Chicago, IL— Jan 24, 2018 — L2TMedia, a leading provider of digital advertising solutions to auto dealerships nationwide, today launched its NEW marketing performance dashboard and reporting application. The dashboard summarizes real-time campaign performance data, showcasing the most relevant KPIs in one unified reporting system.

Dealers now have the ability to create custom screen views through simple widget creation and drop-and-drag functionality, schedule reports to be delivered when they want and download data through simple PDF or Excel export functionality.

“L2TMedia is proud to release our completely redesigned unified reporting system,” said Liz Prior, L2TMedia Co-Founder and Head of Operations. “We understand the importance of our customers having access to real-time performance data across our entire portfolio of advertising solutions. This information is the foundation for making informed marketing decisions and realizing true return on investment for dealer advertising spend.”

Visit go.l2tmedia.com/dashboardvideo to view an demonstration of the new dashboard and its features in action.

L2TMedia’s value-added digital marketing solutions – paid search, display, video, SEO, reputation management, social media, Facebook advertising – improve performance and profitability for dealerships, based on business goals. Our innovative and expert team guides you through determining strategy, assigning the proper budget, executing campaigns and tracking results. Our proprietary AutoQuity™ programmatic digital advertising platform optimizes for CPL performance across search platforms. L2TMedia leverages a higher level of support from our partners: Google, Bing and Facebook.

For more information, visit l2tmedia.com or contact marketing@l2tmedia.com.

Different professionals win their customers’ trust in different ways. For a doctor, say, or a mechanic, there are credentials: certifications and advanced degrees. Things aren’t always so cut-and-dry in the digital marketing world, where many professional roles are multidisciplinary. So how do you know if you can trust an SEO provider? The short answer: results.

There are no official credentials for SEO, so SEO professionals who want to win prospective clients’ trust have to rely on their past work to prove the value of their services. When you start looking more closely at an SEO’s track record, it becomes much easier to separate the wheat from the chaff. Search engine optimization encompasses many marketing activities, and any SEO worth his or her salt will be well-versed in the following:

• Content marketing – content is the lifeblood of SEO. Without good content, quality SEO results can be kissed goodbye. ‘Content’ includes blog posts, website copy, videos, images, PDFs, infographics, and other assets. All of these media can be optimized for search engines.
• Search marketing – the sole focus of an SEO is to ensure that your business is visible across search engine results for as many relevant queries searchers use as possible.
• Consumer behavior – a good SEO will be able to identify important industry trends and search behavior.
• Advertising – SEO is a form of marketing, and selling your brand to potential customers is the goal. Just because people find your site doesn’t mean that they are going to engage with your business. Creating specific calls-to-action within your content aids this process to create leads and generate sales.
• Public relations – creating relationships with your potential, current and former customers is essential. SEO accomplishes this by incorporating social media and blogging into campaigns. Reputation management is also at stake here, as online reviews become increasingly important factors in consumers’ purchasing decisions. A good SEO will keep an eye on online reputation, though active reputation management is another discipline entirely.

So how can you tell the difference between a good SEO and a bad SEO?  Unlike doctors and mechanics, SEOs have a more difficult time proving results. Why? Because of tangibility. Optimizing a website does not produce a product, or something that cures your cough. What it does is help people find the information they’re looking for – and trust me, everyone is always looking for something. But that’s the thing – we SEOs can’t provide results in minutes or days. Try months. What’s tangible for what we do are the metrics we provide. We can show you metrics about how much traffic you received during a period of time, where those visitors came from, which pages they visited on your site, and how long they were on your site.

This data represents a car dealership in Orlando, Florida that sells four brands. Its large metropolitan location, number of brands, and inventory are all factors that affect these metrics. The more brands you sell, the greater the opportunity you have to attract searchers based off of brand recognition. Remember: just because you get a lot of traffic doesn’t mean that traffic is necessarily qualified. You want to make sure you are attracting the users most likely to invest their time and money into your business.

