Results for: content marketing

Digital Branding

Top 5 Website’s Features to Become Mandatory in Following Years

Internet marketing is the most important way of reaching new customers today. Web design is the presentation of your expertise, the way you approach new users or clients, so it is indeed extremely important that quality your website is optimized for your target group. Before we go deeper into the most influential aspect of Internet marketing – features for your website, let’s discuss how a good website is different from a great website.

Is Your Website Good or Great?

Today, it is way easier than 5 years ago to design and develop a decent website within a few days. Progress of different tools made it now, more than ever, possible to launch a fine looking website with less coding than before. Website builders, templates, themes, and layouts are there as well to help you upgrade a simple site to the professional one. Plus, with improving your website you are enhancing your business opportunities!

Considering all listed above, and the fact that internet users are accustomed to seeing websites all the time, on all their devices, it is necessary to have a superior quality website in terms to keep your customers interested! Everyone browsing the internet today can draw a distinction between cheap (PBN, community) site or custom and highly efficient one. Aesthetics have been improving over the last few years, so now we all want impressive features and super cool design.

Besides visuals, a “great” website provides smooth handing – what is also important nowadays to point out: “user friendly experience”. There is no space for a great site to “fail to perform” – it has to keep going on any task with no glitch.

Here are the 5 features we found extremely important to keep implemented and up-to-date to your site in order to rock it up on the www:

1. Invest in your site – chose features smart!

One of the main issues a lot of small or new businesses face at the first stage of developing their online appearance is – lowering the cost for the website in terms of having more budget for the following stages. If you really want to offer tangible value to your visitors and potential shoppers, then don’t hesitate to invest in certain features for your website. Your website should offer tangible value for visitors – so use interactive features to utilize the services available on the site. Customers love to create a sense of interaction, so think about the optimization of emails and offering them the news they are really in need of! Browse for the best WordPress web-design company which can help you with a custom website with totally unique features!

2. Keep in touch – chose the right and unique contact forms

Let’s not keep in look at how your content should be relevant and awesome in terms of visitors to assign to your contact forms. Also, let’s imagine that you did your homework and almost everyone wants an update from your awesome website!

Contact forms are there to help you get through your audience, and keep them informed. You should use them to introduce on-trend new features, frequently asked questions, personal touch or some “unique” offer for loyal customers!

3. Everybody loves Polls!

Here human nature already played a big role! All of us love to participate in discussions. More than ever, on the internet, those discussions can be “anonymous” – well not quite anonymous but you can “hide” under some pseudonym if needed.

Your site is there for people, so what people need- you provide! Make amazing polls from time to time or some other interactive features where people can vote or choose and that way feel needed from your site. Make people more involved in your business and they will come back to you!

4. What is going on behind the scenes?

No need for explaining this in detail – everyone loves to gossip and to see what it is “really” like to do something. So for having people more interested in what you do, a smart move is to do behind the scenes videos or blog posts or images, where you can share some of your funnies and fails. We are all human beings, we all fail – so why not share your weak spot with others?

It can only make you stronger 🙂 Also – don’t forget to add value to those videos, for instance why you chose to do that type of business and what exactly inspired you.

5. Reveal-Based Features

Sometimes we are attracted to things we can’t have. These characteristics are of great value when we talk about customer engagement and online marketing. One way to use this for your business is to introduce a sense of excitement among the visitors. For this purpose, you could try introducing reveal-based features. For instance, you can add games that require all the users to do a certain action prior to accessing the promotion.

Maybe those certain spots made you think more about why is it mandatory to have a super great and highly effective website, in the ocean of average or decent sites. Measure pros and cons and get into the game of “how to engage more”! Many Software development company in Houston follow the above mentioned principlesin roder to attract the visitors.

Legal Branding

How to Keep Yourself Moving If You’re Feeling Stuck at Work

It is easy to get stuck and feel bored at work. This is likely due to the fact that you’re not encountering any challenges enough, not having proper work to do, or just getting tired of doing the same mundane tasks daily. Regardless of how the issue could be, boredom at work can lead to negativity, lack of inspiration and effort which is something you don’t want to put yourself in. Here are some essential ways to get rid of the agonizing feeling of boredom and make your working life exciting again!

1. Visualize Success

Visualization has been adopted by people to imagine their desired outcomes and successes. This exercise allows one to achieve their task or goal with complete focus and confidence. Mastering this skill will help you and the professional CV writing service you team up with demonstrate all your strengths and achievements on your CV if you decide on a career change. Visualization assists in developing a creative subconscious which promotes generating unique ideas. Take for instance, while sitting down with your colleagues for a brainstorm session, encourage everyone to visualize to develop a theme for a marketing campaign.

Practicing visualization is a straightforward method. Sit in a comfortable spot, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and let your imagination take its course. Construct a visual in your mind that represents the dream or your goal that you want to accomplish. Maintain your focus on the imagery and affirm yourself that you can attain it. Keep practicing it twice a day as part of your daily routine so that you can accelerate your achievement of those goals and dreams.

