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Proper URL Tracking Attributions Recruiting Firms Must Know

With so many options available to them, many recruiting firms just don’t know where to start when it comes to digital marketing. If you are in the recruiting and staffing industry and you’re not currently doing some sort of digital marketing, you’re behind. But now’s the time to start. 

If you found this blog post organically, I’d be willing to bet that you are performing digital marketing and are trying to figure out how to attribute marketing dollars to what is working for your firm and what is notHere are some key methods you can use to measure the effectiveness of your spending. Once you have the data, you can make informed decisions to allocate more money to the strategies that work. 


Related Post: PPC Match Types For Recruiters ➢


Let’s Talk Tracking 

If you’re not using a tracking system on your digital marketing activity, stop right now and go implement Google Analytics (GA) on your website. We’ll be looking at this platform and discussing URL tracking and specifically UTM, which are the tracking parameters GA uses. 

Once you’ve implemented GA on your site, the next step is to figure out which digital marketing activities you are currently running: PPC, SEO, LinkedIn organic, LinkedIn ads, Facebook organic or Facebook ads. After your finalized digital strategies are running, put those to the side, we’ll come back to them later. Now, go to the Google URL campaign builder. This tool helps you create the proper URL parameters making it easier to monitor how your digital activity is doing. 

URL Tracking

UTM Codes and Naming Conventions 

UTM Codes and Naming ConventionsFor example, let’s say your job link currently looks like this: 

Company.com/job1234/job-title/ 

By appending a UTM tracking query to your URL, you allow GA to collect data. Here’s an example of a proper tracking URL you might add to the above job link: 

?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=job123 

The new tracking URL above says that you are using paid Cost per Click (CPC) to promote your job on LinkedIn. You can also put the name of the job in the utm_campaign section allowing you to easily reference the specific job. 

Some other examples of naming conventions/parameters are: 

  • utm = google analytics tracking parameters 
  • ? = triggers the tracking query after the URL 
  • & = used to separate multiple variables in the query 
  • utm_source = (google, linkedInbingfacebook) 
  • utm_medium = (cpc, social, email, display) 
  • utm_campaign = (job123, spring_sale, salaryguide2019) 
  • utm_term = (cpc keyword) 
  • utm_content = (ad title, ad dimensions) 

Not all UTM codes/parameters are needed and technically only the utm_source parameter is required. 

Using these naming conventions, you can experiment to figure out what works best for you and your firm. The one thing I want to stress is staying consistent with your naming as well as ALWAYS using lowercase naming conventions. Lowercase naming conventions help keep your data clean, making it easier in GA to gather and read the data 

For instance, if you create a lowercase name and later write the same name with uppercase letters mixed in, Google registers these as two unique tags. This will split your traffic between the lowercase source and then uppercase source. Here is an example: 

Let’s say you are tracking all your “Newsletter” traffic. If every other month you are using a capital “N”, you’ll notice in your google analytics reports that half your traffic is coming from the source “Newsletter,” and the other half is coming from “newsletter.” 


Related Post: How Your Recruiting Firm Should Approach Competitor Negative Keywords ➢


Channel Groupings 

Now back to the list you created of your digital marketing activities. Using the previous information, you can create URL tracking parameters that are consistent and match your digital marketing activities. Your data will tell the person looking at the data who, what, and where traffic is coming from. Having the proper data shown in GA allows you to see exactly where your candidates or clients are coming from. 

Example of Channel Groupings in Google Analytics: 

channel groupings

Key Takeaways 

1. Poorly executed UTM tracking can lead to inaccurate and messy data 

2. Always use lowercase UTM parameters 

3. Be consistent with your naming 

4. If you have a lot of UTM’s to build, do it in Excel 

macbook air on desk with phone and mini cannon

Google Reviews: How to Get Rid of an Inaccurate Google Review?

