Tips to Boost SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the talk of the day and is not going to fade away any time sooner. If your brand page is on the top result in the first page of Google, there is only a 33% chance for it to be clicked. You will have to focus consistently on how to improve your SEO and can attain a higher rank in SERPs in just as less than 5 hours. Here are some tips and tricks to enable you to do this.
Incorporating Competitor Keywords
Google had a ban on bidding competitors branded keywords which was lifted in 2008. You can now bid on your competitor’s keywords without using their trademarked names. Use of branded names will more likely help convert your leads. The use of your competitor’s weakness into your success helps profusely at the same time, maintaining the keywords so that customers can find both brands. But, be sure to include an eye-catching copy so that the customer who searched for the competitor name gets lured into yours. A checklist to select keywords is as follows
- Choose content for easy keywords, the ones easy to create
- Choose similar keywords
- Go for low difficulty, high volume, high click-through rate
Optimizing your mobile site
With growing mobile audiences and Google too embracing mobile-first index, there is an excellent opportunity to keep your brand on the front foot. A brands mobile website that loads slower has a negative impact on the customers and also on the sites search ranking, with more activity taking place on mobile devices, the speed of the mobile page matters.
The use of large images is the main culprit of why mobile websites load slower. This is when Duda web design can help you. The images are automatically resized and compressed, which allows web pages to render them quickly. Image Magick is also a reliable platform. Another platform used is CDN (Content Delivery Network).
Local SEO
A local SEO is as important as a global one. Your brand should rank among the keywords in your local area.
To make your brand visible through a local SEO
- Insert local keywords across multiple listings
- Include business category
One another step is to claim your Google My Business profile, which helps business listing show up for local searches. Optimize this category with images, contact information, etc.
Duplicate tags and broken links
One major issue is duplication which affects SEO. You can access duplicate contents through tools like Site liner which discovers content blocks, broken links along with analysis report for free.
Use of 301 redirects
In case of an old URL variation, use of 301 redirects can help prevent Google from seeing it as duplicate content,
Canonical URL tag attributes
In the case of two identical content pages with different URLs, canonical URL tag attributes can signal Google which page needs to be shown in search.
Nofollow and Noindex tags
These tags are used when you do not need search engines to crawl and index a page in SERPs. Likewise, the use of robots.txt allows or disallows pages to be crawled by Google.
Conclusion
The better the SEO practice the chances of getting a higher rank and search results are increased. The tips put forth in the article gives a boost to your site’s ranking.
Facebook AD Types
Page post engagement
It is a popular ad type and works with both published and unpublished posts and is a better option to boost your content reach.
Likes
Another popular option, but alas, its popularity has never been reflected in its success. In order to grow their audience, many Facebook pages use this type of ad. The lack of proper engagement like shares, comments, clicks, and audience targeting leads mainly to the waste of your budget.
Clicks to website
If you are trying to increase the traffic to your site, these ads are almost useful; or when you need to drive the users land on a specific page to promote a campaign.
Conversions of website
Website conversion is an excellent option from Facebook for lead generation and ecommerce. This requires installing a tracking pixel to the site in order to measure the number of visitors into customers.
Installation of Apps
This is an excellent application in case your brand wants to promote an application. This can lead users directly to the app store, thereby combining promotion and effectiveness.
App Engagement
To further increase your app promotion, you may experiment with app management, which tries to connect with existing app owners, thereby re-engaging your app.
Offer claims
This type of ad may help drive traffic to your Facebook page when you have just launched an offer. It can help with more massive participation on your page.
Video views
Facebook supports .mp4, .avi, or .mov type of files with ratio 16:9. Facebook is dominant with videos and hence a prevalent option for producers popularizing their content to a relevant audience.
Local awareness
You can set location, thereby advertising your local business to beat your competitors.