2. Talk to your boss or supervisor about the problems in your job

The best way to resolve this issue is to go directly to your superior so that they can help you out. You can discuss handling more challenging work or tasks, preferably that fits your interest. This approach would certainly benefit both sides as you get to improve and learn more while helping the company by filling up the gaps in areas that require more support.

This is your opportunity to exercise your ability and time to its fullest by going beyond your boss’s expectations. Once you have completed the repetitive and mundane tasks, invest your remaining time on duties that are beyond your job scope. Over time, your boss will recognize your work ethics and commitment. The opportunity to climb your career ladder would be within your grasp.

3. Pick up new skills when you have downtime

If you have plenty of spare time during or after work, take this opportunity to expand your knowledge and learn new skills. Arming yourself with new knowledge can be beneficial to you as well as getting rid of the sense of feeling stuck at work. If you are looking for resources, here are some of the best e-learning platforms to pick up any skill that you need.

  • Skillshare: platform focused on creative education. Topics covered from graphic design, music production to fine art and cooking. Other technical classes include data science, analytics, and e-commerce as well.
  • Udemy: over 80,000 different courses, Udemy is one of the best online learning platform marketplaces. Not only it covers professional skills, but Udemy also covers hobbies as well ranging from growing plants to playing video games. That being said, there are not many well-known instructors that use Udemy as the main learning platform.
  • Coursera: an online course marketplace that is mainly catered for professionals. Coursera features some of the world’s best companies and universities in the world. Courses include arts, humanities, sciences, business, IT, languages, personal development and many more.
  • LinkedIn Learning: platform tailored to business professionals. There are over 1,000 courses on topics such as project management, web development, and digital marketing. It’s also one of the best platforms if you’re looking at your skill up-to-date. LinkedIn Learning also provides certification for you to include in your profile, displaying your expertise and improving your online resume.

If you are still unsure of what to learn, general skills can be fun and useful to learn at making you a more well-rounded person. Some of the best general skills that you should consider picking up include:

  • Speed reading
  • Learn a new language
  • Learn how to draw
  • Learn basic photoshop
  • Photography
  • Gain the ability to be humorous

4. Find positivity in your job

Regardless of what your job is, there will always be a positive side in your profession. Whether it’s being helpful and supportive of others by creating value in their work or just being able to engage with people, you will find something that you enjoy doing with your career. Another approach is to volunteer to lead in a project, instead of waiting for work to be assigned to you and get stuck with the same mundane task. In this way, you can have more freedom over your work and establishing a better impression of your superior for your willingness to lead projects.

Most importantly, surround yourself with positive people at the workplace because they can provide you with the motivation to achieve your goals, empower you to make the changes to succeed and cheer you on your success.

5. Build momentum through achieving small success

No matter how mundane your job is, obtaining success is still a catalyst that provides joy when you completed tasks and being recognized by your peers. Appreciating your small successes and the small steps you take can be the tipping point between failing and succeeding. The lack of appreciation and gratefulness can also lead you down the path of not being able to see the significance of your own small successes. Last but not least, reward yourself for achieving your small goals. This could be anything from treating yourself to your favorite meal or a drink. Always having something to look forward to is the best approach to train your brain into creating motivation.

About the Author

You Jing is a content writer who writes about career and lifestyle topics to inspire job seekers and employers alike on their journey to work-life balance, empowerment, and transformation in their career path.

Boosting your company's digital image
Digital Branding

How to Boost Your Company’s Digital Image

In today’s world, so much of life operates on the internet. Although this has an impact on everyday society and social interactions, it also has significant repercussions on how businesses operate. Of course, the quality of a company’s products and customer service are still incredibly important in retaining customers and earning referrals. But, increasingly, a company is not viable in the long-term unless it has an excellent digital image.

That is, every business must have an effective and appealing internet presence if it is going to be successful. Therefore, factors such as social media activity and website layout should be important to you as you grow or build your business. Here are a few ways you can begin to create a reliable and viable internet presence for your company.

Make your website design clear

21185368 – website template

Clean Up Your Website and Other Professional Profiles

If your company has been around for a while, chances are your website has, too. Even if it’s only been a few years since you updated and upgraded your website, it’s probably time to do it again. Effective websites should be aesthetically appealing, simple, and easy to navigate. Especially if your website was created a while ago, it may be overly busy or bright, since that used to be the preferred style online. Today, however, that style doesn’t fly anymore. Your website should have clean, simple colors and easy-to-read fonts.

Every page on your site should be accessible via a “map” that runs either on the side or on the top of the website. This will make sure that your visitors can get anywhere on the website that they’d like to, with one simple click. While you’re redoing the style of your website, also update any old content, and double check for typos or grammatical errors. Small typos on the front page of your website will turn away customers before they even have a chance to figure out what your company is all about.

Maximize website SEO

Make Use of SEO for your Website

Even the most beautiful and functional website is useless unless people are actually visiting. After you’ve upgraded and modernized your website, it’s time to boost the number of visitors. To increase traffic to your website, make use of SEO — search engine optimization. SEO runs on a number of factors, one of the most important of which is keyword use. Do some research and find out the most relevant keywords used when people search for companies such as yours. Then, incorporate those keywords throughout your website content, so that your website will begin to appear higher in search engines’ results.

