Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm

Attracting your target audience and growing your social media especially your LinkedIn followers is one of the hardest things to do as a digital marketer. You have to post relevant content and you have to do it frequently. But how do you know what’s top of mind for your target audience? LinkedIn has introduced a content suggestion tool – an innovative tool that helps you discover trending topics and articles amongst your target audience.

Watch this 2-minute video for step-by-step instructions:

Kindly note that in order to access this content suggestion tool, you need to have your own LinkedIn company page.

The post LinkedIn Content Suggestion Tool appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

14 Valuable Tips to Increasing Your Social Media Followers and Engagement

Najam Ahmed — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 20:37:40 +0000

Social media followers are an extremely important and crucial metric for business owners to keep an eye on, an increase in the social media followers for a brand would determine whether there is any success to the new social media strategy you just applied, the regular consumer will look at your numbers before deciding to follow you and bigger brands and influencers will judge your usefulness to them through your numbers. Today you will learn ways to grow your social media followers and maintain their loyalty rather than harness it for your organization’s growth and betterment.

1. Have a follow-worthy brand

People nowadays look for value in the brands that they want to follow, they are not interested in three sales pitches on each platform that you have a page on, instead, they look for ways your brand can help them, provide value to their careers, and businesses. This can be done better if there’s a personal touch that your company connects with their followers on social media, people follow brands that are somewhat socially responsible and sustainable, so go out and engage with them on their level telling them that you care.

2. Optimize your Social Media accounts

Before you make any efforts to gain newer followers you need to go back to the basics, one of the main steps is making sure that your business accounts on all platforms are completely optimized, think of your social media pages as your website, from the bottom up; be it the description, account captions, links in your bio, hashtags and all other minor aspects. The username you incorporate should be very user-friendly i.e., making sure that it is as close to your brand name as possible and mot immortally keep it universal i.e., making sure that you have the same username on different social media platforms. Namechk is one of the best websites to check the availability of the username across the internet.

3. Follow real, legitimate, and similar accounts

To get noticed and followed back, you must first be a good follower, finding and following people, brands a page that is similar to your business regardless of the social media account. When following these people, you will be followed back by a lot of them especially if you have your page completely optimized and full of posts that provide value. Additionally, following relevant and successful pages related to yourself on social media will give you a baseline of what the industry is talking about, what and when to post, and just unintentionally incorporate their successful baseline to your social media accounts.

4. Incorporate Social Media Buttons on your website

This step doesn’t necessarily involve your social media accounts but more of your website, sometimes people have a higher number of visitors on their website while they don’t have a lot of followers on their social media pages, this either means that they don’t post great content or their visitors aren’t aware of their social media and usually, it’s the latter. Incorporating appropriate social media buttons on the right pages can be of great help if you are looking to grow social media followers, additionally, there can be an addition of social media sharing buttons allowing your website to be found and therefore your social media growing.

5. Find the best times to post on social media

Sometimes an amazing post that provides insane value and information to your followers could seriously underperform and at times trivial posts with not a lot of value end up performing better than a lot of your posts at other times, social media is a game of timing, with better timing being a lot more rewarding. There needs to be adequate research put into your followers and fans and this should be analyzed to make a better posting schedule for your business, mind your different platforms have different times at which posts may perform better. Better posts at the right timing could really increase your social media popularity through the roof.

6. Use hashtags to get found

Hashtags have been around for a long time and adequate use of the right hashtags on the right posts has helped so many smaller social media pages grow their social media popularity. Hashtags can be used in a couple of ways, one could be using extremely popular hashtags but sparingly and strategically, you can easily find your company-related hashtags by using different tools. Two is using hashtags that are not so popular but using relevant trending topics and current events, these are not very popular but would bring you fans from your industry and relevant topics. A smart approach should be taken to hashtags allowing your business and social media pages to grow.

