What does 100% efficient means? First, is important you to know that all of these solutions are having the best return of investment. Second, we included only solutions that are doing a super job for you.

You will find many solutions from different industries: WordPress support, a super way to make secure payments, a new but super powerful real-time task management tool, website builders, WordPress themes and plugins, and much more.

Let’s start.

1. Taskade – Real-time task management tool

Working remote is a huge thing that many people and companies do. Why? As an employee, you can work with any company from the whole world, you can get paid very well, you can do the work from home or whatever else place you want, and more.

As a company, you can hire the best employees from the world, not the best from your location.

Hiring remote people is what many new and especially technology companies do with great success. That is why many of them advance rapidly and become giants in their industries.

But how can team members collaborate when each of them is so far away, and in a different time zone? The answer is Taskade, an all-in-one collaboration tool that combine all the benefits from its competitors: Asana, Trello, Google Docs, and Slack.

Taskade is free to use, it works both for real-time and asynchronous communication, it comes loaded with hundreds of templates that you can use or fully edit, it works perfectly on Web, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, PC, and Mac, and even more.

You can easily create your own workspace by adding blocks, dragging and dropping elements, adding smiley faces, and tag. On each workspace you have cool features: audio and video calls, file sharing, you can share the workspace with your team members or work alone, and other cool things.

The design of Taskade is super minimalist, and the interface acts lighting fast and it is easy to use.

Taskade will heavily boost productivity among your teams and company.

Start using Taskade today.

2. Privacy

We shop online for almost everything – WordPress themes, plugins, monthly subscriptions for website builders, invoicing software, time-tracking and collaboration tools, and much more. It is very difficult to feel confident that your credit card is safe when you give your financial info to so many websites.

To be 100% secure when shopping online, you can simply use Privacy and their virtual cards. Privacy is free to get started, and it comes with layers of security features that will not only keep your financial information secure, but also provide management benefits for all of your tools.

You use the virtual card exactly as your bank card, but at checkout, Privacy will generate random numbers that mask your real card information. Should you suspect a fraud or should a merchant get breached, you can simply close the card yourself without needing to jump through any service hoops. Your bank account is safe. And all of those free trials you always forget to cancel? Use Privacy’s single-use cards that you can close immediately after you sign-up so you never get charged for the next month.

Protect your money with Privacy, it is simple and free to get started.

3. WhatFontIs – The Best Font Finder Tool

Nobody has enough fonts for their projects, this is what any professional designer can tell you right away. And it is true, each design should be carefully matched with the right font.

To have as many fonts as possible, you should take a picture of all the fonts you like when you browse the internet, and then upload them to WhatFontIs – the best font finder tool – to identify them. It is free to use and it works excellent.

WhatFontIs has over 600k indexed fonts, it is the only system the identifies both free and paid fonts, and it works with all font foundries, including Google fonts.

The powerful AI will quickly identify the font from your picture, giving you all the info, you are looking for: the name of the font, the price, and the link from where you can download it.

Use WhatFontIs and never let a font to escape you.

4. Total Theme

There are tons of WordPress themes on the market but how many are awesome in terms of design, functionalities, what is in the package, setup, and so on?

Total Theme is that WordPress theme that you will never stop using it. It has over 40 professional demos that you can install with one-click, a brilliant drag-and-drop builder, tons of styling options, and builder modules, and much more. Total Theme is loaded with 4 premium plugins that will help you a lot: the famous Visual Page Builder, Templatera, Slider Revolution, and LayerSlider.

With Total Theme you can build high-converting and pixel-perfect websites from scratch, or by quickly editing one of the included themes. You decide, it takes only a couple of minutes for any way you choose.

Use Total Theme

5. Online Photo Editor

Are you looking for an online photo editor like Photoshop? Look no further since the Appy Pie photo editor is here. Free of cost and with the coolest features you could ask for. It does not matter how good you are as a photographer; it also does not matter how expensive your cell phone or DSLR is. Before you upload your pictures to Facebook and Instagram, every photo could do with a bit of retouching. That is why the best free photo editor online takes away all the flaws of your image at the click of a button.

Make your selfies more gorgeous and pictures of your vacation more fun by using the Appy Pie, free online photo editor.

6. Codester

Codester is the favorite marketplace for designers and developers that are looking to buy thousands of premium PHP scripts, codes, themes, plugins, and much more.

If you are looking to get an additional income, sell your items via Codester, they are not requesting exclusivity over your products.

7. Dr. Link Check

Dr. Link Check is the most popular, easy to use, and fastest broken link checker for your website. Write down your website URL and the platform will quickly scan your website and send you a detailed report of broken links.

Get rid of broken links, nobody likes them.

8. Bonsai Contracts for Design & Developers

With Bonsai you can generate web design contracts, you can generate invoices from proposals and contracts, you can manage customers, expenses, payments, and much more.

Bonsai is the preferred suite of software dedicated entirely to freelancers, with over 100,000 happy users.

Use Bonsai for free.

9. Free website builder

Mobirise is a free website builder that you can use with 0 skills and 0 experience.

This complete package will help you quickly create gorgeous websites in minutes. Start from scratch using the drag-and-drop builder and the tons of included elements, or edit one of the included 2,500+ templates. Both ways are fast and easy.

Create new websites with Mobirise.

10. Affordable design to code web development service

Goodie has huge experience in the market, being a very popular web development service for designers and for business owners that need simple WordPress websites, 1-10 page websites, 99 designs or similar, email templates, and much more.

Get in touch with Goodie experts.

11. Astra Theme – Elementor Templates

Astra will supercharge your Elementor website with 100 free and premium themes. Make your website stand out of the crowd and win over your competition.

It is simple, just use Astra.

12. Landing pages

MailMunch is a powerful landing page builder that you can use to create any kind of landing or squeeze page, with 0 experience and 0 coding skills.

Use the beautiful landing page templates and the drag-and-drop builder to create landing pages that will increase your website conversions by up to 400%.

Start creating landing pages with MailMunch, it takes only a couple of minutes.

13. Email Template Builder

Unlayer is the leading email template and page builder for SaaS that you can quickly embed on your website and let your visitors to create landing pages and emails that convert.

They will find included a super-fast and clean interface, tons of gorgeous templates and elements, and a simple to use drag-and-drop builder.

See how it works.

14. Schema Pro

Forget the times when it was complicated to add markups to all your website pages.

Now, by using Schema Pro, all the markups will be automatically added in seconds, to the selected pages.

Make your website rank higher in search engines, it is efficient and easy.

15. Rank Math SEO

Rank Math is the fastest growing WordPress SEO plugin, being extremely efficient and free to use.

Configure it in just a few minutes and most of your website’s SEO will automatic and the rest of it is easy as a pie.

16. WordPress gallery plugin

Imagely is providing you a complete package of Photography WordPress themes and plugins, including the famous NextGEN Gallery plugin that is used by millions of people.

All these themes look fantastic and it will help you create photography websites that convert and engage your audience.

These themes support automated print fulfillment.

17. Zapier Mastery Learn how to automate your business to create more free time

If you are constantly busy and you feel that many tasks could be automate but you don’t know how, Zapier Mastery is the right course for you.

Learn from an automation engineer how you can automate your business to create more free time. The course looks great and it is useful for both you and your staff.

Check it.

18. WordPress photography themes

Even if your photos are among the best in the world, you still need a powerful WordPress website to showcase them.

Photocrati builds the very best photography WordPress themes on the market, by closely working together with professional photographers. They understood perfectly what you need, that is why they succeed building top-quality themes for this industry.

Use these photography WordPress themes to create gorgeous website on which you will display stunning galleries and sell images (they support automated print fulfillment).

19. The #1 WordPress Knowledge Base Theme

Looking for a solution so you can limit hiring new support staff?

By using KnowAll, the leading knowledge base theme for WordPress, you can quickly implement a FAQ section that your existing customers will appreciate and they will stop contacting your support staff for small things.

20. Simplest website builder

8b is the simplest and fastest website builder on the market. It doesn’t take over a few minutes to build a fully customized website that look great. And you don’t need any coding or special skills.

Create your website now with 8b.

21. Event WordPress themes

Event WordPress themes are a special niche where ShowThemes is the best.

They worked a lot to be the leading supplier for this niche. First, they understood from event professionals what is needed, and after they’ve got the best designers and developers in the world.

Check these WordPress event themes.

22. Real Estate WordPress Themes

Tesla Themes created powerful, SEO-friendly, pixel-perfect, and lightning-fast real-estate WordPress themes. All of them are fully responsive, looking great on all devices, and come with premium support, which is super-friendly and quick in solving any issues you may have.

All these real-estate themes are WooCommerce ready.

23. uKit

Today, in 2020 it is important to have a website and te look good on both PCs and mobile devices. uKit visual editor allows you to adjust your website to fit perfectly on any device. It does not require any coding or technical knowledge to do – so how about give it a try? 14-day trial is available for free.

24. Marketables – A Resource Marketplace

Marketables is a two-directions platform. As a customer, you can find gorgeous landing pages, email templates, banners and covers and use them in your marketing campaigns straight away.

As a graphic designer who creates such assets, you can add your products on Marketables and get paid for every download of your templates.

Sign up and become a part of Marketables!

25. stepFORM

If you are thinking of attracting your audience with conversational forms, quizzes or surveys, and increasing conversion rate and behavioral metrics, stepFORM is the surefire solution. No coding skills needed. Just drag and drop the elements and enjoy both the process and the outcome. Set up your Logic Jumps, configure CSS properties, connect PayPal or Wallet One. Take advantage of all stepFORM features now. Free!

26. LogoAI

With LogoAI, anybody can easily create a logo design, without spending fortunes and without having any special skills or experience.

Write your company name, add a slogan if needed, and you are good to go. LogoAI will quickly show you hundreds of logo designs to choose from.

Try LogoAI, the results are extremely good.

27. WordPressToWix.PRO

Safe and smooth website migration is frequently impossible without a knowledgeable and professional team. WordPressToWix.PRO is a trusted team of website developers users may contact, when deciding to switch from WordPress to Wix. The service can boast over three years of experience in website migration as well as hundreds of successfully transferred projects. They thoroughly explore all the aspects and characteristics of the project, which is under transfer to ensure the best result. 

28. actiTIME

actiTIME helps thousands of companies – from startups, non-profits and family businesses to Fortune 500 organizations – in their daily operations.

Use it for time tracking, scope management, accurate billing, and much more.

Try it all actiTIME features for free in the 30-day trial, no credit card is required.

29. uSocial

uSocial is a platform dealing with social media buttons such as Like and Share buttons for a website. The user-friendly interface lets you build the buttons in one go. You can also enable hover effects and an eye-catcher to grab people’s attention. And the Get More Visitors tool will help you drive traffic from your website to your groups on social media.

30. Topper

Launch a multi-functional blog, online magazine, or web store using Topper WordPress theme You can choose from free or premium plans of the theme. You can also choose any or all of the 14+ skins included in the theme. Using Topper, you get what you pay for. For example, if you need only 1 skin, then you for that skin only. You can modify any layout if the theme with the help of the Elementor page builder. You can also use it with Gutenberg and any different WordPress extension that comes to your liking.           

31. uCoz

Kickstart your online presence with uCoz —a free tool that allows you to create a website in your browser. Featuring both visual and code editors, as well as direct FTP access, RSS import and ability to install external widgets from the web with ease. Sporting a perfect balance between a code-based approach and a visual approach, it is a solid choice for both amateurs and professionals.

32. InvoiceBerry

InvoiceBerry  is a powerful, complete, and easy to use invoicing software used mostly by small and medium companies, and by freelancers.

The platform is packed with features and a clean interface that will guide you every moment.

See InvoiceBerry in action in the 30-day free trial, no credit card is required.

33. uCalc

If you want to accelerate order processing, install an online calculator on your site. uCalc is your assistant for that. It’s a modern calculator/form builder that doesn’t require any programming skills. With the uCalc calculator, your clients can get quotes at a stroke, pay for the order, subscribe to your site to receive promo codes and more. See all the features for yourself.

34. Helion

Helion WordPress theme is an all-inclusive solution for your blog, online portfolio or a web store of any level of difficulty. The theme is fully responsive and GDPR compliant. It’s quick and easy to edit using the Elementor page builder. Working with 11+ demo skins, you can achieve the perfect look and feel of your online project. Using the Helion theme, you can bring a versatile look and feel to the header and footer of your site, as well as inner pages, and other theme options. 

35. Wix2WP.PRO

Wix2WP.Pro is a full-cycle Wix to WordPress migration platform that delivers a broad spectrum of website transfer services. They have been in business for several years, having successfully transferred around a hundred of versatile projects. They employ a team of professionals, who are both competent in the niche and capable of completing all kinds of transfer-related tasks. They guarantee high end result with minimum effort/time/budget investments. 

36. Fotor

Fotor is the most used visual content solution on the market, having millions of happy users.

The platform is loaded with tons of pictures and graphic elements that you can use right away to create engaging and converting pictures for your websites and social media channels.

37. uLanding

Create your first landing page with the uLanding builder and launch your website today. All you need for a professional-looking landing page is here: stylish ready-made templates, full-fledged functionality, adaptive site version for all devices. You can also A/B test your pages to see exactly what’s working. A number of contact forms and pop-up windows are also provided. Check out the platform today.

38. Moderated chat for live Q&A and Web Events

RumbleTalk will help you to add a moderated chat for Q&A and live events on your website in minutes, without having to write a single line of code.

Start with the free forever account and upgrade it whenever you need it.

39. MMThomasBlog.com

MMThomasBlog.com covers the most important and widely-searched for web design-related aspects. The platform grants access to more than 50 popular website builders to help users choose the best service that adheres to their specific business or personal goals and intentions. The resource abounds in the unbiased and informative website builder reviews, comparisons and general web design-focused articles that help simplify the process of website development for everyone. 

