Category: Digital Advertising

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Unlocking SEO Potential at MozCon

January 25, 2024

A Look Back at MozCon 2023 as We Prepare for the 2024 Conference

In August 2023, our technology team attended MozCon 2023 in Seattle and spent two full days learning, talking, and exploring innovative ways to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and all of the facets that surround best SEO practices.

Our team arrived back on the east coast ready to share all of their ideas with the full company and begin implementing everything they learned. After spending some time putting their new education into practice, they have highlighted the greatest takeaways from last year’s conference.

Here are the top three topics that our team highlighted as most important after MozCon 2023:

1. Google is a Digital Ecosystem

Google is only one search engine among many, but it stands out from all the rest because of its broad expanse of offerings. Google is now a social network, a business directory, a place to shop, a place to image search, an aggregator, and a personal assistant––all rolled into one.

Thinking of Google as a digital ecosystem encouraged our team to incorporate all Google had to offer into our strategy and web presence going forward. SEO is equally interconnected and needs to be woven into all layers of content, campaigns, websites, and ads from start to finish. Google is currently the expert on users’ motivations for search and data collection, making Google the key to connecting with targeted audiences.

How our team is using Google differently in 2024:

  • Not thinking of Google solely as a search engine
  • Not getting sucked into the algorithm-thinking SEO practices
  • Using Google’s offerings to find and retain target audiences
  • Exploring content beyond just web pages––especially indexed YouTube video
  • Focusing on identifying local link opportunities in addition to traditional backlinks

2. GA4 Offers Privacy Conscious User Data

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a customizable tool our technology team uses to measure traffic and engagement across the websites that we create, optimize, monitor traffic, and study user behavior. In order to address privacy concerns, Google moved away from Universal Analytics (UA) and implemented the GA4 data structure to collect, store, and use data in a way that is compliant with privacy regulations in different countries/states while focusing on events rather than sessions. It uses modeling to estimate conversion data that can’t be observed directly without identifying users. GA4 aims to collect user web and app data  in a privacy conscious manner while preparing for a cookieless browsing future.

How our team is leveraging GA4 in 2024:

  • We are using GA4 to track user behavior and sources of traffic
  • We are using the funnel report builder to analyze flows and track conversions
  • We are customizing our team’s navigation for easy access to useful reports
  • We are building custom audiences and using them for remarketing in Google Ads
  • We are using GA4 to measure the impact of our paid media efforts 
  • We are using GA4 to create custom reports to extract key insights for decision making 

3. AI and the Rise of Large Language Models

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not new, but universal accessibility to it is. Like many, our team regards AI with equal parts skepticism and curiosity. While at MozCon our team approached new information about AI with an open mind and challenged their own beliefs to embrace experimentation.

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool developed by OpenAI to generate human-like text based on input. OpenAI trained ChapGPT on a massive amount of text data from the internet, using a machine learning model known as a large language model (LLM). ChapGPT “learns” by identifying patterns in the data and uses them to make predictions.

After Open AI launched ChatGPT, many companies such as Microsoft and Google started to integrate ChatGPT into their search engines or created their own LLMs, such as LaMDA/Bard and Bing Chat.

How our team is leveraging AI in 2024:

  • Increasing efficiency as a digital partner and personal assistant
  • Solving problems and expanding research
  • Learning better skills for prompting AI
  • Integrating ChatGPT functionality into other applications
  • Increasing transparency when using AI and sharing it’s benefits with each other
  • Continuing to explore all that AI has to offer our company workflow

Our technology team was thrilled to learn all they could from MozCon in 2023 and are very excited to gain even more exposure to new technologies at MozCon in 2024.

Education is at the heart of everything we do. If you are looking for a partner who is constantly exploring and learning new technology, we are ready to share our knowledge with you and solve your digital marketing problems. Let’s connect!

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Celebrating Our 2023 Wins + Planning for Our 2024 Successes

January 12, 2024

2023 brought 12 months of growth for our team. We welcomed four new employees and five new clients, putting in hundreds of hours building up our offerings.

As always, education and professional development are at the forefront of our company culture. Our team attended three conferences and exhibited at two, networking with new connections and expanding our skills in design and technology.

