TopinDigiXpert

7 Ways to Use Facebook for Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 05:02:00 +0000

Facebook continues to be the reigning champ of social media sites, as the #1 spot where friends connect and share online. More than just a meeting place for friends, Facebook has grown into a venue for businesses to market themselves through interaction with customers and self-promotion.

In this post, we will be looking at seven ways you can use Facebook for marketing.

Whether you’re a big corporation or a small local biz, Facebook is a powerful marketing tool – it’s a great space to keep customers informed, develop brand identity, and broaden your reach.

1. Making the Most of Your Facebook Business Page

A Facebook page is a great free marketing tool for businesses. These pages let businesses identify themselves – not just through listing product offerings and services, but also by sharing links, images, and posts on a customizable page to give a better sense of a business’s personality and character.

Your Facebook business page is a great spot to develop your brand identity and show your human side. Facebook is where you can loosen the tie a bit – don’t be afraid to be funny.

Ultimately you should consider what your key audience would want to see. Share social media images, links, videos, anything, as long as it is connected to your business and it seems like something your target audience would enjoy.

In addition to hilarious videos of dogs walking in tiny shoes, a store specializing in footwear might also post an article about how to measure your foot size accurately, what kind of shoe inserts are best for different sore feet woes, etc. A nice mix of humor, educational resources, and posts about your store updates is ideal.

Check out our another blog: 9 Brilliant Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content on Facebook

2. Facebook Advertising: Classic Ads

Facebook offers its own form of advertising with Facebook ads, which appear in the side columns of the Facebook site. These classic ads are referred to more specifically as Marketplace Ads. They include a headline with copy, an image, and a click-through link to either a Facebook page, a Facebook app, or an outside website.

Implementing Facebook advertising into your Facebook marketing strategy is one possible technique for increasing likes or driving website clicks.

Facebook advertising features include:

Demographic targeting by Facebook user data on age, location, education, and interests.
The ability to set ad budgets.
Ad testing, in which multiple ad versions can be run simultaneously in order to compare ad designs and setup.
Built-in ad performance measurement tools.

Facebook doesn’t release information about their ad CTRs, so it’s difficult to know how successful Facebook ads really are. In our Facebook Ads vs Google Display Ads Infographic, we found that Facebook ads generally have a CTR of 0.051%, and an average CPC of $0.80; however, a business’s Facebook advertising cost can vary a lot depending on the targeting options set and competition.

Using Facebook advertising to increase your “Likes” can be very beneficial – once a user likes your page, they essentially become followers of your business page, and your posts will appear on their Facebook news feed.

This results in more users interacting with you and your brand, forming relationships that may end up translating to conversions in the future.

3. Hosting Facebook Contests

Running Facebook contests, sweepstakes, or promotions is another Facebook marketing tactic that can increase fans and brand awareness.

When conducting a Facebook contest, be aware that contests can’t be hosted through Facebook itself (meaning you can’t ask for likes as entries, have people write answers in the comments, etc.) Businesses must use a third-party app for creating their Facebook contest, then direct users to the app from their Facebook page.

There are plenty of paid tools to help you do this, as well as some free ones. Shortstack offers a number of free contest templates, so long as your page has under 2,000 likes. Pagemodo also has a free option. Many third-party Facebook contest apps offer free versions, but your options with them are limited.

4. Facebook Promoted Posts

Facebook Promoted Posts let Facebook page owners pay a flat rate in order to have their individual Facebook posts reach a certain number of users, increasing a specific post’s reach and impressions.

Some businesses have asked – why should I have to pay to ensure that my post is seen by users who are my followers? If a user has liked my page, they should always see my posts on their news feed, shouldn’t they? The answer to this question is no because it assumes that users spend every waking moment of their life on Facebook’s news feed. For the health and safety of your Facebook fans, we hope this isn’t true!

If a fan of yours happens to be looking at their news feed when you post your story, they are likely to see it, but even then there is no guarantee if their news feed is swamped by other posts. That’s where Promoted Posts comes in – it ups your chances of being seen on a user’s news feed. Facebook Promoted Posts are shown to existing fans, with an added option to reach friends of fans.

Promoted Posts are easy to set up – just click the button beneath any of your page posts.

While the flat rate simplifies the process, Promoted Posts lack the targeting options offered by other Facebook ads.

Check out our another blog: Four Ways To Write More Engaging Social Media Post

5. Sponsored Stories

Sponsored Stories are a type of Facebook ad that shows a user’s interactions, such as a Facebook like, to the user’s friends.

Sponsored Stories seeks to capitalize on the “word of mouth” marketing concept. If a user sees that three of his friends like a certain page, he is more inclined to pay attention. The goal of Sponsored Stories is to have a user take the same action as their friends. Advertisers can choose to show friends “likes” if they want more page likes, show friends who have “claimed this offer” if a business wants more users to claim offers, etc.

While the action performed by a friend liking a page or claiming an offer is automatically posted in a user’s news feed, these posts easily get overlooked. Sponsored Stories get preferred positioning, capable of appearing in news feeds and the right sidebar. Sponsored Stories is also the only ad format available on mobile devices.