Targeting
You can create an ad targeting a specific audience that can go beyond demography. Facebook’s deep allows this option. You can even create ads targeting particular life events, celebrations, political beliefs, which increases the chance of reaching the right audience while being budget-friendly.
Google Ranking Signals for Content Marketing
Content serves as the key to success when it comes to search engine optimization. The technical SEO exists and plays a teeny-tiny factor. But Google has stressed it again for publishing the site with high-quality and useful content.
What has perceived as a sign of high-quality content in Google?
The five content-related ranking signals of Google determines which article to appear at the top of Google as mentioned below:
Linkable content
The google’s oldest ranking signal is the backlink profile. Since the Google has launched, the backlinks served at the core of its ranking algorithm.
Ever since Google has repeatedly added dozens and even hundreds of other signals. But the backlinks has remained the most powerful one. It can be used as a very simpler ones, the more better it serves.
The website owners had figured out that the Google’s search result pages had been heavily manipulated. It seems to be very complicated now, to the point that whether a single person is working for Google to completely understand how it works.
There has been high- authority and low authority links, good and bad links also natural and unnatural links. Generally, one group balancing the other.
Few links would drag you down, while others drive you up. It remains unpredictable. This makes a clear sense that many editorial and natural links are required. In simpler terms, we need to generate a linkable content. Here comes the role of the content creator who plays a vital role, to create content that attracts valuable links.
What do you mean by a linkable content?
There comes no single definition when it comes to a linkable content, because there is no single type of link. Generally, the educational content attracts links from teachers, innovative content get links from niche journalists and bizarre content drives links from popular media outlets and discussion boards.
Check out Buzzsumo, while working on an article for getting an idea on which content attracts more links for your topic. This filter results to view recently published content as well to evaluate the current linkable trends.
Stay relevant
Certain years ago, the specific keywords were added several times in an article or they may be added on a page that served enough for Google to consider that content was relevant to the matching search query. Similar to the keyword stuffing to rank higher on the google.
This leaded to a very easily-manipulated signal, therefore Google has been working hard on improvising its relevant signals.
Here comes no single signal, whereas backlinks renders to a group of signals. As copywriters, we do have control while we create the content.
There comes the biggest improvement of Google’s relevancy algorithms done by implementing the introduction of semantic mapping. It renders Google to understand each query in context than matching the exact sequence of words to the indexed documents.
With the help of Semantic research, publishers can create relevant content, better-researched to the similar ways helping the Google algorithmically calculate its relevance.
The text optimizer tool helps you to create a more relevant context to match Google’s and its users expectations. It also scores your content relevancy and points towards the possible areas of improvement.
Other improvements are initiated to Google’s relevancy algorithms that are not easy to practise but are good to include such as:
- Google BERT update
- Google Hummingbird update
Length of the content
There has been loads of debates as well arguments in the SEO niche with regards to the contents length. But Google favours a long-form content.
It is stated that long-form content generates more backlinks and tends to rank higher.
Either it may be a direct ranking signal or a simple way to create more linkable content, the long-form content goes a long way.
As a rule of thumb, you have to use the editorial judgement:
- If you get an option of writing an 1000 word article or three 200 word articles, ensure to choose the longer option.
- If your article turns into a 5000-word book, consider breaking into a series by making into specific angles and subtopics.
If you had fully covered a target question in your 500 word article, that mostly happens while addressing narrow queries or specific topics. The useful article that answers a query serves better than a long-form content which has solely written for a word count.
Exact Match of Keywords
Google has crossed beyond the exact-match of keywords and understands relevancy beyond word strings, that may include your target keyword which remains important.
One study founded that “ the wide numbers of title tags in Google exactly or partially match the keyword they rank for”. Most titles did not have exact-match of keywords but some variations in those.
This makes us aware that Google is still looking at keywords, hence keyword research and optimization is yet important.
Engage with the Content
Google never confirms that they use on-page engagement as a direct ranking factor. The thing is, users leave right away if they find the content was useless. This adheres the “bounce rate” and “time on page” metrics questionable signals of content quality.