Be warned not to overuse keywords, however. This can get your website marked as “spam,” and can also turn visitors away if the content does not read naturally and fluidly. For instance, a digital marketing firm may make good use of the keyword “Above The Fold Media – SEO firm” by utilizing it in website headers or photo captions. However, attempting to weave a phrase such as that into the text of blog posts may prove tricky and ultimately be detrimental to the company’s SEO rankings.

Check out this video by SEO link builder Julian Goldie and learn more about keyword research:

 

 

Stay Up-to-Date with Social Media

While you’re paying attention to your website, don’t forget to make use of social media as well. Make sure that your company has an official and accurate Facebook page, and check it regularly so that you can respond quickly to any comments or messages. If relevant to your company, also consider starting a Twitter or Instagram account, so that you can interact with your customer base and earn followers through your posts.

Keep in mind that internet trends can change quickly, so it’s important to be in tune with your customer base. Pay attention to any feedback you get from customers, and you’ll be well on your way to creating an appealing internet presence for your company.

Social media promotion
Digital Branding

8 Powerful Ways to Promote Your Product in Social Media

Social media has become an innate part of everyday life for a lot of people all over the world. Not only is it a universal tool but it is also quite powerful. You can use social media for personal purposes but a lot of businesses have also found social media to be useful when it comes to promoting their products to a wide variety of audiences.

If you don’t have a social media presence as a business, you might find that you lose out on opportunities with potential clients. On that note, you should try and learn how to utilize social media to help power up your business. Here are several ways you can do that.

Social media marketing

Ideas To Promote Your Business On Social Media

Partner with Bloggers and Influencers

The great thing about social media is that it gives normal, average people the chance to become noticed and generate a solid following. They can have a variety of interests so if you have a particular niche as a business, you’re bound to find an influencer or blogger that has the following filled with your target customers.

Some businesses can get away with partnering with bloggers and influencers regardless of who their followers mainly are. However, to ensure that you aren’t wasting your money partnering with certain bloggers and influencers you want to do your research and figure out who their main audience is.

Knowing what you want from your influencers and bloggers will ensure that you have a smoother transaction with them. After all, not all of them know how to deal with business transactions so you should take charge.

Create Explainer Videos

There are plenty of ways you can advertise your products online. From online image ads to sponsored content, you will have plenty of avenues to promote your product on social media. For particular products, one content that you should invest in is explainer videos.

Plenty of experienced branding agency Auckland based know that you should create explainer videos for your products. The types of products that will most need explainer videos are software if you’re selling them. Having an explainer video will make it simpler for your customers to understand how to use your product.

Even if you have a product that might seem like a no-brainer, like clothes, it might be great to have an “explainer” video. It doesn’t really explain how to use the product. It just shows how it looks on a video.

Social media sharing

Share on Social Media

The most important task that you should do for your business’s social media is to share the content in some form on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be every day. As long as you are consistent and have a schedule for when you post, then you should be able to build a considerable size for your community on social media.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be constantly sharing posts that are promoting your products. It can feel like you’re a always showing ad so people might be irritated. You should share not only content that you produce but also content that other fans of your products have produced. It’s a great way to build a relationship with your community.

Run Social Media Contests

One way to attract attention to your social media accounts is by running a social media contest to give out awards on those who engage with the contest. Before you run any social media contests, you first have to make sure that you aren’t breaking any rules for specific social media platforms that you are running it in.

Use Email Marketing

Many people might think that email is no longer a popular avenue to communicate with your target audience. However, every expert marketer knows that email marketing is still a strong avenue that can attract a lot of attention to your business.

Use email newsletters as a way to share relevant information with your subscribers as well as an avenue to share promotions and sales to them.

Create In-Store Promotions

If you have physical locations then you might as well create promotions online that will persuade anyone who sees it go to your store location. One way to do that is by creating a sale that is only applied inside your physical location. You can also market a specific product that is only available at particular branches.

Offer an Upgrade or Trade-In

If the product that you are offering isn’t a physical product and is instead a service, then you might want to create offers for upgrades or trade-ins. These upgrades are best marketed towards your more loyal customers is so that you can continue to have them with you for a long time.

Loyal customers will be an advocate for your brand without you even asking them to as long as you treat them well consistently.

Share Customer Reviews

Making use of the positive reviews that you get from previous customers will help potential customers that are on the fence about whether they should use your product or not. Sharing these reviews on social media every once in a while can help persuade them to be a customer too.

Use social media for business

Over To You

Social media as a powerful tool and it would be a shame as a business owner if you don’t utilize this for the growth of your business. The ways listed above are but a drop in the ocean when it comes to how you can make the most out of your social media presence for your business. Apply them in your next marketing plan and you will surely realize growth in your business.

