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When to use a subdomain Best Practices

When to use subdomains

  • January 20, 2019

There are two main ways to subdivide content – subdomains or subdirectories. I will henceforth refer to “subdirectories” as “folders” to avoid confusion between two similar “sub” terms. Folders are easily understood. They appear as slashed organizational groupings on your domain, just like folders on your PC. If you have several events to share, you might group them all under an events folder.

Content organized by folders

  • www.mycharity.org/events/food-drive
  • www.mycharity.org/events/car-wash
  • www.mycharity.org/events/fund-raiser

Is there ever a time when you wouldn’t want to use folders, but instead a subdomain?

Content organized by subdomains

  • events.mycharity.org/food-drive
  • events.mycharity.org/car-wash
  • events.mycharity.org/fund-raiser

The short answer is: No. I never advocate for the use of subdomains. Subdomains divide your domain in the eyes of Google. You must monitor and maintain the authority for each subdomain separately. Your ranking can suffer as a result. Most small non-profits already struggle to gain authority with limited content and backlinks. Dividing it even further makes no sense.

There are times, however, that require a subdomain. Subdomains are configured easily across different platforms or technologies. That is typically the #1 reason they are used. It usually stems from someone wanting to create a new or different web experience for a particular program or event. They might go out and purchase a dedicated (different) domain. Instead of having a different domain, subdomains can bridge the gap between them while maintain your branding and identity. If WordPress hosts your site, but Squarespace hosts a new event page, placing them side by side on your domain only requires a single DNS setting.

The best thing you can do is anticipate these needs, get in front of rogue web activities, and concentrate all of your content and users onto a single platform and domain. Your audience easily finding your content more than makes up for the small sacrifice in autonomy!

Google My Business optimization Search Engines

Optimize your Google My Business listing

  • December 28, 2018

If you haven’t claimed your address on Google Maps yet, take a look at an early blog post titled Claim your address on Google Maps. There you will find instructions on how to set up ownership of your address. But once you do, what should you do to make the most of the opportunity?

Steps to Optimize Your Listing

  1. Make sure your information is correct. This includes:
    • Name of your business
    • Service categories
    • Address and service area
    • Operating hours (including any holiday exceptions)
    • Phone number
    • Website address
  2. Add a profile photo, cover photo, and long-form description of your business. This is a form of free advertising so make sure your brand is consistently applied across your web, social, and My Business listings to users can easily find and recognize you.
  3. Check your Insights to see how customers are finding you. Since 2013 Google has basically stopped sharing searched queries for organic search, but this is one of the few opportunities you will have to see what terms were googled that led to your listing being shown. You can then create or adjust your content to better serve your top queries.
  4. Check your reviews and reply! Users increasingly rely on online reviews for decision making. Even a scathing 1-star review can be an opportunity to attract more business. If you do have a couple of bad reviews, think about your brand’s tone when replying. Are you factual and defensive? Sarcastic and funny? Deferential and apologetic? Replying to a poor review shows that your business is active, online, and cares about customers. Offer some more information, an apology, and invitation to let you do better next time. You might be surprised how quickly you can turn public opinion with sincerity, but only if you are monitoring and replying.

Google My Business as an extension of your website

Think of your Google My Business listing as an extension of your website with serious draw for organic search. Offer the most requested information through your listing, but also in a very easy-to-find format on your website. A lot of users, especially on mobile devices, will click through the map listing to see your website. Whether it’s business hours or address, make sure that is prominently displayed (and double check it on mobile). Need help claiming your address or optimizing your listing? Contact us for help!

Geotarget Google Ads Google Ads

Geotargeting Google Grant Ads

  • December 10, 2018

One key aspect of compliance with the Google Ads Grant is to properly geotarget your ads. According to Google’s Account management policy, your Ads account must contain “Specific geo-targeting to show ads in locations where users will find your nonprofit’s information and services useful.”

For the majority of non-profits, that will mean that people physically close to you will find your message most appealing. If you serve Thanksgiving dinner to homeless in your area, someone from another state or country is less likely to volunteer. They would (probably) like to find a charity closer to their hometown and support their initiatives.

It is rarely relevant to show ads to the entire globe. In fact, doing so presents two risks. First, Google flags your ads on the compliance report. Rectify the situation within the month or risk losing your grant. Secondly, because you are less relevant to searchers abroad, your click-through-rate (CTR) could suffer. Drop below 5% CTR on your ads, and you again, run the risk of being non-compliant with the grant.