These metrics are important because they indicate areas of opportunity in your SEO campaign, and help diagnose website issues. Metrics are also important in understanding performance over time, to see how your industry and other factors affect your digital marketing results.

SEOs working in any industry understand that their work plays an important part in obtaining new business, but that many factors affect the success of a campaign. The question of ROI causes some businesses to shy away from SEO: they don’t see the value, or aren’t familiar enough with SEO to understand the ROI. Quality SEO work will bring benefit, and offer a solid ROI. Here’s how:

• • Branding – If you’re in a competitive industry and optimize your site for high-volume, competitive keywords, you’ll be more likely to populate in SERPs. More people will visit your site and will understand how your services can help alleviate their problems. Visitor traffic in Analytics will show increases in organic visitors, increases in pageviews per session and an increase in the percentage of new users that visit your site.

• Sales –SEO can lend a hand in creating leads and sales, by driving traffic to your site, which should be optimized with goals and conversions in mind. Your sales can be monitored through advanced website traffic reporting, with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and other third-party services. This data can show you which products your customers are interested in, and where to focus future SEO efforts.
• Overall traffic increase – having a well-optimized site will help attract more visits to your website, which is just like people walking into your shop. If they visit, it’s likely that you have what they’re looking for, which looks great for your brand and for your sales!

This screenshot shows the same car dealership in Orlando, Florida. Organic sessions have increased significantly year over year, and are consistently going up.

It’s important to note that SEO results differ by industry and by business, and depend on how goals are defined. Some metrics may show huge increases, and some small increases. Some metrics may seem negative, but may actually be positive. It is up to the trusty SEO to analyze the data and provide clear, accurate reports.

SEO results aren’t instantaneous; it can take months for optimization to yield traffic increases. SEO is an ongoing process that requires constant tweaking. Search volume for all keywords fluctuates, and user intent also changes. It is important to understand these trends and constantly adapt to search intent to stay on top of your target audience and your competition. Search engine optimization is a worthwhile investment for any business with a website.

In a space where millions of businesses are competing for users’ attention, your brand can’t afford to fall behind.

Chicago, IL Nov 13, 2014 — L2TMedia today announced it ranked 163 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, a list of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. L2TMedia grew 652% during this period.

Co-founders Tom Moorhead and Liz Prior are proud of what this recognition represents.   “L2TMedia is known as a leader in the automotive digital marketing industry,” said Moorhead. “The award validates that and is the results of considerable effort by our amazing employees and strategic partners.”

L2TMedia is again on pace for double-digit growth in 2014 and its most recent surge is fueled by the launch of its proprietary technology platform called MyAccessPoint (MAP). “MAP not only provides a real-time reporting interface with robust analytics for each of our products but also cutting-edge technology that allows us to optimize campaigns for performance and scale our business efficiently without compromising the customer service that L2TMedia is known for,” said Prior.

“The companies ranked on the 2014 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 continue to set the bar for their industry higher each year,” said Eric Openshaw, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and U.S. technology, media and telecommunications leader. “There are so many exciting products and smart thought leaders driving this list. We congratulate the Fast 500 companies and look forward to seeing them continue their momentum into 2015.”

“For 20 years, the Deloitte Fast 500 rankings have honored the innovation that is part of these companies’ DNA,” added Jim Atwell, national managing partner of the emerging growth company practice, Deloitte & Touche LLP. “We’re glad to be serving these high-growth companies, and helping the technology sector recognize the great strides and transformation these companies are making in their respective areas.”

Overall, 2014 Technology Fast 500™ companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 135 percent to 123,678 percent from 2009 to 2013, with an average growth of 1,640 percent.

About Deloitte’s 2014 Technology Fast 500™

Technology Fast 500, conducted by Deloitte LLP, provides a ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies – both public and private – in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2009 to 2013.

In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least $50,000 USD or CD, and current-year operating revenues of at least $5 million USD or CD. Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of five years and be headquartered within North America.