Digital BrandingPersonal Branding

An Expert’s Guide to Generating Leads on Facebook

Marketing isn’t always straightforward, and for many marketers and entrepreneurs, generating leads is a challenge. Facebook is a great platform to help you generate more leads. It’s a place where you can turn a conversation into customer loyalty and purchases, as well as getting to know your customers even better. Let’s see what it takes to generate leads on Facebook.

Why Facebook Is An Ideal Platform To Generate Leads On

There are a couple of reasons why Facebook is one of the best platforms to generate leads. And while you might have read that Facebook’s network growth has slowed down, they still have over 2.50 billion monthly active users. So, if you create a well-strategized presence focused on both organic and paid advertising methods, your possibilities on this platform are endless.

Another reason to use Facebook is that you can set different objectives as your goal with a campaign, which is something that most other platforms are not able to provide, even in 2020.  But not just that, the platform has made its name in lead generation with thanks to one of marketing’s golden rules: ‘know your audience.’ And while many marketers, such as yourself, might think that they already know their audience, the data you’ll gather when advertising on Facebook, might say otherwise.

Building Engagement And Expertise

f you want to start generating organic Facebook likes, it is essential to remember that you’re going to need to build a community that trusts you and create a lot of engagement.

Engagement And Community Building

Increasing or building brand engagement is important because the trust you create will eventually trigger more purchases. People are engaged with your content if they like, click, and comment. To make sure this happens, you will have to create value for your audience by writing exciting content, showing entertaining videos, and answering questions about your product/service.

You can also utilize customer reviews to build more trust. But if you do, it is an essential thing to keep in mind that you have to remember to always reply to messages, customer reviews, and questions. This will help you build a relationship with your potential customers, which will eventually generate more leads. 

Another thing you can do to improve the engagement with your brand and products is to build a community on Facebook. When you start with creating your community, you need to take a good look at yourself. A community is not about making a profit (or at least not directly); it is about personal success and helping others to succeed too. It creates mutually beneficial relationships that add value to your business, your own life, and that of the other community members.

When building a community, you can introduce the expert approach. This means you share valuable, expert level, information about topics that relate to your audience and product. The aim is to trigger a more in-depth conversation or discussion. You do this by asking questions and making comments as well as inviting others to share content too. Once you have established brand engagement and trust, you’re ready to start with Facebook Advertising. 

Facebook Advertising

Advertising is used for many different things, and such is the case with Facebook Advertising as well. Objectives like doing market research, getting customer feedback, and increasing conversion can be applied to create advertisements on Facebook. In this paragraph, we will focus on Facebook Lead Ads. 

Facebook Lead Ads are promotion forms that allow marketers, or anyone else who is interested in the matter, to collect information from possible customers. You’re also able to connect with prospects, get them to sign-up for newsletters, demo requests, and blog notifications. 

And by using dynamic creative, you can make sure to deliver the right message, at the right time to the right person.

Facebook lead generation lets you sync with your company’s CRM, which allows you to follow-up quicker and more efficiently. When you create a lead ad and someone clicks on it, they get presented with a unique form that automatically selects the information on their profile. After that, the users only need to confirm with a few clicks, super easy. You get the data into your CRM and will be able to give this new possible customer a quick call. You should also check out onlineacademy.com/ if you’re looking for some of the best training on Facebook advertising. This will help you cut your learning curve in half and go straight to making profits for your clients or your ecommerce website.

A tip for creating leads ads that will convert is that people are more willing to help you if you help them. Meaning, if you offer something in return for the data that you need, users are often more inclined to fill out the form. 

Building campaigns

Building campaigns with Facebook is relatively easy. The first thing you will have to do is to set a goal for your campaign. Facebook offers three different categories of objectives to choose from awareness, consideration, and conversion. If you’re going to get more leads, you’ll need to select conversion. These are the next steps to building a campaign:

  • Specify the ad set, that will determine how your ad will run. Think about this carefully, because targetting will make or break your campaign. 
  • After you’ve selected all the qualities of your possible customers, it’s time to build and test your ad creative. You can choose from different formats that are set up, which makes it easy to run. 
  • Once this is done, you are ready to launch your campaign. 

Statistics

After you’ve set up your campaign and it is running, it’s time to take a look at Facebook Statistics. We’ve selected the five most important measurements to keep track of to maximize your Return On Investment with Facebook Ads. 

1. The first is impressions, also known as the number of times your ad is shown and seen.

2. The number of clicks and the click-through-rate shows how interested people are in your ad. You can calculate the CTR by dividing the number of clicks through the number of impressions. 

3. Conversion rate, the conversion relates to the actions taken on your website after users come from your ad. 

4. Return on ads spend is defined as revenue divided by the costs of the ads. 

5. Lifetime value is the projected value that a customer will have during his or her entire life. In marketing, you often set a goal as to how much you want that value to be.

Increasing click-through rates

The click-through rate (CTR) of your ads is one of the best ways to understand how your audience is responding to your ads. There are a couple of things that will help you increase your CTR. 

The first is to distill your audience. You are increasing your CTR through audience redefining means that you will only select the users who are most likely to click on your ad. Let’s say that you noticed that men between 20 and 30 are clicking the most, and women of the same age group almost not at all. You should retarget your audience to men between 20 and 30. This means you are targetting the highest quality audience, which will increase your click-through rate. In other words, you are shifting from volume to value-based marketing. 