7. Be regular and share your content more often

This one is a no-brainer, having an audience is just as important as keeping it engaged and loyal; how do you keep them engaged? Make sure you are posting often and appropriately siting different platforms, consistency on social media is key and research shows companies that post more often than other companies perform 73% better than the ones that don’t regardless of the content, this doesn’t mean that you stop prioritizing the content, the content is just as important as the timing and the regularity of the posts, if not more.

8. Hold Giveaways and Contests

Giveaways and contests can be the best and most proven way for your social media to climb to its potential given that they are conducted properly and are giveaways for something the customers actually want. Of course, the first few giveaways might be sorts of trial and error and there’s some amount of experimenting that has to be done, once you get the hang of it, it is going to become extremely easy and fun to do, would drive great engagement and get your brand found more easily.

9. Collaborate with businesses similar to yours

Collaborating with one of your competitors can bring great value for both of the brands, the platforms, and the plans can vary and be discussed in detail, the way to do it would be to promote each other’s social media accounts and their content, with the likeliness of the followers following both brands because they are very similar is highly likely, this would drive better engagement and reach for both the brands and provide positive PR.

10. Engage actively with other brands and fans

As you start gaining followers and reach on different platforms, you need to start engaging positively with other brands, customers, and followers to better the PR and drive more growth, reply to comments and acknowledge mentions and tags, furthermore feature prominent customers on your posts, stories, and highlights. Solve the problems that a customer might express on social media with a very positive mindset, remember you have to look good to everybody else on the platform.

11. Remind your email subscribers about your social media

If you have a newsletter or email list that you regularly send emails to, make sure to promote your social media accounts over there, this could be accompanied by a slight use of incentives to do the same, you could provide an eBook or a complimentary discount if they do as promote, the people that regularly open your emails will gladly follow you. This would give you a boost for your social media accounts and drive more reach along with engagement.

12. Include visuals in your posts

Including visual photos in your content on social media is crucial, they are the real high performers, having or including an eye-catching image with your post brings a lot more value, these are some facts compiled by Hubspot:

Content containing relevant images gets 94% more views than content that doesn’t contain relevant images.
Visual content is 40x times more likely to be shared on social media.
Posts showing faces get 38% more likes compared to the ones that don’t.

13. Explore paid social

Ads on social media are crucial and important, although it might not be for everyone, social media ads can provide business owners with leads and customers at a fairly acceptable cost, every social media platform has different ads that are better tailored for their own organization, majority of these are simple to understand for people who re trying to enter the market and will provide decent returns on investment, however being relatively young and new into the social media world, I would personally advise you not to use paid social, only after a couple of months when you have a handful of customers that you acquired through social media should you try out paid ads, and remember to start slow and experiment what works best for you rather than putting all your money in one platform.

14. Do not ever buy followers and fans

Despite things not going your way and your social media strategy seems to not work, you should never buy followers and fans, even though in the start it will look like a shortcut to building a huge online community. This will pollute your audience with robot profiles and accounts and people that don’t care about your brand. You be essentially paying to reach bots and not to mention the penalty that social media platforms may put on you if you are caught with fake followers, they can vary but they include account suspension and termination, do you think a risk as big as this is worth for a thousand bot followers?

The post 14 Valuable Tips to Increasing Your Social Media Followers and Engagement appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

How to Jump the Innovation Curve by Guy Kawasaki

Najam Ahmed — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 20:41:06 +0000

1. Great Companies have meaning

When you have meant you earn money; great companies want to change the world.

Apple changed the world with computers.
Google changed the world with Information.
Canva is changing the world with design.

2. Make a mantra

Come up with 2-3 words to have a great mantra, a mantra should define your company with 2-3 effective words.

Nike has “peak athletic performance”.

3. Jump to the next curve

Don’t be afraid of change instead embrace change.

4. Make intelligent products

A slipper that has a beer bottle opener beneath it

Ford Mustang GT has a speed limit you can set on its key to preventing yourself from speeding.

Mercedes Benz has an automatic detector that detects when a car is going to collapse.

5. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Going to the next curve means your products might be crappy at the start, it’s ok!