So, you’ve been given a bad Google review. Most companies have, and sometimes it’s something you simply can’t avoid. But what happens if the review is wrong? What if the review is misleading, the wrong location, or even the wrong company? Each of these can be very damaging to your brand. Let’s break down a few simple tips on how to get rid of inaccurate Google reviews.

Types of Reviews Google Will Remove

While there’s no recourse for having Google delete a bad review, they will intervene and remove damaging reviews that are inaccurate. There are a number of different types of inaccurate reviews Google will remove, including:

1. Fake Accounts

If a user creates multiple accounts and leaves similar reviews in a short amount of time, you can ask Google to look into the activity. This could be five, 1-star reviews in under an hour, or something along those lines.

2. Incorrect Location

If a review is posted under the wrong location. This is most common with franchise locations such as restaurants or shops. While they all share the same brand, it doesn’t necessarily mean a location should be hit for the experience someone received at a different location. Google will remove these reviews if you contact them.

Along those lines, Google will also remove a review if the same user leaves the review for all locations. For example, if you have 15 locations in 1 state, the bad experience may have happened at 1 location, but all 15 reviews can be removed if it is not defined which one should truly have the bad review.


Related Post: PPC vs. SEO: Which One Should I Focus On? ➢


3. Disgruntled Employee

If a former or current employee leaves a bad review, this can be removed. Reviews of this nature violate Google’s guidelines.

4. Incorrect Company

Sometimes people leave a review for the wrong company altogether There are many companies out there with similar names, or a customer could have forgotten the actual name. If you’re a recruiting firm, but someone left a bad review about your cheeseburgers, Google will also remove that!

Steps to take if you have a review to remove

If you’re sure your review reflects one of the above issues, then it’s time to flag the review for Google to take care of. Here are the steps to take according to Google:

How to Flag Reviews on Desktop

  1. Sign in to Google My Business.
  2. If you have multiple listings, open the location you’d like to manage.
  3. Click Reviews from the menu.
  4. Find the review you’d like to flag, click the three-dot menu, then click Flag as inappropriate.

How to Flag Reviews on Mobile

  1. Open the Google My Business app.
  2. Tap the menu, then tap Reviews.
  3. Find the review you’d like to flag, tap the three-dot menu, then tap Flag review.

Related Post: How to Build Your Brand Through Digital Marketing ➢


Respond to Bad Reviews

If none of these tips are consistent with the bad review you’re dealing with, at a minimum, just respond. There is a spot on a Google review where you can hit ‘Reply’ and this comment will be made public. When people are looking at your business on Google and they see a bad review that has gone unanswered, it resembles something the company has ignored or could be true.

Respond with clear & concise sentences recognizing their concerns, but also offering a solution to the issue they had with your business. Do not engage with arguments but offer solutions where they can reach out to you individually or let them know you emailed them personally to help resolve the issue.


man taking notes from computer

How Your Recruiting Firm Should Approach Competitor Negative Keywords

As a recruiting firm, you want to make sure you’re not spending your marketing budget on the wrong keywords or unintentional calls. Recruiting firms using PPC have to really look at the negative keywords they are using, as well as the competitors they are showing up for, to ensure they’re not wasting valuable ad spend on false conversions.

For example, if you’re a staffing firm and you want to show up for the keyword staffing agency near me, you want to make sure you have all the major competitor names in your area as negative keywords.


Related Post: What is SEO? Beyond the Keywords ➢


What are Negative Keywords for Recruiting Firms?

Negative keywords are a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a precise word or phrase. When deployed, anyone searching for that precise word or phrase will not be shown in your ads. But if you don’t utilize negative keywords, your ads will show up in inefficient searches.

Let’s use an example of Robert Half, a well-known staffing agency.  If someone types in Robert Half staffing as a search term and you have staffing as a broad term in your keyword list you are bidding on, you will show up for that search.

You might be thinking, that’s great, my firm can be positioned to compete with them! But it’s not like that at all.

It has been tested and tested and no matter how many times your upper management “thinks” that your team can steal that lead…the answer is NO.  If someone is looking for your competitor with a branded searched, they are almost certainly so deep into the sales funnel that you have little-to-no hope at stealing the lead.

