There is no one who doesn’t want to work with the best, especially when it comes to business consulting. For small and big businesses alike, when you are thinking of investing in SEO, one should always look for providers who can deliver the best of their promises in action. But, how to identify who is the best?

Before checking out the characteristics of a good SEO agency, it is essential to understand how SEO works and which all aspects of it play a crucial role in business marketing. Online business is quite a competitive and complicated affair with hundreds of thousands of companies competing in the same space. This is the reason why businesses should hire expert SEO providers in order to get dedicated and loyal customers online.

Professional SEO firms knew all the nooks and corners of digital marketing and ensure that your brand thrives in this highly competitive space. You can be reassured about relevant traffic and in turn, convert it into sales with the help of SEO. If you into the search for such an agency to take your online business marketing to the next level, here are some essentials to look for.

1. Professionalism and experience

Thro succeed in the digital space; it is important for the SEO provider to have significant experience in your industry-relevant SEO practices. If you want to reap maximum results, then it is advisable to sing up with a company or professional provider who has considerable experience in your field of business.

Providers from the same industry will have a better understanding of the competition and the standard SEO practices which will work the best in it. Check if the SEO agency you approach is knowledgeable about the business dynamics of both the local market and international market as your focus. Professional SEO providers know the client as well as user expectations and can work at best to meet all these objectives.

2. Notable reputation

The clients of the SEO providers will have volumes to tell about their services and support. This is the ideal way to identify whether the provider in consideration is reputed or not. You can check online to see the feedback and testimonial about any top SEO agency to ensure whether it is a highly admired service.

You can also get information from the blog discussions and forums by gathering comments and feedback about various providers. You can also check the grievance posting sites also to see what complaints clients used to raise certain providers. It is also ideal to ask someone you know about their experience with SEO outsourcing to see if they have any suggestions to make.

3. Analytical ability

As we know, SEO is a very strategic approach to business marketing, which has to be done based on a thorough analysis. Tools like Google Analytics are used by expert SEO providers in order to understand where their clients stand and the specific areas to be worked on.

While approaching an SEO agency, you should check their analytical tools and methodology in order to understand whether they possess significant expertise in this specialty. Without analytics, getting into SEO will be something getting on to an ocean sail without any map or sail plan.

Any professional SEO provider will have a highly analytical mind and essential analytical tools handy. If your SEO provider is not keen about numbers and if their decisions are not data-driven, then your efforts may ultimately fail. SEO is a precise scientific approach than an art, so choose only someone who focuses on figures and results.

4. Utilizes the latest strategies

As we know, digital marketing is a constantly changing specialty. SEO techniques are evolving day by day, and many of those become obsolete over time. Say, for example, keyword stuffing was one of the top SEO strategies at one time, but now it is considered as a black-hat technique which may end up in a penalty.

A professional SEO provider will always watch for the latest changes and updated in terms of search engine optimization and change their strategies accordingly. In fact, the SEO approach in various industries may also differ. They utilize time-tested techniques and apply them to suit to the actual needs of the clients. In fact, no SEO strategy tends to ensure 100% results, but a fine combination of the best approaches can bring in real results.

5. Professional team

Successful SEO is a team effort. A professional SEO team is an ideal characteristic to look for while finding an SEO agency. A good company will encourage their SEO staffs to do constant research to tackle the latest search engine algorithms and bring their clients on to the top.

A professional SEO team will consist of not an only search engine expert, but good web designers, website planner, content engineers, social media experts, e-mail strategies and so on. Professional agencies will train their staff to continue to make sure that they are fully focused on results based on the changing SEO conditions.

6. Follows an ethical methodology

A reputable and professional SEO agency may use only white-hat SEO techniques while trying to promote client sites. Those agencies which offer over-night results may be trying out the black hat techniques to show some instant (short-lived) results, but this will ultimately put you into deeper troubles.

Good SEO agencies will never use the black hat tactics like spamming, doorway pages, or invisible text to boost search engine positions. Now with their latest algorithms, all major search engines run very strict monitoring on the SEO activities, and if the bots identify any websites employing such strategies, such pages will be instantly penalized or even get banned.

This is the reason why you should join hands with only those providers using legitimate SEO methods which are approved by search engines as ethical. The right approach professional SEO companies utilize now are:

• Quality link building
• Website optimization
• Keyword focused quality content etc.