6. Let newer audiences buy your product

As you go to the next curve, different audiences start buying your product and using it in ways that you didn’t intend it to be used, don’t freak out and take the money.

7. Polarize People

Don’t be afraid of polarizing people, it’s ok if people get upset with your products.

8. Take constructive criticism

Differentiate between people who want you to succeed and take their advice, cancel out the people who criticize for no reason.

9. Start bettering your pitch

Start with a story that gives you a connection with the audience, allow yourself to stand out. Max 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font.

The post How to Jump the Innovation Curve by Guy Kawasaki appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

10 Recommended SEO Plugins for WordPress

Najam Ahmed — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 13:44:40 +0000

WordPress has made it easy for anyone to create a website. It’s easy to use, it’s fast, it doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge. Here’s a list of 10 recommended SEO plugins for your WordPress-based website:

1. Yoast SEO by Team Yoast

Yoast SEO is the first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps, and much more.

2. 301 Redirects by WebFactory Ltd

301 Redirects Plugin helps you manage and create 301, 302, 307 redirects for your WordPress site to improve SEO and visitor experience. With a user-friendly interface, 301 Redirects is easy to use.

3. Contextual Related Posts by WebberZone

Contextual Related Posts Plugin displays a set of related posts on your website or in your feed. Increase reader retention and reduce bounce rates.

4. W3 Total Cache by BoldGrid

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.

5. Really Simple SSL by Really Simple Plugins

Really Simple SSL is a lightweight plugin without any setup to make your site SSL proof

6. Smush by WPMU DEV

Smush reduces image file sizes, improves performance, and boosts your SEO using the free WPMU DEV WordPress Smush API.

7. Sucuri Security by Securi Inc.

The Sucuri Security WordPress plugin is free to all WordPress users. It is a security suite meant to complement your existing security posture. Sucuri Inc. is a globally recognized authority in all matters related to website security, with a specialization in WordPress Security.

8. AMP for WordPress by Ahmed Kalaudi, Mohammed Kaludi

AMP for WP automatically adds Accelerated Mobile Pages (Google AMP Project) functionality to your WordPress site. AMP makes your website faster for Mobile visitors.

9. a3 Lazy Load by a3rev Software

a3 Lazy Load is a Mobile-Oriented, very simple-to-use plugin that will speed up sites page load speed. The more content-heavy your site the better the plugin will perform and the more you will see the improvements in performance.

10. Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets by Brainstorm Force

This plugin helps you get eye-catching results in search engines with the most popular schema markup plugin. Easy implementation of schema types like Review, Events, Recipes, Article, Products, Services, etc.

The post 10 Recommended SEO Plugins for WordPress appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

Healthcare: Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing

Najam Ahmed — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 00:23:49 +0000

The following 9 blog posts contain more than 44 healthcare digital marketing and social media marketing tips, tools, methods, strategies, and examples that can help doctors, healthcare facility managers, owners, healthcare professionals, and healthcare marketing professionals to expand their reach online, get more exposure, and acquire more patient leads:

The post Healthcare: Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

16 Tips to Become an Influencer

Najam Ahmed — Mon, 24 May 2021 19:39:26 +0000

Social media influencers are all the rage right now. Brands want to collaborate with them in order to expand their reach and drive conversions. The followers of influencers, on the other hand, look forward to expert advice and recommendation from them. Are you wondering how to become one yourself? With the popularity of influencer marketing, it is only natural that people are becoming increasingly curious about how to become an influencer.

Here are 16 tips to be followed in order to make an influence and/or become a thought leader:

Choose a specific niche – and become an influencer in that specific field
Don’t be shy, and don’t try to be perfect; just do it!
Decide which social media platforms you want to use to show your influence
Create a Content Strategy
Launch your own website or blog – don’t rely on a social media platform for a long run
Engage with your Followers
Great Representation, Attractive Intros
Storytelling
Leverage Hashtags
Never Buy Fake Followers
Ask yourself a question – why should someone follow me?
Partner with some existing influencers
Be Transparent, Be You and Build the trust – don’t pretend to be someone else – don’t just copy someone!
Use Analytics
Talk about current, trending topics – about your niche
Give Credit, Get Noticed

Choose a specific niche – and become an influencer in that specific field

The first tip to become an influencer is to choose a niche – a niche where you feel like you are an expert in that particular area, and you want to share your expertise with the specific people i.e. your target audience.

