Introduction

Ecommerce businesses have been on a successful trend over the past few years. People have started considering them as the ideal option for their shopping purposes. This has been very helpful for the businesses as a whole. While there are amazing benefits to business with increased customer interaction, there are some increased responsibilities too. To be able to cater their customers, businesses often have to expand their courses of operations to different countries. This can be a tricky experience.

Why is expansion difficult for businesses?

Although some people might disagree but expanding to other countries is seen as one of the most critical steps in the business survival. Yes, it is a definite requirement when the customers demand, but it has its downsides too. There are a lot of things that a business has to consider while they are at it.

They need to keep track of the language the clients are willing to communicate in. Furthermore, the time difference also plays a huge role in maintain contact with the customers. The currency factor also comes in to play as the business will need to keep a track of the latest rates at which the currencies are exchanged. So how can the business tackle such scenarios arising?

The new Magento extension

The increasing problems in no way mean that the business should stop considering the idea of expansion. Instead, the business must look for solutions to these issues. The new Magento 2 GeoIP extension helps the admin to assure that they keep their customers satisfied at all times. This new tool will help in redirecting customers in accordance to their preference. It will maintain the switching of currency, language as well as the time as per the customer’s requirements. This will ensure that the business can expand the business with ease.

Functions of the GeoIP extension

The best part about this new GeoIP extension is that it will automatically detect the customer’s location. This way the business does not need to worry about these small issues. Instead they can focus on other matters of strategic importance. The clients will be redirected to the preferred IPs in order to ensure that they receive the best customer experience.

The tool also helps in mentioning the prices in the currency that the client uses. Before going ahead with any given function, the new extension will give a pop up window for the client to consider. The language change will also be done automatically making sure that the customers do not have to go through the hassle of translating. The tool also helps in restricting the noisy customers away from the website. This automatically makes sure that there are no free riders.

Advantage of GeoIP extension

As we have discussed the function of the extension above, it is a real asset for the business if they use it efficiently. This can help them in having the ideal customer service that will increase their customer loyalty overall. The customers will also feel that they are being respected and given attention. The ignorance of social barriers is a real plus for the business and it will help them in making their mark in the market.

Shoes. Cosmetics. Beverages. The chances are a few brands came to your mind instantaneously as you read the categories. Whether it be Nike, Chanel, or Pepsi, there are certain brands that have managed to become synonymous with their categories. That is the power of branding.

According to research conducted by Marketing Profs in 2015, over 77 percent of marketers believe that creating a strong brand is essential for the growth of a company. Furthermore, according to Forbes, consistent branding efforts help raise the revenue of a business by a whopping 23 percent!

One thing is for sure- branding is a must for the success of your business. While generally, marketers tend to focus on the benefits of brand awareness and recognition in revenue generation, there is another critical benefit branding provides. It helps in boosting your online presence!

What is SEO, and why it matters?

Before we delve into how branding can help SEO and vice versa, it is vital to understand why SEO matters to begin with.

Well, it is because in today’s online world, getting your target audience to visit your website is not easy. A few statistics will help you in gaining a perspective.

With the end of the decade, Google had introduced a completely new algorithm, which started certain trends for the coming year. Keeping an eye on these trends will help any and every website owner to improve the ranking and stay ahead of their competition, without observing any drop in ranking. 2019 saw important changes like mobile-first optimization because most of the internet users started using mobile devices along with Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. Few trends will remain important this year while some others might not be as significant. Let us consider the ones that are listed below. 

Voice search

With the rise of virtual assistants, voice search has also started rising. This is going to be one of the biggest trends of 2020 and this is also going to affect search engine optimization greatly. You might be asking how, and here are the answers. 

• Voice search is different from the text and they are extremely conversational. Apart from that, search queries are longer, which means that the websites are targeting long-tail keywords. 
• When voice searches are being targeted, keywords have to be replaced with phrases, which make the work easier for Google. Users will also be able to find whatever they want easily. 

Local search

According to https://www.inc.com, if you are not using due diligence for local SEO, you will start losing out in front of competitors. According to several studies, 9 out of every 10 searches are normally for products and services that are present nearby. 50% of the searches are going to result in actions to visit physical locations or place an order. This is not going to die in 2020. Rather, it is going to become even more popular. 

• The success of a local search is possible because of using mobile devices, which will help you to easily locate a coffee shop that is present near you. 
• Local search is also drawn by reviews, which are associated with products and places. You will be able to view recommendations from the reviewers before you are going to any business. 