Now I know you are thinking: “Well if the searcher reads the ad copy and URL in my ad they will see that I am not Robert Half.” The trouble is, people don’t pay as much attention to the ad as you WANT to believe they do. A lot of people just click on the first option that pulls up on their phone or desktop after typing in their search query.

Now, I am not saying that ad copy is not important because it definitely is. I’m saying that putting all of your trust, and ad spend, on the low-percentage chance that the searcher diligently reads the ad copy is not a prudent idea.


Related Post: New Site Launch SEO Checklist ➢


The Danger of Neglecting Negative Keywords

So, if your company is using staffing as a general keyword in your keyword list, you would show up for the search term Robert Half staffing. When the searcher inevitably doesn’t catch that you’re not Robert Half, here’s what’s going to happen.

The searcher is going to click to call the agency and your office answers:

“Hello this is ABC Staffing. How can I help you?”

The searcher will rightly be confused and disoriented not to hear Robert Half, and either hang up or ask for Robert Half. Once the searcher clicked call, you lost a good amount of money based on the keyword cost of each click. If you don’t use negative keywords for your competitor names, you will continue to cost yourself money and fail to get the conversions you’re expecting. Not to mention you’ll skew your analytics and metrics in the process, making it difficult to forge a future PPC strategy.

How many Competitor Recruiting Firms Should I Have in my Negative Keyword List?

The more the merrier. Having a large number of competitors in your negative keyword list will get you more accurate conversion data, better click-through rates, and greater return on your ad spend.  In the end, every staffing agency monitors marketing budget and specifically paid media/PPC very closely, so you want to make sure you’re optimizing and structuring your campaigns the best you can. Using negative keywords and specifically, competitor negative keywords is a big part of budget savings.

In closing, negative keywords will help you save budget and give you the ability to get in front of the exact client/candidate you are looking for. Make sure you are continually monitoring and adding negative keywords to your list. It’s wise to set aside time to go through your search query reports to see where you are potentially losing money on unneeded clicks.


So, the next time someone tells you that you have an opportunity to increase overall organic visibility on your site, hear them out. Ask them pointed questions about how they plan to drive marketing success.

And if you do find yourself starting a partnership with a marketing agency, here are four ways to build an effective relationship.

woman creating a new start up website

Schema Structured Data: What It Is and How to Implement It on Your Website

Structured data is a way for search engines to organize the content in your HTML by providing explicit clues about the meaning of the page using semantic vocabulary.

Google and other search engines created a structured data standard called Schema.org. Google recommends using JSON LD and schema.org.

Here is an example of ATT and Verizon using reviews and price schema:

Schema.org (often called Schema) was launched by Bing, Google and Yahoo! to create and support common schemas. Schemas are a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML source code to improve the way Google reads and represents your page in search engine results pages (SERPs).

For example, here is a JSON-LD structured data snippet that appears on Parqa’s website:

Schema.org markup is becoming more important in voice search, acting as a suggestion that points digital assistants towards the information to correctly answer a voice query. Voice queries depend heavily on implied context, and Schema markup can help give that context to an otherwise unclear page of text.

There are clear advantages of using Schema.org, but actually implementing it can be more challenging. Because of this challenge, only a small number of websites make use of Schema.org. If you use schema markup, you’ll automatically have an advantage over the majority of your competition.


Related Post: How to Build Your Brand Through Digital Marketing ➢


How Do I Add Schema to My Website?

Option 1

Hall Analysis has created the JSON-LD Schema Generator. It allows you to pick from a group of popular types, but instead of outputting microdata, it generates JSON-LD. Google also has a JSON-LD tool. These tools only produce the code and you will have to manually add the html to the individual page’s source code.

Option 2

WP SEO Structure Data Schema is my preferred plugin for WordPress websites. This plugin allows you to insert the information and not only creates the JSON-LD, but also adds the code into the source code.


