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.

One of the most important parts of business strategy is customer service.

Making sure your customers are happy and taken care of is essential. If you are unsure how CRM strategy can help your business and what kind of things to watch out for when implementing this strategy, keep reading.

1. Ignoring Social Media’s Impact

When focusing on customer relationships it’s important to remember that many of your users are relying on social media.

It is estimated close to 200 million American’s use social media in their everyday lives. Ignoring that huge proportion of the population would be completely detrimental to your CRM project.

Making sure to engage your customer base over Facebook, Twitter or Instagram can give you a one-on-one interaction with your customers.

2. Being Too Ambitious  

When it comes to choosing the right CRM methods for your business, it’s important to remember to not do too much in the beginning. You don’t want to overwhelm your team or your customers.

Having a well organized, multi-step plan, will keep you from getting swamped in data and keep your customers coming back.

3. CRM Strategy That Won’t Grow

One of the biggest failures of a bad CRM project is a strategy that won’t take into consideration the future of the business.

In this day and age, with e-commerce constantly changing and more and more people spending time online, it’s important to have a flexible plan that will be able to improve as your company grows. As a company grows it’s important to keep an eye on all data and try and find a CRM strategy that will grow with you.

4. Not Having a Designated Project Manager

When working on your CRM it’s important to always have a head of your project that your staff can go to when issues arise.

One of the biggest failures of a bad CRM strategy is having a disorganized project team. Project managers are put in place to control your work. If something happens, they will be able to designate ways to fix any issues that arise.

This person will be in charge of every step. If a new site is introduced, they will have a way to implement it. If you’re hoping to have a strategy that’s easy to use, provide multiple versions that can be improved on by your customers.

It’s also important that your team is trained. Make sure they know how each part of your strategy will work.

5. Failing to Keep the Customer in Mind

If your system is too flashy and over the top to be used then you will have failed your customer base.

Making sure you know your customer and know what they need will keep them happy. Customer resource management relies on keeping your customers happy.

So don’t let them down by having a system they can’t even use. After all the CRM definition, at its very core, is customer service.

What’s Next?

Now you know the basics about CRM strategy. It’s time to implement!

This will help you improve some of your online business presence. If you would like to learn more about SEO strategies or how to use social media to promote your business, visit more of our blog.

You’ve got a store full of merchandise, the question is, how do you get rid of it? The world of sales is a competitive one, and if you aren’t marketing your vape products correctly, you may get smoked by your competition.

The best way to let others know about your products is by aiming for the top. The top of the Google search anyway. Most people don’t go past the first page of search results so you’re going to want to be there.

This can be easier said than done. Here are ten vape marketing tips that will help you up your SEO game and get your website the traffic that you want to see.

1. Page Speed is Everything

In the days of old, people would wait around on a webpage for a bit before getting frustrated and moving on. Nowadays though, you’re lucky if someone will wait for more than a few seconds.

You’re going to have to build your site with speed in mind. Remove any clutter that could slow the website down. When your site is, slow and cluttered, it reduces the customer’s trust.

A fast site just increases the customer’s experience in general.

2. Link to Sites with Relevant Content

If you sell vape products but not juice, you want to link to somewhere like brokedick.com/vape-juice. Granted you wouldn’t usually link to someone who sells the same products. You want to link to a blog that pushes the same sort of content.

As a vape store, you don’t want to link to something like bed sheets. It makes no sense and just doesn’t match up.  Keep in mind that when you do this, you want to make sure that the website you’re linking to is a trustworthy one.

3. Write what People want to Read

You do want to write to get ranked on Google, but that won’t do any good if you can’t keep someone on your site to browse your products. You want to write content that is valuable to actual people with feelings and wallets.

You want people to not just read your blog, but absorb the information. You need for it to help them. If you do this the SEO Gods will actually reward you because search engines follow user activity.

4. Let Other Sites Link to You

If you’re going to be linking to other sites, it’s only fair that you let them link to you back. This can’t hurt you, only help you because it gets the word out about your products easier and faster. You also get the build a relationship with the company who is linking to you.

This doesn’t mean that you should just let anyone link to you. Again, this works if it’s a trustworthy site.

5. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

SEO and social media go together like a tired blogger and a nice cup of coffee. Remember when we said that search engines follow user activity? This is where that comes into play.

It’s all about getting as many shares as possible so you want to set up a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. From there, share content that your followers are going to be interested in sharing. If you really want shares, host contests to gain attention.

On all articles on your site, make sure you have an option that allows a visitor to share it to their social media.

6. Use Web Analytics

Once your vape marketing campaign is up and running you need to know if it’s successful. It’s for this reason that you need to set up analytics.

Analytics is a neat tool that allows you to check your numbers every time you launch a marketing campaign. You can take notes about what’s working so you can keep doing it, and what’s not working so you can fix it. You’ll want to have this set up as soon as you start marketing your vape store.

7. Write Unique Meta Descriptions for Everything

Meta descriptions are the descriptions that will be shown in Google before someone clicks on your site. You need to make sure that it is well crafted with a keyword thrown in.