Another aspect of improving your CTR is content. The images and text you use play a huge role in your CTR. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix for this one; you will have to test to figure out what works for your audience. 

Facebook Messenger

Another way of reaching your audience is through Facebook Messenger. Through a messenger, you will be able to engage in actual, live conversations with your prospects. These conversations can help you gather more information and ask in-depth questions.

It is also possible to create ads that have a click-through to a messenger. If you set up an automated chat, you will be able to get an excellent and full idea of who your potential customers are and what they are looking for in a product.  

Facebook’s messages objective is a tool that will help start even more conversations. Through this tool, your ad gets delivered to people who are statistically most likely to want to have a conversation with your business. 

Conclusion

We hope that after reading this article, you feel comfortable enough about generating leads on Facebook to give it a try. The platform offers great flexibility when it comes to marketing goals and has an immense network of possible customers. Facebook Advertising and Facebook Messenger allow you to get to know and understand your potential customers. If you are patient enough to build your audience’s engagement and earn their trust, you will soon be swimming in leads.

Digital Branding

Apt Use of Directional Cues in Designing Great User Experience for your Target Audience

For web designers, making sure that they are one step ahead in creating the next great web design, they have to think out of the box. But sometimes that is not enough; they need to think about how to use the User Experience (UX) to their advantage. For designers, making users act upon their design can make a design work big time. For this, they need to make the users read the content of the website, follow the directional cues and click on the call to action buttons.

If you are not sure about the directional cues aspect that I mentioned in the last paragraph, don’t worry as this whole blog post is about how directional cues can be important in making a website work. And especially the design aspect can use the directional cues to make a website work. But why does a website have to offer directional cues in the first place? I will try to answer this question and other aspects in detail, so read on.

Directional Cues: The Basics

UX is one of the best ways for designers to make sure that they are on top of their game. By making a visitor get hooked on a website is no mean feat. There are virtually billions of websites out there on the internet, and on average, a user visits thousands of websites in his lifetime, if not more. But we like only a few dozen of them and visit them frequently. So, what can make a website tick? It is the directional cues through UX that can make the difference and is one of the most happening trends in design.

For all the businesses working in Dubai and other regional cities, they need a website so that they can attract the target audience. Thus, the role of the designers is one of the most important ones for the success of a website and, eventually the business it is representing.

A directional cue is not something that we usually don’t come across. Pointers call to action buttons Curves and lines all can be a directional cue as they can offer a cue to the user as to where we must go or use the website accordingly so that the website owners can benefit from it. First of all, let us talk about content and how it influences the choice of a website visitor.

Content to Die for

We all are aware of the famous phrase “content is the king”. The design can surely get the attention of the visitors of a website, but it is the content that can make all the difference. Right from the CTAs to special discount offers, there are many ways in which you can make content work for you big time. The use of directional cues in content is one of the best ways in which a positive result for the business can be achieved.

Let me explain what the directional cue in this context can be of great use.

Think of directional cues as something that will offer your visitors an option so that they can use your website in an easy uncomplicated way. You need to offer visitors the use that they can use to get along with the website without thinking about what will happen if we click on the icon power button. The visitors don’t have to predict what will happen next as you need to use queues so that they know where they are headed.

Everything mentioned above is very important for your future as a business. You are investing much time and money on your website, and so is the visitor on your website. He is also investing is time to find the product that you are selling.  If you want him to become your customer and also offer a positive word of mouth in social circles, you need to use directional cues smartly.

So how can you do this? Let me explain.

Getting Along with Directional Cues

The use of arrows and single points is one of the easiest ways to offer your visitors an option to choose what he is looking for. For example, if you are offering a flight booking on your website, you need to offer a functional and accessible search button. In this way, you will be able to offer your visitor I cleared optional so that he can book a flight in an easy and hassle-free way.

The art of offering directional cues can be mastered throughout a period. For designers, it isn’t easy because they have to work with different industries and businesses, and they have to find how they can create a design exactly according to the requirements. Observing direct marketing is one way to make things better in this concern.

Let me offer you an example so that you can understand my viewpoint easily.

Direct marketing professionals base their sale campaign so that they have every chance to get the attention of their target market. The use of print media in this concern is what makes them truly effective. The use of brochures and flyers is one effective way in this regard as word of mouth can play an important role. And print advertising for direct marketing is one easy way to get the job done effectively and within their budget.

The use of visual guidelines for tracking the target market is one easy way that works for them.

Use of Colors in Directional Cues

Most of my readers will not understand how directional cues can be mastered with colors, so here it goes. Your color palette is a powerful tool to make your reader aware of what you are offering them. It can improve the user experience far better than any other technique. The use of red color, for example, in a text, can make a visitor stop and notice what’s the message. This is just one of the ways to use colors to your advantage.

If you are nor comfortable with the use of color schemes or color the buttons in a specific way, you can always get the support of a website design dubai firm having the expertise in this concern. In this way, you will be better off in reaching your ultimate goal, that is, good traffic on your website and ultimately good sales.