Steps to add geotargeting

  1. Open your Campaign
  2. Choose Locations from the left-hand navigation
  3. Here you can choose between either:
    1. Location. For example, “Dallas-Fort Worth.” This will highlight the included regions and you can evaluate the potential total reach for that location.
    2. Radius. You can choose a radius of any size around a particular location, say, 50 miles around downtown Dallas.
  4. Any combination or these can be inclusions or exclusions.

In this example, the DFW area as defined by Nielsen DMA regions has been combined with an area of a 60 mile radius around Dallas. While most of the two areas are redundant, the inclusion of the radius adds a small area up near Sherman to include the best coverage for this example.

Google Ad Geotargeting Example
Claim a Google Maps address Search Engines

Claim your address on Google Maps

  • November 9, 2018

Google Maps is one important way your audience will find you. Whether they are navigating to your physical address or not, the Google Maps widget on search results pages is some valuable real estate that you can claim ownership of. Once you’ve verified your ownership of an address, you can edit the information that is shown, upload nice pictures, and respond to any reviews that might have been left (especially if they were negative).

Claiming an address is fairly straight-forward, but it may take one to two weeks because it involves receiving a postcard via snail mail. To start:

  1. Go to https://www.google.com/business/
  2. Log in with the Google Account you want to manage your business with
  3. Enter the name of your business
  4. Depending on whether your business is already list on Google or not, you can either select it from an existing entry, or elect to create a new one.
  5. Enter all of the requested information from address to service area to contact information
  6. Finish and request a verification

When the postcard arrives, you’ll need to enter the code in the same interface and the the ownership of the Google My Business address will be complete!

Facebook UTM Parameters Analytics

UTM Parameters for Facebook Ads

  • October 19, 2018

If you run Facebook Ads, metrics like impressions, clicks, and landing page views interest you. Each metric, available inside Facebook Ads Manager console, contributes to evaluating the effectiveness of your campaign. That information drives future optimizations to make the best use of your advertising dollars. However, there is one question those metrics cannot answer:

Once the user arrived on your site – what did they do next?

Tracking User Behavior on your Website

Just because you drove 100 people to your landing page does not mean you made 100 sales. What’s more important is how many people engaged with your site, clicked to read more, or completed a goal defined inside Google Analytics. It’s entirely possible that while one campaign seemingly outperformed another in Facebook metrics, the less-clicked ad brought more conversions. No one metric tells the entire story, so it’s important to evaluate all metrics together for the entire length of the customer journey.

Luckily, there is a way to link the two systems so you can follow users from click to session. Look for UTM Parameters – or URL Parameters in Facebook. Each campaign provides an option at the bottom marked “optional.” However, to do things right, this is absolutely mandatory. Click on Build a URL Parameter and you’ll get a window like this:

UTM Parameters in Facebook

Facebook UTM Parameters

You can customize each of the fields for tracking in Google Analytics. Recommended values are:

  1. Tell where the user came from with Campaign Source.
    Example: facebook
  2. Tell what form of content brought them with Campaign Medium.
    Example: ads
  3. Separate out individual campaigns with Campaign Name.
    Example: spring-2020-promotion
  4. Designate multiple variants with Campaign Content.
    Example: red-background

Save yourself a headache in the future, and force everything to lowercase with dashes in place of spaces. Google Analytics tracks any variation in UTM Parameters separately (including capitalized letters). Then, set up a segment inside Google Analytics for these users. Track the behavior of anyone who clicked your ad on your website and determine the true effectiveness of a campaign from start to finish! If you need help setting up campaign tracking in Facebook, contact us today.

Facebook conversions Social Media

Facebook Business Manager Account Conversions

  • September 30, 2018

If you run a small business or nonprofit, chances are you’ve already explored or even realized the benefits of a presence on Facebook. You can create a Facebook Page for your organization, assign multiple administrators, and start sharing posts and collecting followers. If you’ve made it that far, congratulations! Leveraging social connections is a great way to extend the reach of your charity. If you’re ready to take it to the next level, however, you’re going to need a Facebook Business Manager account.

Advanced Permissions

A Facebook Business Manager account is set up under the business entity – so your personal Facebook account won’t be the sole owner. There are advanced user permissioning options in a business account as well. So everyone who once administrated your Facebook Page can continue to do so uninterrupted. But you might want to give different users different levels of permission, and you can control that through Business Manager. You can also grant Partners access to your page, which is helpful when an agency is employed. You can grant (or revoke) Partner status without explicitly giving individuals from the Partner agency personal access.