This is going to be the deciding factor to rather or not someone will visit your site so you can’t afford to just write any old description and call it a day. You actually need to put a little thought into it.

8. Your URLs Need to be Easy to Read

If your URL leaves a user saying “huh?” chances are their search engine is going to be just as confused. You need to keep them as simple as possible to ensure a good customer experience.

Imagine if someone is trying to tell their friend about your site later and they can’t remember the URL at all. You don’t want that.

9. Use Relevant Keywords for Images

There is a whole section of most search engines that is dedicated completely to images. It’s for this reason that you want to choose the right keywords for your images so users can find them.

Make sure the keyword is relevant to the image, and of course, stay away from keyword stuffing.

10. Your Content Needs to be Interesting and Consistent

If someone visits your site and sees that the last time you posted anything was almost a year ago, they will get the impression that your business is no longer up and running. It’s safe to say that you don’t want to give this impression.

Not only do you want to post quality content, but you want to make sure that you post often.

The world of vaping is a very competitive one. It feels like you can’t throw a stone without hitting a shop and that’s just with brick and mortar stores. You want to make sure your vape marketing techniques are smoking or you will get left in the dust.

New to SEO and don’t know where to begin? Contact us with all of your burning SEO questions.

Search engine optimization used to be easy. You selected a keyword and away you went. Now Google uses a sophisticated algorithm that considers around 200 factors when ranking pages.

This means you need to make some careful decisions when it comes to using an SEO strategy. Picking the right keywords and creating great content is only half the battle.

Another thing you should consider is what ecommerce platform you’re using. Different platforms have different features that can help you execute your SEO strategy.

If you haven’t considered these 10 factors, you may not have the best ecommerce platform for SEO. If you’re thinking about a new platform or website, it’s time to compare the competition. This guide will tell you exactly what you’re looking for.

1. The Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO Allows You to Edit Page Titles

Keywords may not be as important as they once were, but that doesn’t mean they don’t play a role in your SEO efforts.

Google still considers keywords for websites and pages in its ranking factors. What’s more, the algorithm emphasizes where those keywords are on the page.

One of the most important places for your keywords to be is the page title. Pages with keywords in the title tend to rank higher than those without.

If your ecommerce platform won’t allow you to edit individual page titles, it is not SEO friendly.

2. You Want a Platform That Allows for Keywords in URLs

Another feature you want your ecommerce platform to offer you is custom URLs. Why do you need this feature? It allows you to create keyword-rich URLs.

This is also important when it comes to improving your ranking in search engine page results. Most auto-generated URLs don’t contain any sign of what the page is about. Many are strings of numbers, which are difficult for people and search engines alike.

The best SEO websites use URLs that tell the user and the search engine immediately what the page is about.

3. You Have a Need for Speed

The best ecommerce platform for SEO is going to load lightning-fast. Speed is an important factor in your SERP ranking, and you don’t want your chosen platform slowing you down.

Google and other search engines rank websites based on how fast they load. Loading speed is important for delivering a good customer experience. The faster the site loads, the better the experience for the user.

When you’re designing your website, you can take certain steps to make your site load faster. You should also consider mobile-friendliness. Your platform plays a huge role in how quickly your site can be delivered, so always consider the speed.

4. Sitemaps and Easy Navigation Can Help You Rank

An SEO friendly website is a website that’s easy to navigate. Your primary navigation links should be text, not images. You should also be able to control navigation by editing menus right down to the individual link.

A sitemap is another useful feature. A search engine can index the sitemap, which helps it check how easy it is to navigate your site. The best ecommerce platform for SEO should automatically generate an XML sitemap.

5. Custom Landing Pages Give You More Leeway

How much can you customize your landing pages with your current ecommerce platform? If the answer is not much, it might be time to switch.

Landing pages are crucial for generating more leads for your business. The more you can customize them, the more you can tailor them to specific segments of your audience.

6. You Must Have a Blog Function

You’re likely convinced you need to be blogging for your business. A good blog has many benefits, including:

• Building trust with your audience
• Sharing useful information
• Building your reputation as an expert
• Boosting your SEO efforts
• Helping your customers find answers to their questions

Almost every SEO friendly website out there has a built-in blogging function. You want to be sure you’ve picked a platform that will support your blogging efforts.

7. Design Marries Form and Function

On the best ecommerce platform for SEO, design is a huge consideration. You want your site to entice people to visit. You also want it to give a good impression when visitors arrive.

The most beautiful site will only hold attention for so long though. If your site isn’t easy to navigate, people will give up looking. If your site prioritizes design over content, it’s not going to be useful or SEO friendly.

Look for a platform that uses design to emphasize content. Good design draws attention to your quality content, highlighting it for users. You can learn more about great website design at www.microdinc.com/website-ecommerce.

8. Make it Shareable

This is the golden age of social media, and everything on your website should be shareable. You want to make it easy for people to share blogs, product pages, and more. SEO friendly websites create a frictionless social sharing experience.

