CategoryCode Blog and Industry News

No One Can Guarantee a #1 Ranking on Google

Posted by Landon Poburan on March 25th, 2013

Search engine rankings are not something that can be guaranteed. Beware of companies that make this promise. There is a lot of spam emails and phone calls these days promising companies #1 rankings on Google. This devalues the hard work good quality companies do.

Here is an excerpt from the Google Webmaster Tools docs on Search Engine Optimization

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.

Most of us have likely received emails from ABC Company explaining they can provide #1 Ranking for our keyword, guaranteed, or they will get us thousands of links, etc. Quick tip, the actual good quality firms would NEVER cold-email you in that way!

Just as Google states it, the bottom line is no one can guarantee #1 rankings. It is an ever evolving process that takes time to do it right. In the past there has been websites and SEOs that have “scammed” the system to quick rankings, and most likely there will be people that continue to try and do so. But Google’s latest Panda and Penguin updates are evidence that they are constantly evolving and that using “Black Hat” methods can get you penalized. You could even get your website banned from Google’s index. The search engines are set to provide the highest quality, most relevant result for a users search query, they will always be fighting spam. Spam will never win.

The best way to increase your website rankings is to produce good high quality content that is relevant for your niche. Then set goals, and work towards them. Working with a local SEO and Internet Marketing company can help you with this.

The Perks of Working Remotely and Working Vacations

Posted by Landon Poburan on March 16th, 2013

I am writing this blog post from the comfort of my hotel room on a chilly day in Calgary. My wife is at a seminar for the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. But running a web design company allows me (and my team) lovely perks such as working remotely!

When I decided to join my wife in Calgary this weekend I knew we would not be able spend much time together but I knew I could relax and take some time to do some quality work, like working on our content marketing by writing this blog post!

Working remotely is one of many perks that we enjoy while working in the digital industry. It is one I also pass along to all of the members of the CategoryCode team. We all work remotely. This means that we can work from our office(s) in Edmonton, or like me today, a hotel room in Calgary.

I find it very soothing and relaxing working out of the office. With some smooth jazz playing, some cartoons on in the background I am able to plug away and get a great start on work for next week. This is not something I would be able to enjoy if I work a more “typical” job.

I also find that passing these perks along to my team increases productivity, happiness and quality of work. By empowering them to work remotely and set their own hours as long as work is completed has been a key foundation of building CategoryCode over the years.

Our Remote Working Toolset

At CategoryCode we use a variety of cloud based tools to get the job done. We communicate via email and Skype, share files through Dropbox, track our time using Toggl and use a nifty tool for project management called Asana (created by the co-founder of Facebook!)

My Working Vacation Hotel Checklist

When I take a working vacation I have some items that I needed checked off while searching for a hotel:

Free WiFi
Fridge
Microwave
Free Parking
Fitness Centre
Swimming Pool and Hot Tub

Not all of these are essential to the “Working” part, obviously the free wifi is key. But since it is a “Working Vacation” some of my requirements land in the “Vacation” column such as a pool and hot tub.

Nothing is nicer then waking up, going for a nice workout, a lovely dip in the hot tub followed by some relaxing work.

Tips for Working Remotely

I have been working remotely for around 9-10 years. Working remotely is definitely not for everyone. Here are a few tips on being successful while working remotely:

Try to work normal office hours. If your clients work from 9 – 5 your not much help to them for support if you work through the night.
Get into a routine. Getting into a routine is key. I wake up, eat, work out, and work 8-10 hours then enjoy the evening with my wife.
Separate your business/office from your personal space. I find it key designating space for your office and work and keeping it separate from your personal space.
Keep distractions to a minimum.
Make a daily to-do list, and try to complete it.
Be accountable. If you are granted the privileged of working from home, be responsible and accountable to yourself, your team and your clients. If your not, the arrangement will not work out in the long run.
Have fun! Enjoying yourself is key to keeping things interesting. Work from a coffee shop, take a working vacation, time some time off through the day to run an errand. Part of the benefit of working remotely is Freedom, so enjoy some!

Anyways, I am off for a nice walk, then back to to work!

The Client is (Almost) Always Right!

Posted by Landon Poburan on March 7th, 2013

I am sure you have heard the saying “The Customer is Always Right” and if you haven’t then you tuning in at the right time so we can change your perception on the age old saying.