A friend of mine from Lebanon decided to be a tour guide in Dubai, because she knew a lot about Dubai and was passionate about helping and guiding tourists. As the tourism industry in Dubai is very competitive, she chose a niche – to target only the people who are coming to Dubai from Brazil and the ones especially who spoke Portuguese only. So, she became an influencer for that specific audience.

Don’t be shy, and don’t try to be perfect; just do it!

Stop long-term planning making lame excuses to yourself. Start recording – and start publishing now! Don’t be cautious, about what people will think and don’t keep delaying stuff. Perfection will come gradually; just keep doing it on a consistent basis!

Decide which social media platforms you want to use to show your influence

Most of the influencers are just focusing on Instagram as it is the number one platform for influencers. YouTube is the second most important channel and lately that is also becoming too competitive. There are already many influencers that are dominating in those particular channels.

If you feel like okay, I have something unique, something special, something to stand out, then you can go ahead and try to compete with those influencers in that particular niche and prove yourself. Another thing that you may consider is trying to find some opportunities on some overlooked, less-competitive platforms like LinkedIn. You can actually become an influencer on LinkedIn – because you face less competition there.

Create a Content Strategy

Think about the content strategy and how you will be distributing the content. Don’t just plan for a week or for a month; plan for at least three months or six months or for the entire year in advance. An example for that could be:
Every Thursday morning I must publish a video (or post an Instagram story), and then always be consistent.

A major concern for people is what to post. Think about the audience – always try to add value. Explore a website called answerthepublic.com, type one of your main keywords over there and it will visually show you what kind of questions around that topic people are searching about. I think that will be the best way to come up with the questions that your target audience is already asking. Plan which questions are relevant, and you can answer them in a much better way.

So, start planning and start creating content now. Then, start scheduling it so you will not have a lack of content or content ideas because everything is in queue.

Launch your own website or blog – don’t rely on a social media platform for a long run

Don’t just fully rely on one specific social media network. What I mean to say is if you are just trying to be an influencer on Instagram on Facebook. Remember MySpace, Friendster or Orkut? They’re no more! Something might happen to Facebook after 3 – 4 years – but, you want to be influencers for your entire life. Right? So, it is recommended that you maintain your own website or blog along with that social media network. Keep sharing your content on both, social media channel and your own website or blog. So, if something goes wrong with your account or it gets suspended or just gets banned for any reason, you’re not going to lose the progress that you have made on that particular platform.

Engage with your Followers

Talk to your followers! It’s not just a one-way broadcasting channel. Don’t just focus on broadcasting your content. Also, try to engage with those people and anybody who engages with your content. Acknowledge them, reply to their comments and thank them. If somebody is having more questions, reply to their comments. Sometimes as an influencer you face negative comments as well, don’t ignore them. You also need to talk to those people and try to convince them as much as you can.

Great Representation, Attractive Intros

Another thing that I have in mind is your YouTube intro video must be good enough. In order to explain people like what they’re going to get if they follow you. Even, if you have an Instagram account. It should be attractive enough. Tell people why they must follow you. Try to come up with some nice pictures, nice videos, great information, analysis or entertainment that actually attracts people. This should be considered while you’re recording videos, taking pictures, editing images or while adding captions.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a great way to connect with your audience on an emotional level and give them a reason to trust you, follow you and to engage with you.

Leverage Hashtags

Hashtags play an important role so choose your hashtag wisely by keeping your target audience in mind. Don’t use too many hashtags; concentrate more on relevant, and trending hashtags. Use www.hashtagify.me for relevant hashtags ideas and use www.trends24.in to finding trending hashtags in Dubai or other countries. Always use hashtag wisely.

