. It's measuring the undesirable outcome of the same behavior.If these rates start trending in positive or negative directions, this should trigger an initiative to understand why. You can dig into causes using web analytics, reviews, survey data, or feedback from sales and customers.&nbsp;<h3>WAU/DAU</h3>WAU/DAU stands for Weekly Active Users divided by Daily Active Users. The metric compares the number of unique users who interact with the product within a week (Weekly Active Users or WAU) to the number of unique users who engage with the product on a daily basis (Daily Active Users or DAU). This is used to measure user engagement and retention for websites and mobile apps.A high WAU/DAU suggests that users are returning to the product throughout the week, and a low WAU/DAU ratio indicates that users are not consistently using the product over time.<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">MAU/DAU</h3>This is similar to WAU/DAU but uses Monthly Active Users (MAU) in place of WAU. This metric measures user engagement and retention over the course of a month.&nbsp;

Digital Marketing Metric Cheat Sheet

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Analytics

B2B Marketing Platforms: A Better Name for ABM Software

ABM started out as a B2B marketing strategy involving one-to-one targeting where individual accounts are distinct segments. Over time, the idea has mutated into an amorphous concept that can be boiled down to mean modern B2B marketing. I agree with the frequently made claim that "ABM is just good B2B marketing." I would consider 6sense the leader in this space, and <a href="https://6sense.com/resources/home/abm-is-still-just-good-marketing">they support this sentiment</a>. They also hardly mention ABM on the homepage of their website.That said, if the term helps individual companies approach key accounts more effectively, more power to them. The problem is that the ambiguity around ABM has negative implications for the positioning and strategy of major software providers in the industry. It makes it more difficult for B2B companies to interpret what these software providers are offering. "B2B Marketing Platforms" is a much better term to categorize software like 6sense, ZoomInfo, and Terminus.<h3>A Really Short History of ABM</h3>Most people agree that the first person to formally package the concept of ABM was Beverly Burgess in 2003 when she wrote "A Practitioner's Guide to Account-Based Marketing." This book caused an initial blip in interest, but interestingly, the concept died and sputtered until 2015:<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/account_based_marketing_Explore_Google_Trends_c362783486.jpg" alt="account-based-marketing-Explore-Google-Trends.jpg">In 2015, interest in ABM spiked after VCs got excited about software platforms like Demandbase and Engagio. The number of software vendors and interest in the term has continued to grow from there.<h3>ABM's Suspicious Evolution From One-To-One to One-To-Whatever</h3>I tried to write a post that would synthesize the various definitions of account-based marketing. Minutes before lodging my keyboard into the drywall on the other side of the room I decided to stop.&nbsp;The definitions of ABM are all over the place. It's a mess. It started out as a one-to-one strategy where each key account was treated as a distinct target market. That's where it should have stayed. Over time, both software vendors and practitioners have been expanding the definition to include more one-to-many messaging strategies. <a href="https://www.itsma.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/2017/02/ITSMA_ThreeTypesofABM_TB059.pdf">ITSMA's</a> even added a new kind of ABM called "Programmatic ABM," which is a one-to-many targeting strategy that is functionally the same as modern B2B marketing. Programmatic ABM is what the top software providers in this category are really offering. Let's pray they never adopt that term.<h3>Why ABM Mutated Into B2B Frankenstrategy</h3>A big driver of this mutation was the introduction of ABM software. Leaders in software categories don't want to be a component. They want to be the platform. One-to-one targeting only makes sense as a component of a marketing strategy. You can't be effective in a B2B market if you limit your strategy to only include one-to-one efforts. However, if you expand ABM to include one-to-many messaging, it loses any distinct features and causes confusion.&nbsp;<h3>What Does This Software Actually Do?</h3>The term ABM doesn't mean much today, but what about the software in this space? Is there a real software category here? We reviewed a number of "ABM" platforms and found a common group of features that are unique to this category:<ul><li>Account Identification: Most of these platforms deanonymize website traffic to reveal additional firmographic and contact details. These platforms also include various methods of identifying accounts that match your ideal customer profile. This includes filtered views, account scoring, and predictive modeling.</li><li>Personalization: Using enriched account data, these platforms provide tools to deliver personalized experiences through your website, display ads, email marketing, gifting, and others. A frequently cited example involves showcasing different website content to accounts based on their behavior and status.</li><li>Messaging: Some of the more advanced software in this space offers the ability to automate message timing based on account behavior. Another messaging feature offered by some vendors is the ability to use AI to generate personalized messaging.&nbsp;</li><li>Analytics: These platforms also include unique reports that help highlight account-level behavior and performance.</li></ul>There is a common set of features here that should be distinguished from CRM, CDP, and general marketing automation platforms. This needs to be called something. The right term is B2B marketing platforms.<h3>B2B Marketing Platforms</h3>6sense, Terminus, and Rollworks are B2B marketing platforms. ABM features involving one-to-one tools might make sense as components of these leading platforms, but the broad classification should be B2B marketing platforms. This term clearly communicates what's being offered to users - a collection of B2B-focused marketing tools. This classification gives software providers the right scope for positioning and reduces confusion.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Zoho Bigin CRM for Link Building and SEO