I like to think that the client is almost always right. I would like to provide a little background on our rational behind this. Lately, as we’ve been networking, people have been talking about what makes their business unique and different. So how is CategoryCode different? Our clients are almost always right!

Our Approach to Feedback

When we are hired, we are hired because of our expertise within the industry. We are hired because you were referred to us, or you liked our work and you trust us to apply that same quality of work to your project.

Throughout the course of a project we allow our clients to review and provide us their feedback. When we receive feedback and change requests we are a little different in our approach. We are not your typical “Yes” man. We don’t automatically do whatever is requested. Now let me explain.

Everything we do is aimed at achieving a specific goal. We design things certain ways, phrase things certain ways, place things in certain positions, create balance, and an optimize finished product that will accomplish these goals.

When the feedback is to move this there, or make this smaller or larger, or add this, etc. We try and take a step back and evaluate the feedback on a deeper level. Are these changes inline with what we’re trying to accomplish? If so, we will make them! If not, this is where we feel we’re different.

If we feel that particular feedback is not in line with the clients goals, or will hinder what we are trying to accomplish. We will explain our thoughts and our rational behind it so that the client can understand our viewpoint and understand why we did something a certain way.

We try to not blindly make changes. We make sure we evaluate feedback, doing our due diligence to get to the root of what there requests are aimed to achieve.

Digging a Little Deeper into Feedback

It is really important to dig a little deeper with certain change requests. Sometimes a client will ask you to do something but below the surface the request is aimed to accomplish something else. It can be beneficial to ask what they are trying to accomplish with that change. If you simply make the requested change, it may not have the impact they were looking for. But you identify the root concern you can create better solutions.

We Love Our Clients!

This is our approach when we are working with our awesome clients. We educate our clients as much as possible so that in the end our work is something they love and will accomplishes their goals!

Blogging, SEO and Website Traffic – The Domino Effect

Posted by Landon Poburan on February 26th, 2013

Most tech savvy professionals and business owners know that blogging is a great way to benefit your business online. If by chance you didn’t, it can help with search engine rankings, website traffic and social media if done correctly. I have noticed when we combine blogging and social media we have a domino effect with our SEO and Website Traffic. It compounds over time, giving you more results with the same effort.

When businesses are just starting out with SEO and Internet Marketing Strategies or just starting to use Social Media they may not have may followers, or many website visitors. But blogging and generating quality content to be hugely beneficial.

I have noticed this personally, with our CategoryCode website. I will outline our experiences with this.

Our Experiences

Each time I write a blog post, I share the article and post the article via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ and some others (When I share the article on Twitter I will typically use some hash tags so it is exposed to people following the topic). There will always be some people that see the post and visit the article. This causes a spike in Website Traffic similar to the spike we seen with our blog post last week on a WordPress Plugin called Gravity Forms. Can you see the spike?!

Now, along with this large spike in website traffic we typically also gained some Twitter followers and Likes on Facebook. Aside from the Social Media sharing, we also make sure we submit an update sitemap to the search engines so the blog post can get indexed quickly.

The Domino/Compound Effect

This is where the magic happens. Keep in mind consistency is key.

1. You write a new blog post on an interesting topic.

2. You share your awesome blog post on all your social media accounts, and gain new followers.

3. Search engines index your new page. Search engines love good, quality, fresh content. The more, the better (of quality content).

4. You see a spike in website traffic from people visiting the article.

5. Rinse, and repeat.

Each time you do this, you will gain more followers/friends on social media. This means that each time you share something more people are seeing it, compounding the amount of people that it will be exposed to, especially when they share it with their networks. Overtime you build a bigger and bigger network that your content will be exposed to.

Each time you blog you are generating new quality content. This is fantastic for search engines, this can benefit your website traffic and this can benefit various search engine ranking factors if you become a quality source of content.

Over time, your social media networks will grow, your website will perform better, and your website traffic will increase. You are putting in the same effort, but each time the results are compounding!

Tip to Maximize Your Results

Determine The Best Time To Tweet

Using a tool like SocialBro to determine the best time to Tweet can be a huge benefit. Sharing your content at optimal times means that more people will see it, creating the opportunity for more people to visit it and share it. SocialBro has a tool to see when your Twitter followers are most active – What time of the day and what days of the week.

Scheduling Your Sharing

Once you have determined the best time to share your content, you can easily schedule your content to be shared using tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite. For example if the best time to share is Tuesdays at 9:00AM, you can still write your article on Sunday night, then schedule it to be shared on Tuesday at 9:00AM.