Related Post: PPC vs. SEO: Which One Should I Focus On? ➢


Testing your Schema Structured Data

Option 1

Use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. This is the most reliable way of testing your schema markup. However, I have had issues with this tool timing out and not providing any answers.

Option 2

Add Structured Data Testing Tool to your Google Chrome browser. I rely on this tool more than the one provided by Google. One click on the icon and you are provided with the type of schema found on the page with an accordion tab to view what is being pulled and any possible errors.

What Schema Structured Data Should I Use?

Organization Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The organization schema markup helps enhance your Knowledge Graph entry and website snippet presence. Remember to Insert your logosocial profile links, and corporate contact information.

WebSite Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The WebSite schema markup helps generate the Sitelinks Search Box feature for brand searches. You need to have an existing site search on your website to enable the Sitelinks Search Box element.

Breadcrumbs Markup (can be implemented through Yoast)

The BreadcrumbList schema allows you generate breadcrumb rich snippets for your pages in the SERPs. This also helps improve the crawlability of your site.

Site Navigation Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The SiteNavigationElement markup helps produce organic site links.

Schema Product Markup

The Product markups can help product information including price and status information to appear in SERPS.

Schema Article Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

If you are producing articles or blogs, the NewsArticle or BlogPosting schemas are for you.

Recipe Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Recipe websites leverage Recipe schema markup to enable recipe rich snippets.

Next Steps for your Online Presence

Schema markup is one of those SEO best practices that will be around for a long time. Google is finding you additional avenues to provide the end user with detailed information before they even land on your site.  You might as well stay ahead of the curve and have an instant leg up on the competition by implementing schema on your site today.

phone with Google search on the screen

Google Analytics 101

For a brand to succeed in today’s digital landscape saturated with competition, knowing their digital audience and how they react is a must. The best way to achieve this goal is through web analytics.

Web analytics can help any brand – big or small – understand how their audience enters and behaves on their site. Analyzing this data, brands can tailor a marketing strategy geared toward their audience, allowing them to achieve their specific business objectives.


Related Post: How to Build Your Brand Through Digital Marketing ➢


Google Analytics Interface

Once you select the desired site, you’ll land on the reporting dashboard, as seen in the snapshot below:

  1. Reports Menu: An Overview of the key categories of your Google Analytics report.
    The Google Analytics report is categorized into four main parts:
    Audience Report –> what are the characteristics of users visiting your site?
    Acquisition Report –> how do you acquire users? How many? From where?
    Behaviors Report –> how do users behave on your site?
    Conversion Report –> do users take a desired action on the site?
  2. Auxiliary Menu: Option to save, export data into a spreadsheet, share data and intelligence (insights from Google).
  3. Time-Period (Date Range): The date range selector is at the top right of every page. By default, Google Analytics will show data for the past 7 days. Click the arrow next to the existing date range to open the selector. Once you’ve selected a new date range, click “apply” to update your report.
  4. Graphs and Tables: This area will show graphs and tables of the metrics from the report you choose from the reports menu.

Now let’s break down the four main categories.

Audience

The audience report gives you a quick overview of your website’s overall performance, including the number of sessions, users (both new and returning), page views, average session duration, bounce rate, user locations, device information, and the operating system used by your users. Below are the most useful reports from the audience category:

Demographics: The demographics report will show the age and gender of users. This report is not enabled by default.

GEO: The GEO report will show traffic segmented by language or location (country, state, city).

Behavior > New and Returning Visitors: This report provides information about the total number of visitors your website receives and breaks it down further into new vs. returning visitors.

Technology > Browser and OS: This report provides information about what browsers and operating systems your site’s visitors have used.

Mobile > Overview: This report provides information regarding the device people have used to access your site (desktop vs. mobile vs. tablet).

Acquisition

Up next is an overview of your website’s top channels generating traffic. These include direct traffic, organic search, referral, social media, display advertising, email and paid search (i.e. AdWords). Below are the most useful reports from the Acquisition category:

Channels: This section provides information regarding the different traffic mediums such as organic, referral, paid, social and others. Which channel has the best conversion rate and why?