Look for platforms that allow you to enable sharing with the click of a button. The easier it is, the more people will share your content with their friends, family, and followers.

9. You Want Full Control of Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important part of your SEO friendly pages. They’re often what search engines pull to create the snippet that comes up on the results page.

If you don’t specify a meta description, the search engine robots will grab a snippet of text from the page. This often looks unprofessional, and it gives users a poor impression of your site. An ecommerce platform that gives you granular control of metadescriptions is a must.

10. Get Analytical with the Right Tools

Finally, any ecommerce platform you choose should give you the tools you need to improve your SEO. Some platforms come with Google Analytics built right in. Others will offer even more robust, custom tools.

Analytics provide insight into what you’re doing and how you could improve. Without them, you’re guessing at what you need to do to improve SEO on your site.

Get a Hand Finding the Right Platform

Choosing the best ecommerce platform for SEO can be a tall task. By making sure you look for these 10 features, you’ll be well on your way to picking the right one.

Not sure your website is reaching its performance potential? Take a look around the blog for more SEO tips and tricks for your website.

Do you have a digital marketing plan? If not, it’s time to create one. No matter how awesome your site or services are, nobody will know about them if you don’t get the word out.

Marketing at random can bring some level of success, but you’ll get much more traffic if you have a plan.

So what does successful marketing look like? It looks like traffic, but how do you get that traffic?

To get you started we’ve created this handy guide. Keep reading for 10 tips for developing a successful digital marketing plan.

1. Target Your Focus Audience

When creating your marketing plan, it’s important to focus on your target audience. Sure, you’d like to bring in any new traffic you possibly can. But you probably have a specific audience you’re after.

Do your services apply more to women than men? Then take that into account when creating your marketing plan.

All it takes is a little common sense. If you don’t offer services for men, don’t focus your marketing on men.

2. Use Strategic Ad Placement

You want to market in the areas that make the most sense. If you’re trying to grab the attention of young adults, you probably shouldn’t spend your marketing money to get ads on websites for elderly people.

Whether you use PPC or other ads, make sure they’re placed in places that make sense. If it’s your goal to reach a specific audience, reach out to them in places where they’re likely to be.

Visit HIVE Digital Strategy to learn more about marketing goals.

3. Research Your Audience

In order to reach your intended audience, you’ve got to know a little bit about them. You may even want to know a lot.

Research your audience to see what they tend to like and what they don’t. Pay attention to trends.

What do they search for? What do they want to learn or purchase?

The more you find out about your audience, the more you’ll be able to target directly to them.

4. Use Social Media

Ads and links are great, but social media is one of the most important marketing tools you can use. Don’t neglect this extremely viable mode of marketing when you’re creating your plan!

Stick to one social media site, or use multiple. You’ll reach a larger audience if you use more than one. But even one social media site can provide countless potential customers.

One of the best reasons to use social media is because the posts are so shareable. And let’s face it, people love to share online content. So make sure you give them something to share.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Spend

There are free ways you can market your website or services, but they won’t get you very far.

Instead, invest in paid advertising.

A share on Facebook is helpful. But it will only reach so many people. A paid advertisement on Facebook, though, will reach many more people.

6. Identify Gaps

Take a look at your existing digital content. What’s missing? Surely you haven’t covered everything you could.

Look for ways to fill out what you have to offer. Cover all your bases. Keep up to date.

New things are constantly being created and discovered. If you leave your website unattended it will quickly become out of date.

Create a schedule to regularly update your digital content. Make sure you’re not missing out on customers because you don’t have content that you should.

7. Have a Content Creation Plan

Don’t create content at random. Everything placed on any of your digital platforms or in your marketing ads should be there on purpose.

Space out your posts so you don’t hit your audience with everything at once. Give them a reason to keep coming back. Don’t intimidate them by providing too much information.

Create a content plan that makes sense for your audience and their trends.

8. Implement SEO

SEO is a powerful tool when it comes to marketing. Optimize all digital content so it’s search engine friendly.

One of the toughest things you’ll have to deal with is getting ranked in online searches. Why should someone choose your website over a different one?

People tend to choose from the first options they see come up in an online search. Using SEO will help you move up to a place where people will see your posts.

9. Encourage Interaction

Marketing shouldn’t be one-sided. Instead, draw people in with things that encourage them to act.

Start a discussion. Create an event. Invite people to share.

Whatever method you use, encourage interaction between visitors and yourself, and between visitors themselves.

10. Know Your Competitors

No matter your niche, you’ll likely have competition of some sort. In order to combat this most effectively, get to know your competitors.

Find out what keywords they rank for, how they market, when they make price cuts, what they’re selling, etc. The more you keep an eye on the competition, the better you’ll be prepared to combat what they’re doing.

Implement These Digital Marketing Plan Tips Today

Marketing can really generate a lot of traffic to your site and company. But you shouldn’t jump into it blindly. Having a digital marketing plan in place will make your marketing much more effective.

You’ll never know how much these tips can help until you try them. So choose one or two and try them out today!

