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The Cliff Notes Version of the GDPR and How It Can Affect You

Europe is big into protecting the privacy of users who enter their information online (like filling out a form for an appointment, a credit card application, or even signing up for a newsletter).  They continually make the laws stronger to protect their citizens from digital evilness (like selling your information without your consent)– much more so than the US. That’s why they created the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (GDPR).  And on May 25, 2018, they are going to start enforcing even stricter requirements.   It can basically be boiled down to applying the Golden Rule to your privacy policy. “Digitally Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Digitally Do Unto You” 
By |Category: Digital Marketing|
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7 Ways to Improve Your Ratings

We understand it can be a pain to keeping track of your ratings and reviews.  And who wants to deal with some deranged customer that could be some disgruntled ex-employee causing trouble., eh– it can be easier to just to shut off your computer and ignore the whole thing. Pretending like it doesn’t exist, however, is not going to help.
By |Category: Digital Marketing|
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What Is a Lead?

When we set-up, maintain and optimize search and display campaigns for our clients, there is one metric that we focus on:  Cost Per Lead. Everything else, your click-through rate, quality score, impressions, clicks, pretty much every other metric in our report helps us analyze the best way to improve the Cost Per Lead.
By |Category: Digital Marketing, Paid Search|
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10 Reasons Paid Search Works So Well for Home Services

While paid search doesn’t work for all businesses, it’s particularly good for home services because there’s always something wrong in people’s homes and they need help, ASAP. So if you own a business that services homeowners, here’s why you need to be using paid search:
By |Category: Digital Marketing, Paid Search|
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How to Easily Figure Out Your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

When we ask business owners what is the their lifetime value of their average customer, here’s what we usually hear: Business Owner (BO): Oh, I think we have that number somewhere. Digital Caffeine (DC): Do you know what ballpark it’s in?  $50? $500? $5,000? BO: I don’t know. Some customers are worth $50 and some more than $5000 so there’s no way to tell. DC:  Well, it’s fairly easy to get a rough estimate. If you add all your sales for the year and divide by the number of customers… BO (cutting us off):  Math? Ugh, I hate math. Oh, is that my phone? I gotta take this call.
By |Category: Digital Marketing|
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Which deserves the credit for your online conversions: Your AdWords campaign? Facebook ads? The pen with your URL on it?

I used to feel sorry for branding marketers. They do all this beautiful work yet there’s no way to definitively prove it leads to any conversions. (Note– we are calling leads and sales conversions.) Meanwhile, in my digital wheelhouse, I would smugly think, “Well, I can prove that our campaigns deliver. Analytics, Baby! Look at these purty conversions!
By |Category: Paid Search|
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Google Warning – Secure HTTPS vs. Non-Secure HTTP – What You Need To Know

Google is sending out notices to owners of websites that do not have secure (HTTPS) pages set up, or security is only partially set up. This is part of Google’s push for a more secure web. As previously forewarned by Google: “Starting October 2017, Chrome (web browser) will show a “NOT SECURE” warning when users enter text in a form on an HTTP (not secure) page.”  Website visitors shown this message will be warned their sensitive information could be stolen by attackers.
By |Category: Search Optimization|
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Why We Choose “Rotate Indefinitely” When Setting up Paid Search Campaigns

When you set-up paid search campaigns with Google, Bing, and others, there’s a section during the set-up process which asks you how you want to run your ads. For Google, you’re given the choice between four options:
By |Category: Digital Marketing, Paid Search|
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Should You Advertise on Your Brand’s Name?

Let’s say you have a company selling Widgets, and it’s called “George’s Widgets”. Should you advertise when someone does a search for George’s Widgets as you already show up in the top spot organically for that search, in fact, you have the top three spots in the organic search rankings. At Digital Caffeine, we consider it a best practice to run ads on your company name. Here are the reasons why.
By |Category: Digital Marketing|
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Google AdWords Update: So Long Sidebar Text Ads

You may have heard the news, Google has made another change to their Search Results Page (SERP) and this one is a large one. Considering how basic the pages are, it seems tough to make waves, but they have.
By |Category: Digital Marketing|
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