Tracking campaign effectiveness would be easier if marketing campaigns drove traffic and referrals back through a single channel, but this is rarely the case. Consumers can do any number of things when marketing influences them into action, and this makes tracking complicated. This is especially true when referrals take the form of phone calls, which can only be accurately measured by analytics through a call-tracking solution.

What is call tracking? In the simplest terms, it's a way of seeing which ad campaigns are driving calls to your business. As smartphones create a seamless experience that melds phone capabilities with online search and mobile browsers, call tracking lets you get more reliable data from your campaigns. Without it, your company could be saddled with distorted readouts of how your digital campaigns are performing. But this simple functionality also provides valuable insights into the behaviors of your consumer base, helping you tweak your marketing style in the future.

Social media is becoming a more powerful force, thanks to a new partnership between Twitter and Google. According to Marketing Land, this latest deal gives Google access to Twitter's full stream of publicly tweeted content, allowing Google to more easily find and display tweets in search engine results. This new Twitter search collaboration is a definite win for marketers, providing amazing opportunities for reaching new audiences.

Publicize Deals and Timely Tweets

Have you ever wished you could change how your business appears on Google's search engine results page to reflect your current campaigns and marketing pushes? Now you can. Since Google will be running recent tweets in its search results, you can get the word out about recent promotions in a way that wasn't possible before. For instance, a local restaurant can send out tweets that include information on a half-price appetizer promotion for Twitter followers. Diners who are searching for this restaurant on Google — perhaps to see menu information, confirm hours or make a reservation — will see that tweet and follow the restaurant on Twitter before they come in to get the deal.

The latest Google algorithm update is a doozy for the mobile landscape: The algorithm will now identify websites as mobile-friendly and use that identification to determine the site's prominence in search results. The move aims to help mobile users find the most relevant search results possible for their specific devices. Search Engine Land reports that Google expects the new tweaks to its current formula to have a "significant impact" on mobile search results.

Moving Toward Mobile

The change doesn't go into effect until April 21, so companies have until then to make the necessary adjustments to their websites to avoid a downgrade in their search prominence.

When crafting a paid search strategy, marketers need to research keywords, craft an effective call-to-action and target specific demographics. Along with these components, having a solid social media strategy is crucial for several reasons that marketers might not initially consider.

Social Media as a Center of Information

Though consumers can visit your brand's official website to learn about your products or make purchases and get in touch with you, research shows that they place a growing value on social media profiles as a source of information. In fact, a recent study reported on by PR Week revealed that 50 percent of consumers searching for information on a brand look at its Facebook page first. Even if you have a paid search campaign that links directly to your website, it's vital that your social networking profiles — including Facebook and Twitter — are updated and include information relevant to your paid search campaign.

Recent high-profile data breaches like the ones at Sony and Target have raised consumer privacy concerns to new levels. It's important that your company website has a privacy policy in place, especially because, as Mintz Levin notes, this is often required by law. If you think only the big guys like Google, Facebook and Microsoft need to worry about potential lawsuits, think again. Your bottom line is also at risk.

The Importance of Privacy Policies

According to TRUSTe, studies have shown that consumers take action based on their privacy concerns. Up to 89 percent of U.S. Internet users claim to avoid doing business with companies where they believe their privacy is not protected. In one such study, conducted at Carnegie Mellon University, consumers were more likely to purchase from sites where privacy information was accessible. More interesting still, these participants were willing to pay more for the same items when they believed their privacy was secure. It's likely there's untapped potential in gaining your website visitors' confidence.

It's easy for marketers to see online ads as a driving force for online sales and traditional ads as a way to create physical conversion, but it no longer works that way. Online ads now play a big role in driving customers to physical stores, so creating these marketing divisions can actually harm overall sales. A new Google tool aims to help marketers understand how their online ads are impacting conversions in stores, and it could change the way many businesses think about the success of their ads.

The New Google Metrics Feature

Just a few weeks ago, Google added a new metric called "store visit measurement" to its Estimated Total Conversions (ETC) tool. This metric helps give AdWords users a window into how digital ads might be driving in-store visits, not just clicks and digital conversions.

What's critical to digital strategy and benefits SEO, social engagement, site traffic, sales and more? Content. Content can serve all of these purposes and more — but for companies to leverage its best attributes, they must first use it to build trust with their consumers.

Even in traditional marketing, the importance of trust is obvious: Consumers don't want to get scammed or ripped off, and they want to be able to believe in a company's products or services. Yet, trust carries even greater implications on the content front. Entrepreneur notes that the average Internet user sees five thousand ads per day, and with all of that noise, the best way to stand out is to create content that builds trust with your audience. A lack of trust among an audience can stifle not just conversions and engagement, but even the reach and impact of that content.

When you're looking to increase search-driven traffic, it's easy to focus on a single element of your marketing campaign in the hopes of honing your overall strategy. However, by using SEO, SEM and traditional media together, you can organically drive search results and boost traffic, both immediately and over the long term.

Using Traditional Media to Draw Consumers In

Traditional media offers marketers a great way to spark initial consumer interest, which can lead to increased search traffic. Advertising through TV and other traditional media affords marketers the opportunity to pique consumer interest in a way that encourages search activity later on through the use of specific, search-engine-friendly keywords. MediaPost highlights the adults aged 25–54 demographic as one that is particularly inclined to perform searches after seeing an ad on television that contains easily searchable phrases and keywords and cites local news broadcasts as an area where ads looking to drive search results have been very effective. Though you certainly don't want to create ambiguous ads that don't give consumers enough information to care, it's important to craft ads for radio, print and television that invite the consumer to search for additional information in such a way as to lead back to you through a strong SEO and SEM campaign.

Content marketing strategy is heading in a new direction in 2015, largely due to ever-changing algorithms, mobile entry points and more demand by users for relevant content that meets their needs. There's no longer a single content solution or a single method of delivery that will lead you to success. Here are six do's and don'ts to see you through 2015.

DO Analyze and Adjust

A study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) showed that 77 percent of B2C marketers have a content marketing strategy in place. The 60 percent of these with a documented strategy considered it successful because they can track ROI and use their metrics to tweak content and delivery over the long term.

There's no magical key to instant success in search engine rankings — but that means nobody else has one, either. Building an effective SEO campaign is all about putting in the work, slowly and steadily, over time. Maybe you've already noticed a drop-off in the effectiveness of a campaign designed to exploit some change in Bing, Yahoo or Google algorithms. Or maybe you want to get optimization right from the start. Either way, SEO should be part of your company's long-term strategy, taking users all the way from click to conversion. Don't focus your questions on search engines, but on how to effectively communicate with your customers so search engines can deliver the optimally qualified results.

These five tips to boost your seo strategy aren't quick fixes, but they will strengthen your search engine game.