Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Josiah Casey, and I focus on search engine optimization and website analytics. I specialize in working with small businesses, and helping people understand the goals of their website and tracking that to the money coming into their business, so they can better measure how their marketing efforts are performing.
What are some specific ways you’ve made a difference for clients?
I am all about numbers and understanding ROI. I firmly believe that if people are investing their hard-earned dollars in marketing with us, then I should be able to show them return in dollars—that only makes sense!
Of course, it’s hard to do that all the time, because it involves so many complicated processes and marketing efforts working together. But, you can almost always get there, especially if you understand website conversion values.
For one client recently, we did an on and off-page audit of their website. After identifying a lot of technical issues and implementing fixes, they saw a 30% increase in revenue year-over-year for several months.
After identifying a lot of technical issues and implementing fixes, they saw a 30% increase in revenue year-over-year for several months.
What’s a common misconception that people have about SEO?
People think that SEO is just about putting keywords in title tags on your website. And that is what SEO was until about 1999, when search engines started to integrate a lot more into their algorithms. That’s when they started to figure out better ways to understand the content on pages, and how to serve the best content to their users.
That’s actually why Google is successful: they have the best algorithm. The initial PageRank algorithm was based on not just the density of keywords in the body of the page. The genius of it was that it could look at the web as a whole and how pages are connected. They realized that websites generally only link to each other if it’s an endorsement. The same principle applies today. The more links you have from more websites and the more reputable those sites are, the more trustworthy your site is.
What are the biggest challenges for website managers as you see it?
The biggest challenge is being able to accurately measure the results of your efforts. But before you do this, it’s important to know why you have a website in the first place. You should have a goal for it. Whether it’s just educating your customers about you, directing them to contact you, or providing valuable content, you should have goals for your site and they should be measurable.
The biggest challenge is being able to accurately measure the results of your efforts. But before you do this, it’s important to know why you have a website in the first place.
What this looks like on the ground is determining conversion values. How much are the conversions on your website worth to you? And that can be difficult to wrap your head around and get to, but you can do it!
For a business-to-business marketing site, it’s a challenge to pinpoint how much one form-fill is worth. You have to start by determining a customer’s lifetime value, and work backwards from there, thinking about the number of touchpoints needed to close a sale, and so on.
If you could tell website owners one thing, what would it be?
The one thing I would say is, “know your conversion values.” Knowing these and tracking them properly helps you understand how valuable your website is and the time that you spend on it.
The one thing I would say is, “know your conversion values.”
Often times when people get into this way of thinking, it sends them down a path of gathering or estimating all kinds of other helpful data. All this helps you allocate your budget and time more effectively.
How can folks get in touch if they're interested in learning more?
They can email me (josiahcasey@fullwindsor.co). We offer a free 20 minutes consultation for anyone interested! I’m happy to discuss your business, your website, and give you a little bit of a strategy moving forward.