40. Gutentype

Gutentype WordPress theme is a clean multi-functional WordPress theme that’ suited for your blog or any different kind of information-rich web resource. The theme has a fully editable layout style. Feel free to modify color settings in the intuitive visual mode. As the name of the theme suggests, it’s fully based on the Gutenberg page builder. Mobile device optimization guarantees that your web resource will look stunning on all devices.

41. HTMLtoWordPress.pro

The process of switching from  HTML to WordPress frequently causes problems and results in multiple mistakes, when completed by inexperienced users. To avoid the potential errors and prevent your website from poor performance, it makes sense to use professional migration services like HTMLtoWordPress.PRO. The platform is positioned as a trusted and safe all-in-one migration service, which ensures worthy result and does not require much time/effort investment as well as coding expertise. 

42. Shella – Ultimate Shopify Store

Creating a fashion store that quickly converts is super simple when using the right theme. With Shella Shopify Theme you can easily set up your own fashion stores in minutes, without writing a single line of code.

Use the included 99+ predesigned pages to build your own fully customized fashion store.

43. Customify – The Most Customizable WordPress Theme

Stop searching, you just found the most customizable WordPress theme on the market, and it is free to use.

Engineered from the first moment to be super customizable, Customify will help you create unlimited and 100% adapted for your need’s websites.

Use Customify, it is free and it looks amazing.

Conclusions

You saw Taskade and I hope that you played a bit with it. This remote collaboration tool is like having Trello, Asana, Google Docs, and Slack, all-in-one. It is brilliant to use, and it is free.

With Privacy, you will gain peace of mind. This online card protects your money and gives you full control when shopping online.

And these are only wonderful solutions out of the 40+ included in the article.

This is what we wanted to do with this article, to show you very cool and efficient solutions.

Are you wondering how to get your customers to leave positive reviews? Not to worry! In this guide, we’ll go over how to encourage customers to write reviews.

Want to learn more? Keep reading to find out.

Ask Your Customers to Leave Reviews

This might seem like a standard tip, but a lot of businesses don’t ask their customers or clients to do this. You might buy a few things every day. Does every business ask you to leave a comment?

If you notice your customer is happy with your service or product, ask them to write a review. To help encourage this, you can ask them how their experience was during the service.

Once they have replied in a positive manner, you could ask them to post it on your Facebook page or review site. Most customers are happy to do so.

If you feel your customer is in a hurry, you can send them a thank you note or follow up email. Add the link to the review site below your note.

When you ask a client to do so right away, the experience is present in their mind. Most people will leave reviews once prompted.

If you are an online shop, make sure you send a follow-up email a week after. This way, your customers will get reminded to leave a note about the item they bought.

Only ask for reviews after you’ve heard from your customers that they had a positive experience.

Talk About the Importance of Reviews 

Explain to your customer why you’re asking them for a review. Their feedback can help encourage other customers to check out your business. Without positive reviews, people will assume your service or product is average.

Highlight Where Customers Can Leave Reviews 

If people head to your website or social media sites, make sure it’s clear where they can drop a review. This way, customers won’t get frustrated and decide not to comment.

You can add website badges for your Facebook, Yelp, or Amazon page. This way, customers can head over to read and write reviews.

Make sure your website’s optimized for mobile devices. This way, people who browse your website on their phone can read more about your business or service.

When customers come in who have left a review, ask them about their experience. Find out if it’s a straightforward process or if they had any suggestions.

Claim Online Listings

Don’t limit yourself to Facebook and Google but aim to use plenty of online listings. Your business will get a more significant online presence. Consumers will have an easier time finding out about your service and product.

There is the added benefit that customers will leave more reviews. A lot of people will look to Google for reviews. Yet, a large percent turn to TripAdvisor and Yelp for information. Google yelp reviews to find out more.

Provide Tokens of Appreciation

Depending on your business, you could offer a small discount when a customer leaves a review. When inviting the customer to leave a review, tell them that you will provide them with a reward.

Reward Your Employees

Teach your team about the importance of providing your customers with excellent service. Also, help them figure out a way to request reviews from customers. Teach them how important it is to ask for reviews.

You can create an incentive program. Employees could receive a cash bonus for the number of reviews they get each month. Decide on what bonus will make sense for your employees.

Reviews can have a major impact. Customers seek out information about your service before buying. Spend your marketing dollars in this area.

Highlight Positive Reviews

Whenever you receive a stellar review, post it on your website. Highlight the comment in an email message. Take a screenshot of the review as well. You can include the picture in videos, newsletters, and brochures.

Respond to Negative and Positive Reviews

A negative review can impact a potential customer’s perception of your business. Make sure you follow up with every negative review left on your social media or website.

If someone had a poor experience with an employee or product, thank them for their feedback. Apologize and work on a solution.

Aim to switch the negative experience to a positive one. If you’re able to do so, ask if you have permission to post about the resolution. You want to try and convert any negative reviews to a positive one right away.

Thank your positive reviewers for taking the time to share about their experience. The reviewer will note that you responded to their comments. This will encourage them to comment again in the future.

Stay Active on Social Media Platforms

Make sure your social media platforms are active and updated. Future customers and clients may come across your business and make a judgment. Aim to focus on popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

On your social media platforms, you can highlight your reviews between informational posts.

Something that a client said could encourage a new customer to seek out your services. By keeping your audience engaged online, you can increase your business’s presence.

Now You Know How to Get Positive Reviews

We hope you found this guide on positive reviews helpful. Train your employees to provide excellent service and invite customers to leave reviews.

Don’t forget to save our site. This way, you won’t miss any of our resources.

Exclude Yourself From Google Analytics Traffic

1. Go to your Analytics property admin > view > filters
2. Click add filter
3. Name it whatever you would like
4. Filter type > exclude
5. Select source or destination > traffic from ip address
6. Select > that are equal to
7. Enter you IP address. Google “My IP” if you don’t know how to look it up
8. Done!

Now your own traffic won’t appear on your site or your client’s site. This is great for making sure your traffic numbers aren’t bulked up by your own visits.

Exclude Robots from Google Analytics

1. Go to view > View Settings
2. Check the box under Bot Filtering: Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders

There you have it. Now, we can use the options that Google has built in to quickly filter some bogus traffic to your site. They didn’t have this option in the past, so it’s nice to see them finally implement it. I wish we could see a list or be able to modify if necessary, but I guess that’s what the custom excludes and filtering are for! I haven’t analyzed a site with heavy spam traffic to see the difference yet. If any of you have noticed a difference, let us know in the comments.

Website owners and content creators have this problem. They may get a lot of traffic, but they don’t know how to monetize it. Even if they know the tactics, they don’t know how to present their offer. They think their reputation will somehow be damaged if they are too aggressive in marketing. Before making any assumptions, let’s look at the facts. The lack of demand is the number one reason why 90% of businesses fail.

Entrepreneurs don’t fail because they offend clients, but because they don’t do enough to sell the product. Many people would like to hear about your service, but they don’t know you exist. That’s why digital marketing is crucial.

How much promotion is enough?

There are two ways to sell a product. You can present it to others or make your clients discover it. You can pursue your customers or attract them. Your sales strategy depends on the amount of traffic you get. The more trust you get with your followers, the more you can promote. Here are five ways to create brand awareness.

#1 Be aggressive with marketing

You will hear about dozens of tactics on the internet, but you don’t need to use all of them. In fact, only a few will bring the results you seek. At first, it’s better to try as many strategies as possible. The more data you collect, the better you will compare them later.

The 80/20 rule says that 20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results. Once you try enough marketing methods, you can filter and keep it simple. Remember that there is no right answer. Although it takes time, it will ensure you the most efficient marketing campaign. Soon you will have figured out an Accelerated Marketing Portfolio (AMP), a framework for smarter marketing campaigns, that is just right for you.

#2 Be product-centered

Imagine if you had a product that is ten times better than the competitor’s version. We assume your customer support is outstanding, people love the product, and it has no quality problems. Would people still buy from other sellers? No matter how saturated the market is, clients will work with the best brand. If you are good enough, customers will be excited and talk about you.

There are many tactics you can use to promote the brand. However, there’s nothing better than having others promoting it for free. The strategy is simple. Start advertising until you get enough traffic to launch. If you design the product well, the first followers will refer your product and encourage others to try it. If you disabled your ad campaigns from then on, the business would grow anyway.

#3 Use inbound marketing

What if you could attract clients instead of chasing them? Imagine the money you would save on advertising. Inbound marketing refers to all the techniques we use to turn followers into customers. We add value to educate the follower, increase our trust, and get conversions. Inbound divides into traffic and conversion tools. First, you could use SEO, web design, or social media for brand awareness. Once you have traffic, you can qualify it with email marketing and advertising. Advertising to followers is not the same as doing it with strangers. With inbound marketing, others will know about your brand and potentially buy from you in the next months.

#4 The 25/25/50 rule for social media

Social media apps give everyone the chance to get traffic for free. When it comes to content, we have to keep the level of interest of your future buyer. If you design your content to add value for free, it can increase your trust until you get your first clients. It’s also a mistake to give everything for free without asking for the sale. Money is a fair way to pay for your work, and your social media should let that be clear. Fifty percent of your posts should give others useful information, twenty-five percent for documenting, and twenty-five percent for selling.

#5 Rank a landing page

Your website is the first impression a visitor gets. It’s so critical that you may lose fifty percent of your visits if the page doesn’t load in three seconds. A working landing page depends on SEO, web design, and content marketing. Make sure that your message is direct so that anybody can understand it. Once you combine these five tactics, you will create brand awareness and boost conversions.

Not only do you want your business to show up, but you also want it to show up high, like on the first page of Google. 92% of searchers will choose businesses on the first page of their search results.

Making that happen is at the heart of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you’re asking, what is SEO, read on for a beginner’s guide to understanding the concept and why it’s important.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is a process designed to improve your company’s ranking or visibility in search results. When someone searches Google or Yahoo for “hiking boots”, you want your hiking boots company to show up on the first page of the results.

SEO is all about helping search engines understand your business and recognize it as a provider of reputable products and services.

Where to Start?

It sounds obvious, but to show up in online search results, your business needs to be online. So, start with a quality website. You can build one yourself or hire a web designer to do it for you.

Then What?

After you’ve created your website, you want to make it easy for the search engines to find it and rank it well. This process falls into two categories: on-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO involves all the technical parts of your website that you can control. You want to make sure it’s organized well with a menu that’s easily understood and used by your site visitors. People should be able to find your services and your contact information without a lot of effort.

Your site should load quickly, ideally within two or three seconds. You can find more information about the technical side of SEO on our blog.

Off-page SEO involves factors that you don’t have total control over. It can include things like links to your site from another one. It’s important because these back-links are one way that search engines recognize a site as an authority. The more authority a search engine is perceived, the higher the site will rank.

You can tackle these techniques yourself if you’re prepared to spend time reading articles or even taking online courses. You may decide to hire an SEO agency to handle it for you.

Content, Content, Content

Creating and optimizing content is the most effective way to improve your search results. You can do this in a number of ways, including writing a blog for your website.

Even Google says creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website ranking.  This happens when visitors view and engage with your content through your blog, your social media sites or your email newsletters. Visitors are more likely to share content that’s helpful, and shared content helps your search engine ranks.

Wrapping It Up

The most important thing to remember about SEO is that it takes time. It takes time to learn the science behind it, and it takes time for all your hard work to pay off. If you want to learn more about what is SEO, please check out these free resources.

Firstly, let’s look at the benefits of hiring a professional company.

Saves Your Time and Money

Hiring a professional company, rather than DIY will save you time and money in the long run. SEO companies will ensure your money is well spent and doing it correctly can even boost your business turnover.

Finds New Markets

SEO companies will have many ideas on how to improve your presence when you approach them with your objectives. This will include markets that you previously haven’t considered.

Increases Website Usability

A benefit of SEO includes a more user-friendly website. Websites that are easy to use will generate more sales or prospective customers.

Sounds good right? Continue reading to find out exactly what you should look for in a reliable SEO company.

1. SEO Strategies Based on Goals, Not Numbers

Business strategies based on long term goals rather than short term numbers will always have better market penetration.

You should approach an expert SEO company with your goals and exactly what you want to achieve from hiring them.

2. Client Education

A professional SEO agency will always ensure you know exactly what they are doing, why they are doing it and how it will benefit your company. If you have any queries, they should be answered within a reasonable time frame.

3. Doing What is Best for You

Doing what is best for you and doing what you want are 2 different things. If the company suggests an alternative path and explains why it is better, then you know they have your best interests at heart.

4. Case Studies and Work Examples

Reputable companies will always have other clients and case studies that are successful. These case studies should show real change and real results with that company’s online presence.

5. Measuring Success

What does the company offer you to measure the success of their SEO work? This could be weekly or monthly engagement reports. Defining a starting point and measuring change at regular intervals is the best way to determine success.

Find out what they consider a successful campaign and see if it matches with your goals.

The Best SEO Companies in Canada will ensure your success when undertaking an SEO campaign.

Ready to Hire a Professional SEO Company?

Improving your online presence can really boost your business. If you like what you’ve read then hiring a professional SEO company is right for you.

Improving your overall online presence should include a social media strategy too. Read up on good digital marketing agencies here.

Search Engine Optimization is a critical investment if you operate a website. That’s a fact. Without SEO, you’re lost in the endless search results.

You know this, everyone knows this.

The real topic is where to start with new website SEO. Not how to get an extra fraction of conversion or 10X — the basics. The actions you’ll take the moment after you signaled the site was good to launch.

Get ready; this will be a blitz of an SEO tutorial.