Over to you

Please offer your valuable feedback for this blog or ask any question by using the comments section below.

Digital Branding

SEO & Branding: How To Increase Branded Traffic

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.

finances online

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.

According to Internet Live Stats, over 75000 searches are done on Google per second
Advanced Web Ranking found out that over 67 percent of clicks go to the first five organic search results
Ahref’s study discovered that over 91 percent of content online does not get the organic reach it needs

SEO helps in gaining a high organic search engine ranking. It uses various techniques and methods to boost your ranking and thereby increase the chances of people visiting your website. Remember, only when people visit your site then only you can actually leave an impact on them and convert them into customers.

How does branding help?

Considering Google is quite vague about its ranking algorithm, it is hard to achieve success in SEO if you focus on short term goals like achieving a high rank.

SEO without a purpose won’t help you in gaining a high ranking. This is only so much you can gain by creating backlinks and including high ranking keywords in your content. You must also take steps to build an authentic and trustworthy online brand.

According to different studies and SEO service experts, Google, along with other search engines, tends to encourage websites that feature a strong brand presence. Such sites can get a better ranking despite having fewer backlinks!

This is why branding and SEO must go hand in hand. Creating an SEO branding strategy can help you genuinely leverage the online world.

How to increase branded traffic

Here is how you can combine SEO tactics with branding efforts to reap optimum conversion rates and brand awareness.

1. Identify and use branded keywords

Apart from high ranking generic keywords pertaining to your category, you must also find and include branded keywords in your online presence.

What is a branded keyword?

A branded search is a query that includes the name of your brand. By adding these keywords into your content, you target users who are already aware of your brand, thanks to your branding efforts. These users have a higher chance of purchasing from your business than other people.

single grain

The more branded searches are done regarding your business, the higher you will rank organically. Now, there are different variations of the branded keyword that you must cater to. Some users might be looking for reviews about your brand, while others would be comparing your business with other similar options.

Make sure your content is optimized for all such branded searches. This ensures that users get information about your brand from you.

2. Use local SEO

Did you know that over 46 percent of search queries on Google use local keywords? Any user with a high commercial intent will then go to Google to find whether your brand is near them or not. If you are a local brand, it is essential to leverage this consumer behavior by implementing local SEO.

result driven seo

Focus on geo-targeting. Optimize all local business listings present on Google to ensure that you can drive traffic to your site from Google directories and Maps. Conduct link building with a special focus on getting links from other websites that are present within your local area.

Each of these tactics will allow you to optimize your website for local SEO. If you are a known brand locally, you will automatically be able to reach users that are already convinced of your branding efforts.

3. Build your authority

A great way to increase branded traffic to your business is by focusing on building an online brand. A lot of times, marketers tend to focus on abstract branding methods. This includes creating a logo, a tagline, and positioning. While these methods are critical to the success of a brand, branding merely begins with such techniques.

The next step is to build a robust and credible image online. As you do so, your ranking will automatically improve. You can use optimized content to build your brand and its authority.

It is essential to publish content that would matter to your target audience and the industry. This helps in reinstating your position in the sector as being an expert and trustworthy brand. It also helps in boosting your brand awareness and reaching a wider audience than before.

So, when it comes to publishing content, look beyond your website. Contribute to the online world by demonstrating your expertise via Guest posts on authority websites. The better the sites are, the more credible you will seem.

Not to mention that this is an excellent way to leverage the credibility and following of other established websites to boost your brand’s ranking!

Verdict

The objective of increasing branded traffic is simple- ensuring that your online and offline branding efforts don’t go in vain. By appearing in a top position for the right branded keywords and by establishing your image as a credible source of information, you can help increase the right traffic to your website.

Now that you are aware of the connection between SEO and branding, you are more than ready to outstrip your competition and emerge as the best brand within your category, both online and offline!

Do you think there are other ways you can boost branded traffic to your site? Let us know.

 

Author Bio:

About Ashley Rosa: Ashley Rosa is a freelance writer and blogger. As writing is her passion that why she loves to write articles related to the latest trends in technology and sometimes on health-tech as well.  She is crazy about chocolates. You can find her at twitter: @ashrosa2.

Digital Branding

SEO For Beginners: An Eye Opener How-To Guide

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.

Digital Branding

What are the Core SEO Trends and Strategies to Focus in 2020

The old SEO strategies and techniques that we used in the past still work but don’t seem to be as effective as expected. As Google is continuously updating its algorithm to deliver users the most relevant results, SEO experts all across the globe are becoming aware of the new SEO trends and strategies that are considered to be the future of SEO.

What are the Core SEO Trends and Strategies to Focus in 2020?