<h3>Why Use a CRM for Linkbuilding</h3>If I get a new client in the finance industry, I can pull a view from CRM and have multiple links ready to go and deliver immediate value for the client. I could use Google Sheets for this, but that's an error-prone solution that's missing a lot of functionality.There are some existing link-building tools out there that offer CRM functionality. BuzzStream and Pitchbox are two good options, but they're relatively expensive. We wanted a simple, inexpensive CRM that could serve as a permanent repository for proprietary link data.&nbsp;<h3>Why We Chose Zoho Bigin</h3>We already use Zoho CRM as our core sales/marketing system, and we didn't want to mix linkbuilding data with our core CRM data. We wanted a separate, simple CRM to manage linkbuilding data. This made Zoho Bigin an obvious candidate. It's a simple, easy-to-use alternative to Zoho CRM with a simple, kanban-style, drag-and-drop interface. After researching the software, here are the reasons we chose Zoho Bigin.<ul><li>$7 a month: I get 90% of the features I need for only $7 a month.</li><li>Minimal Configuration: The native objects (contacts, companies, and deals) come with very few fields preconfigured and this saves time on customization.</li><li>Integrations: Since we're already using Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns, using Bigin allows us to sync data to our existing campaign software.</li><li>Convenience: By using Zoho Bigin, we get the minimal CRM experience we're looking for, but it still integrates with the rest of Zoho's products.</li></ul><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Initial Customization</h3>We use the company module for the bulk of our work so we customized the company form to fit our needs. We removed any fields we didn't need and added new fields. Keep in mind, you have a limit on the number of custom fields you can add so reuse native fields when possible.After our customizations, these are the fields we have in the company module:<ul><li>Company Name</li><li>Website</li><li>Link URL</li><li>Description (for notes)</li><li>Email Address</li><li>Phone Number</li><li>Industry</li><li>Site Type (blog, aggregator, association, etc..)</li><li>City</li><li>State</li><li>Annual Cost (for links that require payment)</li></ul>This makes Bigin's company module the primary module for my use case. If you're on the least expensive paid tier, you can remove any fields from the company object that you don't need. Once this is done, adding new companies is fast, and easy.&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-side"><img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/zoho_create_company_0d6c5e161f.png" alt="zoho-create-company.png"></figure><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Bigin's Pipeline View</h3>Zoho Bigin's pipeline feature enables you to visualize and manage your process using a Kanban-style project board. &nbsp;This allows me to drag and drop prospects around the board with easy without having to worry about the standard CRM data model.&nbsp;<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/bigin_homescreen_59b28bcfc9.jpg" alt="bigin-homescreen.jpg"><h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Email Integration for Outreach</h3>We don't do any bulk emails for links. Our strategy focuses more on high-quality links and individual emails. However, there are bulk email strategies that work so we tested the integration with Zoho Campaigns.The integration only took a few minutes to get up and going. For some campaigns, you may be able to just use a field like Industry or City/State for segmentation, but if you need more nuanced segments, you can use tags. You can tag companies and contacts, and use those tags to create lists in Zoho Campaigns.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Conclusion</h3>Overall, we're happy with Bigin as a link-building CRM. It has met our expectations as an easy-to-use CRM that ships with minimal configuration and can be customized. It was also easy to integrate with Zoho Campaigns to support outreach campaigns.&nbsp;If I had a bigger budget I would take a close look at apps like Pitchbox, but for smaller operations, Zoho Bigin works well. I would recommend it for small digital agencies, and small to medium-sized in-house digital marketing teams. Other simple, kanban-style CRMs like Pipedrive, Monday CRM, or FreshSales might also work well for this.&nbsp;

We've been using Zoho Bigin as our link-building CRM for several months now. Here's how it's going.

Zoho Bigin as CRM for Link Building and SEO

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Link Building

Using First-Party Cookies To Store Campaign Parameters

If you're a marketer focused on lead generation, you're adding parameters to links in campaigns to track campaign performance. If a user clicks one of your links and then completes a form on your site, those campaign parameters need to be passed through to your CRM.Because my audience is marketers I've written this as simply as possible. Even if you have a primitive understanding of JavaScript, I think you'll be able to follow along.<h3>URL Parameter Examples</h3>Below is an example of a URL that might be created to track a specific campaign. This URL contains the standard UTM parameters but you can also use custom parameters.<pre><code class="language-html">http://demandstack.io/?utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;
utm_campaign=awareness&amp;utm_id=615690&amp;utm_content=open-source	</code></pre>Below is an example of a URL with custom parameters.<pre><code class="language-html">http://demandstack.io/?ds_id=849375894&amp;source=reddit&amp;campaign_id=61560980&amp;ad_id=1842038674</code></pre><h3>Capturing Parameters</h3>Using vanilla Javascript, we're going to make use of the <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URLSearchParams">URLSearchParams utility</a>. This is a JavaScript constructor that provides a lot of helpful methods for manipulating data.<pre><code class="language-javascript">// get query string from url
const paramsString = window.location.search;