New Website SEO: A Checklist of the Most Important Ranking Factors

SEO is difficult when you’re having to go back and fix its problems. The effort you place in the early stages of optimization roll into all future efforts. You’ll build upon best practices versus mending broken issues.

Here are the absolute SEO essentials you need to do when launching:

Hardware & Code

The hardware powering your website matters. The code delivering your site files matter, too. Get both of these sorted and the site will perform to standards.

The main items include:

• Hosting — Pick and use the best hosting you can afford as site speed is a ranking factor. Likewise, get hosting that’s reliable, so your visitors can access its content. Last, choose a host with flexible features if you choose to upgrade or install add-ons.
• Code (Theme) — Develop or buy a mobile-friendly website theme. A mobile-friendly design adds to your SEO rankings since it’s accessible. You’ll also want to ensure your site code is compliant and error-free.
• Security — Get an SSL certificate, so your website is HTTPS compliant as this, too, is a ranking signal. Use security add-ons or scripts to lockdown site security. And, perform backups and scans, so the site isn’t knocked offline because of malware.

You’re welcome to scale these items as the site matures. A fast, reliable website will prevent Google from de-indexing its content. Plus, a great experience keeps users engaged — and incentivize engagement like sharing.

On-Page Factors

Get these right, and you’ll earn most of the SEO benefits:

• Titles — Include the primary keyword in the title but also make it engaging. Compare search results for the term and add CTA triggers. This can improve your clickthrough and search presence.
• Descriptions — Include primary and secondary keywords in the meta description. Likewise, give it a hook to make it engaging for search and social users.
• URL — Keep it short and sweet, with the primary keyword.
• Headings — Apply keywords in the page headings (H1 – H4, usually). Use the headings to break-up content, making it digestible, too.
• Alt Tags — Apply descriptions in the alt tags of your images, links, and other on-page items.

Important:

Use a combo of keywords related to the topics (i.e., LSI) on every page. The topical keyword selection refines the page, making it relevant in search.

Content Creation

Content deserves its own section because each new page introduces new rankable keywords. Whether it’s written, video, or anything between, you want regular content going up on the site.

Here’s what you do — in 5 steps:

1. Make a list of everything known about your offers and industry
2. Use keyword tools to discover the keywords for each topic created
3. Compare your topics to competitors and decide on a content format
4. Create the content, DIY or outsourced, and refine its structure
5. Publish content to the site and get it shared on social channels

The ideal scenario is creating a few new blog posts each month. The posts should aim for length as this gives you more keywords you could rank for.

Continue expanding topics and interlink them using relevant keywords. And, try new content formats (ex. video) depending on your community’s preference.

Usability

Account for visitors with disabilities or those who don’t speak your language. A website should be accessible to all if you want to maximize its reach.

• Structure — Keep the site “flow” simple by including navigation and interlinks on each page. Fix dead-end pages and use heatmaps and analytics to find roadblocks.
• Accommodation — Fill in alt descriptions for those who may use Web readers. Tweak the font size for easier reading and comprehension. This keeps users of all types engaged.
• Load Times — Get better hosting (as noted above) else remove anything bogging the site down. Ideally, you want the website loading within 1 to 2 seconds. Anything beyond a few seconds will have people leaving.

In all, you want the site experience engaging so people stick around. The longer they stay, the more they’ll get valuable information. This info will increase the chances fellow webmasters link to your resourceful pages.

The 80/20 of Search Engine Optimization

Too many website owners get wrapped up in “guru” speak. They’re quick to jump into a marketing strategy because it sounds great. Except, they never completed the strategy they had going before — wasting resources.

Jumping from strategy to strategy creates an endless loop of failure.

You’re in business so you know about the 80/20 rule. Apply it to your website development and marketing strategies. In doing so, you’ll max the strategies without getting hung-up on unimportant details.

For example — you could do the following for the 80/20:

• Completing all the on-page optimization for exiting pages
• Starting and maintaining a blog to get fresh content in search
• Removing underperforming pages while optimizing high ROI pages

SEO becomes a waiting game once you’ve covered the basics. In the meantime, learn more about SEO services you could tap to supplement growth efforts. And, refine the operations and do your best in providing a great service.

From the Basics to the Next-Level Strategies

You can do most new website SEO on your own by following tutorials. After, you can explore advanced SEO strategies…

…but this poses an interesting path:

• Option #1: Learn advance strategies and spend the time doing them
• Option #2: Pass the advanced work to vetted professionals

Those with plenty of free time should explore doing DIY SEO. Otherwise, hire an SEO agency if you rather spend time in business operations.

In the meantime — learn as much as you can about website optimization. See our site tutorials and tips while the SEO efforts mature.

With so many to choose from, how can you tell a good marketing agency from a mediocre one?

In this post, we’ll outline three things to look for when selecting a digital marketing agency. Read on to learn more!

1. They’re Dynamic

Like the right website design, a good marketing agency adapts to changing times.

Nothing in the digital world stays the same for long. Trends in social media and SEO marketing can change overnight. Keyword stuffing was a popular strategy years ago, but today it can get you blacklisted on Google.

The best marketing agencies track trends and always try to stay ahead of the curve. Rather than sticking with the same old process, they’re constantly updating their strategies based on the latest developments.

A good marketing agency also understands the ins and out of your business. They listen to your concerns and focus their campaigns around your goals.

Along with the idea of being dynamic, marketing agencies should also work fast to meet your needs. They should have a proven track record of meeting deadlines and delivering what you need on time.

2. They’re Focused on the Long-Term

Another sign of a great social media marketing company? They’re not focused solely on short-term results.

Campaigns are important–no doubt about that. They get the ball rolling and can bring in a lot of new leads in a short period of time.

But if a marketing agency uses only short-term campaigns, beware. Your results will be sporadic at best–lots of business during the campaigns, followed by slow periods in between.

A good marketing agency will focus on helping you build your brand’s reputation over time. This takes more than a few quick traffic hits from a PPC campaign. It involves building strategies (online and offline) to give your brand real value in the marketplace.

3. They’re Transparent

A final quality you should find in any reputable agency is full transparency.

Does the agency use “secret” methods in their campaign strategy? Do they hide raw data or only provide dashboards or limited reports for their clients?

These are sure signs that they’re amateurs (at best) or scammers (at worst).

A legitimate agency knows that sharing data–all data–is the best way to success. They’re happy to share source data with their clients. They’re eager to explain why they conduct their campaigns a certain way and have tangible results to show you.

Building a brand isn’t just a matter of hiring a marketing agency. It involves forming a partnership of open communication so you can work together to meet your business goals.

Ready to Hire a Good Digital Marketing Agency?

There’s no shortage of marketing agencies out there, but they’re not all created equal.

If you want to take your business to the next level, you’ve got to be choosy. Keep the above tips in mind and you’ll have no trouble identifying a great digital marketing agency.

Want to stay on top of the latest digital marketing trends? Click here for what’s hot in 2019.

With want ads to sift through and interviews to endure, a job search is a long process that can take months or even years.

But, before you ever submit an application or walk through the hiring manager’s door, you need a resume. A resume showcases your skills and experience. It lets employers know if you’re right for an interview–or the job.

One of the best ways to be found and selected for an interview right now is to get your resume online. Whether you’re posting your resume on your own website or a popular job finding platform like LinkedIn, it needs to be optimized for search.

How else will recruiters find you?

Keep reading for a closer look at how to write an SEO resume that will help you get the perfect gig.

Write a Killer Headline

Just like a blog post or article needs a great headline to be found, your resume needs a killer headline if you want to get noticed.

Open your resume with a headline that lets potential employers know who you are and what you’ve achieved in your previous positions.

Pick the Right Keywords for your SEO Resume

One of the most important aspects of SEO is keywords.

If you want your resume to be found on LinkedIn, for example, try to think like a recruiter.

What terms and keywords apply to your industry? And what variations of your job title might be used by a recruiter when searching for candidates?

Write out as many terms as you can, then try to work the most applicable ones into your resume naturally.

Add Relevant Links

Links are one of the most powerful components of SEO.

Part of their power is the credibility they lend to an article or web page.

If you can link directly to companies you’ve worked for or projects you’ve helped with, potential employers can see first-hand the quality of work you’ve been a part of.

If you’ve written any articles or blog posts related to your field, link to those too.

Ask for Help

If you’re worried that your resume doesn’t sound quite right or may include a few grammatical errors, it never hurts to get a second opinion.

Ask a friend or coworker to look over your resume and let you know what they think.

A resume writing pro may be even more helpful if you want to land the right job. Look for a top resume service that can help you build an effective resume. A resume that will land you the right job.

Your Turn

Writing an SEO resume that will help you find your next job takes time and effort. But, if you do it right, your resume could help you find your dream job.

Remember to optimize your resume for potential employers. Make it easy for them to find you and decide if you’re right for the job.

If you’re looking to expand your skill set–and improve your resume–check out our recent post on the best free digital marketing courses.

Social media and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. This works out well, seeing as they’re two of the most important things you can do to find success online. We’ll do a little explanation of how social media and SEO work together and what you should do to capitalize on the fact that they do.

Social Media and SEO

To understand how these two subjects work together to help one another, it’s important to get a little bit about how search engines work.

Google’s algorithm uses search factors that come together to let Google know how relevant a page is in relation to the keywords in a user search. Their goal is to make search engine results as relevant to user searches as possible.

The more you can optimize a page for search engines, the more traffic you will see because your site will rank at the top. People are wired to click one of the first few results on a results page, so getting to the top is of utmost importance.

There’s a lot of information contained with search engine optimization and social media. If you’re curious to know a few more specifics about social media and marketing, read more here.

Social Signals as Ranking Factors

Social signals here will refer to your pages and links that are presented to Google via your social media pages.

At one time, social signals were considered in the ranking factors of search engine algorithms. They are, however, not considered anymore.

While we don’t know exactly why they were taken out of the equation, it’s likely because so many links present on social media don’t really mean that much. Followers and subscribers are very important, but it’s also easier to fake thousands of followers now than it ever has been in the past.

In other words, some of the cold hard data present on social media platforms are hard to give an objective value. That said, social media still plays heavily into how well your organic SEO does.

That said, when they took social media out of the SEO ranking factors it was a pretty big hit to the professionals. That’s because things like Facebook likes and shares once played a huge part in how well a page ranked.

Why You Shouldn’t Rule Social Media Out

The objective of search engine optimization isn’t just to rank high in the results, it’s to get people to visit your website.

Optimizing for Google searches is definitely an excellent way to reach people when they’re interested in your product or service, but social media is a way to get people acquainted with your brand.

If you can cultivate a good number of followers on your social media sites and post regularly enough for those followers to become familiar with you, you’ll be the first brand that pops up in their heads when they need your product or service.

Beyond that, having links to your homepages and product pages is exactly the same as having them pop up on search engine results pages. You just have direct access to the users where they spend their time, and the link on your social media page is just as valuable as the one at the top of the Google results pages.

Use Social Media as an Arm of SEO

Keyword research, backlinking, and content creation are all huge elements of a traditional SEO platform. In order to rank for specific, popular keywords, you have to know which keywords are popular and create content that fits in well with them.

There’s a lot of information contained with search engine optimization and social media. If you’re curious to know a few more specifics about social media and marketing, read more here.

Content creation has to happen if you want to stay relevant, keep freshness, and continue generating traffic that moves down the pipeline toward your product pages to make conversions.

The hope is that if you gather the right elements, your content creation efforts will rank and be found by users in the search engine results pages. Social media can easily be used as a way to push your content out to your followers so they have immediate access to it.

Those followers are probably going to have a greater affinity toward your product than they would if they had stumbled upon your page in the search results, meaning you might get a purchase from them.

Your Content Can Spread

One thing that social media offers your SEO is the ability for it to get shared. If you consider social shares as opportunities similar to ranking well in search results, every time you get your content shared is a blessing.

That share will go onto the feeds of countless people who will potentially share it, opening it up to countless other people to do the same. Just because something only has, say, five shares, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been seen by hundreds of people.

That’s the beauty of boosting your social media presence. You have the opportunity to get people acquainted with your brand and present your content and product information directly to those people.

Further, those people can then spread your brand and product out to the rest of the world.

Social Media Moves Back to Traditional SEO

Finally, your social media efforts will come full circle when you have enough of a following.

Page views and backlinks will skyrocket when your content is pushed through your social media. As people start to look at the content you’re creating and follow links back to product pages, those people will start to suggest your brand in their own content.

If they like you, they might pop a link to your site in their blog post. That will happen more and more, eventually boosting your pages to the top of search results pages.

Need Strategy?

Social media and SEO work together and are incredibly important individually. It’s essential that you think through your digital marketing platforms and set yourself up to have visibility online.

Visit our site to learn more about how you can start seeing the results you’re looking for!

As market trends change, you should adopt different types of marketing strategies. But which ones can best fit your business?

With growth-oriented marketing strategies, your company can be a success. Explained below are 15 techniques you can implement to market your business.

1. Paid Media Advertising as One of the Types of Marketing

Paid media ads offer you a practical solution to growing your business.

To launch the ads, you’ll require some capital. Such a strategy will translate to a significant ROI if properly executed.

Paid media ads include print ads, TV and radio commercial or paid social media posts. Before using this technique, set realistic goals for the performance of the ads.

Track the progress of ads you launched. If one form of paid media advertising fails, try a new one.

2. Word-Of-Mouth Advertising

People no longer need to speak face to face for this marketing technique to work. A client mentioning your product on a blog or social media post can help market your business.

Review sites can also help get the word out to potential customers. The reviews on these sites have to be positive for them to advertise your company.

3. Affinity Marketing and Co-Branding

Affinity marketing is among the marketing strategies that help you compete healthily.

