When the word ‘optimization’ is used, people tend to tense up, ready to be pitched the same way they’ve been time and time again:

“The last person didn’t have any idea of what they were doing with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Our team can help.”

Every business owner has heard it from countless agencies, claiming they can execute on SEO more effectively. The truth is, SEO is the same from every agency. You select the keyword, internal and external link your site and that’s generally it. However, in a world full of companies preaching the importance of great SEO, many web developers overlook the importance of other on-site tactics to create value from users. This is intelligent optimization.

Schemas are lines of code added into the backend of your website that tell search engines, like Google, information about your site. For example, here at Untitled, our schema markup is as followed:

The list continues. If you want to look how your schema is structured, use Google’s Structured Data Tool

Google treats schema marked-up sites with authority, allowing you to move up in rankings quickly. More importantly though, schema creates rich snippets (those boxes you see in Google search), allowing your business to be found more easily.

Lastly, schema markup is going to play a huge role in the future of business as a whole, since it is the primary source of information for voice control assistants like Google Home and Alexa.

2. Create Sales Funnels

It’s simple, but many web developers don’t understand sales. Intelligent optimization places a heavy emphasis on pushing your web visitor to create an action. This is common place for business owners, but web developers need to understand this as well.

In a service oriented business, ensure that at the end of every single page, there is a very clear button that says, “Contact.” The funnel should always be structured to create the desired action, in this case, contacting your business. For e-commerce sites, make sure your best selling items are also presented at the bottom of your page (you want them at the top as well).

Giving users the ability to create action at every step along the journey is crucial for intelligent optimization.

3. Add The Right Pixels

Once again, a simple rule, but very important for web developers to be aware of. Not only should a Google Analytics tracking code be placed, but a Facebook Pixel needs to be added as well.

Facebook has two key benefits for businesses, an analytics dashboard and their Custom Audience tool. The Facebook Pixel cookies a users browser, and when they return to Facebook, it retargets the user with your businesses ads. It’s a highly effective retargeting method, with some industries experiencing average conversion rates upwards of over 14%.

The best way to organize your pixels is still through Google Tag Manager. If you’re not familiar with GTM, you definitely need to be.

4. Use Automation In The Right Ways

Tools like IFTTT and Zapier can become a businesses best friend, especially small businesses. For intelligent optimization to become effective, choosing the right methods for automat is very important.

An example of the wrong way to automate would be automating follow-up emails. You’ve more than likely received an automated follow-up email disguised as a real response from a sales rep. It’s very apparent and generally comes off cheap, annoying and dishonest.

When automating, look for opportunities that will save the company time and doesn’t engage interpersonally with customers. A great example would be automating social media postings from the blog. A simple Zapier script that cross posts to all social channels from your blog would be a great start.

5. Data Harvesting

Untitled Firm specializes in data driven marketing, and one of the first questions we always ask clients is how they collect data on customers. Combining web pixels, sales funnels, and Custom Audiences gives your company an edge to creating a powerful CRM database. Once you have the data, knowing the best way to analyze and utilize it is crucial to a successful marketing campaign in 2019.

Data driven marketing is the future, and being able to leverage your site’s data is the first step in creating a high end one-to-one marketing campaign.

These 5 steps are created for intelligent optimization, however, each of them translate into the bigger picture for your company. Understanding user interaction and how your customers behave can all be found within your proprietary data. Untitled acts as a medium to analyze and create action from this database.

If your business is ready to execute intelligent optimization and/or data driven marketing, contact the Untitled team today. We are ready to work with your business.