Never Buy Fake Followers

Don’t try to buy fake followers; because people know when you’re buying followers. It’s cheating, it’s immoral – never buy followers. Post great content – so people will follow you and share your content.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, they all know when you buy fake followers. Your account is at risk when you use fake followers and your account can be suspended temporarily or be banned for life.

You can use paid advertising like YouTube advertising or Google, Facebook or Instagram advertising to attract the relevant audience so as to never buy fake followers.

Ask yourself a question – why should someone follow me?

Frankly speaking, people have no interest in an influencer or in his/her business. People are concerned about their own problems, their own challenges, their own questions and their own interests. So, if you actually solve their issues, help them to achieve their goals, make them happy, give them inspiration, entertain them, provide them with analysis and entertainment – they feel more attached with you and they start following you.

Partner with some existing influencers

You may consider partnering with some existing influencers in your relevant industry. You can co-brand yourself with such people. For example, Eric Sue (who was quite famous already) became more popular because of Neil Patel. They launched a project together called www.marketingschool.io

Be Transparent, Be You and Build the trust

Be Transparent, Be You and Build the trust – don’t pretend to be someone else – don’t just copy someone!

Use Analytics

Try to concentrate on some analytics, if you’re using Facebook, use Facebook Insights, If you’re using Twitter, use Twitter analytics. If you are using your website or blog, use Google Analytics, if you’re using Buffer there is Buffer Analytics. What I’m trying to tell you is that whatever you have done in the past, analyze it, check what kind of posts are actually working in your favor, what kind of content brings more engagement, more likes, more shares, more comments – keep producing that kind of content more often so you can have a better impact and keep your audience engaged based on your audiences’ interests.

Talk about current, trending topics – about your niche

Use Google Trends www.google.com/trends/ to know what questions your target audience is currently searching for. Just enter a topic and you will be able to know which countries your topic is being searched more in, what kind of queries are trending during different periods of time. If you can answer those queries there are more chances that your content can go viral and you can get much more influence in that industry.

Give Credit, Get Noticed

Whenever you’re sharing someone’s content – it is advisable to tag that influencer using @mention or while you’re sharing someone’s tips. In this way, you acknowledge it and give someone credit they deserve. So, what happens sometimes when you keep tagging people in a meaningful way [Don’t spam!], those influencers may start following you as well. And sometimes when they share some of your posts, your content can go viral and you can get lots of new followers in a short span of time.

What do you think? Did I miss something? Kindly share your thoughts in the comments section.

Najam Ahmed | Digital Marketing Strategist

The post 16 Tips to Become an Influencer appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

Digital Marketing: 41 Tools +12 Tips + 6 Steps to Create a Strategy

Najam Ahmed — Sun, 02 May 2021 03:19:46 +0000

I found these 3 articles very helpful for those who are already working in digital marketing industry so I mentioned them all here with a summary and the links that will take you to the relevant articles where you can learn it all. Kindly let me know if you personally use some other tips and tools so I will update my blog post accordingly. Many thanks, – Najam Ahmed

6 Steps to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

Build your buyer personas.
Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you’ll need.
Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.
Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.
Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you’ll need.
Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

Read this entire article here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-strategy-guide

12 Digital Marketing Tips

Know your customer.
Match your content to every stage of a buyer’s journey.
Don’t just write about your products or services.
Focus on the long-term.
Incorporate SEO into your overall content strategy.
Understand the big picture when analyzing an advertisement’s performance.
Remain flexible as audience preferences shift.
Remain consistent in design when launching a campaign.
Become a growth leader for your company.
Personalize your content.
Try new things
Don’t underestimate backlinks.