The chances are that you share an audience with another business that sells products similar to yours.

With co-branding, you’ll partner with enterprises that share your interests and audiences. Since the enterprises aren’t your direct competitors, they won’t make loses from the deal.

Co-branding allows two ventures to gain access to each other’s audiences.

You may even co-develop products and sell them together. Such a technique helps you attract consumers and increase your sales revenue.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to attract more customers.

Adopt this strategy by letting other people or ventures (affiliates) to market your business. Give them a commission for every sale they make for your company.

Consider offering each affiliate unique URLs to your product pages.

The links help you register sales to a specific affiliate as they make and earn commissions. You’ll get to drive sales and attract new audiences.

5. Cause Marketing

Nonprofit organizations currently partner with business to further their marketing strategies. Such a partnership allows your enterprise to motivate customers to donate to their communities.

Through cause marketing, you can link your company to a cause. Your cause can focus on giving clothes to homeless people or fighting a particular disease.

Cause marketing helps you reach consumers who care about personal values.

Choose a cause that represents or matches your brand. Your employees should be ready to support it too.

Visit the site to learn more about this marketing technique.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is among the marketing techniques that allow you to use keywords to market your products. You have various keyword options to choose when using this strategy.

Focus on those that are relevant to search engines and your targeted audiences. Use latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords since they are a derivative of your primary keyword.

Search engines usually crawl through your site looking for new information. Consider updating your web pages with valuable content for them to rank well on search engines.

Incorporate both primary and LSI keywords in your blogs and product descriptions.

7. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Such a strategy helps you market content you expect to appear on search engines. SEM guarantees a higher ROI than SEO.

Use SEM as a means to get your content to the top positions on search engine results. To use this technique, optimize your site’s images and meta tags.

SEM is a form of paid advertising meant to increase online conversion rates. Your target audience includes people who rely on search engines to find products.

SEM providers expect you to bid for specific keywords. Your choice of keywords varies with your industry and products or services.

8. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is among the different types of marketing that rely on the Internet.

Value-rich posts on your social media pages help drive traffic to your product pages. Use social media platforms to foster brand awareness. Rely on them to attract loyal audiences too.

Develop a schedule for posting on social media. Take time editing and reviewing the content you want to display.

Incorporate videos, images, hashtags, and links in the posts to make them more engaging.

9. Direct Selling

Direct selling allows you to meet with clients outside your business premises. For it to work, be tactful as you convince the clients to buy your offerings.

Your sales staff should have outgoing personalities for them to engage with customers easily. The goal here is to make sales by getting customers excited about your products.

As your employees meet customers in person, your brand’s reputation may improve.

Ask them to discuss the possible impacts your services or products have on customers’ lives. They may even approach large gatherings of people to sell the items.

10. Contest Marketing

Contest marketing is one of the types of marketing strategies that require creativity.

You have to launch the right contests for people to participate. Use platforms such as social media to run the competitions. Consider setting awards or prices to appreciate the winners.

Such a technique helps increase traffic and conversion rates on your site. For instance, you may give the participants a free eBook after they complete a particular task.

Your contests should relate to your products and the targeted audience.

11. Employee Marketing

Your employees can be your brand ambassadors or potential customers.

Your company may give them discounts to use on certain services or products. They may talk about or share discounts with their friends or family members. If the deals are great, you’ll have other consumers seeking your offerings.

Employee marketing enables you to keep your workers motivated.

Use this technique to make your employees part of your company’s growth. They’ll be more willing to support your business and help it attain its desired goals.

12. B2B (Business-To-Business) Marketing

B2B marketing is a strategy that allows you to inform other businesses about your offerings. The technique may work if a company is making solutions suited to other firms.

Use professional language in your campaigns for your enterprise to sound credible.

You may employ the marketing techniques discussed in this guide in your B2B marketing strategy.

Take time learning the inner workings of companies you’re targeting. Know their decision makers and policy makers. Identify the problems they may be facing and market solutions that can solve them.

Contact representatives from these ventures regularly once they show interest in your products.

13. Storytelling

Through the art of storytelling, your business can capture the attention of potential customers.

Your narrations should have points of conflicts supported by strong characters. The story doesn’t have to be a feature film or novel for it to be captivating. Make it as short as one paragraph or one page.

Storytelling is among the few marketing techniques with an emotional impact. You can tell your audience about your company’s success story. You may narrate about one of your employees or customers’ experiences too.

Customers are likely to transact with your business if they can relate to your narration.

14. Networking Events

Networking events allow you to meet consumers in the real world. They give you an ideal platform for interacting with consumers who enjoy your online services.

Look for networking opportunities that are relevant to your niche and industry. Use social media and search engines to learn about upcoming events.

Consider attending networking events that are nearer to your place of business. Carry plenty of brochures and other materials that give an overview of your offerings.

When asked to speak, keep your speeches short and concise. Find creative ways of helping people before selling them an item.

15. Guest Posting

Guest posting is among the types of marketing strategies targeted to blog readers. Such a technique allows you to create content (a guest post) for another site.

You get to increase traffic on someone else’s blog with your guest post.
Your site’s traffic might increase too if you included a call to action (CTA) segment on the article.

In your CTA, request the readers to visit your product page or site. Including a link to your product page or “contact us” page may work too.

Guest posting allows you to attract new audiences from someone else’s platform.

Adopt Different Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business Today

With knowledge of the various types of marketing techniques, choose one or more for your brand. Ensure that they resonate with your employees and audience. Use them to replace current strategies that seem ineffective.

Consider combining multiple marketing strategies for your enterprise to grow.

We’ve published lots of valuable content on how to grow your business through marketing. Check out this article on why content is king for SEO.

Looking for the best digital marketing ideas?

Creating a great digital marketing plan is essential for having a thriving business in the modern age. There are plenty of tried-and-true digital marketing techniques that have been around for a while now. However, 2019 is also bringing a lot of new and innovative trends that promise to be effective for modern businesses.

Below we’ll look at the top 5 digital marketing trends that you need to consider using in 2019.

1. Add a Chatbot to Your Website

If providing customer service is important to you then chatbots are one type of digital marketing tool that you’ll want to consider using in 2019.

AI chatbots can easily be placed on sites of all kinds to automatically help customers find what they’re looking for and answer common questions. They’ll be able to chat with customers in a natural way through an instant messenger.

While your support team may not be around 24/7, a chatbot can be. Because of this they can be a great help for marketing products and offering support. A chatbot will also help lead customers to what they’re looking for and even help them make a purchase.

2. Optimize for Voice Search

As part of your 2019 digital marketing strategy, you’ll also want to spend some time improving SEO for voice search.

With the rise of AI devices such as the Amazon Alexa and other smart speakers, voice search is becoming very popular. Because of this, it’s important to optimize your website and blog content accordingly and make sure that voice searchers will be able to find it.

For example, SEO for voice search will include creating content that is more question-oriented content and conversational and that mirrors the way people speak when searching with their voices.

3. Try SMS Marketing

While it’s often overlooked by businesses, SMS marketing is also a great tool to use in a digital marketing strategy.

People use their mobile devices more than ever before, and because of this, mobile marketing tactics including SMS marketing can be highly beneficial for connecting with customers. SMS marketing gives businesses a more casual avenue to keep in touch that is more personal than an email would be.

Setting up a smart and automated campaign for SMS marketing can be tricky, but it can be done. You may want to check out some sms marketing services if you think this digital marketing technique may be right for you.

4. Start Streaming

Another great idea to add to your digital marketing plan is to start using live video streaming.

Live video is becoming very popular for marketing and these days many businesses are using webinars and live streaming events on Facebook, Youtube, and other platforms to connect with customers and sell products. While normal video content can be helpful for marketing, a live streaming event can be even more effective and can seem more exciting and authentic to customers.

Additionally, focusing on live video is great for businesses as well. Live streaming video is cheaper to create than a fully produced marketing video.

5. Create VR Content

In addition to streaming video, virtual reality is also on the rise and has the potential to be very useful for marketers. Virtual reality offers a few different possibilities for businesses and brands to connect with customers and can allow people to see a product or have experiences in a very immersive way.

For a travel business, for example, virtual reality video could help a customer “see” firsthand what a destination is like and get them excited about taking a trip. However, the possibilities don’t stop there. Other businesses of all kinds will find ways to use virtual reality to promote goods and services in 2019 as well.

Using These Digital Marketing Ideas in 2019

By using the digital marketing ideas above you’ll be able to stay ahead of the competition and market your services and goods like an expert. Make sure you consider incorporating some of these techniques and strategies into your plan in 2019.

Are you making some big mistakes with your digital marketing strategy? Click here to learn about the top digital marketing mistakes you need to avoid.

Research shows that 96% of lawyers who participated in a study reported using social media. The most used LinkedIn and Facebook at 84% and 80%, respectively, while 59% used Twitter.

Simply put, if you’re not active on social media, you may soon fall behind your competition. Of course, it’s not enough to simply be on social media — you also need to stay up to date on it.

In light of the above, here’s a rundown on what’s new in social media for lawyers this year.

Let’s get started!

Facebook

Facebook’s algorithms are increasingly making it hard for companies, including law firms, to market themselves without paying a lot for this.

In other words, it’s difficult to generate posts in a manner that will give you the visibility necessary to draw prospects.

Still, some of the platform’s services related to paid advertising are extremely powerful and effective for attorneys in 2019.

In addition, you can still use Facebook this year to keep yourself in front of your colleagues and clients. By sharing posts about a continuing education course you’re teaching or a conference you’re attending, you paint yourself as an active and interesting person with whom people wouldn’t mind working.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another essential social media platform for attorneys, especially for business lawyers.

Considering that LinkedIn is so powerfully optimized in 2019, you can expect your law firm to be ranked high when someone searches for you online. So, it’s important that your LinkedIn page is carefully crafted.

LinkedIn is particularly valuable for lawyers who have business-to-business practices, or even for anyone who works as an appearance attorney on call. If you’re trying to network with other lawyers, LinkedIn is the marketing platform for you this year.

Twitter

Twitter has doubled its character limit for an individual post to 280 characters. This is now allowing for more detail in your posts, which you can use to your advantage.

In addition, in 2019, Twitter is allowing you to embed more videos — which includes live streams — images and articles than before.

What does all of this mean for you now? It means that Twitter messages no longer have to feel limiting. Your posts can be extremely effective if you have a strong following coupled with great hashtags.

How We Can Help with Social Media for Lawyers

In addition to providing the latest advice regarding social media for lawyers, we offer a wide range of search engine optimization, or SEO, tips for business owners in general.

For example, we explain what SEO means for local companies and the importance in 2019. We also offer advice for hiring SEO professionals.

In addition, you can find out through our site if your clients’ online reviews impact your SEO efforts.

Take a peek here to find out more about how you can use SEO and social media to draw more clients and thus strengthen your bottom line in 2019.

Your website content doesn’t just function to engage your readers. It’s part of the complex algorithms which underly SEO.

Snatching organic traffic by rising through the SERPs is the end goal of anyone who’s engaged in search engine optimization. Your content is the place where it all begins.

If you’re wondering how your content affects SEO then you’re in the right place. Read on and we’ll show you why you shouldn’t be just creating good content… you should be creating great content.

1. On-Page SEO

Your on-page SEO is determined by your content for the most part.

There are some other minor things which aren’t directly related to the post or page you’re trying to rank and could be considered on-page techniques. These include meta descriptions, site speed, and website architecture.

The content on the page, the keywords included, and the length of the content is all important. Without good content, you’re simply not going to be able to rank.

Good content is about more than just pleasing the crawlers, however, SEO specialists are engaged in a constant tug-of-war with Google’s algorithms. SEO experts want to rank, while Google wants to provide the best user experience possible.

If you’re in the dark on this you can try a free website grader tool to help figure out what changes you’ll need to make.

2. Increasing Your CTR

Your click-through rate is an important part of your overall SEO strategy. It signals that users are interested in your page and hanging around to keep getting more information.

By increasing your CTR you’re also increasing the overall SEO power that your website holds and helping yourself up in the search rankings.

3. Increased User Engagement

Great content increases people engaging with your content.

This takes a ton of different forms. Your social media pages will get more shares, people will generally be talking about your business, and your articles and pages will make the rounds more quickly.

Social media engagement may not directly affect your SEO power but just getting your page out there will help to bring in more traffic.

SEO focuses on the search rankings but thanks to the emphasis Google places on the end user’s experience you’ll quickly find out that a successful SEO campaign will get people talking about your business and not just visiting. 

4. Organic Backlinks

Backlinks are the foundation of off-page SEO. While many people start with Web 2.0s or PBNs when they’re initially gathering links those grey hat methods will only get you so far.

If you’re able to produce the best piece of content possible for a specific subject then chances are other people in your niche will be linking to you as a reference.

Without these organic links, your page is doomed to either be a grey-hat project or just go without enough traffic to turn a profit.

Your Website Content Matters

Website content isn’t the end-all, be-all of SEO but it forms the essential structural foundation on which you build the rest of your campaign.

It’s important to focus on making your content as awesome as possible, especially for those who are in high-competition niches. If you can provide value to your readers then you’re in taking a step in the right direction.

Looking to make your traffic soar by conquering the SERPs? Check out our blog and learn more than ever!

For many individuals and businesses, this is not a “what if.” Instead, it’s an annoying reality.

If this describes you, then the answer to your problem may be custom web design. However, many people don’t know much about what custom design is and why it works so well.

Keep reading to learn more about how a custom design can transform your website!

What Is Custom Web Design?

We’ve prepared a solid guide to the benefits of custom web design. However, we need to first define exactly what “custom web design” means.

Most people and businesses build websites with a template or website builder. This has some obvious advantages: it’s cheap, easy, and fast.