Sponsored Stories don’t only apply to likes or offer – they can be used with any Facebook Open Graph app. If a friend has just installed Scramble With Friends on Facebook, Sponsored Stories can show users that their friend has just played the Scramble game, with an invite to “challenge them,” “play with them,” or any similar variation.

Facebook claims that Sponsored Stories have 46% higher CTRs and 20% lower CPCs than regular Facebook ads, making them a very serious strategy for marketing on Facebook.

Facebook Sponsored Stories can be created easily through the Facebook ad create flow. Open Graph Sponsored Stories with a customized call to action require advertisers to use a third-party provider.

6. Facebook Open Graph

Facebook Open Graph lets businesses label a user’s action with their app. Billions of interactions are posted on Facebook Open Graph every day.

Businesses can create third-party apps that connect to a user and post a notice on Facebook when a user performs a specific action with the app. Facebook’s Open Graph allows for creative interactive options outside of the standard “like” and “comment.” Posts can suggest that users “listen,” “taste,” “read,” – it’s up to businesses to get creative.

Virtually any time a site or app prompts users to sign in to Facebook, it has something to do with connecting the user to the Facebook Open Graph.

7. Facebook Exchange (FBX)

Facebook Exchange lets advertisers take advantage of ad retargeting on Facebook through real-time bidding. Advertisers can target audiences based on web history data – when a user visits a product page on a retailer’s website but fails to make a purchase, the retailer can then display an ad for that same product on Facebook with FBX.

While Facebook retargeting ads were only relegated to the side columns, recently these ads have been allowed to appear in news feeds, the most valuable Facebook real-estate. This is great news for FBX advertisers since response rates for news feed ads are 10 to 50 times higher than that of ad placements in the right column.

So how do Facebook Exchange ads perform? The CTR for Facebook Exchange ads is 40% lower than for other web retargeting ads, like those offered by the Google Display Network. Other retargeting ads are also cheaper, with the price per unique clicks costing 80% less than Facebook retargeting ads. Still, in terms of cost-per-impression and cost-per-click, FBX ads are considerably cheaper, so the monetary benefits depend on your business’s needs. These numbers are also subject to change as FBX ads begin to appear more often in the news feed.

Check out our another blog: 9 INGREDIENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

If you found these tips helpful or you have any other tips which you think can work comment down them. If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

Best Email Marketing Tips to Increase Engagement & Subscribers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 04:32:00 +0000

Email is your most powerful marketing channel when used well. Your visitor’s inbox is a perfect opportunity for you to capture attention, communicate important updates and invite readers back to your site for increased visibility. The stats on email marketing effectiveness say it all – top marketing specialists and service providers tell us that email marketing is 40% more effective than social media, results in more sales than any other channel and is the absolute most cost-effective marketing solution for small to medium business. In this post, I’ll share the top 5 email marketing tips to help you increase engagement and get fast results.

1. New Signups

To get email marketing to work for you, you need to get some subscribers! There are several effective ways to gather visitor emails on your website, from simple newsletter sign-up forms to opt-in checkboxes on post comments or a checkout process.

The best method I found for increasing subscribers and sale conversions over at Themify was to add an effective, yet subtle slide-up popup. When a visitor scrolls to 50% of the page, a popup slides up at bottom right corner. Not only is this eye-catching, but a discount code is offered to new sign-ups.

If you run a WordPress site, we created a free plugin called Themify Popup so you can add a popup like this one to your site. Give it a try!

When creating your welcome emails, follow these tips:

Keep your subject line conversational. Welcome messages should read as if they’re coming from a friend, not from a robot!
Use your welcome message to let new subscribers know what they can expect from you, and how they’ll benefit from membership.
Include a call to action button or link. Your welcome email is a great opportunity to get subscribers to engage with you further, even if it’s as simple as following you on social media.

Check out our another blog: Mobile SEO: Welcome to The Future of SEO

2. Thank You Emails

Now that you have some new signups, be sure to thank them! This can be as simple as redirecting them to a thank you page on your website, but setting up a Thank You email when specific actions are taken (such as redeeming a discount code or purchasing a product), reward them with a featured offer, another call to action, or other suggested resource. This is the beginning of an ongoing conversation that sets the foundation of your campaign.

When designing your Thank You:

Test it out first. A thank you message is a perfect opportunity to up-sell, but some split testing can really help determine which offers your subscribers respond to best.
Keep it simple. Finimize has created a great-looking email template but still sticks to a text-based and personalized message.

Check out our another blog: 10 Landing Page Optimization Tips That Will Help You Convert

3. Teasers

Teaser emails generate interest and get your subscribers excited about what is to come.If you have a new product, service or content series coming out, you can create an alluring and irresistible email campaign that builds up anticipation.