In order to beat the competition in the online market, we need to re-think and update our content and SEO strategy as per the ever changing updates of Google search engine. Keeping this in mind, we need to update our website and adopt the recent SEO strategy so as to ensure that more prospects and customers find us on search engines. So now, the question is “What are the Core SEO Trends and Strategies to Focus in 2020?”. Below is a comprehensive list of new SEO trends and strategies to follow in the coming year 2020:

  1. Optimize your Website for Featured Snippet
  2. Invest your Time on Influencer Marketing
  3. Implement Voice Search SEO
  4. Focus on Mobile UX Factor
  5. Generate Video Content on Website
  6. Enhance Dwell Time on Website
  7. Content Length and Quality Importance
  8. Artificial Intelligence in SEO
  9. Work on Semantic Search and Intent Optimization
  10. Understand the Need of Structured Data
  11. Positive Impacts of Brand Mention
  12. Optimize Content as Per Google BERT Update
  13. Install Amazon Polly to Increase Dwell Time

Optimize your Website for Featured Snippet

A featured snippet is the search result that appears at the top in a box before the #1 position on SERP. The featured snippet has a very good click-through rate, so it is recommended to take advantage of this feature. To avail of this feature, we need to generate clear and simple answers to commonly asked questions on our website which may be featured on top of SERP based on their quality.

Invest your Time on Influencer Marketing

The current trend is showing that users are more likely to engage with a trustful, respected and well-known person than with ads. So, we should invest more in influencer marketing to enhance SEO efforts. Influencers can also help create valuable backlinks, an important factor in determining Google rankings. Before engaging with an influencer, make sure what type of content you want them to create, how it links back to your website and if they are relevant to your industry.

Implement Voice Search SEO

Voice searches have become a popular trend due to the advancement in mobile devices. So, we should optimize our website for voice searches and understand how to implement conversational searches into our SEO strategy. For voice search, you should focus on content with keywords having conversational queries, long queries, local targeting, and an FAQ page is a must for voice search SEO. For voice search optimization, make the title tags and first headers sound like a question similar to what a user is going to ask. For example: If your blog’s title is “Minimize Software Development Cost for Startups”, then try to make it “How to minimize Software Development Cost for Startup Businesses?”. Additionally, you can also optimize the old content with this strategy.

Focus on Mobile UX Factor

Mobile UX is an important factor in determining a website’s ranking, so a mobile version of a web-page is a must. Mobile first indexing is one of the core indexing and ranking factors. If your page doesn’t look good on mobile devices, you may lose ranking. It is essential to have a mobile version for a website to drive more users towards your website. Getting higher in the Google mobile page index will make your web-page highly authoritative.

Generate Video Content on Website

Videos are the new source of information for the users browsing online. As per studies from Google and other reputed organizations, 6 out of 10 users prefer to watch videos online than TV because online videos are a much better source of academic and entertainment information. As a result, this has greatly affected modern SEO, and marketers are now optimizing the videos for search users so as to reach out to the maximum audience. The video optimization starts with adding relevant keywords to the video headline and in the description. 

Dwell Time to be the Major Ranking Factor

Time spent on a web-page before bouncing back would be one of the major ranking factors in the coming days. The dwell time metrics are very important as they tell, how interested users are in your content and if they are getting the desired information about what they are looking for. Having a better dwell time means users are more interested in your content, so we should focus more on generating quality and valuable information for the users to get ahead of the competition.

Content Length and Quality Importance

As we know, content quality is one of the core ranking factors for any website, but now the search engines are also considering the length of content as a core ranking factor. Currently, users are now looking to get complete information from a single authentic source that is why they prefer to read lengthy content from reliable sources. Recent studies revealed that more no. of users are reading articles having a content length of 2000 words than fewer words. So, we should focus on generating lengthy content embedded with comprehensive and quality information that answers almost all the related queries for what a user is looking for.

Artificial Intelligence in SEO (Rank Brain)

Artificial intelligence is the new trend in SEO which many companies are following. As Google uses AI to deliver highly relevant results, to identify keyword stuffing, bad backlinks, irrelevant content for users, it’s necessary to use AI in your SEO strategy so as to meet the search engine requirements. AI also determines metrics such as bounce rate, time on site, etc. Using artificial intelligence in SEO and content strategy can be very useful to gather important data and customer insights which can lead to overall SEO success.

Semantic Search and Intent Optimization

Now, Google doesn’t use the exact match words that are being typed by users in the search box. Google actually looks at the user’s query context/intent and analyzes the highly relevant search intent to reflect the results. Google has a very good understanding of searchers’ intent that is why the traditional content creation with a single keyword doesn’t work now. So, it is necessary to use Text Optimizer and make a collection of the desired search queries into related concepts and entities. This semantic research will help create content having sentences based on some common co-occurrence analysis of the term you select.

Understand the Need of Structured Data

Structured data refers to displaying data in an organized way. It can be used in many different ways to display a website’s information as enhanced results in SERPs in the form of rich snippets, rich cards, carousels, knowledge boxes, etc. Google is interested in fetching more data from your web-page and giving more exposure to your website. So, it is recommended to implement structured data on your website to boost visibility and ranking. Marketing experts working in various emerging software development companies in India are now focusing hard with the developers to implement structured data for all websites on which they are working to enhance the SEO efforts.