Doing Keyword Research

If you would like to create a bigger SEO impact with your blog post, I suggest using Google’s Keyword Tool. This will provide you some vital information on what keywords people are searching for allowing you to use them in your article title and throughout the body. We did this with an article and we ranked on page 1 for the targeted term.

Practice Makes Perfect

Many businesses don’t like blogging. I personally am not crazy about it either! But the benefits are too large to ignore.

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Ideas start to flow better, they come together faster, and it starts to take less time. Just like anything else in life, you need to get into a routine!

Wrapping Up

I truly hope that you have found some benefit to this article as we have found it beneficial for us. Hopefully you can start to see these results if your not already!

Tracking Google Analytics Goals with WordPress and Gravity Forms

Posted by Landon Poburan on February 20th, 2013

We have recently switched to using Gravity Forms for all of our WordPress websites out of necessity. We love internet marketing and conversion rate optimization but in order to do those effectively we need to properly track and record conversion data.

For every campaign, firstly, you need to effectively capture information through forms. Gravity Forms allows us to quickly build forms and I love the fact that it stores the form entries in the WordPress database for later viewing.

Along with recording entries, we need effective tracking and analytics. We had a fair bit of interested on our article on Tracking Google Website Optimizer Conversions using AJAX Forms, I figured there may be people that need to know how to track Google Analytics Goals using Gravity Forms.

Please note, this tutorial expects Google Analytics to be setup, and tracking code placed on all pages. For this we like using Google Analyticator.

Gravity Forms Confirmation Options

Gravity Forms provides 3 different confirmation options for a form submission, we’ll focus on 2. Details below from the Gravity Forms plugin.

Text

Confirmation Message Text: Enter the text you would like the user to see on the confirmation page of this form.

Page

Redirect Form to Page: Select the page you would like the user to be redirected to after they have submitted the form.

Google Analytics Tracking with ‘Page’ Confirmation

Tracking goals using Gravity Forms ‘Page’ confirmation can be done using Goal Type: URL Destination.

In Gravity Forms you can select a page on your website which you would like a user to go after submitting the form. This would typically be your thank you page.

In Google Analytics you can create a goal with the Goal Type of URL Destination (as shown above) then type in URL of your thank you page in Goal URL under Goal Details. Every time someone reaches that page you will see a goal completed.

It would be best practice to make this thank you page ‘noindex’ so that search engines cannot reach this page and possibly skew tracking.

Google Analytics Tracking with ‘Text’ Confirmation

You don’t always want to send the user to a new page when they submit a form. To do this choose ‘Text’ confirmation in Gravity Forms. This means the user will be provided a text thank you message rather then being directed to a thank you page. The user will never leave the form page.

We can still track goals with this method using Virtual Pageviews in Google Analytics. The setup for this in Google Analytics is exactly the same as the ‘Page’ confirmation (shown above) as Google Analytics is still tracking a URL Destination as the goal, however this page does not actually exist – hence virtual pageview.

In order to track a virtual pageview we need to use Google’s _gaq object and trigger the _trackPageview event so Google will track the page view.

Here is how we setup this up in Gravity Forms:

Gravity Forms Virtual Pageview

In the screenshot you can see we have chosen ‘Text’ on the Confirmation tab of our form, then we have entered our text thank you message: “Thanks for contacting us! We will get in touch with you shortly.” But the magic happens with the line below.

<script>
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/contact-thankyou']);
</script>

You need to wrap the code in <script> tags so it fires and embeds properly into the page. Then you need to update the code with your page URL. In this example the page URL we are tracking is /contact-thankyou.

Feel free to copy and paste the code above to start tracking!

Your Next Client May Be Right Under Your Nose

Posted by Landon Poburan on November 21st, 2012

As business owners we typically always have our eyes open and ears to the ground for new opportunities such as a new or potential clients to work with. Building new relationships with clients is key for continued success in business. I started CategoryCode in 2010 and worked as a freelance web designer and web developer for approx. 6-7 years prior. The relationships and clients I gained along the way have brought me to where I am today.

In order to grow and expand we need new clients. I can assume we all agree in saying that the best form of a new lead is a referral. People have a much higher probability of buying from you or working with you when they have been referred by someone they trust. This is key, the more relationships and more clients we have, the more opportunities we have for referrals!