Google uses some user engagement metrics as a ranking single, but these signals are differently evaluated from SERPs to SERPs, never having the absolute metrics. They are compared for top-ranking sites, allowing Google to identify quickly the possible anomalies.
What Not to Do With Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising serves as an important marketing tool that allows you to target your preferred audience by reaching people, who require your services or goods. The social media company stays the top choice for many advertisers, that reaches more than two million users per month across the globe.
If the Facebook ads are not correctly advertised, your ad campaigns would definitely fail. The marketers will instruct you what you should do, but they won’t mention what you shouldn’t. There are several common mistakes to be avoided while using the Facebook advertisement.
Avoiding Frequent changing of Ads
You have to frequently change some of the elements in your ads to combat the dreaded ad fatigue, that leads your ROIs to drop. You need to make your ad campaigns run long enough to optimize Facebook’s system. Facebook calls an active campaign to enter the “learning phase”, the time where the system shows your ads to several users, in order to learn the ways for best optimization of the results you desire.
Usually the learning phase requires the least of 50 conversions to complete at that time. You may even find the fluctuations in the results of your ad campaigns.
The learning phase takes some time for collecting the data, in order to improve your campaign’s performance. It is mandatory, not to make any changes in the ad elements rendered towards the campaign level or the ad sets that include objectives, target or the budget. Making any changes in these, will lead the learning phase to restart. If this happens, you have to wait for another 50 conversions before optimizing your campaigns. Take your time to observe the ads rather than micromanaging your ads.
Not having Patience with Results
Some do believe that running ads on Facebook platforms will give instant results. Facebook requires time and experimentation for obtaining your coveted ROIs. Apart from the learning phase, you have to track the buyer’s journey, through which you have to push your customers that normally takes time. The split testing is done to monitor which ads perform well.
Practise patience allowing Facebook’s system to complete the learning phase without any interruptions. Scale the campaigns and closely monitor your results that performs well by pausing not so performing campaigns.
Ignoring Unknown Target Audience
More than any form of advertising, the Facebook ads allows for more targeting. When you don’t know to target the audience appropriately, you would reap an unsatisfactory result. This may serve the ads to the audience, who are unlikely to respond to your offer.
If you don’t know your target audience, the kind of quality content you provide may not suit them. While starting your campaign, ensure to set a more detailed targeting like the buyer’s persona, their interests, income, location, gender and their age.
Generally the audience persona illustrates the personal information of your ideal customers, that may include their location, interests and education. By knowing your target audience, you can craft your copy, creative and strategy to appeal them accordingly.
Not using the option of Scaling ads
The business owners are eager to increase their sales through Facebook ads. The sales can be increased through two ways like targeting the new customers or by targeting the current customers. Doing the later method is usually easier and cheaper.
As the customers who made a purchase in the past would trust your brand. They are very likely to purchase from you again, when compared to new customers. You will bring positive results more likely, when the target loyal customers ad infinitum make your campaigns reap. Your marketing budget must grow as your business grows.
For increasing your customer list, you have to target the new audience. You have to increase your ads reach or higher bidding, for growing your business to earn a better spot on the users feeds. This scaling process requires an increase in the ad’s revenue.
You would slip the countless opportunities of reaching the new customers, when you avoid the scale. This would lead your business to remain stagnant. You don’t really need to scale all your ads each time. You can opt to scale when your campaigns are performing well. Make sure your CPA is under your target goal and your ROAS at a high number before the scaling process.
Not Replacing your Ad Creatives
The target audience would experience ad fatigue on your constant usage of the same image, ad copy or video. Thereby, the click-through rates would eventually drop, while fewer users will see your ads. Even if they see them, they feel apathetic and choose to ignore the ads or, may hide them. Your audience would be interested when you refresh your ads.