Marketing is all fine and dandy, but you’ve got to have a great place to send your leads. Your website has to be top of the line. Check out our article on great web design.

These days, most small businesses need the services of a digital marketing consultant.

Why is that? Simply put, digital marketing is the most effective tool for growing your business. It helps you improve your conversion rates and allows you to reach your target audience.

However, digital marketing is also a very broad term. It represents many different methods of marketing, such as SEO, PPC, social media, email, and so on. The sheer variety of options at your disposal is staggering.

If you’re launching a marketing campaign, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got your bases covered. That’s why talking to a website marketing consultant will usually be worth your time.

Not convinced yet? Here is our list of 8 reasons to hire a digital consultant.

1. Industry Relevance

Before launching a campaign, you should have a solid grasp of your industry.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Every industry depends on many important factors, such as your competitors and the latest practices. To identify these factors, you’ll need to research your target audience.

You can make this task easier by hiring a sales and marketing consultant. They’ll help you learn more about your audience’s interests, behavior, and preferences. This lets you adapt your marketing strategies according to the latest trends.

2. Helpful Expertise

If you already have a content marketing team, you may not need to hire an outside consultant. However, what if the results just aren’t there?

This happens a lot more often than you may think. Many online marketing techniques are hard to track, especially in the SEO industry. There’s a reason some big companies pay top dollar to keep their talent in-house.

By hiring a digital marketing expert on the onset of a campaign, you’ll improve its chances of success. Of course, you’ll need to find someone who’s already worked on similar projects in the past.

And if you’re wondering, most small businesses could use this kind of expertise. For instance, here’s how a digital consultant can help you develop your high-risk merchant services.

3. New Ideas

As you may know, digital marketing can be a fickle beast.

To some extent, this is to be expected. Depending on your field of expertise, many marketing options simply won’t work for you. On the plus side, that means certain techniques should perform better than expected.

How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Well, that’s where a digital consultant can be of use to you. They’ll take a look at your marketing efforts and provide a new perspective based on the consumers’ viewpoints.

For example, let’s take a look at social media marketing. A good digital consultant can figure out where your target audience is available. Then, they’ll streamline your campaign by explaining how best to share your content.

4. Renewed Focus

Online marketing is usually a time-consuming exercise.

Most of the time, you’ll need to hire new people to run the campaign. Setting up the in-house team also takes time and resources. And even after all that, you’ll have to oversee the campaign yourself.

By comparison, working with a digital consultant takes a lot of the hassle out of your hands. You won’t have to deal with training, onboarding, and managing your team. Instead, you can use that time to grow your business from the inside.

5. Website Design

Without an up-to-date website, your small business will face major setbacks.

The reason is simple: the online market never stays still for too long. Consumers are always looking for new content, so you need to keep up with them. This means improving your SEO campaigns and updating your website design.

Right now, it’s all about responsive design. In a mobile-first world, you have to make sure your visitors can browse your site on the go. A digital consultant will be able to offer advice on what you need to adjust or remove.

6. Native Ad Placement

Did you know that native advertising is all the rage nowadays? So much so, in fact, that your small business can probably benefit from it as well.

If the term doesn’t ring a bell, native advertising offers an organic way to display your ads. This changes the way consumers interact with content. When done right, native ads can provide a big ROI boost.

That said, it can be hard to figure out where to display your native ads.

If you’re struggling in this regard, you should hire a content marketing consultant. With the help of their data-driven solutions, they’ll come up with the best content distribution plan for your needs.

7. Advanced Metrics

In digital marketing, finding your ROI can be a difficult process.

That’s one of the main reasons why businesses hire digital media consultants. For starters, they help you determine your Key Performance Indicators (or KPI’s). This lets you know whether your business objectives are achievable.

Also, a digital consultant can tell you how to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. In some cases, you may get a monthly (or quarterly) report on each campaign. This makes it easier to make a sound marketing decision.

In the long run, these metrics will also offer a clear insight into your keyword performance. In other words, you’ll know how your potential customers are reacting to your brand.

8. Power of Storytelling

Finally, there’s the matter of making your services as attractive as possible.

First, you need to come up with a way to connect with your target audience. In recent years, many businesses have tried to do that by creating engaging messages. A digital consultant can help you out with that.

Once you’ve defined your message, you need to spread it across different platforms. If the message is compelling enough, your services will benefit from positive PR. This improves your image and visibility.

More on Digital Marketing Consultant Services

By hiring a digital marketing consultant, you should be able to start your campaign almost immediately. Best of all, you’ll still be able to make decisions that suit your business plans.

Want to know more about the importance of SEO and social media? Interested in finding out which aspects go into running a small business? You may want to take a look at our blog!

Are you frustrated by the fact that your website just doesn’t seem to be able to rise in the search engine rankings?

Do you wish you had more time to devote to researching your site visitors and creating content that’s tailored towards them? Are you concerned that your current SEO and digital marketing strategies just aren’t working?

If so, then it sounds like now is the time to hire SEO professionals.

But what should you look for to ensure you end up with the right agency?