Creating new relationships and generating business take many forms. When you gain someone’s trust, you have a much better chance of getting a referral.

Our Experience

At CategoryCode our largest source of work comes from referrals. The largest source of our referrals is our existing and past customers. We know that the more happy customers we have, the more referrals we have the opportunity to receive. I am sure this equation can be applied to almost every industry.

But getting your next client may not be as difficult as you thought. New clients and referrals may be right under your nose. Here are two of my personal examples both within the last 2 weeks.

Example 1

Today I was shoveling the snow which is almost a daily activity in Edmonton. My neighbour was also shoveling his walks. We got to chatting and he asked me why my car is always home. I began to explain that I work from home. As most people do, he asked “What do you do”. This allowed me to explain that I run a Digital Marketing company where we build Websites and do Online Marketing.

It turns out his wife’s parents just started a limousine company and are looking to get a website built. This is fantastic, I explained I would provide him my business card and I’d be happy to sit down with them.

Example 2

I am a fitness buff and a natural bodybuilder in my spare time and I workout each day. The gym happens to be a great place to network whether you’d like to believe it or not. (Note: I don’t recommend sitting and talking at the gym. There is a time and a place for it!)

This past week I was in the change room and another gentlemen sparked a conversation asking me about my diet and what I eat. I began to explain what I eat and how it is fairly easy to maintain since I work from home. Once again, this opened up the conversation about what I do. I explain we do marketing, etc. etc. It turns out he is a real estate agent and asked if we do websites and real estate marketing. It just so happens that we have had fantastic success in this industry.

Tips and Recommendations

Your potential clients may be in front of you but you have never taken the time to notice. Here are a few tips for tapping into existing opportunities.

Tip 1 – Be Friendly

This may sound like a no-brainer but being friendly is a fantastic way to meet people. If your neighbour is outside don’t be afraid to spark a conversation Get to know them and build a connection. You never know where it may go. If you simply keep to yourself all the time you may be missing out on opportunities. Once you have engaged in a conversation take note of our next 2 tips.

Tip 2 – Actively Listen and Ask Questions

Active listening is very important when talking with people. I would urge you to ask questions and then actively listen. If you are always doing the talking, you will not get to know them and will miss key things people tell you. By asking questions you can find out what they do, who they know, etc. and by listening actively you can pickup on key things and read between the lines. For example maybe they have a website and are currently working with a company but his body language suggests he is not happy. This provides an opportunity ask questions and learn more.

Tip 3 – People Hate Being “Sold”, get them to ask you

I suggest you work on your soft marketing skills if your not proficient at networking and conversing.

I also suggest creating some key conversation points. For example I have found that when I tell people I work from home or run my own business it typically results in the other person asking and wanting to know what I do. This provides a nice way to get them to ask me a question, allowing me to answer rather there question and eliminating a need to “sell”.

When someone does engage, make sure you can with few words effectively explain what do you. You don’t want to bore them, but you want them to be able to identify what do you.

What strategies do you use to find and engage new clients?

Giving Back this Christmas to Santa’s Anonymous

Posted by Landon Poburan on November 14th, 2012

It is that time again, Christmas is right around the corner. It is less then 6 weeks away if you can believe that, time flies!

This is the season where you can curl up inside by the fireplace and enjoy your family’s company. But not everyone is as fortunate. This is a time of year where many people rely on various charities and organizations for food, clothing, and shelter. These organizations need our help more then ever.

I was watching the afternoon news today on Global TV and they featured Santa’s Anonymous for a segment. There representative said that since Christmas is landing on a Tuesday this year they will be delivering toys very early, which means they need people to donate gifts now, and not wait.

After seeing this I thought of how excited I am buying presents for my 4 year old nephew and how I love watching his excitement when he opens them. Hearing Santa’s Anonymous is looking for people to take action I decided I want to pass this joy and excitement on to other children in Edmonton. We will be going out and purchasing some toys to donate to them this Christmas season.

I also challenge other local businesses to do the same. In some way shape or form, to any charity in need, every little bit helps.

Merry Christmas!

Edmonton Real Estate Marketing Strategy

Posted by Landon Poburan on November 6th, 2012

Edmonton Real Estate Marketing

At CategoryCode we do quite a bit of real estate marketing and we have begun to build a proven process by which we’ve achieved great success. Because of this we love seeing new stats regarding this local niche.