// create a new URLSearchParams object 
const params = new URLSearchParams(paramsString);
</code></pre>The code above gets the URL query string (the stuff after the '?'). Then we create an object called 'params' using URLSearchParams. This object stores the URL parameters in key/value pairs.&nbsp;<h3>Using Cookies to Store Campaign Parameters</h3>This is the important part. We strongly recommend storing campaign parameter data in cookies. This is because when a user clicks your campaign link and visits your landing page, the parameters are there in the URL. However, as soon as that user navigates to another page, all those URL parameters disappear, and that data is gone.This is why we store data as cookies. Below is a function for setting a cookie in a user's browser. &nbsp;<pre><code class="language-javascript">function setCookie(cookie_name, cookie_value, expiration_in_days) {
 const d = new Date();
 d.setTime(d.getTime() + (expiration_in_days*24*60*60*1000));
 let expires = "expires="+ d.toUTCString();
 document.cookie = cname + "=" + cvalue + ";" + expires + ";path=/";
}</code></pre>In this function, we have the cookie name, the cookie value, and the number of days until the cookie expires. Now, we take our key/value pairs and set them as cookies. But, we don't always want all of the parameters. To add some control, I create a variable called targetParams to designate the data I want to collect.<pre><code class="language-javascript">// The keys of the parameters we want to capture
targetParams = ['source', 'campaign_id']

// Iterate through key/value pairs of parameters
for (const [key, value] of params.entries()) {

 // Only include targeted parameters
 if (targetParams.includes(`${key}`)) {
 
 // Set cookie for key value pair (cookie_name, cookie_value, expiration_in_days)
 setCookie(`${key}`, `${value}`, 90)
 }
}
</code></pre>Once you've tried setting a cookie you can verify it's working by opening Chrome developer tools and going to the Application tab (see screenshot below). On the left sidebar, you'll see a section called Cookies. If there are multiple sites listed, pick your site. &nbsp;In the main window, you'll see the list of cookies on your browser.&nbsp;<img src="https://lovestack.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/cookies_tab_developer_tools_1fgu8_e6609146d1.jpg" alt="cookies-tab-developer-tools-1fgu8.jpg">For my example, I'm looking for cookies with the name 'source' and 'campaign_id' to ensure everything is working.<h3>Reading Cookies and Setting Form Values</h3>Below is the function for getting the data from a user's stored cookies. If they clicked your campaign link and navigated around the website before going to your form, that's OK. We can still grab the cookie data.<pre><code class="language-javascript">// Get Cookie
function getCookie(cname) {
 let name = cname + "=";
 let decodedCookie = decodeURIComponent(document.cookie);
 let ca = decodedCookie.split(';');
 for(let i = 0; i &lt;ca.length; i++) {
 let c = ca[i];
 while (c.charAt(0) == ' ') {
 c = c.substring(1);
 }
 if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) {
 return c.substring(name.length, c.length);
 }
 }
 return "";
}</code></pre>Our form might look something like this.<pre><code class="language-html">&lt;form action="#"&gt;
 &lt;label for="fname"&gt;First name:&lt;/label&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;input type="text" id="fname" name="fname" value="John"&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;label for="lname"&gt;Last name:&lt;/label&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;input type="text" id="lname" name="lname" value="Doe"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;

 &lt;input type="hidden" id="source" name="source" value=""&gt;
 &lt;input type="hidden" id="campaign_id" name="campaign_id" value=""&gt;

 &lt;input type="submit" value="Submit"&gt;
&lt;/form&gt; </code></pre>We have two hidden input fields that we need to set values for, but you might have five or ten. Something that will save a lot of time and code is giving your hidden input fields ids that match your campaign parameters. This makes the code below really simple. We can just iterate through our targeted parameters (from the variable 'targetParams') and set values.&nbsp;<pre><code class="language-javascript">targetParams.map((param, index) =&gt; {

 // Run the getCookie function for a parameter 
 let paramValue = getCookie(param)
 
 // Set the input value for the associated parameter

 document.getElementById(param).value = paramValue
 
})</code></pre>When the user hits submit, the data in these hidden fields will be sent with the rest of the form data payload.<h3>Handling Form Data</h3>The least technical way to handle this webform data is to use an automation platform like Zapier or Make. Using these tools, you'll need to create a webhook (catch hook) and use that webhook URL as your form action. Then map the data using the connector for your CRM.Some CRMs have form capture tools that provide an endpoint URL and provide field ids that need to be included in your form inputs.Cases that involve complex data transformation or sending data to multiple applications might require something more elaborate. One example is to create a form handler service on AWS that can receive payloads and perform ETL.&nbsp;

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