by Charly Baune | Mar 15, 2018
Businesses need to be more focused and determined on their digital marketing strategies. This is the only way to generate substantial gains in growth and profit and boost the reputation of your website to your target audience. Otherwise, chances are, you might never be able to generate enough attention to rank higher on the search engine results pages of Google.
While you can’t control everything, there are steps you can take to marketing your website in a positive way. This means avoiding certain mistakes that can cost you big time. Read on to learn about 5 common digital marketing mistakes to avoid:
1. Not Having Goals
If you don’t have a goal or strategy laid out, it can be almost impossible for you to market your website and rank higher on Google. Having clear goals is crucial to figuring out how to advertise to your target audience and how you can get more people to join your business. Everything, from your website to advertising campaigns, should follow your clearly defined goals. This way, your audience can see a common thread through everything you do.
2. Not Listening to the Audience
Your target audience and customers are the lifeblood of your business. Not listening to them can create a negative image of your company. Users hate it when their voice goes unheard at times. You must try to solve problems and issues people are experienced by carefully listening to audience feedback. This can tell you what you’re doing right and what you should skip in the future.
3. Not Engaging on Social Media
In this digital world, if you still haven’t created profiles or engaged on social media, it would probably be considered a shame. Bear in mind that social media marketing is crucial to your digital marketing strategy and helps you in communicating and engaging personally with your target audience. By commenting, liking and sharing, you connect to your audience on a more interactive level. This way, you become a part of their lives and can feel assured to receive business from your fans and followers.
4. Producing Content for Content’s Sake
The days are long gone where writing the same old redundant content found on every other site would get you rankings on Google. With the search engine’s updated algorithms, it’s now imperative to be unique and distinctive with your content development approach. Be creative with producing content to get your audience excited about what’s going on.
5. Not Understanding the Use of SEO Properly
SEO plays an important role in digital marketing, just as Dr. Watson does in Sherlock Holmes’ life. If you don’t understand its purpose, you are on the wrong track to success. It’s a sensible idea to hire a SEO agency, as it will perform the necessary changes for helping your website rank better. Tactics such as keyword stuffing, overloading of backlinks and hidden text won’t get you too far.
So, if you want to rank better on the results pages of Google, make sure to avoid these five common digital marketing mistakes.
by Charly Baune | Feb 13, 2018
Local SEO is a highly effective form of online marketing, which enables businesses of all sizes to promote their products and services to local customers. While mastering the local aspects of your SEO campaign may sound daunting, it’s one of the best ways to help your business achieve great success. Are you looking for ways to conquer local SEO? Here is a detailed guide:
Get Organized
All winning strategies begin by creating a solid plan and getting organized. Therefore, when creating a local SEO strategy, make sure that you allocate the appropriate time and resources required for achieving success. Keep in mind that your SEO won’t change overnight, and you won’t see instant results. You need to be ready to put in great effort and remain consistent with your strategies. It’s a good idea to first get your entire team onboard with the strategy, so that everyone is on the same page about the time commitment from day one.
Claim Listings
One of the best ways to boost local SEO and rank better on Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) is to check your listings. Online listings are extremely important, as they give your business instant visibility and validate your legitimacy. Google wants to help individuals looking for a particular product or service find the best business online. So, try your best to list your business across the web with accurate contact information, address and a good description. Popular places to claim listings before you move onto industry-specific forums and sites include Yahoo, Bing and Google+.
Use Social Media
Creating profiles on social media is just like claiming listings on various websites. It is crucial for helping Google test your authenticity and validate your legitimacy. The more active you are on social media, the better chances you have of ranking better. Encourage followers to connect with you by liking, sharing and commenting on posts and by visiting your blog for more information. Publishing and sharing quality content that readers will love can significantly help in boosting reputation. Having a social media profile also makes it easier for prospects to analyze how you treat your customers. Therefore, make sure you create a helpful, cooperative and friendly tone that allows prospects to engage with you.