Positive Impacts of Brand Mention

Google included brand mention as a part of its algorithm update and is tracking how many times your brand is mentioned online. So, it is the time to work around brand mentioning as Google is not only looking for links but also for people talking about your brand on social media and other online platforms.

Optimize Content as Per Google BERT Update

Bert is basically termed as Bidirectional Encoder Representations From Transformers. BERT is powered by AI and ML to provide a new way to efficiently understand the language for Google searches. It has an immediate effect on how websites are ranked on SERP. As per the BERT update, your focus should be on the context of the search term not on the keyword (with an inclination towards conversational queries). It will consider the overall context of the keyword by analyzing the other terms associated with the keyword in order to understand the actual intent behind a user’s search queries.

BERT will analyze the long-tail keywords to understand the overall context of the phrases in your search query. It is assumed that long-tailed phrases will help in improving results. BERT also implies that content is always the king which requires a primary focus above all SEO parameters, so it is required to focus on using long-tailed key phrases in your On-page SEO and content strategy. The use of keywords in the content doesn’t need to be exact, you can instead use different words of the keywords after keeping in mind the user intent behind the search query related to that keyword.

Just for an example: The exact keyword used within content like “software development India” will be given less value as compared to the phrases like “list of Indian companies delivering quality software development projects”.

Install Amazon Polly to Increase Dwell Time

Amazon Polly, a speech recognition tool will help you increase the dwell time of users on your website as it will read aloud any content piece for your site visitors. This tool is available as a WordPress plugin and can easily be integrated into blog posts. Having both the reading and listening options on your webpage will make users engaged for a longer period of time, and therefore enhance the dwell time which is a major ranking factor.

Bottom Line

All the aforementioned SEO strategies could be a game-changer for any website you own and will help you get a better search engine ranking and ensure a continuous inflow of highly relevant traffic as compared to your competition. We would be glad to hear your views or suggestions regarding the content. You can contact us directly through our comments section.

About the Author

Manoj Rawat, a Growth Hacker, Ideator, Innovator, techy and an experienced SEO, SMM and Marketing Consultant with over 8 years of IT experience. He loves to share technology trends, marketing tips & strategies among online communities. He is an avid sports person, traveller, & nature lover. 

Digital Branding

Tools Your Company Needs This 2020

There is no argument that stubborn companies that refuse to adapt to the new way of business management are doomed to crash and burn in the long run. Enterprises that do not use any modern technology in their business operations are losing out on both their present and future competition. There are now many tools that exist to help companies grow and scale, such as applications that manage enterprise contracts, track cash flows and prove analytics.

Sticking to the “old ways” will not do the company any good as many systems have all been rendered inefficient or redundant by software tools. There is now a race towards building a smart company. And the fun part is that it is not exclusive to the big corporations. Even startups and small businesses are exerting efforts into integrating as much automation and AI into their standard operating procedures to gain leverage over their competitors.

Here I have created a list of the best tools for some business operations that your company needs this 2020.

Internal Communication

Communication is essential within any organization. The chances of miscommunication in a team that has no reliable messaging platform are high. In line with this, the resulting consequences from even the slightest sense of misunderstanding could bring in a lot of unnecessary confusion and mistakes to the company. 

An effective messaging platform needs to be set and standardized to foster not only a good working relationship between employees but also improve the overall efficiency and productivity of the office.

Some of the best tools that I found are:

Data Storage

In the past, the only way to have records of a company’s business transactions are through a paper trail and hard copies of documents. However, with the advancement of technology and the improvement of cloud-based systems, it is now possible to upload all of the company’s files on an online server where they are safe from physical harm. Aside from the security, a search tool makes it easier to locate files instead of having to browse through hundreds upon hundreds of folders. 

On top of that, a convenient feature of online data storage is that any administrator can access the files wherever and whenever as long as they have access to the Internet.

 Some of the best servers for data storage are:

Analytics

Analytics and Search Engine Optimization may sound like intimidating concepts, but with the right tools and training, they are easy to understand. Analytics is vital to any business, regardless of whether it’s a big corporation or a small startup. Analytics provide valuable insights that greatly help with a company owner’s decision-making.

The best analytics tools available so far in the market are:

Social Media Marketing

Social Media is now one of the most significant time-consuming activities in the world. It is estimated that in 2018, the average person spent an average of 136 minutes a day. As of today, this number has probably already doubled as there are now more fun features to keep users occupied. At the same time, the life of an individual, both social and professional, can now revolve around social media.

This is why social media marketing has become one of the best marketing strategies to use to help brands connect with customers, increase their brand awareness, boost their number of leads, and increase their sales. Managing social media accounts can be quite a tedious task, and thankfully, there are software applications available for companies to use, such as:

Other Internal Processes

Some internal processes are best left to automation. For example, GatekeeperHQ’s contract management software can easily make your contract management process much faster and with fewer errors and hassle than any experienced contract manager can. On the other hand, there is Quickbooks which allows users to track company expenses, carefully manage cash flows, and create online invoices for better business management.

Summary

At the end of the day, this technology is only as powerful as the one using them. Users must take the time of the day to properly understand each aspect and feature of the automation tools to get the optimal results!