Referrals: The referrals report provides information about the segment of your web traffic that arrives through another source, such as a link on another website.

 AdWords: This report provides information about your current and past AdWords campaigns. What is your best performing campaign? Which campaign has the highest bounce rate?


Related Post: PPC vs. SEO: Which One Should I Focus On? ➢


Behavior

What good are analytics if you can’t track behavior (still good, but that’s not the point)? Fortunately, that’s not a concern you’ll have because it just so happens to be that the behavior overview report reveals what pages people visit on your website and what actions they take while visiting. It also provides information about user behavior flow, pageviews, bounce and exit rates, page speed insight, site search, and events. Below are the most useful reports from the behavior category:

Behavior Flow: The behavior flow report visualizes the path user’s travel as they go from one page or event to the next. This report can help you discover what content keeps users engaged within your site, and also identify potential issues with content.

Site content > All Pages: This report provides information about what the most visited web pages of your website are. Are your most important pages being viewed?

Landing Pages: The landing page report provides information about the first page people visit when they land on your site. These pages (outside the homepage) are mostly reached via organic search. What is your most viewed landing pages and how can you mimic this success?

Exit Pages: The exit page report provides information about the last page people visit before they leave your site. Is the user getting stuck? Do these pages need calls to action to push the user further down the sales funnel?

Site Speed: The site speed report provides information about the time it takes for your site’s pages to load. It also provides suggestions you can make use of to improve your pages’ average load time.

Site Search: The site search report provides information about the search queries that visitors use to find products or pages on your site. Is there a common theme a new page or FAQ section can solve? Keep in mind that you’ll need to enable site search functions to make use of it.

Events: Events are user interactions with your site’s content. Events provide information regarding your visitors’ activities such as downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays. We suggest events being set up via Google Tag Manager.

Conversions

You can’t forget conversions. These include form filling, product sales, or any other activity that achieves a business objective. For monitoring purposes, the conversion goal overview report reveals the status and completion of goals. Each goal has to be manually set up.


Learn how Parqa can help positively impact your business’s online presence


Glossary of Terms

Session/traffic:: A session is when a user visits a website and spends time browsing through pages and then leaves.

Direct Traffic: visits from users who either type the URL in directly or reach the website via bookmarks. Links in work email will work as a bookmark link.

Organic Traffic: visits from organic searches (Google, Bing) and not from paid (ads).

Referral Traffic: visits from links on other sites.

Social Traffic: visits from known social websites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIN)

Email Traffic: visits from email with URLs tagged correctly with tracking parameters.

Pageviews: How many times a web page has been clicked on and loaded.

Unique pageview: aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session.

Unique visitor: This term refers to a user who visits your website more than once within a specific time period (e.g. a month).

Average session duration: The average time users spend on a page. Google Analytics measures this by calculating the time between one page being viewed and clicking on another page on your website. This means that if someone spends 20 minutes thoroughly reading a blog post and then leaves the site from that page, Google Analytics will not record that time.

Goal: Goals can be set up in Google Analytics to track conversions. They relate to a quantifiable action that your website visitors can take that you deem a success. For example, buying a product, signing up to your newsletter, or downloading a PDF are all goals.

Conversion: This is when a user does something that you want them to do (goal) such as purchasing a product, completing a contact form, etc.

Goal conversion rate: This is the percentage of visits on a site during which the user completes one of your goals (e.g. buying a product).

Bounce rate: Percentage of users who visit a page on your website and leave.

Custom reporting: Google Analytics has the option to create custom reports based on the metrics and dimensions you’ve selected. Custom reports present the information you have selected in a way that works for you.

Exit page: The last page a user views on your website.

Filters: A means of controlling or changing the data that appears.

Events: Events are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to track as Events

Landing page: This is the page that users first see during their session, also known as an entrance page.

Percentage of new sessions: The percentage of overall users that were first time users to your site.

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