Creating multiple ad visuals for one offer would avoid the ad fatigue. For instance, while promoting your social media management services, the same message can be reused but you have to change the accompanying video or image of your ads. It’s better to change both the copies and the visuals.
Advertising without any Strategy
You must know what you want your ads to accomplish, when you decide to run your campaigns. You should optimize the part of sales funnels like the top, middle or the bottom. Consider the business goals like increasing the sales or exhibiting brand awareness, you desire to achieve.
You have to know what you want to achieve, before creating your ad. You have to set a realistic goal or define your objective to measure.
Facebook offers numerous ad objectives to use. The objective you choose will make the results of your ads to reap.
For instance, If you want your customers to visit your brick-and-mortar store, you can choose the store visits objective that opts to be a prudent choice than the brand awareness objective.
The choice of Wrong Image
There is a choice of selecting wrong images for your ad. The right image serves more complicated to upload a high quality photo than a low quality image. It gets granular as choosing an object as the subject than choosing a person.
Keywee, a digital marketing company published a study on the creation of Facebook posts that convert, in the year of 2017. The study stated that the ads with identifiable people images had performed better than the ads with objects or generic people.
The researchers found that the ad with an image of Beyonce outperformed the ad exhibiting the image of an unknown woman , when they ran ads for Fortune.
This type of study exhibited the ads with relevant images to it’s target audience outperformed the ads with irrelevant images. Likewise, the campaign for Where Traveler featuring the Hollywood sign targeting Los Angelinos, had performed better than an unidentifiable city featured ad.
Avoiding the Facebook Pixel
To track the site visitors, a code called Facebook Pixel is installed on your website. The visitors who return to Facebook can be targeted with ads that increase the likelihood of conversions. The visitors who return to facebook, can be targeted with ads for increasing the likelihood of conversions. The Facebook pixel plays a major role in retargeting the customers, as an essential part of digital advertising.
Customers usually deliberate before doing a purchase. Several ads appear to their feeds before the conversions. Unless you retarget the customers, you will not be able to push them towards the sales funnel.
Pixel allows you to exclude certain audiences, who have clicked on your ad to purchase your product, downloaded your content and submitted answers to your lead form.
Narrow down the Audience
The highly targeted audience allows you to increase the revenue of your ad spend. Ensure that your audience isn’t narrowed too much. In case of narrowing down, the system can’t collect enough data to learn about the ad. This makes it difficult for you to shape the future ads. The system requires at least 50 conversions for optimizing the delivery of your ads.
The audience size meter would determine whether your target audience is too broad, too narrow, or just appropriate.
Less Expensive
Facebook is an inexpensive option to increase your reach and the interest in your business. It doesn’t mean you drop your advertising budget very less and expect to obtain the same results. To increase your conversions, you need to pay for the ads. The amount of efforts required to put into your ads involves posting high quality images for Facebook ads. You get what you pay for the ads, similar to reaping the fruits of what you sow.
Avoid to Advertise with a Bad Website
The existing website should have traffic, completeness and effectiveness of the landing page for reaching a wide audience. Ensure that your website works well, then use advertisements for directing the customers to your landing page.
Generating a good facebook ad requires some efforts. You have to design effective ads to drive traffic to your website and increase the rate of conversions.
The Benefits of Online Store for Your Small Business
When your small business has thrived in the local community by serving for years, it would be daunting to establish an online store. Having an online store would definitely require twice the amount of work for no guaranteed gains.
The question is would your customers use an online store ?
An online store or e-commerce website serves an incredible tool for the small- business owners for leveraging numerous benefits. When setting up an online store it requires some time that pays for itself as the sales starts rolling in. You can always hire a new employee when you end up with a high volume of purchases.
The e-commerce store can be combined with the online marketing tools and tactics for achieving the knock over results of the new customers rendering towards social media marketing and search engine optimization.
The online stores serve as the perfect complement to your brick- and- mortar store. You can weigh the benefits against your doubts on reservations and choose a budget to go ahead with your e-commerce initiative.