Communicate and Engage
Besides publishing content on your social media profiles, one of the best ways to keep your customers intrigued and engaged is to create a company blog or industry-specific community or forum. These platforms will only be used for allowing people with great interests in your industry to communicate and engage in serious discussions and share useful information. Blogs and forums can help in keeping your readers engaged, while allowing Google to see you as an authoritative entity—boosting local SEO rankings.
Request Reviews
Lastly, don’t hesitate in engaging with your target audience. Provide incentives for them to buy product or services or simply post a review regarding their experience with your brand. Prospects will always be interested in hearing what others have to say about a business, as it influences their purchasing decisions. The more positive reviews you get, the better chances of you ranking higher on the local SERP rankings of Google.
Conquering local SEO is doable for your business and will help your business grow and succeed. Follow the tips mentioned above to do so!
by Charly Baune | Feb 8, 2018
In the past, local SEO and rankings was a game of quantity—how many backlinks you can achieve and how many times you can stuff geo-targeted keywords in a single page. However, Google has become more intelligent over the years. The search engine giant has now streamlined its local ranking process using various data and signals to determine quality of backlinks, content and pages.
Among these signals includes the usage of social media. It has now been revealed that social media marketing plays an important role in local rankings. We’ve outlined here how social media affects your SERP (search engine results page) rankings, why it’s important to build a social community and tips to maximize SEO value from your social media channels.
Social Media and Local Ranking
Many social media networks such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter provide category-based pages. You can set up a social media page for your business by choosing a category and sub-category. Previously, businesses seeking local marketing had to take a trial-and-error approach with various directories and citations. Today, it is essential to get quality directory listings. What can be of higher quality than social networks? These sites have immense domain authority and traffic.
Therefore, social media sites play an important role in local rankings. If you remain consistent in the form of address, phone number, business category and description, you can help Google get an authentic profile and image of your business. The search engine giant will find the information reliable when different sites and visitors have validated it. This ultimately helps your business rank higher in map results and local search.
Since social sharing allows businesses to communicate and engage with customers, they help in increasing the awareness of a brand and its website content. If a major publication finds your post and decides it is worth citing, they will link to your site, content or both, helping you increase rankings. Through social traffic, you can also improve other site metrics such as pages per visit, time on site and bounce rates, all of which are crucial for influencing local rankings.
Importance of Social Communities
Businesses looking to expand should invest in building their social community, which comprises of prospective buyers, potential advocates and referral customers. Since consumers on social media are in control of what they follow, earning their support makes a connection beyond simple advertising and promotes engagement opportunities.
Building a social community can also help with establishing and maintaining relationships, while adding value to each other’s lives. You really get to know your audience, while giving your business a personality and place to share its story. This allows you to develop a strategy that is specifically targeted for your customers.
Here is how you can build an appealing social community:
- Create a group for users to rally around a common interest or goal.
- Introduce incentives for those actively taking part in your community.
- Engage in strategic conversations regarding your business.
- Take part in discussions and create topics for debate.
- Connect with your offline community.
- Collect vital feedback.
- Amplify your news.
If you want to increase your local rankings on Google, make sure to focus on your social media strategy. Social media signals are crucial for establishing influence, value and credibility in the industry.
by Charly Baune | Feb 8, 2018
Nowadays, webmasters and business owners are constantly looking for new ways to market their website and its products or services. It seems, though, that almost everyone is trying too hard to become content experts. While it is imperative to generate unique and relevant content, you can’t stop focusing on other digital marketing techniques. And no, we’re not talking about SEO, SEM, Video Marketing, PPC or SMM, as these are rather redundant practices used by all websites around the world. It’s time for you to think beyond the norm. Consider these underrated digital marketing techniques:
Podcasting as a Marketing Tool
Not many people consider podcasting as a valuable digital marketing tool, but plenty of viewers and prospects are interested in hearing about what you have to say. This method of marketing is only gaining momentum, but could turn potential customers into active listeners and then a medium for referrals. Recent findings show that between 2015 and 2016, the number of people listening to podcasts grew by 23 percent.