About L2TMedia

L2TMedia provides paid search, SEO, retargeting campaigns, YouTube advertising, social media and online reputation management.  With this robust suite of digital products, L2TMedia has become one of the premier service providers of digital marketing solutions in the automotive industry.  For more information, visit l2tmedia.com or contact marketing@l2tmedia.com.

On Friday, October 17^th 2014, Google announced another Google Penguin algorithm update. The purpose of this algorithm is to minimize the presence of websites who take part in spammy link building practices in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Brief History About Google Penguin:

The first Google Penguin update rolled out on April 24^th 2012 with the express purpose of cutting down on “webspam” in the results it serves up for users. Google’s goal is to use this algorithm to penalize websites who were taking part in spammy and manipulative SEO tactics by weakening their visibility in the SERPs, and provide the most relevant, quality results possible. This is Google’s sixth Penguin update since April of 2012. Since being rolled out, this algorithm has affected around 3.1% of search queries.

What Is Google Penguin 3.0?

Google Penguin 3.0 has been referred to by Google as a “refresh” to their original algorithm. This update coincides with the purpose of Google’s Panda update which focused on weakening websites that provide a poor user experience, or whose content is not up to par.

This refresh is not all said and done. Google’s Pierre Far announced via his Google+ page that this refresh is not 100% complete. He states that it is a “slow worldwide rollout” and will affect less than 1% of US search queries.

Should I Be Worried?

Our clients don’t need to worry about getting penalized. We don’t partake in the following targeted linkbuilding practices, but if you do, you might expect trouble:

• Building links on article directories, link farms, or other similar link aggregators
• Paying for links to be built in bulk in a short period of time
• Posting spam posts in irrelevant forums and social communities
• Listing your website on directories that are not relevant to your industry

It’s probably obvious, but the above tactics are pretty outdated, and don’t align with SEO best practices. They don’t provide a lot of value, and webmasters have seen their websites hit with Google penalties if they did have spammy links in their backlink profiles.

If you’re worried about potential penalties, we recommend resources such as Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer to view your historical link profile.

We will keep you updated on any further information that is released about Google Penguin, and all other algorithm updates!

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/10/20/penguin-3-0-the-definitive-guide-to-diagnosis-and-recovery/

“I’ll Google it.”

I seem to be answering more and more questions with, “I’ll Google it” lately.

How many campgrounds are in Duluth, Minnesota? “I’ll Google it.”

Is there a driving range on my way home from work? “I’ll Google it.”

What’s the name of that brewery in Grayslake? “I’ll Google it.”

Local business owners must love guys like me, because when we want to find a new bar, golf course, or a place to spend the weekend, we Google it. The only problem is, guys like me don’t always Google stuff the same way. Some use Google Search, others use Google Maps, some might have even downloaded the Google+ Local app on their iPhone and that is how they search for local businesses! So what does all of that mean to a business? It means that the business has to have all of its information correct on a variety of Google listings to ensure that their customers could easily find them.

Well business owners, in June, Google introduced a new way for you to “Get on Google.” It’s called “Google My Business” – a name that fits well with what business owners would like to see more customers doing – Googling their business! The Google My Business update focuses on streamlining the local search process for customers and also includes some new goodies for business owners. By combining popular Google products under one convenient page, business owners are able to better connect with their customers. Now your business’s Map listing, Google+ Local Listing, and Google+ Business Page are all connected into one nice, neat page for your customers. Customers can get directions to your location, read reviews about your business and even take a look at the new photos you posted to your Google+ Page, all in one place. The new format is compatible with desktops, smart phones and tablets, so no matter how your customers access the web, they can see the same information.

Google My Business now gives businesses the ability to learn more about how customers are finding them online. The updated Insights panel allows business owners to see how many customers are visiting your listing and how they got there. Managing your online reviews can be done from the same dashboard, so you can quickly respond to an unhappy customer’s complaint, or send a thank you out for a glowing review. There is even a mobile app that allows business owners to receive updates and check on your listings from their phones.

http://blog.l2tmedia.com/2014/07/introduction-to-google-my-business/

Want to know if your current SEO provider is following SEO best practices? Trying to figure out if your website needs SEO in the first place?