Proper white hat SEO techniques will guarantee slow, but steady results which are more sustainable.

Most importantly, a good SEO provider will only give realistic commitments to its clients. They may never guarantee the No.1 SERP position, but they may focus more on strategies which help their clients to slowly and steadily build in terms of search engine ranking.

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If you want your eCommerce business to succeed in 2019, you should craft an excellent social media marketing strategy. Today, it’s not enough to just produce share-worthy content. It’s also important to utilize sneaky marketing tricks to improve brand awareness and customer loyalty.

In this article, you will find recommendations on how to use Facebook, Instagram, and Tweeter to boost your eCommerce sales. Follow them, and you will take your business to the next level.

Collaborate with influencers

It’s always challenging to make your first online sale. When no one knows your brand yet, no one wants to buy your products.

If you have just started your eCommerce business and want to get first orders immediately, you should collaborate with digital celebrities in your niche. They can easily influence the opinion of your target audience and make people believe that your product is worth buying.

If you can’t afford collaboration with influencers, which have more than 100,000 followers, you can collaborate with micro-influencers. The services of micro-influencers, who have around 15,000 followers, will not cost you a fortune.

Run giveaways

People love freebies even more than you can imagine. Can you guess what the simplest way to draw the audience’s attention to your brand and boost sales is? All you need to do is to provide people with a chance to get something for free.

So, why don’t you run a giveaway on social media? It will help you to raise brand awareness and generate enormous sales. To run a successful giveaway, you should make four simple steps:

• Offer a valuable prize. It can be a new product, gift card, huge discount, etc.
• Craft a catchy post to inform followers about the giveaway. If you have no idea how to write winning captions, you may check writing services company reviews and get help from a professional writer.
• Ask influencers in your niche to inform their followers about a giveaway. The more people will participate in your giveaway, the more returns you will get.
• Utilize reliable social media contest tools to make sure that the process of winner selection is fair and transparent.

Generate social media buzz

Do you know how to launch a brand new product successfully? You should make people talk about your product everywhere: on social media platforms, at parties, and even in Starbucks’ toilet queues. You should make people feel excited about getting a new product and encourage them to place pre-orders as soon as possible.

To hit this goal, you should generate social media buzz and make your brand irresistible. Every post related to the new product launch should intrigue your followers. Try not to reveal any specific details, but to drive curiosity. Here are a few ideas, which you can use:

• Start countdown 30 or 50 days prior launch. Mention in every new post how many days have left. Make people wait for your new product as impatiently as they wait for Christmas.
• Collaborate with bloggers in your niche. Allow them to “leak” some details related to the new product launch on social media
• Add countdown sticker to Instagram stories

Ask questions to get feedback

If you need to get feedback from your target audience, don’t waste your money on running surveys. In the digital age, you can get answers to your questions using social media.

Let’s imagine that you operate in the fashion industry. This spring, you are going to sell a vintage style dress available in five colors. You need to forecast demand for different colors to avoid inventory stockouts.

To create a demand forecast, you need to be neither a financial expert nor a fashion guru. You just need to use the Instagram carousel. Upload five photos of the dress in different colors and ask your followers to comment on which one they like the most.

That’s all! Now you just need to check the answers. If you know that the green dress gets 2,000 “votes”, and the blue one only 500 “votes”, you can forecast demand easily.

Share user-generated content (UGC)

Another great way to boost eCommerce sales is to share user-generated content on social media. As you know, people tend to trust real customer reviews more than the advertisement. For this reason, user-generated content attracts more potential buyers than any paid ad. Also, UGC costs no money.

It’s worth mentioning that people like to interact with companies. And they feel happy if someone finds their photos and videos share-worthy.

If you want to base your marketing strategy on user-generated content, here is a short guide for you:

• Create your branded hashtag
• Invite your followers to share their opinions about your brand on social media
• Remind them that they should use your hashtag and tag you on photos and videos
• If you have just started your social media profile, it’s highly likely that you have no followers. In this case, you may send your customers an email to invite them to follow you on social media and share their reviews.
• Never forget to mention the content creator, when you share UGC on your business profile

Share behind-the-scenes

Let people know more about your company. Reveal information about the technologies and materials you use. Show the team of professionals behind your business.

