by Courtney Dobson | Jun 14, 2019
Below is the roundup of some of this week’s MarketingBitz articles and blogs. MarketingBitz publishes digital marketing articles, videos and slideshows written to address the needs of small businesses.
5 Things You Need to do Before Launching Your Small Business Website (June 13, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “Launching a website can prove incredibly stressful, as there are a ton of moving parts in place. And although you might be tempted to get your new website live as quickly as possible, you want to make sure that you’ve completed a few necessary items prior to launching.”
Social Media Best Practices for Posting on Facebook (June 11, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “Social media has completed transformed the way that businesses communicate with their customers. It’s allowed for a much more personal, in-depth and honest look at businesses and what sets them apart from competitors in their industry.”
How to Keep Your Website Content Fresh (June 13, 2019)
Business 2 Community: “So many small business owners spend lots of time and money establishing a perfectly curated, informative, eye-catching site. And then they abandon it, with no updates or changes to the form or content for months, or even years, at a time. When this happens, your website becomes like a stagnant time capsule.”
3 Tips to Add Context & Drive Engagement to Your Social Media Content (June 12, 2019)
Search Engine Journal: “With social media engagement hovering below 0.1%, networks showing more ads than ever, and organic social visibility in a continuous decline, social media does not seem like the lucrative marketing channel it once was.”
How to make online reviews one of your most powerful SEO weapons (June 10, 2019)
Search Engine Watch: “Online reviews and SEO have been closely tied together for a long time. That’s common knowledge at this point. According to Moz, online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria for how Google displays search results.”
by Courtney Dobson | Jun 13, 2019
Launching a website can prove incredibly stressful, as there are a ton of moving parts in place. And although you might be tempted to get your new website live as quickly as possible, you want to make sure that you’ve completed a few necessary items prior to launching. When these tasks are completed, it potentially save you a lot of time, trouble and even money further down the road.
Your website is often the first thing a customer sees about your business, so you want to provide them with a good experience that encourages them to keep coming back. Plus, it’s the only piece of your marketing that is completely controlled by you, without any outside input (reviews, comments, likes, etc.)
Below are several components you need to do prior to launching your new small business website.
Check URLs
On a new website (or any site, really) you want to be sure that all of your links are working properly. The last thing you need it someone clicking on a link and being redirected to an error page. Go through each and every link you have on your site and make sure it goes to the right place.
If you’re migrating information from an old site, often times certain URLs change. Be sure to put 301 redirects in place for these URLs to ensure that your visitors are landing on the correct pages. These redirects will help improve your SEO, as they inform search engines that the old page needs to be removed and the new page should be indexed instead.
Check Page Speed
If visitors are forced to wait a long time for your site to load, they will likely leave it for a different one. There’s no reason why your pages shouldn’t load in a timely fashion. Google’s Page Speed Insights is a great tool for testing page speed. It will even provide you with suggestions for helping your page load faster, and how much time these opportunities can save.
Create A Responsive Design
Consumers are utilizing their smartphones more than ever before to access information about businesses quickly. In 2018, 58% of website visits came from mobile devices. What that means is that your website needs to be responsive across all devices. You need to be sure that your website looks appealing on any and all devices (PCs, tablets), as well as website browsers, like Google Chrome and Firefox.
Ensure Functionality
Websites traditionally have a lot of different features and unique details. Elements like contact forms, job applications and email list signups should all be filled out and tested thoroughly to ensure that no errors occur. As a safe practice, check anything on your site that leads to something else, whether it’s a link, form or something else. That way, you’ll know for certain that users are being directed to the right place.
Input Proper SEO & Analytics
Prior to launching, you need to make sure that you have an SEO strategy in place on all of your webpages. Each page should have a unique title tag and meta description that describes the content on the page. These components will help your website get indexed properly by search engines and increase your chances of showing up in relevant search results.
You’ll also want to input an analytics tracking code to monitor what’s happening on your website. That way, you can make necessary changes or test certain things and see what works and what doesn’t. Google Analytics is very easy to input. After signing up, you’ll simply add a tracking code to your pages. Within mere hours, the tool will be able to show you tons of information about your website and the individual pages.
Lastly, you need to make sure that you review, review and review some more. Comb through your entire website for any spelling or grammatical errors. Proofread your product names, address, phone number, everything. Nothing is more unsettling than a website with incorrect information.
By taking the time to execute all of these tasks correctly, you’ll be able to launch your new website easily and confidently.
by Courtney Dobson | Jun 11, 2019
Social media has completed transformed the way that businesses communicate with their customers. It’s allowed for a much more personal, in-depth and honest look at businesses and what sets them apart from competitors in their industry.
Through the usage of text, photos, video, links and more, small businesses can highlight the most unique and important aspects of what they do, as well as their expertise and knowledge in their particular arena, all from a single digital avenue. You can also interact with your customers directly and in a timely fashion through various forms of posting and messaging.
There’s numerous social media platforms that can be used to promote your small business. However, it’s important to remember that not all channels are created equal, and that the means in which you publish a particular piece of content should be handled differently based on which channel you’re using.
As the first part of a four-part series designed to help you gain a better understanding of what works best and where, below are a few tips for how and when to post content on Facebook.
Facebook boasted over 2.3 billion monthly active users in the first quarter of 2019. So, if you’re wondering whether or not you should have a presence on the platform, the answer is yes. But simply having a page on the platform isn’t enough, you must have an active presence for the channel to serve its purpose and help market your business.