Facebook Business Manager

Business Ad Account

You will also get a Business Ad Account. If you’ve take advantage of the Boost Post option in Facebook, you’re already half way there. A Business Ad Account gives you more information and control over your boosts. But it also opens up a whole new world of advertising options. You can set up, run, monitor, and report on official ad campaigns – big or small. You can create a Facebook Pixel to embed in your website so your ads can see what the visitors Facebook sent you did on your website – and how to optimize the delivery for better results automatically.

Integrated Facebook/Instagram

Another benefit is advertising across both Facebook and Instagram. Don’t have an Instagram account? No problem! With a Facebook Business Manager account, you can still advertise on Instagram. Or if you do have an Instagram account for your organization, you can link it to your Facebook Business Manager account and incorporate it into your ad strategy and metric reports.

Advantages for Nonprofits

Lastly, if you are a certified 501(c)(3) charity or nonprofit, you can set up your account as such. This allows you to host fundraising events directly from posts, boost, or ads. You can also allow others to fundraise on your behalf. You might have seen this trend recently where individuals will set up a fundraising target for their birthday or other event, and Facebook will report on the progress to their goal. At the end of such a fundraiser, all the proceeds go directly to the nonprofit – FREE of fees!

If you’re ready to incorporate Facebook and/or Instagram ads into your overall digital marketing strategy, start by converting your existing assets into a Facebook Business Account (https://business.facebook.com). If you need help with this conversion or want some help developing a campaign strategy and execution, contact Dijon Marketing today.

Permanent 301 Redirects Search Engines

The importance of 301 Permanent Redirects

  • September 11, 2018

It’s inevitable. Eventually, some how, for some reason, your pages are going to move or change names. You might reorganize your site structure. You might migrate to a new domain. Or you might just rename a blog name to something snappier for better SEO. Whatever the reason, any time you change a URL, the old link will break and present a 404: Page Not Found error.

404 Page Not Found Error

Reasons 404 errors are a problem

  1. First and foremost, it can be disruptive to your users. Even if you update all of your navigation, they might have bookmarks. Errors appear when visitors click on old bookmarks or emailed links.
  2. There may be a plethora of links back to the page you just moved. You may or may not ever know about them. Anyone on the internet can link back to your site (and that’s a very good thing). It could be an old tweet or Facebook post someone will reference years from now.
  3. Google’s bots crawl and evaluate those links to see how valuable your site is. Every backlink is a vote in favor of your domain being high quality. However, they ignore and delete any link that leads to a 404.
  4. If your page has Pagerank mojo that’s gotten you onto Page 1 of Google a 404 will remove it from Google’s index. Restoring that prestige can be difficult and time consuming.

How to avoid problems with 404s

Luckily there is a way to avoid these calamities when you’ve moved content. It is a 301 Permanent Redirect. (Note: You don’t need to fully understand the different kinds of redirects. Just remember that ONLY a 301 will give you the benefits you seek.) A 301 redirect will redirect all of your users to their desired content at the new location instantly and seamlessly. Don’t worry if the bookmarked link is out-of-date. They arrive at the new location. They won’t even realize they’ve been forwarded. It will also redirect all of Google’s bots so they can continue to crawl and value your content. It signals to Google to update the address they’ve stored in their index. The new page is associated with the old. This carries almost all of your previous SEO link juice with it … almost.

The truth is, the worst thing you can possibly do for SEO is move content. Before you embark on reorganizations or migrations, ensure it’s for a good reason that truly benefits you or your users. If there’s not a really good reason to move content, DON’T. However, if you must, then a 301 redirect will be your best friend. Not sure how to implement 301 redirects or accidentally tarnished your SEO in a migration? Contact us for help!

Google Analytics destination goals Analytics

Set Destination Goals in Google Analytics

  • August 26, 2018
Google Analytics Goals

Google Analytics comes with many features out of the box that will give you added insight into your website performance, visitor profiles, and campaign effectiveness. You may find that over time, there are limits to what the built in metrics can tell you and you’re ready to do some configurations of your own. Knowing how many people come to your site is the first step. The next is knowing what they do. The way to monitor this is through conversion goals.

The simplest goal to set up is around a destination – how many of your users visited a specific page … like a donation page, or a donation thank-you page.

To set up a new destination goal, you must first be an admin of your Google Analytics account. Go to the admin view by clicking the gear icon in the lower left of your analytics view. This brings up a menu about Accounts, Properties, and Views. Goals are specific to a single view. Ensure you use your master data view if multiple views exist. Click on the “Goals” icon with the flag in the menu.