Read on to learn how to choose an SEO company.

1. Ensure They’ve Worked with your Niche

The first step in understanding how to hire SEO professionals?

Make sure that they have experience not only within your specific industry, but also in creating content that’s geared towards your target market.

The best way to figure out of they’ve worked with a brand that’s similar to your own?

Ask to see a portfolio of their past work.

This way, you’ll get an understanding of how they can adapt to a specific brand’s voice and design aesthetics while keeping SEO at the forefront of these efforts.

You should also ensure that they have experience working with a company of your size. If you’re a larger business, then they’ll need to be able to help you with market segmentation.

If you’re a smaller brand, ask how they’re able to help you to personalize your content to increase customer loyalty.

2. Ask for References

When you’re trying to understand how to choose an SEO company, it’s important not to be swayed by what the company says about itself alone.

You’ll also want to ensure that their past clients are willing to back up the claims they’re making.

A trustworthy SEO company will be able to provide you with references and reviews directly from their past clients — not just anonymous testimonials on their website.

When you speak with these references, be sure to ask how the SEO company took the time to understand their brand. What sort of “getting to know you” questions did they ask, and did the client feel as though the content they were getting was unique and tailored to their brand voice?

Also, ask about the specific gains the company saw as a result of the SEO service.

How much higher did they rise in search engine results? Did they gain more social media followers or monthly website visitors? Did their backlink quality improve? Were they able to rank for the keywords they wanted?

Above all, did the SEO company tweak their strategies and campaigns according to data and analytics? Or did they just set the initial plan in motion, and then walk away?

Be sure to ask about payment structure. Were there any surprise or hidden fees? How was payment collected?

Finally, be sure to ask the all-important question: “Would you work with this company again?”

3. Understand Their Service Offerings

When you’re ready to hire SEO professionals, you also need to make sure that their services are able to meet your needs.

The specific services you’re looking for will depend on your business size, the industry you’re working within, and even the types of campaigns you want to run.

For example, maybe you need help writing content for your blog every month. Perhaps you’re interested in beefing up your company’s online reviews. Maybe you need help with social media, or even with creating video content.

Whatever you need, you don’t want to work with an SEO company that can’t offer it.

Usually, most SEO companies will have a complete listing of services on their website.

For example, this company, 180fusion, can provide things like email marketing, logo design, PPC, social media management, and more.

4. Ask About the Tools they use

When it comes to SEO management, even the best of SEO companies aren’t able to accurately assess the effectiveness of their strategies without some analytical tools to help them.

When you’re trying to hire the right SEO agency, you need to ensure that you understand how they’ll continue to monitor your traffic, research your keywords, and evaluate the effectiveness of any email campaigns you send out.

One of the best ways to figure all of this out?

Ask them about the tools that they plan to use to monitor your website. Also, ask them how often they’ll check your site’s analytics, and the kinds of changes that they’ve made in the past with other clients to fine-tune their strategies.

There are tools that can test your site’s mobile-friendliness, your website’s overall speed, and even help you to learn more about the demographics of the people visiting your site.

If the SEO company you want to work with doesn’t seem willing or able to discuss the tools they use, then it’s a sure sign it’s time to move on.

Are you Ready to Hire SEO Professionals?

We hope that this post has helped you to understand what you need to research and ask when you’re ready to hire SEO professionals.

Remember to ask for references, inquire about monitoring tools they’ll use, and ensure that they have experience within your specific niche.

It’s also OK to shop around when it comes to SEO outsourcing. Plus, comparing multiple offers may even help you to get a better deal!

Looking for more advice on how to strengthen your SEO strategy?

We can help.

Be sure to check out our blog for more advice on how to help your site get closer to the first page of Google.

Starting an internet business is exciting and terrifying.

How do you get an audience? Why would they choose you over the thousands of potential competitors?

Thankfully, building an effectively marketed business is more straightforward than ever before.

Use these seven tips to help your business grow and thrive.

1. An Internet Business Niche that Works

Choosing an in-demand niche is the first step to creating a successful online business. However you decide to monetize your site, you’ll need to carefully target your actions to create an audience.

Identifying a niche is easier than you think. The two most important factors are an interested audience and a path to monetization. It definitely helps if you have previous experience or interest in a niche as well.

Start by researching the top ranked websites that provide products and services. Figure out what they provide that is better than their competitors and see what topics they cover.

Once you’ve found a broad topic that has interest, look for a subcategory that is underserved. Travel is a massive topic with a huge audience. Finding a SIM card while traveling is a specific and narrow aspect of travel that is still highly sought after.

2. Effective Email Tactics

Building an audience is essential for an effective internet business. Generating and keeping an email list is one of the best ways to do this.

Whether you’re selling a product, a service or affiliate marketing, keeping in contact with your potential customers allows you to keep their interest. It also makes it easy to provide additional value to them through targeted content.

Try to get the email address of everyone who visits your site. Offer something of value to them. An ebook, a spreadsheet template or a discount on a service you offer is an excellent way to pique their interest.