If you want to build a trustful relationship with your customers, you should share behind-the-scenes photos and videos. It will help to explain to your audience how your company actually works. Absolute honesty will boost customer loyalty and, as a consequence, sales.

In conclusion

As you can see, social media can help you to increase eCommerce sales in numerous ways. You just need to choose a marketing strategy, which perfectly suits your business concept.

Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a blogger with rich experience in writing about UX design, content planning, and digital marketing. Currently, she is the chief contributor at RatedbyStudents where she helps individuals and organizations improve their web content writing, design, and planning skills.

There is no doubt to the fact that we are currently living in the digital era because right now if you look around, you will see that most industries and businesses are getting digitized as products are not only shown and described online but sold there as well. All of this is justifiable because the number of customers you can get to your local store is nothing as compared to the quantity that you can get online. Now everyone has a phone and almost everyone is using the internet, instead of going door to door to sell your products and services, wouldn’t it be better to use the internet and reach out to the masses that too without any physical efforts? Going online is one wise choice to make so long as you  pay attention to e-commerce branding concepts.

Now, if you are someone who just recently started your e-commerce business and if you want to know how to establish your brand and then promote it then, yes, you are at the right place, reading the right content. You see, you might be selling the best quality products and your services can be extremely amazing but if you aren’t visible to your audience, there’s no point to be on the internet in the first place. Long story short, your visibility is all that matters and that should matter.

Tips For E-Commerce Branding

Here are a few tips that can come in handy to you for branding your e-commerce business:

1- Creating a brand identity

It is but very obvious that to start with the branding process, you first need to create a brand identity for your business which means that the first thing you need to do is to get a logo. Not just any logo will do; in fact, you need to make a proper investment on your logo and hire a professional because your logo will be representing your e-commerce store so make sure to take logo selection seriously. Once you are done with the logo, you then need to focus on your branding guide which includes the color palette you have to follow, the typography, and the style that you will always be following.

2- The story of your brand

People love it when they get to hear the story behind a brand. You need to create a story for your brand too and make your audience hear that story out. From your core values to your missions and goals, you need to mention each and everything in your story. Above all of it, you need to tell and show people that they matter to you and you are there to make an improvement in their lives.

3- Get your hands on social media

Yes, having an e-commerce website of your own is imperative, but what’s more important is the fact that you need to be on social media platforms. You see, right now, every single individual is using social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are a few most important platforms to be on because believe it or not, you can make millions of customers just by being on these sites. Long story short, you cannot just overlook the fact that social media is supposed to be a part of your business and you need separate marketing strategies too for being successful there.

Conclusion

These are some of the steps to e-commerce branding that you need to follow in order to be successful. So, use the tips we just gave and make sure to give the best of your efforts to your business if you really want it to reach new heights of success.

How would you like to open an Amazon store filled with products bearing your own brand labels? The thought is literally intoxicating because you know that Amazon is the world’s largest consumer marketplace and the ultimate place to find the greatest number of consumers interested in what you have to sell. If you are sincerely contemplating opening an Amazon storefront, the following information can serve as a guide to why you would want to sell your own brand, private label products and then how to go about ensuring maximum profits. After all, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You want to make money and lots of it. Here is how it’s done.

Why You Want Your Own Brand

The very first step is to fully understand and appreciate the benefits of selling your own brand products. Sometimes referred to as private label products, these are simply products manufactured by a company and sold to you generically without a label. However, you don’t want to list generic products because consumers expect to buy them at rock bottom prices.

This is why you want to create your own brand so that you can build that brand and price your inventory accordingly as your brand becomes well-established. In other words, you don’t need to manufacture your own merchandise, you just need to build a brand with products manufactured by companies of your choice.

What New Merchants Should Know About FBA Benefits

At this point, it would be in your best interest to understand the benefits of letting Amazon fulfill your orders. Referred to as FBA listings, these products are housed in Amazon warehouses and all orders are fulfilled by Amazon, hence the FBA listing. The major benefits include warehousing and fulfillment. You don’t need to operate a large warehouse and you don’t need to pull orders, pack or ship any products. The best benefit of all is that FBA products are eligible for Prime free shipping which is a huge perk on the customer end.

Unfortunately, you should also know that mistakes can happen and sometimes those mistakes can be costly to a merchant’s bottom line. Many times Amazon owes their merchants money over mismanaged orders, improper stocking or even for products damaged in the warehouse or in shipping. If you want to minimize losses, you might want to consider software like AMZRefund that can help you track any Amazon errors which are affecting your bottom line.