Reaches the large audience instantly
Increasing your audience significantly increases your sales. You had already saturated your local market making known everyone within the 20-mile radius assuring you do exist. Thereby people had made up their mind to choose a competitor or to patronize your business. You can easily advertise about your online store to this local audience. But it may not be an easy way for keeping them away from your competitors.
You can aim for the low- hanging fruit, where people live 500 miles away and love to purchase from your store but have no other way to get there. Here comes an option of an online store that instantly opens doors for the people across the nation and around the globe. You can go for a modest investment setup for increasing your sales by not limiting your local audiences.
You can end up increasing your local orders too. Nowadays people are busier hence online shopping would be more convenient for them. Your neighbors would always love to support your business, but they don’t have enough time to stop the storefront when it’s open. Through online shopping, people can browse your product pages online and make a convenient purchase even at 3 am.
Collection of Data and Behavioral Insights
The online store gives access to built-in analytics and data for the customers and their shopping habits. For instance, you can check what kind of products are frequently bought, so that you can give special discounts or you can cross-market those products on other web store pages.
You can frequently give offer discounts by checking whether it is used by the first-time customers or the repeated customers for understanding the impact on lead generation and the customer’s loyalty. These data can troubleshoot your website or prices indicating which web page can cause people to leave your site or what type of products are abandoned in carts
Does your shop convince people to purchase or does your visitors leave ?
The time they spend on your site and what’s their average order value ?
You can track these types of behaviour or data that is virtually limitless. But you would require a hand from a web developer or the marketer for setting the right tracking system. The data you want to collect isn’t automatically offered through your e-commerce platform like Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics tool.
The Use of Online Marketing Tools
You need to have an online presence to take advantage of the online marketing tactics. Usually, an online store yields you a marketable web presence to show up in the search engine results, that can be shared on social media or to collect emails for a newsletter campaign. Obviously, your website or shop can’t achieve these automatically.
You have to actively use the social media for posting ads, search engine optimization and email marketing techniques to accomplish your specific goals. These may include grabbing the attention of people towards your website for making a purchase henceforth increasing your revenue.
The success or failure of your online store depends on creating effective marketing campaigns. Avoid the mistake of establishing an online store and not marketing it. You can either start with a simple postcard or email newsletter campaign for alerting your current customers for making an online purchase. To retrieve the best results, the ongoing need for marketing can be factored in your store budget along with the initial estimate of designing and creating the store.
Ways to maintain relevancy and competitive
It’s now the time to say yes to e-commerce, consumers have got the taste of convenient purchasing through online that lets them deliver their products at their doorstep. But if your shop doesn’t render for online business, there is the risk of losing customers to your competitors.
This is true when you cater to busy people. For instance, You sell products for toddlers or babies, the moms are your target audience, as they are typically busy making a store purchase, they would look for a convenient online shopping option. These moms would make an online purchase and refer their friends too.
The E-commerce platform is the best option for your small business, as it allows convenient payment methods like Paypal, Apple pay, Stripe and credit cards.
An e-commerce store can have these features of payment options more than a physical store. Ensure to have an SSL displayed clearly before your domain name for customer’s information’s security and safety purposes.
Cut down the rental costs
The important factor you consider to rent a space for your small business is the location. Do you really feel happy with the foot traffic you generate for your location in exchange of the rental cost ?
By using the option of an online store, you would never require a physical location. You can store the inventory in your basement by checking the zoning and tax requirements. But if you opt to maintain a space where customers visit for making a purchase, then you could rent an affordable space.
Instead of using a location as a source of advertising, your number- one priority must be online marketing. Thereby, the money you save on rent can go for your marketing efforts. There comes a flexibility in terms of your daily schedule, if you transit completely to e-commerce.
For instance, the orders can be processed and responded to customer emails at any time. You have to consider attention towards the post office closing time as you have to send your packages on time.