You don’t have to be an SEO expert to tell whether your site is following SEO best practices. I have put together steps for auditing the four main concerns of SEO, and the questions to ask yourself in the process. Your answers to these questions should give you a clear idea of where your website stands, and whether you need help with your SEO.

 1) Meta Data 

“Meta data” gives search engines and users information about a webpage’s content, and includes a meta title, description, and keywords. Each page on your site should have its own unique meta title and meta description. Meta titles should be 65-70 characters in length and meta descriptions should be 150-160 characters. Your meta titles should read like chapters in a book, with each title describing exactly what Google will find on that page.Meta titles should be consistent and clear. An example of a title for a local car dealer’s homepage would look like this:

Nikki’s Mercedes Shop | New & Pre-Owned Mercedes Dealer | Chicago, IL 

Google doesn’t use meta descriptions as ranking factors, so these should be written for users. They should briefly describe the page’s content and compel the user to click through to the page.  The most common issues we see when we perform audits are meta title and descriptions that are stuffed with keywords. This is meant to “trick” Google and is not an effective SEO tactic. When evaluating the meta data on your site, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do your title tags contain keywords relevant to their pages’ topics? Are they about 60-65 characters in length?

• Do your meta description tags describe their pages? Are they naturally written and inviting to users?

• Is there an excessive amount of keywords in your titles and descriptions?

2) Content

Google likes websites that consistently publish fresh, relevant content. It also likes to see links within that content. “Internal linking” refers to in-text links that send users to other pages on your website. These links should be used only where they can enhance the user’s experience. By writing for users instead of primarily for search engines, you will end up with natural, informative content that will help users move through your site. When you review your website’s content, ask yourself these questions:

• Is content well written and free of typos? 

• Does your content discuss the topics that people are searching for? Does it contain links to relevant pages within the site?

• Is your content "thin" or lacking useful information?

• Is your content keyword and ad-heavy? Is phrasing unnatural or awkward as a result?

• Do colors or design "hide" keywords from users in the hopes of ranking for those words?

3) Backlinks 

Backlinks are the links from other sites to yours. When we audit a client’s backlinks, we are looking at the number of links, and how many domains they’re coming from. Google likes to see links from a variety of relevant and trusted sources. So you also want to make sure you’re not linked to by sites that Google would consider “spammy.” An example of a spammy site would be a general directory requiring payment for links. 

Anchor texts are just as important as link sources. Anchor texts tell Google (and users) about the content being linked to, and why it’s relevant. You can use Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, or the Backlink Explorer Tool within RavenTools to inspect your backlinks. When looking at your backlinks, ask yourself:

• Are your links from quality, respected web sites?

• Are anchor texts relevant, representing a good balance of branded, keyword-focused, and natural text?

• Has your site gotten many links by spamming blogs, forums, or low-quality directories?

4) Organic Search Visibility

This part of the audit involves performing searches of branded and specific terms to see how your site is showing up in Google’s search results. This helps narrow it down to the top three to four cities that are closest to the business, which I can search combined with the top keywords found in Google Trends. If the client isn’t showing up well in these searches, I’ll focus on these key terms and cities within content and off-site linking. The bottom line is that you want to make sure you’re in place to capture traffic from these searches. When searching for your brand on Google as I detailed above, ask yourself:

• Are you showing up for your business name?

• Are you showing up for keywords with your location attached?

• Are you showing up for keywords with cities showing high search interest attached? 

• Does your business have profiles with accurate and consistent information elsewhere on the web? Google+? YellowPages? Is the website tied to your Google+ page using publisher tags?

Take a minute to review your answers to the questions above. As you can see, all you have to do is master a few basic concepts and search tricks in order to tell whether your website needs a fresh SEO approach. Now you’re just one quick audit away from celebrating your SEO success or firing the shady guy who’s been spamming your site with worthless links!