On October 30, Top Draw Inc. posted an infographic on there blog called Alberta Searches 2012. In their infographic they display what Albertans are searching for most on Google. They did an absolute fantastic job and we were happy to see some stats on real estate. If you browse to the section “Home Sweet Home” you will see some great stats.

We always educate our real estate clients at how competitive this market is. It takes work to penetrate, but it can be done with a strategic plan in place. Finding statistics like those of Top Draw’s really help when planning your marketing strategy.

The #1 searched term for real estate is mls followed by rent. Some of the more long-tail terms are homes for sale and mls edmonton.

These are great and now let’s start to think of a marketing strategy.

Inbound Marketing

Firstly let’s look at traffic generation. You want to get your website in front of the people looking for your services. This is called Inbound Marketing. Well, these statistics show that some of the most searched terms in Alberta are “mls”, “rent”, “homes for sale” and “mls edmonton”.

Let’s set the ‘rent’ keyword aside for a second. The majority of these terms are buying-centric. This helps us take our strategy a step further. There are more people on Google looking to buy than looking to sell. This is demonstrated by none of the top 10 keywords being “selling a home” or “free home evaluations” or related to selling.

So as we setup of marketing strategy we can see some solid keywords we can target to capture some internet traffic. Now trying to optimize for “mls” alone will be difficult, so you can start to look at long tail versions of this keyword and use it as a root to build from. Taking it one step further would be “mls edmonton”. You can continue to build from there. Using a term like “mls edmonton” will still have weight for “mls” in organic seo and you can target both when using pay-per-click advertising.

The next section of the infographic is important as well. You can see that when it comes to branded terms, “Remax” is the most searched term. Followed by “comfree”, “vrbo” and “century 21″. This is also fantastic information. If you happen to be a RE/MAX REALTOR® then you definitely should do some work with that keyword as it is highly searched for. Since RE/MAX has spent that much time and effort on there brand recognition, take advantage of it!

Now if you aren’t with a RE/MAX brokerage, then we can still use this to our advantage in a different way. Another form of traffic generation we use is per-per-click advertising with Google Adwords. We classify the above mentioned keywords as competitor keywords. If people are searching for your competitors, you can still advertise to them! If your with a different organization, there is still a large amount of people searching for “Remax” so let’s put your business in front of them and see if we can’t sway them by the benefits of working with you.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Inbound Marketing is highly important. If you do not have people coming to your website then having the best website in the world will not do you much good. On the other side of the coin, if you have thousands of visitors but a poor website, that is money down the drain as well.

Conversion Rate Optimization is the other piece of the Real Estate Marketing puzzle.

Essentially CRO is building and designing a website that will turn your website visitors into leads and/or customers.

When we begin working on this part of the strategy these statistics play a very important role. To create a highly effective webpage you want the message of webpage to match what the visitors are looking for when they come to it. We call this continuity.

For example, if you follow our tips from above and are targeting “mls edmonton”. People searching for this are looking for MLS real estate listings in Edmonton. This means they are looking to buy (in most cases). But, if they click through to your website and the first thing they see your marketing is focuses on promoting Free Home Evaluations there is a very good chance they will leave.

To create the highest converting pages you need continuity to match what the visitor is looking for. If they are looking to buy then your page should be built with this in mind. You can still have information about Free Home Evaluations but it shouldn’t be the focus.

Extending and Building on the Strategy

What we have discussed is a foundation for a solid strategy. However, this can be extended and scaled to be even more effective. Here is one of many ways you can extend your strategy.

Multiple Landing Pages

Having multiple landing pages is a very effective way to increase your conversion rate. Since your in real estate, you help people with both buying and selling. So you don’t want to only focus on one. A tip however is to create multiple landing pages for different types of visitors. If you have Google Adwords running and you have some keywords targeted towards buyers and some targeted towards sellers, give them what they want!

If someone comes to your website from searching “mls edmonton” it would be best to have them land on a page about buying.

If someone comes to your website from search “free home evaluations it would be best to have them land on a page about selling and free home evaluations.

Always Track, Test and Measure

With everything you do, you need to track and measure the results. We have provided an overview of the foundation of our marketing strategy, but we track, measure and test everything.

In-depth keyword research is needed to determine the best and most useful keywords to target. Targeting “mls” may bring the most visitors, but targeting “edmonton mls listings” may bring more leads. These are things you must always test and measure.

Likewise, we are always testing the best landing page to display to our website visitors. If they are looking to buy we are always testing different elements to try and generate the most leads by identifying what they truly want and what triggers them to convert. You can only discover this through testing.