2023 was a website heavy year––our team built over 43 websites, spending over 1,000 hours writing, designing, constructing, and testing. We created nearly 500 digital ads and worked on 228 unique projects of varying complexities. Our data and tech team completed three extensive SEO audits and got the ball rolling on six more. We also launched two new Marketing Automation systems in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud.

As we move into 2024, we are excited for the new opportunities on the horizon––including clients, design techniques, and innovative strategic methods––all delivered with the same quality and care we’ve prioritized for the last 11 years.

Visit our website for fresh ideas and upcoming trends on our Insights page, and take a look behind the curtain under Projects to see how we handled different client challenges. Follow us on social media for day-to-day updates or reach out through our contact form to chat with us directly.

At 5 Horizons we solve problems using creativity, technology, and data to help our partners grow. We look forward to being your partner in 2024.

– Pat Riley & Ben Sandman

Co-Founders, 5 Horizons

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Why SEO Isn’t One-and-Done

December 12, 2023

There isn’t a single person in marketing who hasn’t heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or taken steps to implement an SEO strategy into their organization’s or business’ efforts. However, most people get stuck thinking that SEO is an item you can check off your to-do list. Instead, SEO is an ongoing process––a strategy that requires continuous attention, tweaking, and improvement. 

What Makes SEO an Ongoing Process?

Changes in User Behavior

In the past, it was challenging to keep up with the most popular keywords or keyword phrases. Now, that task is made even harder by Google, which is not just looking for keywords anymore—it is also reviewing the intent behind the search by compiling a user profile. Understanding the “why” behind your audience’s search is a long process but one that will tremendously help your SEO results.

Evolving Marketplace

New technology, products, media, trends, etc. are constantly entering the marketplace, shifting the trajectory of the audience’s interests, hobbies, and likes. Anticipating these changes is difficult, but you can learn to adapt, pivot, or enhance your strategy and language in accordance with the market demands.

Algorithm Updates

To avoid search engine results page (SERP) manipulation, search engines frequently update the way they evaluate and rank websites when it comes to search results. These updates can have an immediate effect on your strategy’s performance, heightening the importance of promptly incorporating the current best SEO practices into your efforts.

How to Keep Up with SEO Over Time

Generate High-Quality Content

Populating your website with content that is relevant to your audience requires constant content generation. Uploading a few blogs to your site when implementing an SEO strategy and never writing another one again will make you rank lower on the SERP and prevent people from engaging with your website. That’s why it’s necessary to keep creating content that your prospective customers, clients, or students would want to interact with on a regular basis.

Maintain Your Website

On-page SEO is easy to keep in mind when you start optimizing your website. But as time goes by and you create new pages, you might forget to write meta titles and descriptions, making it harder for search engines to index your content. Continuously keeping your site organized will help your page rank higher.

Monitor Trends and Competition

Staying in the know of the new approaches search engines and your competitors take when it comes to SEO will help you adjust your own strategy if needed. Learning from the victories and mistakes of others is just as important as learning from your own, and it will help you stay afloat when search engines inevitably release updates that can affect your rankings. 

It is vital to keep your SEO fluid and flexible to help your operations thrive and gather as many viable leads as possible. At 5 Horizons, we offer continuous SEO services that ensure your organization, business, or school reaches your target audience. Contact us today to learn more and follow along on our Demystifying SEO journey.

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5 Ways to Leverage Matched Audiences

November 27, 2018

Get More from Your Database

The power of digital marketing is its ability to maximize the efficiency of your marketing spend through precise targeting. Yet not enough marketers or agencies take advantage of the most efficient target, their own database. 

Current, past, or prospective customers are all significantly more likely to purchase than even the most finely targeted new audience. This is why re-targeting is so powerful: it targets prospects who’ve already indicated their interest by visiting certain pages of your website. Well, why not take that concept one step further?

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Don’t Get Stuck in Groundhog Day – Online Advertising Needs Fresh Creative

February 2, 2015

Groundhog Day isn’t just the day Punxsutawney Phil tells us when Spring is coming. It’s also a great (in our opinion) 1993 comedy featuring Bill Murray as a weather reporter keeps reliving the same day over and over and over again until he gets things right.

When it comes to online advertising, sometimes brands can get stuck in Groundhog Day. Are you showing the same ad over and over again? Is your creative, ahem, creative? Or just really repetitive?

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