However, cookie-cutter websites tend to look a bit generic. And once you’ve seen one site using a certain template, you’ve seen them all.

Custom web design is truly “custom.” It means that you or a professional have built everything from the ground up.

Wondering why you would do this? Keep reading to learn more about the awesome custom design benefits!

The “Wow” Factor

We hinted at this earlier, but let’s just say it: websites built with templates are boring.

Imagine if thousands of books had the same cover and the same chapter layout. How many of these books would you want to read? After all, none of them look like they are doing anything new.

Web design is like that, too. Sure, you can whip something up in WordPress in minutes. But it’s going to look like something you only spent a few minutes on.

With custom web development, you can get a site that has a true “wow” factor. And in a crowded field of competitors who all look the same, your site will truly stand out to your audience.

It’s “Just Right”

Another problem with using web design templates is finding what is right for you. Some templates are going to have too many images, for instance, and some will have too few.

The hard part, then, is finding a template that is “just right” for your particular needs. And many people may never find that template at all!

With custom design, you get exactly what you want on every page. Think of this as a time-saver. Why spend weeks or months finding what’s “just right” when you could have someone bring your dream site to life?

Conversion-Centric

The best websites don’t just look good. Instead, the best sites are maximized for conversion.

This means guiding visitors in a specific way. The ultimate goal is that these visitors will become customers after coming to your site.

With cookie-cutter templates, the site is not designed for conversion. That means you may be losing out on potential customers left and right!

Custom web development helps you design the entire site with customer conversion in mind. By focusing on user experience, you will end up with a website that is far better than any template.

Faster Loading

If you use website templates, you may not know much about coding. But trust us: the coding for a website is very important.

With templates, you are getting code that has been copied again and again. It may be old and clunky code; in rare cases, it may lead to strange errors that you cannot fix.

With custom design, you start fresh with a clean code. Not only does this avoid those problems, but it may help the website load even faster.

This is important because load times can really make or break a website. And by reducing load times, you’ll reduce your “bounce rate” and keep more customers on your site for a longer time.

Easier to Find

What if you build an amazing website and no one can find it? In that case, you probably have bad SEO.

Most website builders don’t make it easy to tweak the SEO of your site. And in some cases, the templates may have no SEO support at all.

Without good SEO, your website will stay at the bottom of Google’s search results. And that means you may as well be invisible.

With custom design, you have full control over the SEO of your site. This can help bring in more traffic, boost conversions, and increase buzz over your company and product.

Room to Grow

Every small business dreams of no longer being small. In short, these businesses want to grow and expand.

As your business grows, you’ll need to expand your website. And if you’ve been using templates, this is where you run into a pretty big problem.

Most templates were not built with expansion in mind. So when you end up expanding the site, it looks like a Frankenstein mix of different parts.

With a professional design, you can actually go ahead and plan for future sections of your website. And when those sections go live, everything will look and flow very organically.

Easy Support

The best thing about using templates is that you can do everything on your own. But what if that ended up being the worst thing as well?

If something goes wrong with a template-built website, there is usually no one to turn to. That means you must spend hours Googling solutions and trying to fix the problem yourself.

With custom web design, you have most likely hired a professional designer to build everything for you. That means if you encounter any problems, it’s easy to reach out and get them resolved.

Honestly, simply having easy access to your designer is a real game-changer. It means you can make immediate patches and additions to your site without having to make your customers wait!

The Bottom Line

Now you know more about custom web design. But do you know who can help you learn even more?

At Social Media & SEO, we bring you the very latest tips and tricks to making your website more successful. To see how we can continue your professional transformation, check out our website design articles today!

So, the question isn’t can they have an impact? The question is what steps do I need to take in order for them to have an impact?

You’re in luck. That’s what this short article is all about—the use of visual images to improve your SEO. So, get out your website and a sharp chisel. We’re about to take your pages to a whole new level.

Read on.

How Search Engines Evaluate Your Visual Images

Search engines don’t rank your images. Not yet anyway. Technology now exists that can match things in your images to other images on the internet. That same technology can guide you to the proper online store to buy a rug that you spotted on Pinterest.

What it can’t do is tell whether an image is breathtakingly lovely or undeniably rancid. That decision is left for humans alone.

How images affect search engines is twofold. First, they look at the words around the image and in the image’s metadata. This information tells them whether your image is related to a given search query.

The closer it matches the query, the higher your page is ranked for that given query.

The other way your pictures, videos, and infographics affect your SEO is through indirect metrics.

For instance, if your image files are huge, they’ll take a long time to load on mobile devices. This leads to a lot of page bounces which decreases your page rank score. Gorgeous photos, however, will increase the time visitors spend on your page, increasing your page rank.

Start with Alt-Image Tags

If your thinking about using images to create a successful business website, start with the alt tags. These tags are hidden in the HTML code. They tell the search engine what the image is and why it matters.

Use this dedicated are to support the focus of your page. If your page is about dog health, and you include a photo of a labradoodle. Appropriate alt text may say something like Curly, the 5-month-old labradoodle with cancer.

Note: If you don’t know how to adjust the alt text on your images, you can use a free plugin. Our favorite is Yoast SEO plugin. Also, readers love people images. Be sure to include some.

Create Gorgeous Graphics

The more visitors like your graphics, the longer they’re likely to stay on your site. This metric is called dwell time. It’s used by search engines to assess your site’s value to visitors.

One way to improve it is to create stunning images. And yes, manufacturing them is completely appropriate and often preferable.

So, brush off your Photoshop skills, open Poster Creator, and get to work. It’s time to craft something inspiring.

Choose Appropriate Image Sizes

Smaller files load faster and reduce bounce rates. The inverse is also true. If you want to improve your SEO, balance your picture quality with its size. Remember, you’re shooting for optimizing your site for mobile devices.

What’s Next?

Once you dial in your visual images, check your other SEO. Two of the largest SEO trends of 2019 include local SEO and voice search SEO. Make sure to include both types in your current site to ramp up your page rank.

If you found this information valuable, pop over to our vast library full of similar web design and web development articles.

So long and good luck!

1. Website Design and Development

Your website will be the heart of this entire operation. Even if you already have a website, you may want to consider a website rebuild. The right SEO service provider will make your website their top priority. It is their job to analyze everything from the format of your website to load time, your site map, PR ranking, metadata, landing pages, site links, and more. If your website is not running correctly, you will be wasting money on every other aspect of your SEO campaign, so remember to take your company’s analysis seriously. This should be step one of your relationship with your SEO company. If anything feels weird here, don’t hesitate to look elsewhere at this point because it’s still early.

2. Keyword Targeting

Next, your SEO firm should be using the Keyword Planner in order to determine which local and general search terms best suit your business. Keywords will determine targeted website copy, blogs, landing pages, pay per click ad copy, social media posts, and more so this is also crucial. In fact, you should consider keyword targeting a critical element when comparing SEO service providers. Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion, or even suggest keywords you know are crucial in converting sales for your business.

3. Meta Data

Metadata is the first thing a search engine sees. This will also be the title and description people see on the first or second page of their search results. Titles should be clear and concise and include whatever keyword you are trying to target on that page. Descriptions should never exceed 160 characters otherwise this will both badly impact your rankings, and read poorly to potential clients decreasing your click-through rate.

4. Landing Pages

The right SEO firm will write and generate specific landing pages to target your most popular keywords and services. These landing pages can later be used for link building and pay per click ads. You want potential consumers to land on pages catering toward the exact service they need. This will lower your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate helping you reach your goal.

5. Backlinking

Once your website is good to go, your SEO team is truly ready to get to work. Link building includes internal blogs, guest blogging on high PR websites, press releases, social media shares, and more. This is how people will stumble upon your website without directly looking for it.

6. Blogs

Every week your website should be posting a new blog. The beauty is this can be scheduled. Most SEO firms will prepare 5 to 10 blogs in advance for your approval. Blogs will be keyword targeted and relevant to trending topics in your industry. They will also be shared as part of your social media campaign.

7. Social Media

At one point in time social media was the intern’s job, now it pays a significant annual salary. Why? Social media is now the main way many companies communicate directly with the end consumer. It’s also the voice of your brand. Sure, your website informs your potential customer, but it does not allow them to get to know you. Your social media presence should bring personality to your brand, and it should also be a place where customer service needs are met. Phone calls are going away, and user concerns are now being portrayed via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Remember to have an employee at your business regularly monitoring these accounts so you don’t lose business because you accidentally missed a purchaser’s problems.

8. Video Creation

Lastly, video is more important than ever. In fact, you may find your videos both ranking and going viral over any other content you produce. You’ll want to choose an SEO firm that has an in-house video team since you will certainly need this feature to rank online. If you already have the content you need, your SEO firm can format your YouTube page so your videos are targeted to rank quicker and higher.

It is never too late to jump into the giant online world of SEO. Consider these eight elements when comparing SEO firms, and you will be sure to make the right decision. Happy searching!

As an entrepreneur, these stats tell you one thing: online reviews can make or break your business. While positive reviews will improve your search engine ranking and keep sending customers to your business, negative reviews will do the exact opposite.

If your business has already racked up bad reviews, you need to act before it’s too late. Keep reading to learn how to deal with bad reviews and protect your business’ reputation.

Engage Review Monitoring Tools

There are many business rating and review platforms: Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Glassdoor, Google Reviews, Facebook, just to name a few.

Your customers, employees (Smart Circle reviews on Indeed is a good example of workers airing their experiences), and literally anyone who knows your business can leave a review on any of these platforms. If you’re not paying attention, bad reviews can pile up unnoticed and gradually harm your business.

This is why you need to deploy a review monitoring tool. It’ll track mentions of your business on the web and let you know when someone has left a review. You can then take the necessary remediation step.

Issue a Quick Response

Online, especially on social networks, a small comment can quickly go viral. If the comment has a negative message about your product or business, your brand can suffer irreparable damage.

It’s for this reason you need to issue quick responses to bad reviews. Although about 52 percent of customers expect a business to respond to a negative review within a week, don’t take that long. Ideally, you should respond on the same day somebody posts a bad review.

If the platform allows you to post a response, take the opportunity to reach out to the reviewer and offer an appropriate explanation. This shows that you care about your customers and are willing to make things right.

That said, not all reviews warrant a quick reply. Some reviews might need you to investigate and gather facts before issuing a response.

Hire an Online Reputation Management Agency

As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate. You probably no time to monitor your business’ online reviews and deal with the negative ones. And if time isn’t a problem, you might not have the expertise to put out the fires without creating new ones.

Here is where an online reputation management agency comes in handy.

Sure, it’ll cost you money to outsource the task, but you’ll rest assured knowing your business’ reputation is in the hands of the experts.

Plus, the return on investment is worth it. An agency will work to ensure your business attains a positive reputation, which is crucial for customer attraction and retention. Ultimately, you’ll make more sales and increase your profits.

Don’t Let Bad Reviews Get in the Way

Earning reviews is a necessary part of doing business in the digital age. However, bad reviews can hurt your brand and get in the way of customers who want to do business with you.

The good news is you can deal with them and mitigate their consequences, and we’ve just taught you how to pull it off.

Stay high on alert and don’t forget to explore our site for more SEO and social media insights.

Technology is evolving faster and faster every year. This means that new types of jobs will become available to keep up with these ever-changing needs. Are you savvy enough to work in this high tech world?

Education can be very expensive but without it, you may not be qualified for new digital marketing jobs. However, you don’t need to take out a huge loan to go back to school. There are a bunch of digital marketing classes you can take online for free!

These courses are quick, easy to digest seminars that will empower you to enter the digital marketing sector with confidence. 

There are many websites that offer great digital marketing tips. Those are great ways to keep up with the latest trends. But what if you’re entering this world as a total novice?

Reading tips online is great. But if you want something more official, consider learning from these online digital marketing courses.

1. Alison Free Diploma in E-Business

This is one of the first massive online open courses or MOOCs. Started in 2007 by Mike Feerick, Alison now boats six million users. They host certified online courses for the amazing price of zero dollars.

Alison offers a variety of courses that specialize in things like search engine analytics, digital measurement, and much more. And if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, they can even help you become a coder.

Give yourself and your checkbook a break. Go back to school from home for free!

2. SEO Training Course by Moz

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is probably the most important skill a digital marketer can possess today. There are many tricks of the trade that can’t be self-taught. You need an expert to show you the ropes.

The SEO Training Course by Moz is the perfect course for all SEO rookies. Over 150,000 students have taken Rand Fishkin’s three and a half hour video seminar. After getting through the lecture you actually receive certification in SEO education. 

For less than half a day and no money, you can get on your way to mastering SEO. 

3. Inbound Digital Marketing Course Plus Official Certification

Here’s another great course offing certification without any tuition. The Inbound Digital Marketing Course Plus Official Certification is available on HubSpot Academy. There are currently over 3,000 students enrolled in the free courses at HubSpot.

This four and a half hour lecture covers all the basics of digital marketing. From conversation optimization to email marketing, no digital rock will be left unturned. 

Hopefully, you pay close attention to all the details. The end of the course you need to pass an exam to receive your certification.

The studying will be well worth it!

If you pass this exam you will receive a digital badge you can add to your résumé and LinkedIn profile. Potential employers will love to see you are coming to the table with quantifiable digital marketing skills.  

4. Twitter Flight School

Twitter is not just a place for people to argue online. It’s also one of the key tools for modern digital marketing. Like the bird logo for Twitter, this class will help you spread your wings and fly in the digital space. 

This “Flight School” is a great way to get savvy about how to make Twitter work for you. It features a bunch of short lessons that all add up to under two hours.

This is one digital marketing course you’ll want to retweet.