To get more information on this, call the professionals of New York SEO organizations. 

Search intent and keyword content

Google released an important algorithm in the previous decade, which provided more priority to search intent. This is going to become one of the biggest trends this year because SEO experts are constantly discovering new ways of optimizing keyword context and search intent. 

• For several websites, it is visible that searchers are searching for at least three kinds of results. 
• When content is being created, the three categories are going to determine the structuring of the content and how they are going to be used. Search intent is going to carve out important trends in the manner in which the keywords will be used.

Structured data

This is going to be one of the most popular SEO trends of 2020. 

• It is no more a secret that Google loves structured data and any website owner would like to gain that position. Structured data include snippets and frequently asked questions. 

Conclusion

It is important to understand all the SEO trends of 2020. This is going to help businesses to outrank their competitors and gain success without struggles.

This is the most straightforward SEO guide that you shall come across on the internet. With tons of jargon being published every day on the internet, it can be a bit misleading to follow them. Well, this step-by-step SEO guidebook for beginners is simple and gives you all the necessary tips to improve your site’s ranking on Google.

So, without any further ado, let’s list down the steps right away.

Step1. Make Sure Your Website Is Google Accessible

For users to be able to see your website, you need Google to see your website first. Google uses crawlers, or as they are commonly known as ‘bots’ for finding new content on the internet. Once, the crawlers access any piece of content, it is indexed in Google’s database.

If Google has trouble viewing your content, then it is pretty obvious that your content will lag in the rankings on SERPs. So, you need to make sure that your website is free from crawling errors. You can simply search your website domain using “site:example.com” as a search term in the Google search box. This would result in all the pages that are indexed with Google. So, if there’s any page missing in Google’s database, you can manually submit it for indexing, using Google Search Console.

Step2. Opt For Keyword Optimization Of On-Page Content

Further to improve the visibility of your site, you need to rank for more keywords. Not just the ones that have high traffic volume but also the easy ones. You can use Google’s suggestions for optimizing your content for LSI keywords that users are searching for.

To begin with, you can type the most relevant keyword that you can think of but do not press “enter” or the “search” button. Look for the suggestions that Google puts forth. For example, type the term “marketing tools” and look for what Google suggests. These search terms are surely being searched by the users, as they are being suggested by Google. Since keyword stuffing is no longer beneficial, you’ll need to include different versions of the same keyword. And in addition to it, you can include contextual words that are commonly used with your primary target keyword. This is where Google’s suggestions come in handy.

Step3. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

A couple of years ago, Google updated its core algorithm with “mobile-first indexing.” Since the majority of Google’s users are using mobile devices, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, it might not rank as well in search results.

Fortunately, you can easily find out if your website is mobile optimized using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. All you need to do is feed the page you wish to check mobile-friendliness for, and you can easily get an answer in yes or no. If yes, then you are in luck, or else you may need to put in some efforts with your website designing team to get it fixed.

Step4. Optimize Your Site For Quick Loading Response

Online users don’t like to wait anymore. This is mainly because of the improved data speeds and user experience that websites and internet service providers tend to focus on. Usually, users bounce back from a page that takes more than 2-3 seconds to load.

An increased bounce rate can affect the overall ranking of your website in SERPs. Sarah Kirksey from WPFarm.com says that one way to decrease site loading time is to optimize any images on your website. Alternatively, you can also switch to a dedicated hosting/server package or Virtual Private Server that gives you more freedom, along with securing your data. Shared hosting can put your data at risk and also increases the loading time, mainly because of the high traffic on the server. Implementing a dedicated server can significantly improve your website’s performance.

Step5. Cross Check Any Crawl Errors & Broken Links

Since search engines, including Google, uses crawlers to access your website. The bots keep on crawling through content and links to update new content, from time to time. Likewise, you also need to keep a check if your website is experiencing any crawl errors.

In addition to checking for any crawl errors, you also need to look for any broken links that your website may have. Google and other leading search engines make note of the backlinks that a site has to rank it in results for relevant search terms. A broken or a bad link can do more harm than a good link can bring in benefits for your site. For this reason, you should continuously keep a check on the link health of your website.

Step6. Seek Collaborative Opportunities With Bloggers

Apart from checking for broken links, your site also needs new links. Since these backlinks are a measure of the authority that your website holds on the internet, new and relevant links become all the more important for SEO.