In fact, more than 20 percent of Americans 12 and older listen to podcasts daily. If this isn’t a good enough reason to make you take podcasting seriously, then you might be interested in learning that there are almost 57 million listeners of podcasts in the U.S. alone. Leverage this opportunity to connect to your customers and reach a new guest audience for marketing your products and services.
Leveraging Big Data
Big data is probably one of the most underrated digital marketing strategies today. It involves analyzing and monitoring information relating to marketing actions, results and feedbacks. Therefore, it can play a vital role in helping organizations determine what strategies might be working and what is not. According to research from Rex Brigg, it was revealed that thousands of companies around the world have wasted 40 percent of their marketing budgets.
The reason for this is lack of insight into the consumer mind and market, which leads to uninformed decision making. If you don’t want your business to end up the same way, perhaps it’s time you considered investing in Big Data and analyze the computations revealing associations, patterns and trends, especially relating to human interactions and behavior.
A/B Testing
This digital marketing method is more focused on testing your strategy with two different versions of the same page. By testing two comparable versions, webmasters can figure out what performs better and works with the audience. If you are trying to maximize conversions and boost web traffic to your site, A/B testing is a tried and tested method for improving web presence. Going from a 1 percent to 2 percent increase in conversions can effectively double your sales or leads.
You have plenty of tools, including Google Analytics and CrazyEgg, to help you figure out where your visitors are hung up and what’s causing the increased rate of click-back rates. You can even use A/B testing on landing pages to maximize your conversions.
So, if you want to take your business to the next level, focus on these underrated digital marketing practices.
by Charly Baune | Feb 8, 2018
In this highly competitive digital world, it is vital for businesses of all sizes to invest in a reliable, user-friendly, and search-engine-optimized website. Without a professional, comprehensive website, it can almost be impossible for new businesses to gain any kind of exposure. Are you planning to start your first business website? Don’t know how to get started? Look at these tips below:
Have a Clear Goal
All business websites serve a different purpose. This makes it imperative for you to come up with a clear goal for your business. Decide on what kind of design you are looking for and how you want people to buy products and services. Build your website around that goal and entice potential clients to call you. A website that doesn’t have a clear purpose will only cost you time and money—minus returns.
Write Your Own Content
Don’t wait for your website to get designed until you start producing content. Think about each page you want, and what you want your customers to read. Even if you plan to hire someone for creating or publishing, it is imperative that the basic message of your company is delivered. Thoroughly monitor content creation to ensure everything is in tune with your needs.
State Your Purpose Clearly and Quickly
Visitors who are looking for a product and service wouldn’t spend too much time reading through pages of content just to find basic information. Make sure all-important points of your company are stated clearly and quickly. Don’t add fluff. Visitors and search engine crawlers don’t appreciate fluff. Clear points attract consumers into exploring more about your company.
Tell Customers What You Can Do for Them
When it comes to creating a website, it is vital that you tell your customers what you can do for them. Therefore, don’t hesitate to explain your services and how they can help customers. Also, provide information regarding latest offers, specials and discounts. This can help to attract prospects who might want to leverage cost-efficient services.
Utilize Calls to Action
Your website should make its goal clear to visitors. This makes it crucial for owners to add a unique call to action to all their pages, blogs and articles. Calls to action make it easier for customers to contact you if they want to purchase a certain product or service.
Own Your Domain
Avoid using a free domain that will come loaded with hundreds of irritating ads. You can find many providers online who offer domains at reasonable prices. Don’t get fooled about free ones that come with extensions either. While yourbusiness.wordpress.com may sound impressive at first, it would be more professional if it were just yourbusiness.com.
Choose a Reliable Host
Last, but not the least, make sure to choose a reliable hosting. Look for a host that allows you to customize and scale as your website and business grows.
Another option is Arvig Media. The company offers website building and design services for customers, and works with clients to create sites from scratch.