Find Your Niche

This might be one of the most difficult aspects of opening an Amazon storefront unless you know exactly what market you’d like to enter. Consumer goods come in all categories from electronics to pet foods and everything in between. If you don’t know exactly what you’d like to list, it’s imperative that you know which products are hot so that you can find your niche. Much is written on finding a profitable niche and there is an actual science to it from researching to finetuning your sales marketing approach. Expect to spend a good deal of time with this step of your journey unless you have a passion you’d like to pursue.

Sourcing Products & Own Brand Labeling

This is another step which may take some time and research. Check out sites like Alibaba that list suppliers from all around the globe. Many manufacturers specialize in the private label ‘generic’ products and it’s up to you to choose the manufacturer that offers what you are looking for. Remember, a niche isn’t everything when sourcing suppliers and manufacturers because consumers are looking for the highest quality at the lowest cost.

Many new merchants look overseas for manufacturers because their cost is lower but the quality isn’t always inferior. Once you’ve found a supplier, it’s time to create your brand, design your labels and then work with a labeling company to produce your own brand private labels. If you find the right labeling company, they can also assist you with graphic design including eye-catching logos that will help build your brand.

Last But Not Least – It’s Time to List Your Products!

Once you have gone through all the above steps to creating and selling your own brand products on Amazon, it’s time to create a merchant account and start listing your products. Here is where you’ll find another benefit of FBA listings because you are not limited by the amount of merchandise you can warehouse.

Amazon will warehouse your products and fulfill orders so that you can continue working on building your brand and growing your inventory. This is just a snapshot of what it takes to build your own brand on Amazon but once you’ve caught the fever, there’s no end to what you can do or obtain. It’s not a cliché because as an own brand Amazon seller, the sky really is the limit. See for yourself.

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Advertising and marketing are some of the pillars of effective business strategies. There are many ways to get your business out there and advertise your services. One of the oldest ways to market your business, be it a product or a service, is by word of mouth. This is the most credible, and cheapest way to help grow your business. Although the best things in life are free, this is not the case for marketing. If you want to grow your business, you will have to invest in good advertising.

 

Traditional vs Non-traditional Advertising

When we say traditional advertising, this mostly encompasses advertising through the most common forms of media such as billboards, newspapers, and radio or TV commercials. This is an older advertising method and has been around for centuries. Non-traditional advertising, otherwise, involves the use of technology to reach out to the target audience. There’s advertising on the internet through page banners, social media marketing, and mobile advertising. Non-traditional advertising reaches a wider audience with an estimated number of 3.2 billion internet users worldwide.

 

What is Online Presence?

Simply put, online presence is the establishment of a business that can be found via an online search. With the rise of social media, most consumers would find a business more credible if it has a strong online presence. Meaning this business manages either a social media site, a website, or both. Businesses that are able to establish an online presence are able to leverage the use of these platforms to help promote and grow the business.

 

 Benefits of a Strong Online Presence

Sure, it’s great to hear all this talk about establishing an online presence. But let us break down how this will actually benefit your business.

Free Advertising

Instead of spending money on advertising firms, you may want to invest this capital into a good construction contract and bidding software that can help you run your business and get ahead of the game. Nowadays, you can use social media platforms to create a page for your business, provide chat support services, and even create online order forms- all for free! It’s like getting something for nothing. In addition, there are also free web hosting websites that enable you to create a webpage for your business for added online presence.

Global Audience

Traditional print advertising only limits your ads to those who have access to this material. Most of the time they come in the form of a section in the newspaper or magazine, as well as outdoor billboards and TV ads. In this day and age, more and more people are opting to go digital and print ads may not be as effective in reaching your audience, most especially the millennials. Establishing an online presence means that you can reach far and wide all over the world. With a growing number of internet users, there is great potential in your business once you have established a strong online presence.

Online Presence = Credibility

The modern consumer will look up most likely anything and everything on the internet. To most users, if your company does not appear on an online search, this can set off a red flag. It is established that a credible company should be searchable online. If your company does not have an online presence, you can miss out on a valuable opportunity to market your business to the right audience.