For this purpose, you can seek collaborations from influential bloggers. These bloggers can help secure contextual links for your website, along with spreading the awareness for your brand. Soon you can realize a jump in your website rankings. All you need to make sure of is to maintain niche relevancy and publish content that your audience finds useful.

Step7. Give Your Site Some Final Touch Ups

Once you are done with all the basic setup that your website needs, you can give some final touch-ups. You can optimize the URL of your landing pages to suit the title. Essentially, you need to keep them short and include keywords as well.

Furthermore, you can optimize your snippets and schema markups with the keywords that you haven’t used in your content but are relevant to the content on the page. You can also, try shifting to HTTPS to offer improved data security to your users. And Google surely loves secure websites. There are many technical elements that you can optimize. Once you start receiving traffic for your relevant keywords, you can put your efforts in that direction. But, let’s leave it for some other time.

For now, all you need to focus on is improving your website’s visibility. It is only after you start gaining sustainable traffic on your website, that you should, move further. But, keep in mind, SEO is not an overnight magic trick. It requires a lot of effort, and that too consistently.

Businesses that work with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) do experience a large number of benefits ranging from increased flexibility to decreased costs to higher security to predictable scalability. Outsourcing IT systems management to MSPs allows companies to focus on their primary projects and not worry about downtimes or other technological issues.

However, all MSPs aren’t great. If you have some concerns about your IT partner or not sure about where your business is going concerning technological changes, it may be time for a new service provider. Similarly, you may already be working with an IT firm unlike other managed service providers that aren’t perfect, and these signs will ensure that you’re on the right track!

The following are the signs that will tell you whether or not you should transition to another IT partner.

No Dedicated POC

If you’re the person that has to report every technical issue to your managed service provider, you’re in business with an unreliable company. Furthermore, if you don’t have a dedicated point-of-contact and are shuffled around from person-to-person, it may be time to start looking for another IT partner. To help you with this situation, we recommend that you find an MSP that offers a 24*7 help desk as well as a dedicated account manager to handle all your issues and queries. Moreover, if ever there is a technical issue, you should be informed about it via the MSP and not vice versa.

Growing Number of Tech Requests

An increase in the number of pending service requests can be a cause of alarm! If your managed service provider isn’t responding to your tech requests promptly, you may need to find another IT partner. A good MSP will respond to service tickets, promptly, and ensure that the number of requests decreases with time. The provider will try to eliminate recurring problems as a first step.

No Fixed Budget

The best part about hiring an MSP is the upfront cost of the services. Unlike building an in-house team and spending money on technological resources, a service provider offers a plan with features that best suit your business. To put this in perspective, an IT firm unlike other managed service providers will ensure that you always have predictable costs, so you can feel confident about your budget along with your IT systems. If you have been facing unanticipated bills from your provider and are exceeding your budget every month, you may need to start looking at another MSP.

Unsatisfactory Security Measures

Most MSPs ensure that your systems aren’t at risk of threats. However, if your current MSP hasn’t conducted a vulnerability assessment in a while, you may need to start looking for alternate options. MSPs should be able to recognize gaps, design a strategy, and best defend your systems from a cyber-attack. To keep your data secure, you need to hire an MSP that conducts regular assessments to identify prospective attacks or outages. It’s a great idea to look for a provider that has a comprehensive plan covering cybersecurity and risk management.

No IT Strategy for Business Growth

If your MSP doesn’t invest in cutting-edge technology to provide you with enhanced services, you may need to start looking out. Your IT provider should provide you with the support and bandwidth that matches your current business while anticipating growth. Unless the approach of the service provider is proactive, they may be doing more harm to you than good. A good MSP will stay up-to-date with technological advancements and provide you with tech-savvy solutions to solve your business problems.

Unable to Scale

To continue growing your business, you need an MSP that can help you scale up. If your managed service provider doesn’t have the capabilities to support your IT infrastructure as it begins to expand, the best thing to do is find someone else. You need a provider that can keep pace with your growing technological needs and deliver the best resources to help with your scalability efforts.

Conclusion

To continue growing your business, you need to match the pace of the market. This requires paying attention to the technology that backs your business. An MSP allows you to outsource your IT infrastructure to expert handlers at half the cost you would pay if setting up a team from scratch. However, you need to watch out for signs that your service provider isn’t working out. To succeed in this ever-competitive market, you need a managed service provider that can support your business and help scale your efforts.