Read this entire article here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-marketing-tips

41 Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools to Help You Grow

Sprout Social
Wyng
Woobox
Nanigans
Facebook’s Power Editor
Twitter Native Platform
HubSpot Email Marketing
MailChimp
Marketo
GetResponse
AdRoll
ReTargeter
ChoiceStream
Rocket Fuel
Simpli.fi
Unbounce
Oracle Maxymiser
Optimizely
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)
Hotjar
Wistia
Vimeo
Landscape by Sprout Social
Canva
Visual.ly
Feedly
Scoop.it
Kapost
Kissmetrics
Google Analytics
Adobe Analytics
Woopra
Zendesk
UserVoice Helpdesk
LiveChat
Moz
SEMRush
Screaming Frog
CJ Affiliate
VigLink
Rakuten Affiliate Network

Read this entire article here: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/digital-marketing-tools/

The post Digital Marketing: 41 Tools +12 Tips + 6 Steps to Create a Strategy appeared first on Dubai, UAE | Digital Marketing Courses by SEO International, a Google Partner firm.

140+ Free Digital Marketing Courses and Certifications 2021

Najam Ahmed — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 18:00:53 +0000

Digital Marketing Courses and Certifications

Here’s an extensive list of digital marketing courses and certifications. Most of them are available for free – however, few of them have some paid content. They can be very helpful for good self-learners either they are new into digital marketing or they are already experienced.

These digital marketing courses and certifications cover all major areas including SEO, SEM, PPC, Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing and much more offered by Google, Facebook, Hubspot, HootSuite and more:

Digital Marketing Courses and Certifications by Google

Google Digital Garage Certification https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/course/digital-marketing
- Get certified in the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing officially by Google
Google Skillshop https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/ | Find free online product training and certifications right for you
- Google Ads Certifications
  - Google Ads Search
  - Google Ads Display
  - Google Ads Video
  - Google Shopping Ads
  - Google Ads – Measurement
- Google Analytics Academy https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/
  - Google Analytics for Beginners
  - Advanced Google Analytics
  - Google Analytics for Power Users
  - Getting Started with Google Analytics 360
  - Introduction to Data Studio
  - Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
- YouTube Creator Academy https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/home
  - Grow your YouTube channel now with free online courses by YouTube
- Google Marketing Platform
  - Display & Video 360
  - Search Ads 360
  - Campaign Manager
  - Creatives
  - Google Web Designer
  - Programmatic concepts
- Google My Business
- Google Ads Manager
- Google AdMob

SEO Courses and Certifications

Moz Academy https://academy.moz.com/ | Access over a dozen on-demand courses to level up your SEO skill set.
Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/course/seo-fundamentals | Created by University of California, Davis and powered by Coursera
SEO Training by Hubspot https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/seo-training | Learn all things SEO, including link building, topic clusters, building search authority, and an inside look into how HubSpot uses blogging to rank #1 on Google.
ClickMinded SEO Certification https://www.clickminded.com/seo-certification/ | Earn your SEO certification as fast as possible. ClickMinded is where 8,702 startups, agencies, entrepreneurs and students learn SEO.

Hubspot Academy – Courses & Certifications https://academy.hubspot.com/

Inbound Marketing Certification
Social Media Certification
Email Marketing Certification
Content Marketing Certification
Inbound Sales Certification and more…
Content Marketing Certification by Hubspot https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/content-marketing
- Learn What Content Marketing is and How to Do It [Course] | FREE Certification Course | This certification course will give you an overview of how to become an effective content marketer.
Social Media Certification by Hubspot https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/social-media
- The Social Media Certification will help you shape the conversation around your business, build loyalty, and attract new customers and partners.

Hootsuite Academy – Courses & Certifications https://education.hootsuite.com/

HootSuite Platform Certification
Social Marketing Certification
Advanced Social Advertising Certification
Social Media ROI and Value Analysis
Social Selling Certification
Advanced Social Media Strategy
Foundation of Social Advocacy Certification
Social Selling for Financial Services
Social for Healthcare Certification from Mayo and more…

Facebook Blueprint Certifications https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/certification

Set yourself apart in digital marketing. Become a Facebook Blueprint-certified professional. Blueprint Certification recognizes advanced-level proficiency with Facebook’s family of apps and services.