Steps to Set Up a New Goal

  1. Choose “New Goal.”
  2. Use a template to set up the new goal
  3. Name the goal something easy to identify, “User visited Donate Page” for example
  4. Choose Destination for the Type
  5. Choose “Equals to” and paste in the URL of the destination page to track
  6. If each visit contributes a monetary value, enter it, otherwise leave the value blank
  7. If your goal includes visiting several pages in order, define them in the funnel interface. Then monitor drop-off points in your conversion goals.
  8. Click Verify Goal to test to see how many visitors in the past 7 days would have been considered a successful conversion.
  9. Save the goal to begin tracking your users.

Keep in mind that goals are not backwards compatible, meaning they will only start logging conversions upon creation. They will not look back at past visits to retroactively inform you of which visitors would have completed this goal had it existed. Let it run for a few days and then check back to see your success rates.

Once you have some goals set up you can start to trace it back to individual visits to see if certain types of traffic convert better than others. Maybe one campaign gets 10X as much traffic, but 1/10th of the conversions. You’d benefit putting more attention to the campaign you previously thought under-performed the others. Goal conversion tracking is the natural next step in analytics tracking and will give you more mature insights into your visitors, website performance, and campaign effectiveness.

Domain registration auto renew Best Practices

The Importance of Domain Registration Auto-Renew

  • August 7, 2018

Do you own a branded web domain to represent your organization or small business?

Are you sure?

It happens more often than expected, but domain registrations do expire. There are lots of reasons why your domain wouldn’t automatically renew. First, you might have no set it up to do so. In fact, you may not have set it up at all. If you’ve used a third party service to set up your web presence, and then severed ties, your domain could be at risk of expiring.

Risks of an expired domain

The main problem with an expired domain is that poachers exist that will scoop it up. They monitor and watch for expired domains and grab them as soon as they become available. They figure (rightly so), if anyone has ever used that domain, it is inherently more valuable than any other. Maybe you let it expire by accident and it will be critical to your business to get it back. They can charge exorbitant prices to return your domain to you. Once you’ve let your registration slip and someone else has paid for it, there is little you can do besides paying the “ransom” … or choosing a new domain.

What can you do about it?

The best thing you can do is to set your domain up with an auto-renewal setting. Most domains cost somewhere in the ballpark of $12/year. So, it’s not usually the cost that is a factor, just the set up. If you’ve severed ties with a design agency, ask them to transfer your domain to your own ownership. There are numerous domain registration companies that have step by step instructions on how to transfer domain ownership between entities. Once you own your domain, verify the configuration is set for auto-renewal. Then, rest easy knowing auto-pilot will take care of the $12 annual charge. Ensure any contracts explicitly state your domain ownership. Do this even if an agency bought it on your behalf and maintains your web presence.

GSuite Gmail on your domain Best Practices

Adding GSuite Gmail to your domain

  • July 28, 2018

Once you’ve purchased a domain to represent your brand, organization, or small business, you’re going to want to associate an email service with it. One of the big benefits of owning your own domain is that you appear more professional by not emailing customers from an address “@gmail.com.” There are many ways to accomplish this, most hosting services or domain providers will try to sell you theirs, but for simplicity, ease of use, and familiarity, nothing beats Gmail.

But how do you get a Gmail address without it being @gmail.com?

Good news: it’s easy! It’s called GSuite from Google and creating your first email address takes only minutes. Check out the pricing and plans available at https://gsuite.google.com/. Pricing is basically $5 per month per user. However, you typically don’t need to start with too many users. You can create a single user with multiple aliases for things like “info,” “sales,” or “support.”

Once you’ve signed up for the service, you need to verify ownership of your domain. This will be done by uploading a text record (TXT) to your DNS server. Whichever domain registration service you used will have an option to add records to your DNS. Google will give you the exact text to paste in, and then will be able to verify your ownership. After that, they’ll give you another record to upload called a mail exchanger record (MX). Again, it’s a cut and paste from Google and within minutes your email is up and working.

You can associate multiple Google accounts on a single mobile device, switching seamlessly between them on your Gmail mobile app. GSuite also comes with a host of other benefits like file storage/sharing, contacts, and calendars that can be shared across users. As your business or organization grows, you can add new users ad hoc.

Even though the process is simple, it can be intimidating if you’ve never worked with DNS before. Contact us to help you get your email up and running so you can connect with new contacts in a professional and polished manner, through your very own branded email account!