Post Length
Despite the large character limit, Facebook posts should be kept short and sweet. Research from BuzzSumo has shown that the shorter the post, the better the engagement. And, according to Facebook, posts with 250 characters or less generate 60% more likes, comments and shares than those with more.
Visuals
It’s 2019, and we’re living in a world where GIFs and memes have all but taken over. Think of your favorite social posts that you’ve come across. I can almost guarantee that there was an image or video associated with it. These visuals go a long way in making your post more appealing and rememberable.
A picture is definitely worth a thousand words (or comments/likes in this case), as it can dramatically help grab the attention of your audience, keep them interested and help build your brand identity, while solidifying your messaging. Visuals allow the opportunity to get creative.
Scheduling
Having a Facebook presence means committing to a regular posting schedule. You can’t post once a month and expect to gain anything substantial from it. Generate a schedule and adhere to it.
Additionally, your content should be a mixture of informative/educational information about your business, as well as entertaining posts. Don’t flood your follower’s feeds with sales pitches day and night, as it’s disingenuous and can come off as annoying.
The general consensus is that Facebook posting should be limited to once per day. The aforementioned report from BuzzSumo revealed that evenings were the best time to post, however, it’s wise to test timing and see what works best for those within your target audience.
Ask Questions
The whole motivation in having a Facebook is to interact with your customers and build your brand. In order to do that, you need to know what your customers wants and needs are, their likes and dislikes, and what they value most from you. To gather this information, ask your customers questions.
Facebook offers different tools for creating polls and surveys, but if you want to create the question as a post, that’s also an option. Be sure to add an image that will catch your follower’s attention and encourage them to respond.
by Courtney Dobson | Jun 7, 2019
Below is the roundup of some of this week’s MarketingBitz articles and blogs. MarketingBitz publishes digital marketing articles, videos and slideshows written to address the needs of small businesses.
Combined PPC and SEO Strategies to Boost Your Small Business Audience (June 6, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “With the everyday development in the betterment of life, everything is changing, from social media to marketing strategies. It becomes difficult for small businesses to find strategies to meet their customer’s needs. PPC and SEO are considered to be a good start for this purpose.”
Black Hat SEO — The Honey Trap for Small Business Owners (June 4, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “Good search engine optimization techniques take time. The algorithms that Google uses are complicated, sophisticated structures and they aren’t easily fooled — especially for long. However, there are SEO methods and companies out there that promise things like “SEO hacks to boost your rankings overnight.” They know the tricks that will temporarily fool the search engine crawlers into providing you with a higher rank in the search engine results pages.”
How to Manage Yelp Reviews for Small Businesses (June 6, 2019)
Business 2 Community: “Whether you own a coffee shop or an auto body repair, chances are one of your main sources of business is from your Yelp page. By this point, you’ve surely put the time and effort into making your profile stand out from the rest of the crowd. However, the work doesn’t end there. You must continue to manage your Yelp reviews to make sure the right people are leaving reviews, the positive reviews outnumber the negative, and that any issues are being addressed.”
How to Stand Out From Your Competitors on Search & Social (June 6, 2019)
Search Engine Journal: “If I asked you who your competitors are, you could probably name two or three without blinking. But what if I told you that they may not really be your competition? And that there are other “competitors” out there that are a far greater risk to your online success?”
5 Trends to Know in SEO & Content Marketing As We Move Close to 2020 (June 3, 2019)
Search Engine Journal: “What’s trending in content marketing and SEO these days? Let’s say this: Content is more important than ever. More specifically, quality, media type, authenticity, and audience targeting all come into play if you want to win with readers and Google.”
by Courtney Dobson | May 31, 2019
Below is the roundup of some of this week’s MarketingBitz articles and blogs. MarketingBitz publishes digital marketing articles, videos and slideshows written to address the needs of small businesses.
5 Free Ways to Get More Reviews for Your Brick and Mortar Business (May 30, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “Marketers have long known that a customer must be exposed to a message seven times before it takes hold—this is called the rule of seven. You’ll most likely have to ask for reviews several times during your customer’s visit. Make it easy for the customer to leave you one. It’s important to mention that you want their review before the person leaves the store. Once they’re out the door, your chances of getting that review drop to around zero.”
Here’s Why Your Small Business Definitely Needs a Website (May 28, 2019)
MarketingBitz: “Despite being the original digital marketing platform, there exists speculation over whether or not small businesses should have a website. Some believe that with the rise of Google and Facebook, websites are simply no longer a necessity. This one or the other mindset is deceiving, as there are many reasons for small businesses to have a website in addition to a presence on local listings (Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, etc.)”
How to Create Content That Attracts Customers (May 31, 2019)
Social Media Examiner: “Storytelling is the way we communicate no matter what platform we’re on. Whether through a conversation in person or in an email, on another social media platform, onstage, or on a podcast, creating good content still matters. It’s only through producing content that people will understand your values, care about your origin story, or know anything about your products.”
Why is Link Building So Important to Your SEO Strategy? (May 30, 2019)
Business 2 Community: “There is no denying the importance of SEO to your business. In today’s competitive market, SEO is more important than ever. However, SEO can be difficult to execute effectively because there are several ranking factors involved in generating high organic search results.”
5 Easy Tips to Skyrocket Your Instagram Marketing This Year (May 29, 2019)
Search Engine Journal: “Looking to grow your business and better engage with potential customers? Then add Instagram marketing to your social media strategy. Instagram is home to a highly engaged and active user base – a potential goldmine for smart brands and businesses that know how to do marketing right.”