3. Compelling Content

We can’t stress this one enough. It doesn’t matter how good the information you’re presenting is if it doesn’t click with your readers.

By the same token, the best-written content can still be worthless if the information is superficial or inaccurate. You need to find that sweet spot of well-written content that provides real value to your customers.

There are several steps you can take to make your content better. The key point is to always target your writing to the consumer you’re trying to reach. Make your writing approachable, entertaining and include a strong call to action.

4. Beautiful and Usable Pages

Your internet business website has to look good. It’s as simple that. No matter how good your product or service is if your website looks straight out of the 2000’s no one will stick around.

Every page should be easy to navigate, eye-catching and designed for your market. Mobile optimization is essential. 77% of Americans now own smartphones and as many as one in ten only browse the internet on their phones.

E-commerce website development is even more important. Nothing stops a sale like a poor or broken shopping experience.

Creating a beautiful website is easier than ever before but don’t be afraid to outsource. Hiring a skilled development company to build and manage your website can free your time up for more productive, and lucrative, ends.

5. Tasteful Monetization

Pop-ups suck. When was the last time you saw a pop-up and thought, oh hey, this looks like a useful product, let me click this.

Monetizing your website is part of running an internet business. The trick is to keep the monetization from annoying and driving away your audience.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to do this. You already provide your audience with useful, compelling content in a great niche, they trust you and know that you know what you’re doing.

Affiliate marketing allows you to use that trust by providing in-article links to carefully curated products that have your seal of approval. Every time someone makes a purchase you receive a commission.

6. Search Engine Optimization

It’s basically impossible to run a successful internet business without search engine optimization (SEO). SEO helps you get your business seen on Google and brings more potential customers in, without costing you a penny.

Start by putting your niche into a keyword research tool. This helps bring up a list of other related keywords and their search volume.

Once you’ve identified terms that are highly searched in your niche you can add them organically into content. This helps you spread your net wider and draw in more organic, and free, customers.

There are lots of other things you can do to improve your SEO. Localizing your content is one of the best ways to improve your search ranking in your area. Simply adding in region or city specific terms makes it far more likely you’ll rank highly in your area.

7. Careful Reputation Management

Your audience’s attention span is microscopic. You can lose their trust and your site’s traffic through a seemingly small misstep or simple inattention.

The first step to building a lasting audience is to consistently publish useful content. Try to put something new up two to three times a week. This lets your audience know you’re active and shows them that you care about their needs and want to help them.

Never recommend something that you haven’t personally used and approved of. Nothing burns your trust and reputation with your audience like wasting their money on a bad recommendation.

If you’re familiar with a company and have tried many of their products you can sometimes recommend their other offerings. Never recommend something just because of the offered commission.

Always be honest with your customers. If you make a mistake fix it and apologize. Let them know you understand what they value and see them as more than a number.

Don’t be Afraid to Fail

The best advice for building a successful internet business is to expect failure. You’re going to make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them and not let yourself get discouraged.

If you would like to learn more about what makes a website successful, check out these other useful tips for growing your business.

These numbers only prove that the legal industry is getting stronger and, hence, competition is getting tighter among the top law firms in the country as well as those at the bottom of the food chain. This should encourage organizations to focus more on audience outreach. According to ONE400 – Legal Marketing, marketing is essential to beef up the bottom line, and it remains a vital aspect of driving growth.

Achieving concrete results should involve understanding the dynamics of online marketing and how it can help law firms widen their reach.

Here are some of the best ways to start.

Junk quantity and aim for quality

We are living in an era where there’s a great wealth of available information for the taking. The downside to this is that much of the online content we engage with is not exactly made to be relevant. Businesses churn out large volumes of blog articles and other content regularly, creating a flood of useless information that could turn off potential clients. What you will need to do is to go against the flow by providing information that’s fresh and valuable to your audience. Never mind the organic traffic you are receiving and the articles you publish weekly. Aim for quality content, and you won’t have to worry about attracting the right people to your service.

Invest in the right talents

What’s a content strategy without the people that are implementing it? For sure, getting a larger share of clients in your industry should start by hiring the right people who will handle your campaigns. From web writers to graphics artists, these talents are essential in communicating the value of your firm to your audience. Getting better results from such an investment would require choosing the skill sets that align with your objectives.

Measure your gains

Marketing involves a great deal of science. And to be able to sustain your revenue numbers in the legal world, it is best to focus on the most crucial marketing metrics in your campaign. Analytics lays the groundwork for strategies in the future. Variables such as site conversions, the amount of qualified leads, and customer acquisition costs can provide valuable intelligence that can help you plan out your next course of action.

Invest in SEO

If your firm’s aim is to acquire as many qualified prospects as possible, then SEO points the way forward. For sure, SEO is an essential element in many a law firm’s arsenal. To be able to make an impact online, your firm should start by coming up with well-defined SEO strategies. Keyword research and planning are your most valuable allies if you’re targeting specific demographics. Whether you specialize in lawsuit loans or personal injury, do not skimp on your SEO efforts. 