5. Google Online Marketing Challenge

Some people need to have a fire lit under them to do something new. That’s why the Google Online Marketing Challenge is a very effective digital marketing course. Not only does it feature comprehensive lessons, but you can also win prizes!

Google gives all its students $250 in AdWords dollars to test out their own advertising campaign. You’ll compete against other learners over a three week period of time to see whose campaign is the most successful.

If you’re the competitive type, this is the perfect course for you. Not only will you learn a lot, but you’ll get real-world experience as well. Plus, you may even win a prize! 

6.  How To Use Instagram Stories for Business

The best way to get marketing content out to young people today is through Instagram stories. Even more so than TV, young people are watching these stories all day long. As a burgeoning digital marker, it’s important to know how to harness this power.

‘Later’ is an app that can be used to schedule Instagram posts and stories throughout the day. It features courses to help you use the app to your advantage. The best one for Insta newbies is ‘How To Use Instagram Stories For Business’.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to execute a successful story campaign. Plus, there are authentic testimonials from influencers who’ve grown their brand through Instagram stories.

7. Social Marketing Education 2018

To fill in any gaps in your social media marketing education, you need to take this course at Hootsuite. With 97 videos accompanied by 27 quizzes, this is one of the most intensive free courses on the web.

This extensive syllabus walks you through all the steps it takes to form an all-out social media blitz. You’ll learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram in concert to deliver cohesive branding messaging.

After getting through this course you will be totally ready for the digital marketing world.

Check Out These Free Digital Marketing Courses 

Don’t enter the modern day job force unprepared. Take one of these free digital marketing courses today!

The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to never stop learning. For more great how-to tech articles click here. 

It shows that three in every four people who use their phones for a local search are ready to buy. All they need is somewhere to buy from.

If your business isn’t showing up high in the search engine rankings, then you could be missing out on a huge amount of business. And the best way to get your business up the rankings is to get your local SEO right.

Read on as we take a look at 11 local SEO solutions that can help to grow your bricks-and-mortar business.

1. Keyword Research

Stuffing your content with local keywords you’ve picked off the top of your head isn’t going to cut it.

Rather than guessing what users in your location might be searching for, do some research. There is a huge amount of data that can help you choose keywords that users search for. Use that information to your advantage.

Remember that a keyword that gets a ton of volume isn’t necessarily the best choice. If there’s a lot of competition from other sites, then you’re unlikely to see any significant improvement in your rankings. Instead, try to find the sweet spot of keywords that are fairly popular without having too much competition.

2. Get Local Backlinks

Link building is a huge part of SEO.

But when it comes to local SEO, having strong backlinks to sites on the other side of the world isn’t really going to do much for you. Instead, try and build as many backlinks to local sites and companies as you can. 

This is far more likely to help when users are searching for local businesses.

3. Use Your Positive Reviews

Positive reviews aren’t just a great way to build confidence in your business.

They’re also something that search engines will use to determine whether or not your business is a good one. And one or two reviews aren’t going to cut it either; having good reviews from only a small number of customers isn’t likely to instill much confidence.

Try using social media to promote your positive reviews whenever you receive them. 

4. Sign up to Local Directories

Not everyone looking for a local business will use a search engine directly.

Make sure that your business is listed on all of the prominent online directories. Sites such as Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages and Angie’s List are all regularly used by potential customers looking for local businesses. The more you sign up to, the bigger your chances of being discovered.

If anything changes, such as adding additional locations, make sure you update all of your listings. You can find more information about acquiring temporary buildings for your business.  

5. NAP

When submitting to these listings, make sure that your NAP information is submitted in exactly the same way. 

NAP stands for name, address, and phone number. This has to be submitted exactly the same for every site. That means you shouldn’t use the word avenue in one listing, and an abbreviation in another. 

If your listings aren’t identical, you’ll actually be competing with yourself in the search results. 

6. Google My Business

If you don’t already have a Google My Business listing, get one now.

These are the business listing blocks that you’ll find in Google search results. Signing up to the free listing means that if users search for your business, it will come up with the same look and feel as if they’d searched for their local Starbucks or Apple store. It gives your business an appearance of quality and trustworthiness.

Make sure that your NAP information is exactly the same for this listing too.

7. Optimize Your Site for Mobile

As we already learned, people using mobile local search are ready to buy.

So if your website doesn’t work well on mobile, you’re very likely to make potential customers look elsewhere. The best solutions are either to have a dedicated mobile version of your site or to opt for a responsive web site. Make sure to test it on as many devices as possible.

Having a site the works well for mobile will also help your position in local search.

8. Produce Quality Blog Content

The backbone of any SEO campaign is blog content.

But it’s not enough to churn out a few hundred words stuffed with keywords. Your blog content needs to be useful, and it needs to be high-quality. If potential customers are drawn to your site via a well-optimized blog post, they’re not going to hang around for long is the content is awful.

It’s also important to keep producing fresh content as this will affect your rankings.

9. Target Your Writing for a Local Audience

If you want local people to read your content, then aim it towards a local audience. 

Blog posts that are genuinely useful to your local community will make your site, and your business more popular. Find out what interests customers in your area have, and write content aimed at them. 

If you find a niche that works, then you’ll set yourself apart from the competition.

10. Optimize Your Product Lists

When sites are being crawled by search engines, they will search through things such as menus and listings of products or services.

So make sure that you optimize these for local search too. Including the right keywords in these pages means that your product list or menu might start ranking in its own right. And it will also boost your overall SEO.

11. Include a Map 

Remember that 76% of users?

They’ve done a local search. They’re ready to buy today. They just need somewhere to do so.

So make sure that they can actually find you. Embedding a Google map for your business into your website means that not only can the see where you are, but they can also get directions from their current location.

Then there’s nothing to stop them from becoming your next customer.

Have These Local SEO Solutions Been Useful?

If you’ve found these local SEO solutions useful then you’re in the right place.

Our site is packed full of useful articles all about the world of social media and SEO. We cover news and information on everything from expanding technology, gadgets, and mobile devices, to the latest developments in the SEO world. We also try to help business owners leverage the internet and social media more effectively.

Feel free to take a look around.

In order to do that, it’s important to understand what kind of campaigns take off and why.

People are spending about 135 minutes per day on social media. It’s time to capitalize on that information and come up with some strategies that are sure to get likes and shares for your posts. 

Read on to learn about the best social media campaigns from last year.

Wendy’s vs. McDonald’s

You may have seen burger chain, Wendy’s, trolling fast food super giant McDonald’s on Twitter last year. It was funny, amusing and an excellent lesson in how to go viral on social media. 

Why?

Because what’s better than watching two huge corporations who sell similar products engage in a public battle? It makes them seem like people and not only that, we get to be spectators in a match of insults online. 

We’re also rooting for Wendy’s, even though they seem to be the aggressor.

The chain went for the jugular, question McDonald’s use of frozen foods and making fun of broken soft serve machines, but all with good humor and wit. 

Wendy’s, by comparison, is a much smaller chain, with fewer stores nationwide and lower numbers. They have always been in the shadow of McDonald’s so when they appeared to be brave by “stepping up” to their biggest competitor, people responded positively and took notice.  

This kind of social media strategy makes them relatable and humanizes the brand, giving it a personality it didn’t have before and which McDonald’s still lacks.

It also got them seen in a meaningful way online, likely attracting new customers and urging people to try Wendy’s if they had yet to.  

#Puberme 

The #Puberme campaign went viral as a way to raise money and awareness for Puerto Rico after the devastating hurricane last year. 

Started by Nick Kroll, it urged celebrities to share embarrassing, awkward photos from their adolescence. Once celebrities with large followings started posting old photos of themselves, people quickly became intrigued and the campaign took off. 

Who wouldn’t want to see a beautiful movie star with braces, acne and a bad haircut?

It gave people a small window into stars’ lives before they were famous and at the same time urged people to donate money and participate themselves. 

We’ve also learned that people won’t shy away from an opportunity to share more about themselves if others are doing it as well.

So, people were quick to participate in the #puberme campaign and asked their followers to do the same, however large or small their following. 

Kraft Competition

Take one of the biggest food corporations in the U.S. and the biggest sporting event of the year, put them together with a promise of being seen by millions and you have yourself a viral campaign. 

Kraft promised to feature “regular people” in their Super Bowl commercial who had filmed themselves with their friends or family, watching the game from home. 

After a few celebrities and famous athletes posted to their social media about the challenge, it quickly went viral with people hoping for their 15 minutes (or seconds) of fame. 

Learn From the Best Social Media Campaigns

Now that you have an understanding of a few of the best social media campaigns from last year, you can focus on what made them work and how you can emulate their approach to go viral yourself. 

Be sure to check out the rest of our site for more social media and SEO tips! 

Small businesses everywhere can benefit from this search engine traffic by implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO involves optimizing your online content for specific search terms. These terms are those your ideal clients are likely to type into Google.

An effective SEO campaign can give you the online visibility you need. The more visible you are on the internet, the greater your odds are for gaining conversions!

Keep reading to learn more about the advantages of SEO for small businesses.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing tool.

Like any traditional form of advertising, SEO is designed to give your business visibility. However, with SEO, you’ll be making your website visible to visitors on multiple digital platforms.

A lot goes into a typical SEO campaign.

Every campaign, for example, incorporates keywords. These are terms that your customers are most likely to enter into a search engine to find your business.

Marketers optimize online content for these keywords. This means that they integrate these terms into web content, enabling Google to make a solid “match” to your site.

Beyond keywords, there are several other things that can influence your Google ranking.

It’s important to have excellent content, for example. Google emphasizes the value of rich content your customers are likely to find useful in its guidelines here.

You can also earn a higher ranking if a lot of other sites on the internet link to your website. This is called your domain authority.

A business owner can implement SEO themselves. Read more here to discover what to do.

The Advantages of SEO for Business

What advantages can SEO bring to small businesses? We have some ideas.

1. Attract Local Customers

One of the greatest advantages of SEO for small businesses is the fact that it can get you more local customers.

This is essential if your business is located within a specific community, one you depend on to bring you regular customers.

Local businesses are also frequently up against competition from chain stores and other big-name institutions–not to mention other local shops!

As a business owner, you can easily implement an SEO campaign to make your website more visible to local customers. This is called Local SEO.

Local SEO is still SEO. Its difference lies in the keywords and its overall strategy.

Local SEO involves optimizing some of your content for location-based keywords. These are phrases like “best Miami beach” or “San Diego restaurants.”

Keywords like these are often searched for in a time of need, when people are actively seeking certain things. For this reason, a local SEO campaign can target people who are most likely to want and need your services.

A local SEO campaign also makes the most of other digital tools. These include Google listings, those informative “cards” that appear to the right of search results.

Google listings give searchers more details about your business, including its hours of operation. They also place your business on Google Maps itself.

Online reviews are also important to local SEO. We talk about these below.

2. Earn More Site Traffic

SEO is primarily designed to give your website the attention it deserves. A well-developed campaign can give your content a high Google ranking.

Google rankings refer to where your content appears in search results. In general, most searchers are only going to prioritize the first page of results.

This is because the first page contains Google’s “best matches” for a certain term. Subsequent pages are less likely to match the searcher’s needs.

If your website is currently hovering on page two or three of results, SEO can help. By making your content more visible, you are more likely to get clicks from visitors.

Once a visitor is on your site, they may just stick around. They may even make a purchase decision right then and there.

Implement SEO to get more site traffic, which can open the windows to more conversions and a solid brand image.

3. Outpace Competitors

As a small business owner, you may feel as if you’re always seeking out ways to outpace competitors.

Such efforts are important. After all, they often mean the difference between a thriving business and a failed one!

If you’re looking for a simpler and easier way to stay ahead of the crowd, think about SEO.

SEO can set you apart from your competitors in many ways. For one thing, it can put the spotlight on your website.

Some of your competitors may not even have websites. That’s right: nearly thirty percent of small businesses do not currently have websites!

SEO also requires marketers to have a great website to begin with. Google can penalize some sites that aren’t meeting its needs for content and speed.

By implementing an SEO campaign, you’ll be meeting design standards that many of your competitors may not have in mind.

If you launch a local SEO campaign, you can easily draw community attention to your business (and away from your competitors’).

4. Leverage Online Reviews

Online reviews are powerful tools. Studies indicate that most consumers will check out online reviews for a business or product before making a purchase decision.

If you’ve enabled online reviews of some kind, SEO can make the most of their potential.

This is especially the case if you implement local SEO.

A Google listing, after all, incorporates a review system any Google user can use. These average ratings display in listings in relevant search results.

You can use these to your advantage by actively responding to reviews your customers have left. What’s more, use your SEO keywords in your responses to these reviews!

Yes, review content can surface in search results. Optimized review content can draw attention to positive reviews and direct more visitors to your website.

Final Thoughts

Search Engine Optimization is an essential tool for any business wanting to get more website traffic. SEO can help you outpace competitors and leverage other digital marketing efforts.

It can even be your secret to getting those profit margins you desire.

Now you know about all the advantages of SEO. There’s still more to be shared, however.

Check out these five SEO hacks that can help grow your business today!

SEO is a diverse topic, a cornerstone of a multi-billion-dollar industry. Before we dive any deeper, have you heard of the service Google My Business? It was previously known as Google Local and Google+ Local. Now it’s often just referred to as GMB.

If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s your business profile on Google. It feeds your information to places like Google Maps, Yelp, and the local pack on search engine results pages (SERPS).

It’s one of the key features that’ll distinguish you from your competition in today’s noisy digital world. It’s also one of the critical elements in setting up your SEO for local business. To understand why that’s important and what impact local SEO has on businesses in 2019, read on.

What Does SEO Mean to Businesses?