Facebook Certified digital marketing associate
Facebook Certified Marketing Science Professional
Facebook Certified Creative Strategy Professional
Facebook Certified media planning professional
Facebook Certified media buying professional
Facebook Certified ads product developer
Instagram Courses by Facebook BluePrint https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/categories/instagram
- Learn all about advertising on Instagram

Bing Ads Certification https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/training/get-certified

To complete Bing certificate program, simply take the free courses at your own pace to prepare for the exam.

Twitter Flight School https://www.twitterflightschool.com/student/catalog

It is a Twitter official platform to help you master Twitter advertising.

Pinterest Academy https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/start-here-introducing-pinterest-academy

It’s a free e-learning tool we designed for businesses new to Pinterest. It can help you get started on our unique visual discovery platform, discover the benefits of all our ad products, take advantage of our advanced targeting and other features — and lots more.

CoSchedule Academy https://academy.coschedule.com/

Your all-in-one hub for premium, on-demand marketing courses specifically designed to help you stay competitive and drive real results.

Ahrefs Academy https://ahrefs.com/academy

Marketing with Ahrefs
Blogging for Business

SEMRush Academy https://www.semrush.com/academy/

Free Online Digital Marketing Courses and Exams

Helpful Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing Blogs and Learning Resources

Social Media Examiner https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

This website helps millions of marketers discover how to best use social media marketing to connect with customers, generate awareness, and increase sales.

Remarkable People Podcast by Guy Kawasaki https://www.facebook.com/WiseGuywithGuyKawasaki/

Remarkable People enables you to understand our changing world through interviews with thought leaders, legends, iconoclasts, and moguls. Equal parts practical, tactical, and hysterical, it covers innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, literature, design, and marketing. Guy Kawasaki has decades of experience with Apple, Google, Canva, Sony, Wikipedia, Mercedes Benz, and startups, so he knows what to ask. Every episode will make you a little wiser — and more remarkable yourself.

Marketing School by Neil Patel & Eric Siu https://marketingschool.io/

LinkedIn Learning https://www.linkedin.com/learning/

Learn digital marketing, business, creative, and technology skills to achieve your personal and professional goals. Enhance Your Skills with Expert-Led Online Video Tutorials – Start Now! Access Anytime, Anywhere. It is for USD30 per month – the first month is for free.

Hubspot Blog https://blog.hubspot.com/

HubSpot’s Blog for marketing, sales, agency, and customer success content.

Neil Patel’s Digital Marketing Blog https://neilpatel.com/blog/

HootSuite’s Social Media Marketing Blog https://blog.hootsuite.com/

Social Media Resources by Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/resources/

Free social media management resources provided by Sprout Social. From client stories to helpful infographics

BuzzSumo Blog https://buzzsumo.com/blog/

Get latest updates and new learning experience by exploring BuzzSumo’s Content Marketing, Digital PR, Influencer Marketing, and Video Marketing

Learn to make great sites https://www.google.com/webmasters/learn/

Browse popular resources, courses, and guides by Google to learn how to make great content for your visitors.

Corey Frankosky’s Surfside PPC https://surfsideppc.com/

Free PPC Tutorials and Online Marketing Courses by Corey Frankosky

Kim Garst’s Blog https://kimgarst.com/blog/

Marketing strategies that work by Kim Garst

Backlinko Blog https://backlinko.com/blog

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18 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Najam Ahmed — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 14:32:39 +0000

Written by Ahmer Ahmed

The more traffic to your website, the more opportunities you have to generate qualified leads, to nurture and help solve their problem and ultimately sell your product or service, gain a new customer or client, and continue to grow your business.