When people are looking to research a service or product they will often start with a simple Google search, often using keywords that are relevant to what they are looking for to bring up a list of the top webpages to visit. Businesses that can take advantage of this system by implementing a solid Search Engine Optimization strategy are often ahead of the game in their industries.

If your company has a web page for its customers to view, it does no good if no one can find it. When Google searches for information, it uses a sophisticated algorithm to choose which websites it will list first in the search results. The closer your company is to the top of that list, the more likely it is to be found by a potential client or customer. More views equal more sales in the digital marketing business.

By investing in your brand and partnering with an established and professional Digital Marketing Service like Digital Monopoly, you can establish a successful strategy for your business. Trying to navigate the best routes to take through the digital marketplace can be time-consuming and sometimes confusing. Leaving the digital marketing side to the experts can help you maximize your online footprint and save you valuable time to work on other aspects of your brand.

There is a proven strategy that Digital Monopoly uses to draw clients to your business and connect you with the right audience for your brand.

Consultation

• Introduce your business and set out your vision for the future
• Explain what you are ultimately trying to achieve within your business
• Explore who is your target market and how you can connect with them

Competition Analysis

• Detailed customized research into your market and what your competitors are doing
• Narrow down specific target areas that will yield the best results
• Set up a focused plan that will get you ahead of your competition

Implementation

• Let the experts build a custom plan to promote your brand on your terms
• Design a campaign that focuses on meeting your goals
• Make beneficial updates to your website and social media accounts

Reporting

• Receive easy to understand professional reports  on your site traffic and sales conversion numbers
• Stay in the loop while being able to focus on other business aspects
• Reporting results can help you set goals and plan long-term

As a business owner, your attention is constantly being pulled in many directions at once. For local SEO particularly in Perth, trying to maintain a digital presence adequately takes not only experience but valuable time that can take away from other projects. The web can be a tough place to navigate, but with expert SEO services in Perth, it can be an incredible tool for expanding the business of your dreams.

Investments in better content have been the name of the game ever since Google started to roll out updates to its search engine algorithm. SEO has become more competitive, and companies are putting a great deal of effort in creating content that’s fresh and informative in a bid to rank higher in the search results.

It all boils down to content creation, and it’s crucial for digital marketers to underscore to know what content pieces click with their corresponding demographics.

For starters, writing content for an SEO campaign has to be taken seriously. The way your ad copies are crafted determines the volume of web traffic you are going to get, so it makes sense to know the best ways for giving your brand the exposure it deserves in the search results.

Simplicity is the key

If you belong to such a highly technical field as IT, you’re more likely to use industry jargon to let prospects know you mean business. But using too much of these industry-specific words only serves to alienate yourself from your audience, especially if they include enterprises that are not too savvy with IT concepts and terms. To be safe, aim to use simpler language that anyone can understand and you can bet your bottom dollar they will rush towards you like iron shavings to a magnet!

Choose and place your keywords carefully

Whether you are using Google Posts or writing a blog article for your LinkedIn profile, it’s always best to know which keywords to include in your content. The inclusion of strong keywords and secondary keywords can greatly increase your visibility. It’s only a matter of becoming cautious of the way you distribute your keywords. You need to makes sure your keywords are evenly spread out so that users can read them naturally.

Go the long way

People keep saying that long-form content is slowly dying, but this is not the case when the objective is to increase web traffic considerably. After all, a 2,000-word blog article is more valuable than a 400-word listicle since longer content tends to be more informative. Customers today want nothing but information that’s new and relevant to their industry, and creating long-form content allows you to reach out to them.

Do your homework

In matters of quality, it’s always essential to write about things that are close to the hearts and minds of your audience. In this case, it’s always best to research about a given topic and provide valuable insights about it. For one, you can try to look for a critical issue or problem in your industry and provide your own solutions to them. You increase your reliability in the process and convince your audience to stay on your site longer.

With the average small business now paying around $75,000 a year on digital marketing, lots of companies are looking for hacks bring this number down. Even if you’re seeing a good ROI for what you spend, a few SEO hacks could increase your returns. If you don’t know enough about SEO, now’s the time to learn.

Search engines use tools called web crawlers to look at every site around and rate the organization of its code, its menu, how fast it is, and how often it’s updated. When users search for the subject this site is based on, search engines use a ranking system based on all of these factors to match sites to user interests.

To make sure you’re getting in front of all of the right users, try these 5 SEO hacks to improve traffic to your site.

1. Start A Blog

While it might seem strange to start devoting your time to blogging, it’s actually a great way to tell stories about your products and services. Your customers want more information about ways they can problem solve using your products and services in ways they’d never imagined. If you’re updating your blog often enough, you’ll also get points for that.

2. Use Image Titles

When you take photos on your phone or camera, you’ll probably notice that the names of the files are basically meaningless. If you upload “IMG123.JPG” to your site, it won’t do much for you.

Add some relevant keywords like “Local-Honey-Harvest-Chicago.JPG” and you’ll end up getting more hits for your honey company than you would otherwise.