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, let’s clarify the term search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

The quality of your traffic is a measure of how likely they are interested in what your site has to offer. Let’s assume your site only sells organic tea, but your visitors are looking for John Deere tractors. Then you’re receiving low-quality traffic. It’s unlikely you’ll get many tea sales from this crowd.

Your quantity of traffic is simply the number of visitors who arrive at your site. More traffic is preferable, as it means a higher chance of your website serving its purpose. Regardless of if its purpose is to simply give information or sell a product.

Also, organic traffic is simply traffic you don’t have to pay for. Paid traffic, on the other hand, includes things like sponsored affiliate links or social media ads.

The goal for businesses is to have a high SEO ranking, high quality of traffic, and medium- to high-quantity of traffic. When you match that with a stellar website and excellent service or product, you’re guaranteed success.

What Is Local Seo and Why Is It Important?

With billions of websites competing for traffic, both viewers and search engines need a way to differentiate between them. SEO helps with this, ensuring viewers land on pages that match their search criteria. But with so many websites now in operation, further distinctions are useful.

For instance, let’s assume you’re shopping for a new leather couch. Furniture stores in London wouldn’t be as useful as stores in your own neighborhood. This location-based segmentation is one of the newest ways that Google and other search engines determine a site’s page ranking.

These search engines are now quite good at evaluating the quality of your website. They’re also good at determining the relevancy of your site.

• Is it structured well?
• Is the content useful?
• Does it match the search query?
• Is it located nearby?

To have your site rank for location, you must perform some extra steps in your SEO. Don’t worry. We’ll give you a brief overview in the following sections.

The important take away is that local SEO is decreasing the quantity of overall traffic reaching most sites. But, more importantly, it’s increasing the quality of that same traffic. As any expert marketer will tell you, that’ll result in an increase in conversions.

Local SEO is as important to businesses in 2019 as voice search technology will be to them by 2022. The state of technology is ever changing. Businesses like yours must stay current.

If you don’t, your competition will advantage of newer technology and steal your business.

How to Search Locally

When a user types a query into a search engine, keywords tell the engine to focus on local results. Words like nearby or near me will tell the engine to search by location. Also, using the name of a specific city, county, or state will limit the search options.

Ok, so you can set up your SEO to target people searching in your location. But what happens if your brick and mortar store is located in more than one city? What if you have multiple branches or service many cities?

If you own a business with more than one location, you set up multiple local SEO strategies. For more information on multi-location local SEO services, you can view here. For the rest of you, jump to the next section.

How to Make Your SEO Local

Localize your website. Include your country, city, or region name naturally throughout your site. Also do your best to get your name on other local sites, such as stores, newspapers, and schools.

Get your business on citation sites and online business directories. Yes, it’ll help customers find you. But more importantly, your company’s website URL, phone number, address, and name will be there.

Search engines cross-reference this information and compare it to what they have on hand. The more often they find external sources that reinforce this info, the higher they rank the accuracy. The higher the accuracy, the higher your page ranks.

Claim your business on Google My Business. Look, Google is the uncontested leader in search engines. If your business info isn’t stored on their servers, your business isn’t going to pop up on maps or local search results. It’s critical.

Respond to reviews. The reviews themselves show search engines that your site is trustworthy. More reviews and higher scores translate to more trustworthiness. You can help moderate these through your responses.

Get quality backlinks. When trusted sites link to your site, search engines trust your site more. Seek out backlinks from your local papers, schools, chamber of commerce, and the like.

Google and other search engines will rank you higher both overall and locally.

What’s Next?

If you’re still wondering what does SEO mean, then we’re in trouble. By now, you should know why SEO is important for your local business, and how to leverage it to increase business. To add SEO to your current online presence is a mechanical process.

If you’d like to learn more about it or other SEO processes, you can find that information in our free Search Engine Optimization Articles.

So long and good luck!

The look of your website makes an impression on your potential customers that navigate to your site. When your website looks homemade and is difficult to navigate, it can drive website visitors away and on to your competitor.

Websites need to display a balanced design to your viewers. Images must be clear and well placed on the page. Text must be aligned properly.

And menus and other elements on your website must work together to present a holistic, professional look that is inviting, attractive and functional.

Developers use certain methods to make websites look good. Here’s how to make a website look professional.

How to Make a Website Look Professional

Follow these tips to make your website look professional.

1. Responsive Design

Using responsive design for your website is one of the first steps in making a professional looking website.

Responsive design refers to the template you choose for your website. Whether you’re hiring a web designer or using a WordPress website template, you must choose a theme with a built-in response design.

So what does responsive design mean?

Responsive design will make your website look professional on any device.

This means whether your prospect is viewing your website from a desktop computer at their office, on a tablet or laptop while relaxing, or on their mobile phone on the go, it will look good.

On the other hand, if a website is not built using a responsive design template, images will be cut off, text can end up squished together or off the pages and your website will look unattractive. It will also lack functionality.

2. Color

When designing a website, the colors you choose are important. The color scheme should blend well together, meaning the colors look good on the page. You can choose your colors by viewing a color palette.

Each color has a numerical value that you or your web developer will input into the color development area.

For a soft look, choose colors that are closer together on a color wheel or from a color palette. But if you want to create contrast, select colors that are directly opposite one another.

Avoid using more than three colors as a theme for your website. Choose two or three.

When selecting colors, think of your target audience. For example, if you have a financial company, stick to conservative colors such as blue and white. If you sell products to millennials, you can get more fun with brighter hues.

3. Should You Hire a Profession Website Builder or Do It Yourself?

If you have the budget, you can hire a professional website designer or web developer to design your website.

Custom-Designed Websites

Having the budget to create a custom-designed website enables you to do more with your company website. It gives you more freedom in layout, design, image placement and the number of pages on your website.

Building a custom-designed website will also allow you to customize other elements such as custom videos, animations, sound files and a whole lot more. In a nutshell, you’ll have more control over your site’s functionality.

With a custom designed website, scalability is better. Your web professional will be able to make changes to your website as your business grows without having to create a brand new website and finding a new template.

On the other hand, custom designed websites eat up your company’s resources and drain your bottom line.

Build it Yourself

If you’re a small business without a big budget, and you have some basic technical knowledge and some time, you might prefer building your website on your own.

These days there are a wide array of website templates and do-it-yourself web tools that make even the most novice web builder able to design a professional-looking website. Find out more about them.

These website tools offer a variety of responsive design templates, an array of color themes and layout options that are budget-friendly.

The good thing about doing your website on your own is that you can make changes to your site yourself.

Unlike a custom-designed website may be created in HTML or HTML5. This business owner will need to wait for a professional that knows HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to update or make the changes to the website.

With a DIY template, that’s not an issue. And to add, you can hire a professional for other services for your business such as SEO or social media marketing and promotion which will help you grow your business.

4. Make Your Website Easy to Navigate

When it comes to professional website design, you shouldn’t overlook your site navigation.

Navigation refers to your menus. Your menus don’t only have to look good and enable your text to be legible. Your menus have to get your prospects to where they want to go.

When your navigation system is organized and make sense, your visitors can find your product pages.

When they can’t find the pages and products or services they are looking for, they get frustrated and leave.

5. Write Compelling Content

When thinking about a good looking website, content might not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, the words on your website can either impress or turn off your website visitors.

Content with engaging headlines makes you look even more professional than mediocre headlines and copy. If your words engage your website visitors it will enable you to connect with them in a professional way.

On the other hand, when your website displays poor grammar and run-on sentences, people make judgments about the professionalism level of your business.

An experienced content writer can make your words sing and motivate your prospects to subscribe to your email list to receive your newsletters and product information.

The Takeaway on How to Make Your Website Look More Professional

Now you know how to make a website look professional. A well designed and well-written website will impress your visitors.

Incorporate the ideas from this post into your website design strategy for a professional and functional company website.

SMSEO provides relevant news and information on a variety of topics, including SEO, social media, marketing and more. Check out this article on how to revamp your social media strategy.

This is why even the smallest digital marketing mistake can cost you many clients. For example, 46 percent of Americans admit they would steer clear of a rehab clinic if it didn’t have any online reviews.

That said, the right rehab marketing tip helps you avoid an otherwise expensive misstep. Let’s look at a few things you should keep in mind when putting together a digital marketing strategy for your treatment center!

1. Monitor Online Reviews to Rank High on Google

Give this a try: type in “(your city) rehab clinic” on Google and hit enter.

Consider that the first three results at the top of the page get the bulk of the clicks. Do you see your treatment center on that list?

Google My Business (GMB) reviews impact local SEO rankings more than anything else. To maximize your chances of ranking in the top three, you need to claim and optimize your GMB listing. Ensure your business details are accurate and add photos of your logo and facility.

Once you verify everything with Google, take the most important step: address the negative reviews. Reply to complaints within the first couple of days after they’re posted, and don’t forget that potential patients will read what you write.

2. Focus on Building Trust

What digital marketing strategies do the most successful treatment centers use?

Inspire Malibu, for example, not only has glowing reviews all over the internet, but they also post testimonials on their site. Plus, they build even more trust through their blog, podcast, photo tour, and staff bios.

Having a staff page on your site humanizes your business. Meanwhile, a virtual tour lets people know what to expect.

Also, potential patients want to read and hear about success stories. So give it to them via blog posts, podcasts, and testimonials.

3. Bolster Your Website’s User Experience

The experience visitors have as soon as they load up your site determines how long they stick around. In fact, one study found that sites with responsive web design experience an 8 percent greater increase in conversion rates from year to year than non-responsive sites.

To make it easier for mobile users to navigate your site, declutter your navigation bar or add a hamburger menu icon.

Want to ensure potential patients find what they’re looking for on your site? Chatbots provide a way for your site’s visitors to get immediate answers to their questions about your rehab clinic.

Making Good Use of Each Marketing Tip

There are many reasons why digital marketing spending by U.S. firms will balloon up to $120 billion over the next three years.

Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing is inexpensive. This gives smaller businesses a better chance against larger ones. Not to mention that digital marketing allows businesses of all sizes to tweak their strategy within minutes.

Each marketing tip mentioned above will help your rehab clinic succeed. But do you want to ensure that your marketing efforts will fit within your budget? If so, be sure to look through our guide on how to save money on your digital marketing campaign!

You are not alone. The New Year offers every business an opportunity to keep up with advertising trends and launch fresh campaigns.

In this digital age, it can be difficult to stay on top of what’s new in the digital marketing world.

This is especially the case when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines are constantly rolling out new ranking factors that force marketers to change their strategies.

You don’t have to be a tech or marketing guru, however, to keep pace with the world of digital marketing.

In this post, we discuss the key digital advertising trends you should be aware of in 2019. Read on for insight!

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI has been on the horizon for quite some time. What makes it new in 2019?

For one thing, AI technology in the marketing sphere is maturing. AI is quickly becoming “actually intelligent,” enabling marketers to automate more of their efforts.

Chatbots are dominating the AI landscape when it comes to digital advertising. Chatbots were popular in 2018, but now that they are becoming more advanced, they are becoming an asset for marketers.

These helpful little bots can field a wide range of customer service questions once visitors navigate to your site. They can also give marketers the ultimate gem: data.

Being able to interact with your customers in real-time boosts their odds of conversion. It also demonstrates authority, something your customers value.

Plus, you’ll be able to get essential data from these AI interactions with your visitors. Such customer insight can help you hone your marketing game and change your tactics as needed.

To keep up with this advertising trend, consider implementing a chatbot on your website. You can easily create your own chatbot at little to no cost, too!

(Note: We only recommend this if customer service is an essential component of your business.)

2. Mobile-First

Over 77% of American adults have a smartphone. This means that a large portion of your site traffic likely comes from mobile devices.

2018 saw a huge emphasis on mobile-first marketing for this reason. After all, if you aren’t catering to your mobile audience, you’re missing out on an enormous market.

However, 2019 is all about mobile advertising. Google has announced recently that it is rolling out mobile-first indexing.

This means that it will be looking at the mobile version of sites when assigning content rankings. If your site isn’t meeting its mobile-friendly standards, your rankings could suffer.

Mobile-first marketing will involve campaigns crafted entirely for mobile users. Advertisers will need to ensure the mobile versions of their sites are up to par.

3. Automated Marketing

Business automation can limit inefficiency, saving companies thousands and millions of dollars each year.

When it comes to marketing, automation is just as important. Automated marketing will be all the more urgent this year.

This is precisely because automated marketing campaigns can get things done faster, and often with better results.

Automated email marketing campaigns, for example, can guide site visitors through a conversion funnel without business owners having to lift a finger after launch.

Such campaigns send out customized emails at key trigger points, ensuring that leads become conversions as quickly and effectively as possible.

It’s not just email marketing that will experience automation. Automated marketing is surfacing across channels and platforms, including social media.

The added benefit of automated marketing is that such campaigns quickly generate insights. Being able to analyze data in real-time can be valuable for marketers busy managing multiple campaigns.

4. Multimedia Ads

Video content has always been popular. It’s not losing its popularity in 2019. If anything, it’s gaining traction.

Marketers will still experience success with video tools like Facebook Live, Instagram stories, and embedded multimedia.

But most importantly, multimedia ads are trending. Such ads incorporate different media forms to maximize customer engagement. They hinge on professional, innovative video experience to drive conversions.

Where do these ads appear? Most commonly, they will appear in news feeds of social media platforms.

But they can also appear in between videos on YouTube and even on websites themselves.

5. Voice Searching

Yes, voice searches are a thing. They’ll be even more of a thing by the end of this year.

Voice search technology gives users a convenient and hands-free means of searching for information. People will still type terms into Google, but these individuals are set to become a minority in the coming years.

This may seem like a negative trend for marketers, especially SEO advertisers. After all, what will happen to all of those keywords?