Here are 18 ways to increase your website traffic:

Link resources in the content
Upgrade older blog posts and content
Encourage to share pieces of content from articles
Focus on industry topics
Repurpose your content
Start or take part in podcasts
Make round-up posts
Post on LinkedIn
Host giveaways
Use Facebook Ads
Improve bounce rate
Publish long-form content
Create a company YouTube channel
Publish viral content
Republish high ranked articles to your social media
Answer Questions
Use Social Media Tools
Better Page Titles and META Descriptions

Here are some details on each above-mentioned points:

Link to your content as ‘Resources’ within the content – instead of just in the Author’s Bio’ section. Nobody wants to visit your profile if you are not a premium content writer, leave the resources in the article!
Improve and upgrade your old blog posts and content. This helps in keeping your content evergreen and ultimately helps in SEO rankings when your content is searched about OR just relaunch a new blog post with entirely new content on the same topic.
Let people share pieces of content from within your articles using https://clicktotweet.com/. Readers on your site can share important quotes, infographics, pictures, and special pieces of the article directly.
Don’t just focus on ‘Keywords’; instead focus on ‘topics’ while writing any piece of content (articles, blogs, video description, etc.) – to improve your SEO.
Repurpose your content (aka content transformation) – you simply convert one of your blog posts into another format (like an eBook, video, infographic, or podcast). Your content stays rich and evergreen and you have even more pieces of content.
Start a podcast (if you’re already known) – or participate in some active podcasts as a guest. Podcasts are a great way to put your brand and your business out Infront of the world, if partnered by contrasting guests in similar industries and niches; podcasts can be revolutionary.
Do a roundup post – and let those influencers know about it. Weekly and monthly round-up posts allow readers to read your blog posts in an organized manner.
Post videos directly on LinkedIn, viral videos related to your industry or niche can be posted on your LinkedIn account, proper credit should be given to the creator and your website should also be linked in the video description.
Host a giveaway contest using https://kingsumo.com. Giveaways are an amazing way to better your reach and engagement. The prize can be anything from an e-book to your company’s best-selling software. The more the merrier!
Retarget your audience using Facebook Ads, Facebook Ads are amazing and underrated and can bring amazing results to your website if used properly. Ideally, used to retarget your website visitors; you can always choose to target newer audiences.
Improve your website’s bounce rate; the most crucial element when it comes to website traffic, ideally your website’s bounce rates should be lower than 60%. These are some ways to better your bounce rates:
- Improve your content readability – use short paragraphs with headings/sub-headings
- Avoid popup ads, they are annoying and always get in the way!
- Create a compelling Call to Action, your call to action should be aimed to convert and compel.
- Attract the right visitors – target the right audience in your paid campaigns. Attracting the right visitors is just as important as having them stick around, make full use of Google and Facebook Ads and select the right audiences for your business.
- Use negative keywords and audience exclusion options in your Google search and display campaigns
- Improve your website’s load time. Images should be compressed so that they don’t affect website load times.
- Set external links to open in a new window, picture this; you are reading something you like and see an external link for something you’d like to know more about, you click and it takes you to a new page in the website and now you have no idea how to go back to what you were reading, frustrated; you close the tab. Don’t make that mistake, links should always open in new pages.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly, having a mobile -friendly website in 2021 is an absolute no-brainer. With more than 50% of the world’s population having access to a mobile device and an internet connection there’s no doubt your customers will try to find you online, you have got to be there when they do.
Publish long-form content – with relevant images, illustrations, embedded videos, resources. Long-form content offers great in-depth information about the topic, this sets you as a trusted and credible website on which your customers can stay educated and informed.
Create a YouTube channel – and produce more video content, this would allow you to get more website visitors through YouTube.
Publish content – that goes viral
- Add more photos, videos, illustrations
- Content should be useful
- Publish it on all possible social media channels
Republish your old/good articles on LinkedIn and Medium, you can also feature your highly liked blogs and articles on your other social media platforms, this serves two purposes; gives you more content to post on social media and enhances the lifespan of your content.
Answer questions (for the questions being asked Yahoo Answers, Quora, LinkedIn Groups, Buzzsumo’s Questions Analyzers) by creating detailed blog posts. Answering questions that have been asked by the public gives your website positive exposure and gives you better content to produce.
Use postplanner.com and buzzsumo.com to come up with most shared content ideas and share them on your social media pages. These tools allow you to see the content that has been most engaged within your niche in a certain timeframe. Make use of it!
Write attractive titles and META description for each page – to improve its CTR that also improve its ranking

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