3. Use Local Keywords

Ask any SEO company what’s hot right now and they’ll say “Local SEO”. Local SEO entails using local locations, neighborhoods, and regional terms in your keywords and on your blogs. This helps search engines to match up your brand with users in your area.

4. Hire A Guest Blogger

Hiring a guest blogger is like when Black Panther and Spider-Man get together for an Avengers movie. Fans of each character get brought together and both companies get to profit from the two different fan bases. Hire a blogger from a company you like or a service you use and let them link to their own site and products.

To search engines, the internet is still a place for communities to come together. You’ll help draw your audience to them while benefiting from their brand’s established authority.

5. Use Reputable Links

When you’re adding links to your blog, make sure you’re using recent and reputable links. A 10-year-old post from a free paper that’s no longer in circulation won’t help your ranking as much as a New York Times article from last week.

SEO Hacks Build Your Reputation

If you’re a relatively new brand or you’re having trouble cornering the market, SEO and local SEO strategies can help you build a strong foundation. Once you’ve found the ideal audience in your region you can branch out to become national and then international.

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to increase traffic to your website, contact us for tips.

Caffeinate Yourself Then Track Production

Coffee and energy drinks can be extremely important when it comes to production. There have been studies done that have shown that the right amount of caffeine can really boost production for the day. Studies have also shown that those that drink too much caffeine can have the opposite impacts on production. For this reason you should track production using different levels of caffeine each day. If it can improve your production even 10 percent it means you will be making 10 percent more money for that day or week.

Broker Out Work

Great freelancers tend to build a team of support around them so they can scale some of their larger orders. For example, a client needing 100 articles done in 2 weeks can spell death for a freelancer’s life outside of work. Having a few writers that you can assign this work out to at a 50 percent margin can be a huge resource for scaling larger orders. You cannot sacrifice quality of work with these writers though as many clients will notice this immediately. Building a team of writers willing to work for you on a contract basis can allow you to approach larger companies with a bandwidth they would need to complete a project.

Payment Forms and Terms

When working directly with a brand you can start receiving payment in a variety of ways. There will be those companies that send you products or even travel tickets as perks of working for them besides payment. Cryptocurrencies can be used with certain freelancers but this can be a bit volatile at times. This risk is definitely worth the reward as there are sites like Mintdice.com that will allow you to spend your Bitcoins or even make more money. As for payment terms half up front for a freelancer is common especially if they have to pay their team or to promote they have done for clients. Use a freelancer platform to start out so you can find client who more than like will work outside of the platform after a while if you are a trusted freelancer.

As you can see the above tips will help you maximize your profits as a freelancer. If you are not willing to broker out work you can only make as much money as your personal productivity allows. Managing freelancers can be difficult but increasing money made monthly is work it.

Google’s professional SEO ranking system has likely confused almost anyone who runs a website or blog. It can be extremely confusing to try to figure out what will make your post rank higher than the competition.

With Google’s recent move toward AI machine learning through RankBrain, website owners only got more confused. Rankbrain aims to make the user experience better, but SEO specialists will have a more difficult time learning how to succeed within the parameters of the new algorithm.

Professional SEO Ranking

Search engine optimization refers to the practice of utilizing keywords, links, and content to rank higher on search engines.

Millions of websites are competing for the same clicks and the pages that effectively use SEO will get a higher ranking.

RankBrain

RankBrain seeks to drastically improve the results users get when they search specific questions or words. It can direct a user to the site they want with more obscure searches, as well as guess far better than human algorithms can. This AI and machine learning process will change the way internet marketing services do business.

Before RankBrain, the prevalent SEO strategy was to use keywords that matched a user’s common search. If you used your keywords effectively (no stuffing and unnatural uses), your site would naturally achieve a higher ranking.

Now, keywords are only a piece of the puzzle. RankBrain can direct users to websites that don’t necessarily include the exact phrase for which they searched. The AI behind it will make an educated guess on which webpage will be the most helpful, and send the user there.

Are Keywords Dead?

Keywords are still important, but they aren’t as important as they used to be. Before Google implemented RankBrain, you could manipulate the SEO system using keywords to show your page first, even if it wasn’t the most useful page to users.

Now, Google prefers pages that are easier to view and more user-friendly. Keywords are still relevant, but you can’t sacrifice readability in the name of keyword stuffing.

To rank higher on Google, you need to have a website that’s easy to read on both mobile and desktop, incorporates keywords naturally, and gives the reader the information they wanted in the first place. Many websites were doing this all along, and they’ll be rewarded for it.

You can’t cheat the system anymore. Your outdated SEO tactics won’t work with the new algorithm. If you’ve dedicated your website to user experience, however, you should be in a great place going forward.

The Future of SEO

Machine learning like RankBrain is the future of SEO. Google shouldn’t reward websites for stuffing keywords and sacrifice readability, and RankBrain seeks to solve some of these problems.

It may take some getting used to, but professional SEO will be in a better place in the future.

Want more SEO tips for your business? Take a look at our blog! We have SEO and marketing tips for all kinds of industries.