Advertise 24/7

            The internet never sleeps. With a strong online presence, you can be sure that you’re advertising round-the-clock. People from all over the world can search and contact your business any time of the day once you’re established on the internet. You don’t have to wait for the day’s paper to arrive or for your spot to air on TV to be able to get the message across. With an online presence, advertising is just a click away.

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You sit on your desktop looking for the best online deals on fashion merchandise. What do you usually do? You merely Google the results and look for the ones that suit you. More often than not, you click on the ones at the top. Do you ever wonder what makes those sites appear at the top? Is it their popularity?

However, the main reason why they appear at the top is their optimization in accordance with the search engine. Search engine optimization has been a defining moment for the change in online advertising and digital marketing industry. Most websites prefer to optimize their content for it to appear at the top of the search results in Google. It has specific strategies which help your site grow in terms of stature.

 

A Brief on the Working of SEO

How does SEO make it possible for your website to appear at the top? Well, it’s not such a complicated process. Every site stands for its content, as it should. The content is the main structure which makes your website strong. In the working of SEO too, it’s the content which plays a significant role. For it to work, you would have to be well-versed with keywords and searches of your content.

What happens is, we target a few specific words from our content and use it as keywords. The experts set keywords according to the searches on Google. For example, if we see a few words which have a vast range in the search history, we can set them as our keywords. It sets up the content is such a way that Google tracks your content up whenever people use those words to search the internet.

It is mainly this strategy which works in Search Engine Optimization. Not only the text content but it also works with various other forms of content available in the web world. Going deep down the context would help us know more about how SEO event works. However, companies usually hire SEO experts such as SEO Company Los Angeles to help them out with the optimization of your content.

 

Working over Videos

Videos are by far the best means of boosting your web content. When you have well-framed video clippings which go well along with your website and its content, it is bound to boost your content for search engine optimization. You don’t need proof to believe how vital videos can be in capturing people’s attention. Once you go away with grabbing the attention, half of your work is over.

Statistically too, videos have seen a rise in their use over the years. Recent developments in the industry have placed videos way above other kinds of content in the market. As you scroll through videos, you get to see various types of content which unknowingly grabs your attention towards a specific product. It is this skill which you require if you wish to excel in this field.

 

Benefits of Incorporating SEO

Websites all over the world look to incorporate SEO into their systems. There have to be substantial reasons behind this. Optimizing your content is more important than you might think. Let’s see the benefits of SEO below:

1. Low Cost and Maintenance

SEO is unlike advertisement where you pay for your products’ advertising. It is something which comes with skill and information. You hire SEO experts to optimize your content, and you are good to go. You don’t need any extra payment over the online sources to boost your content. Some people go for illegal sources and spend money, but the effort ultimately goes in vain, as they fail to focus on their content.

One should know that spending extra money is not going to get them anywhere. It’s their effort and quality which can do so.

2. Increase in Traffic

Optimizing your content means a definite increase in web traffic. Statistically, most websites opting for SEO have witnessed a considerable increase in traffic. It’s obvious when your content appears on the top of the search results that you are bound to see an increase in web traffic. The growth would not be there overnight, but it would be steady enough to keep you guessing. You have to keep patience for the result.

3. Enhancement in Credibility and Stature

For a brand, its credibility stands on top of its priority list as it should. As a webmaster, it is obvious for you to look for a way out which helps you enhance your credibility. You can use social media platforms, your nearby sources, and other means to propagate your brand credibility, which are good ways of promoting your brand. However, SEO lets you have a look at the bigger picture.

Using SEO, when your content appears on the top of search results, your potential customers are bound to think about your brand as a high-end one. This impression of your brand on your potential customers demands a strategy. SEO helps you have that.

 

4. Return of Investment

Your expectations for your investments rise higher with the amount that you consider for investing in a project. With SEO, you land in an entirely appropriate place where you get more than your expectations. The effects on SEO on your web traffic are most of the times higher than what you usually expect for a certain amount of expenditure. So, the return of investment that you get in SEO is one of the best.

5. You are ahead of your competitors

If a concept becomes popular, its demand is bound to increase. With an increase in demand, the competition also increases. Considering a lot of people are already starting to look for SEO experts to expand their business online, you should not waste any time in getting started. It would make you stand with your competitors who are already in this field and give you an edge over those who aren’t.

Business is a race where you need to strive to get better every day. Don’t simply do it because everyone is busy doing it but, do it because it’s the way to go.