The key to constant improvement is testing new ideas and tracking the performance.

Overview

We have gone over a lot here. Here are some important take away points:

Use inbound marketing to put yourself in front of the people already looking for you
Make sure the message on your website matches what the visitor is looking for
You can always scale things up or down
Always track, test and measure performance to continually improve

As always there are many exceptions to the rule. This is an overview and a foundation of how we build our real estate marketing strategy. We have an in-depth process and extensive tool-set which allows us to bring targeted users to targeted landing pages and convert them into hot leads. However, this is only done by continuous market research and testing. Marketing is an ever-evolving and on-going process and it is never complete. You must always test new ideas, new strategies to continuously improve!

View Top Draws full Alberta Searches 2012 infographic.

Interested in Real Estate Marketing? Contact us today.

Split Testing with WordPress Themes

Posted by Landon Poburan on October 29th, 2012

As many of you know, we love conversion rate optimization and split testing at CategoryCode. We have a great set of tools that allows us to setup and track our A/B tests to constantly increase performance on our landing pages and marketing campaigns.

This past year we found a new tool, rather a WordPress plugin, that we have added to our tool set. The plugin is SES Split Testing Plugin. We found this plugin when we were required to run a split test on a WordPress website. Our client had a completely built website and we were making modifications to the design which we wanted test. We created a new template which contained a number of our changes such as revised header and navigation, and much more.

The SES Split Testing Plugin allowed us to run an A/B Split Test in combination with Google Analytics and Custom Segments!

How to Setup a Split Test with WordPress and SES

Create 2 or more WordPress themes you’d like to test
Install the Plugin
Select themes you’d like to test in plugin settings
Define custom segments in Google Analytics
Track performance in Google Analytics
Declare winner!

Note; You will need Google Analytics setup and installed on your WordPress website.

In Google Analytics you will need to setup the custom segments. Custom Segments are ways of categorizing and tracking website visitors. You will base them on a “User Defined Value”, the value will be the name of each theme folder. The SES Split Testing Plugin is very handy in that when a specific theme is being used it tags that visitor with the value of the theme name.

Once you have the segments configured in analytics it will start tracking data (may take a day to show). You can now view all of your Google Analytics data and see important stats such as Goal Completions and compare your themes.

Once your have collected ample amount of data, you can declare a winner, deactivate the plugin, then use the winning theme!

Update: Interested in more split testing tools? Look into Google Content Experiments.

» Looking to increase your ROI with Split Testing? Contact us today to find out how we can help!

2012 Search Engine Optimization Industry Survey

Posted by Landon Poburan on October 22nd, 2012

SEOmoz has released a great survey available on the SEO industry for 2012. Interested in viewing the fully survey? View the 2012 SEO Industry Survey.

This is a great little survey to read. Let’s touch on some information we’d like to highlight.

Training and Conferences

93% of respondents learned SEO from online resources and 88% learned from “hands-on experience”. This is a great little fact. I think this goes with most internet related skill sets, that they are almost always self taught. I have found that the most talented people I have ever come across are almost always self taught. This is an industry and a time where information is so readily available that we can learn as much as we want, as quick as we want and get hands-on experience from a global market.

Client Reports

49% of respondents are providing clients with monthly reports. I think reporting is extremely vital to all forms of marketing. First off, clients need to see what is being done so they can see what they are paying for. Especially in these industries where the work we do can’t always be seen and results can take time.

Also, I think it is extremely important for educating clients on what is being done. Reports really help with that. Explaining what strategies are working, what isn’t, what work was done, what work is too be done, and so on.

Lastly, reports are crucial for internal use as well. We need to track performance for historical data. We need to know if certain times of the year bring spike in performance or drops, if certain tactics or strategies benefited us or hurt us. If your not creating in-depth reports, you may be missing out on ROI for your clients.

Paid vs. Free Tools

Tools are what allow us to do our job. Using insufficient tools can seriously hurt the end product. Google dominates the Free Tool market.

93% list Google Analytics as the #1 Analytic tool
88% list Google Adwords as the #1 Keyword Research tool
73% list Google Website Optimizer (now Google Content Experiements) as the #1 CRO tool
75% list Youtube (owned by Google) as the #1 video hosting tool

Then SEOmoz seems to take the cake for top paid tool set with 55% naming them as #1.