Nothing, really. Proper keyword usage will simply be all the more important.

SEO marketers will have to be very cautious that they are effectively tagging images and content to align with voice search demands.

6. Brand Safety

With the rise of “fake news,” consumers are getting pickier about ad content. They are less likely to trust brands at the outset.

For this reason, brand safety is one of the most important digital advertising trends for the year.

How will marketers implement this trend?

Some may take advantage of encryption technology to ensure safe delivery of ad content to consumers. The same goes for machine-learning and other AI tools designed to fight ad fraud.

Others may emphasize values of transparency in ad content itself. Personalized, frank content will likely be more successful in the long run.

Read this post from EraserFarm to learn more.

Digital Advertising Trends for 2019

To succeed in the world of marketing, it’s important to know this industry’s trends.

The digital advertising trends in this post may not feel entirely new. But they signify the evolving needs of consumers.

These needs point to more voice-based searching and transparent, fraud-free advertising. They also prioritize video content, indicating a huge push for multimedia ads across many platforms.

AI will stay on the scene, ensuring seamless customer service interactions via chatbots and automated marketing schemes.

Google’s mobile-first indexing will urge marketers towards even more mobile-friendly advertising.

Looking for more digital advertising tips? Check out this post on SEO hacks designed to grow your business.

That’s a lot of content to read. But did you know that 50 percent of US adults can’t read a book at an eighth-grade level?

For many writers, that can be a hard level to write at. Especially if you work in a complicated field like high tech, removing jargon and difficult sentences can be a painful task.

But learning how to write website content for high-tech doesn’t have to be impossible. And if you’re looking to learn how, you’re in the right place.

After reading this article, you should be able to simplify your website content with ease.

Read on to learn more!

Break up Long Sentences

Can you shove three whole slices of pizza in your mouth?

If you answered yes, that’s impressive, but for the rest of us who aren’t the Hulk, the answer is no. Eating three whole pizzas in a bite is practically impossible.

But, easting three pieces of pizza with, say, 20 bites, seems pretty doable.

The same goes for reading. No matter what you’re writing about, shorter sentences can make it easier for a reader to digest what you’re saying.

Take the following sentence for example. Sophia, Alex’s sister, met Luke, the brother of Olivia, to go out for dinner as friends in Memphis, Tennessee, where the best BBQ restaurants are, to eat pasta and get to know each other.”

That’s a pretty hard sentence to read. Let’s make it easier:

Alex and Olivia’s siblings, Luke and Sophia, had dinner in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis is known for great BBQ, but they ate pasta while getting to know each other.

Ah, much better. Giving the reader bite-size pieces to digest makes it much easier to read. Once they understand the first sentence, they can move on to the next with a strong base.

Dictionary

In high-tech, there are plenty of complicated terms that only experts understand. But to write website content, you have to be able to explain these terms.

That isn’t as hard as it might sound. In fact, it should be pretty easy if you create an online dictionary.

Think of all the terms people ask you about and then dedicate a page on your site to defining them. Then, when you use the term, you can just add a link back to the page.

If you design it well, you could even have the link go directly to that term. Potentially, you could make it possible to hover over the term to get the definition.

This will help your readers understand what’s going on, but it will also allow you to have a well-researched reference page. This will also boost your SEO.

Articles About Difficult Concepts

Similar to this, you could write articles about difficult concepts in high-tech. Some concepts take too long to define in a simple terms, but you could include links to those articles within other articles.

For example, if you’re discussing better data capture programs, you’ll want to make sure your readers know what data capture even is. Instead of spending 100-200 words writing about it, you could link to an article explaining what it is.

Again, this will boost the SEO of the page you’re linking to, which will help improve your rankings. This should also be part of your digital marketing goals.

Editing Software

Some editing software is made specifically for writing with readability in mind. You can pay for services like these, but many of them are free.

One really great one is the Hemmingway App Editor. Named after the easy-to-read Ernest Hemmingway, this app will tell you what sentences are hard to read. It will also tell you what phrases you could simplify and where you could remove passive voice and adverbs.

You’ll also be able to tell what grade level you’re writing about. Shoot for something below grade 9.

This software and ones like it are quite helpful, but don’t take them too far. Even the developers of the Hemmingway app suggest overriding the suggestions on occasion. Too many edits can actually make it harder to read!

Don’t Talk Down

Now that you know how to make content easier for people to read, let’s discuss some simple notes you should take when doing this.

Sometimes, when writing for people who don’t know your industry well, it can be tempting to begin talking down to them. Some people do this on purpose, but others do it by mistake, with good intentions.

Consider what your audience knows. Even though they aren’t experts like you, chances are they have some idea of what you’re doing. They wouldn’t be on your site otherwise!

Avoid talking down by leaving some more complex parts of your website content in the article. Make sure it can be understood, but let the reader know that you respect them.

You can learn more about this from iTech Data Services. They have plenty of understandable content that doesn’t talk down to the reader.

Ask Someone Else

Before you publish anything on your site, it can be a good practice to ask someone else to look over it first. Don’t ask someone who is an expert though; ask a friend or someone in a different department.

Don’t let them scan it and tell you it looks fine. Print it out, hand them a pen, and ask them to scan for any content that doesn’t make sense. Make sure they know it won’t hurt your feelings.

Even if you’ve done everything in a way they understand, this process will still help your writing style. They may even catch a few typos for you!

Ready to Transform Your Website Content?

After reading this article, you should know how to make your website content much easier to read. Remember that even though you work in a difficult field that it doesn’t mean people can’t understand what you’re saying.

Want to read more? Check out our website blogs to learn more.

If that prospect sounds good to you and you don’t have a website yet (or don’t have a very good website) it’s time to start investing in one.

Building a business website may seem like a challenge to those that aren’t particularly tech-savvy. Fortunately, website building has never been easier given the number of tools (many of which are free) that are available to you online.

Below, our team takes you through the basic step-by-step process that’s required to build a website that will “wow” the online community and will help you to enjoy more sales!

1. Pick a Domain Name

Before people build business websites, they need to know what their website’s web address is going to be. This may be a simple process for some and an extraordinarily painful process for others.

When picking a domain name, you’re going to want to keep things short (below 8 characters preferably) and make sure that your web address is easy to spell.

Furthermore, you’ll want to get a “.com” domain since people are already programmed to type that extension in at the end of web addresses.

There are plenty of places you can register for your domain name. We recommend NameCheap for fair pricing and high quality of service.

2. Decide on a Platform

With your domain name in place, it’s time to decide how you’re going to build your business website.

Business websites are typically built on “platforms” that make the web building process simple. This comes in contrast to a decade or so ago when websites were being built by hand leveraging coding languages.

The vast majority of businesses build their websites on the WordPress platform which is free and relatively simple to use. You might also consider drag and drop platforms like Squarespace or Wix.

3. Pick a Web Host

Many people who are building their first website don’t understand the concept of web hosts. Web hosts are basically an entity that houses your website online.

When people type in your domain name, that domain takes them to your web host who then connects visitors to your website.

There are many web hosts out there and not all of them are created equal. A bad web host can make your website slow and can hurt your Google rankings.

Research web hosts carefully and always try and sign-up with one that offers a money back guarantee.

(Note that website builders like Wix and Squarespace require you to host sites you build on their platforms with them).

4. Outline What You Want to Include on Your Website

Building without a blueprint is a sure fire way to waste time. Before you start building your site, pull out a piece of paper and quickly sketch out how you want it to look.

If you’re not sure what you’re going for quite yet, study your competitor’s sites and see what they’re doing for inspiration.

5. Always Keep Goals in Mind While Building

It can get easy to lose sight of why you’re building a website, while you’re building a website. That’s bad news because business websites that don’t build with goals in mind underperform substantially.

What do you want from the visitors on your website? To contact you? To buy a product?

Figure out what your goals are and what your customer’s goals are likely to be and design your website to make achieving those goals as simple as possible.

6. Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity

Website building platforms like WordPress have a lot of bells and whistles you can enjoy. When you see them all, you might be tempted to incorporate everything into your site.

Don’t.

Remember, you have a goal with your website. By filling it with clutter, you make it that much harder for customers to take the actions you’d like them to take.

7. Include Strong Branding Elements

Given that most people are using the same website builders (generally WordPress) and are leveraging very similar templates, websites have started to look very similar online.

To make sure you stand out, keep your branding strong while building.

Include your logo at the top of your page. Adjust your theme’s accent colors to match your branding’s color palette. Change your site’s default fonts.

Anything you can do to give your business website a little bit of a unique flair can go a long way in making it pop.

8. Consider Getting an Assist

If you’re still overwhelmed by the website building process and are wasting a ton of time working your way through these steps, you have options.

There are a ton of professional development firms out there and freelancers that can offer advice, help you through snags, and can even design your site for you.

Don’t get overwhelmed and know that any questions or help you may need is always just an internet search away.

We’re serious! Check it out!

Wrapping Up How to Create Successful Small Business Websites

The steps above are steps that thousands of business owners before you have taken to create successful small business websites.

We hope that our article has given you the map you need to get your company online so you can start maximizing your success in 2019 and for years to come!

If you’re looking to learn more about everything from social media to website building and beyond, look no further than our killer content at SM SEO!

Well, there are many things you can do. And one of the best options is to focus on your search engine optimization (SEO) tactics.

But if you’re like most people, it can seem a little daunting. However, don’t worry any longer. We’ve outlined 3 key things you can do to become an ecommerce SEO expert.

1. Optimize Your Titles and Descriptions

First and foremost, it’s important to optimize the titles and descriptions throughout all of your pages. This is an SEO fundamental.

These are the pieces of content that tell both Google and page visitors what your pages are about. The title is what displays as the main text in Google search results as well as in the header bar in the web browser.

The description is what shows up as the body copy in the Google results. Both are important in improving click-through rate as well as improving your search engine rankings.

2. Ecommerce SEO Expert Pro Tip: Put Your Products in Categories

Next, when it comes to ecommerce SEO, be sure to organize your products well. A core part of SEO is having a unique keyword for each page. 

So if you have more than one page competing for the same keyword, you are actually fighting for the same traffic, and cannibalizing your efforts. That’s why you should organize your products in similar categories, like Winc has done.

Then, all you have to do is create one page for each category. This makes your website more organized and will improve your SEO rankings as well. Talk about a win-win. 

3. Optimize Your Images

Images are an important part of any ecommerce website. Since people are buying your product online, without being able to see or touch them, it’s crucial that your product imagery is exceptional.

To do, make sure you do the following:

• Save your images as a JPEG or PNG
• Pick the right dimensions to avoid slow loading times
• Be sure to have images shot from multiple angles and include a zoom feature

Also be sure your images are super crisp and not blurry. Often, it’s worth investing in professional photography. People will trust your company much more if the photos seem professional.

If you do these things, your images will help you sell more product than ever before. This is one of the biggest things you can to do increase your online sales.

Final Thoughts

There you have it: 3 tips to help you become an ecommerce SEO expert. Try implementing them in your business today. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll begin to see results.

Have questions or want to learn more? Contact our team of experts today. We’re happy to help you on your SEO journey. 

Here are a few things to test before launching a new site.

Does Your Site Look Good on Mobile Devices?

Around 60 percent of online searches in the United States happen on a mobile device. This is a trend that doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime in the near future. The onus is on you to push out a website that is accessible and readable via mobile. In fact, Google recently changed its search algorithm to prefer sites that render well on mobile.

Fortunately, this won’t take an obscene amount of work on your end. The best web hosting platforms will offer mobile responsiveness or mobile compatibility as a standard feature. Regardless, you need to ensure that your site looks good on both phones and tablets before you decide to open it up to the public.

Is Analytics Doing Its Job?

Analytics adds a helpful element to any website. Analytics shows you how people are engaging with your content. Looking at this information will allow you to fine tune your process in order to make site visitors happier. The vast majority of visitors jumping from your home page to your product section? Consider integrating the two pages to ensure a more streamlined user experience.

Some web platforms offer users a variety of built-in analytics tools. There are also a lot of external analytics programs out there if you want to get really detailed. For most people, the standard toolkit will be enough to examine user engagement over time.

Have You Thought About SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way for individuals and organizations to increase their chances of being found online. Not every web search is specific. How often do you know exactly what you’re looking for when you type something into Google? It doesn’t matter what your site does, it can benefit from SEO.

Keywords are a great starting point. You can test keyword viability buy running them through a variety of free tools. Using strong keywords on your site will boost your organic search viability in search engines. You’ll want to place these keywords in a variety of places, such as in body text, and in image and site metadata. Finally, you should see what happens when you search for your site. If it’s hard to find, you’ll want to make some changes.

Is Your Site Fast Enough?

People who use the Internet frequently know that few things are more obnoxious than a slow site. In fact, this is something that many people won’t tolerate at all. About 40 percent of people abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load. Three seconds isn’t a very long time. Yet, in today’s world where everything happens instantly, people simply don’t want to wait that long for a webpage. You’re going to end up losing a lot of business if your website has a slow load time. Use a free speed test site to ensure everything is running smoothly before you launch.

Are Your Images Good to Go?

Not many people want to read through endless seas of text when visiting a website. Images are a great way to break up text with a bit of flavor. But you need to make sure photos and graphics are working correctly before you welcome visitors to your website. How can images not work correctly? First, you should see how they appear on the page. Are they aligned in a way that looks good? Be honest with yourself. There’s no benefit to telling yourself something that isn’t true since it’s your visitors that will suffer.

Photos and graphics also play a role in determining site speed. These are often data-heavy files; so they can take a while to load. To remedy this, you can compress images for faster load times.

Don’t rush your site launch. You can always make it private again if something’s off, but that won’t bode well for your image or business. Just take a bit of extra time to check these things before you launch your site.