What makes teaser emails work:

Create a story. Whether you’re launching a big website or are just coming out with a new product, build a story that draws readers in and gets them excited about your upcoming launch.
Set a goal. What are you hoping will happen? Teaser emails can generate new subscribers, get you new leads or pre-order sales. Figuring out what you want the campaign to do for you will help you design the email around the strongest call to action.
Be mysterious! Don’t be afraid to give just enough away to get readers to take action, or give them the whole story after a call to action is taken.

4. Engagement

These are the most common emails you’ll send as part of an effective campaign. Engagement emails can let subscribers know about new content, features or promotions while keeping the conversation going with a request for feedback or social media interaction.

Some great things to add to your engagement emails:

Your best content. Promote content, features or products that are a truly outstanding resource for your subscribers. Outside of increasing conversions, this helps generate more shares.
Highlight underused features. If a feature or product is not being used the way you want or as often as it should, highlight it and give your readers a brief statement of why it's great and how they can try it out.
Ask for feedback. Invite your users to reply with their thoughts or desires, or to send you a Tweet. If you feel like getting fancy, set up a survey and link it to your call to action!

Check out our another blog: How to Make Your Content More Readable

5. Giveaways / Contests

Rewarding subscribers is part of the foundation of great email marketing, but that shouldn’t stop you from celebrating holidays, anniversaries or other special events with targeted giveaways. Experian reports that birthday emails enjoy higher transaction rates than promotional emails, and everyone loves a free download or product.

In Uber’s campaign, they give away a free ride for referring a friend. Redeemed rides are instantly converted into a new user. When planning your own giveaways, consider these options:

Offer a personalized coupon code. Personalizing giveaways to a users birthday, for example, maintains engagement and encourages purchases.
Give away your best selling product or trial a service for a limited time.
Offer a free ebook made up of your most popular content or a free download.

Check out our another blog: 6 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Important For Your Internet Marketing

Going Forward

There is so much more you can do with email marketing once your subscriber list grows and your campaign begins to gain momentum and mature. Below are just a handful of other ways you can engage with your audience:

Customer Feedback: Send a periodic text-only email that simply asks how your subscribers are doing and what they would like to see on your site.
Digests: Roundups aren’t just for blogs – if you run an online store, a periodic email highlighting new or best-selling products is a great way to drive traffic to your site.
Come Back Emails: Most email marketing services like MailChimp offer ways to identify who is engaging and who isn’t – creating a special campaign for subscribers who haven’t stopped by in a while lets them know you care and reminds them to check out your site again.
Social Media: Running a special Social Media contest, or share specific content only to your Facebook page? Let your subscribers know there are other ways to enjoy your brand.

How to Make Your Content More Readable

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 04:33:00 +0000

Your team has created, socialized, and measured content in just about every possible way … except for one of the most important metrics: how your audience is engaging with the words.

You want visitors to find information, stay engaged, or complete a task. But once readers’ eyes hit the words on the page, if it takes too much effort, their interaction falls off and you have churn. You know this anecdotally. Yet most don’t measure it scientifically.

Which of the thousands if not millions of words on a website are helping or hurting? What content is too dense or confusing?

Content teams work hard to create compelling content, but they have a natural blind spot. They’re too close to their creations – the blogs, thought leadership, and marketing pieces – to see them through the audience’s eyes.

Check out our another blog: 2018 Content Marketing Toolkit: Tips, Templates, and Checklists

AI tools can benchmark content understanding

Now, with advances in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, a new breed of technology can test content for readability and clarity, which go to the heart of user experience and engagement. It can move organizations from a subjective approach, often fraught with editorial friction, to an objective, metrics-based approach.

In this article, I look at how to test for readability across your organization. For CMOs and chief content officers who want more engaging content, you now have ways to measure and benchmark clarity across the organization. And these tools can also help individual writers and creators produce better quality content.

Let’s define readability and clarity

Content clarity is the user experience of how difficult or easy it is to read the text. Why is that important? We know from neuroscience that processing words place a far greater cognitive load on the brain than images. Plus, attention spans are shorter, meaning visitors have a lower tolerance for confusion.

Fortunately, there are several widely used measures. The Flesch Reading Ease Index, created by Rudolf Flesch in the 1950s, calculates the average syllable per word and the density of long sentences and assigns a readability score – the higher the number, the easier content is to read.

The Flesch-Kincaid measure, derived from the index, scores readability at grade level, approximating the number of years of education required to easily understand the content (though with this tool, a lower score means higher readability). The U.S. Navy developed the Flesch-Kincaid measure in the 1970s to ensure that soldiers under stress in the field could easily understand written instructions in their manuals. While today’s audiences most likely aren’t in combat, they do face the stresses of information overload and too little time.

Your readers are checking out and churning

Research shows that the average U.S. citizen reads at a seventh- to eighth-grade level – and it’s not simply a problem of low academic achievement. Some studies show even highly educated people to disengage rather than spend the mental energy to unpack dense, complicated prose. Josh Bernoff, author and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, surveyed 550 businesspeople in 2016. As many as 81% said poorly written content wasted too much of their time.

That’s one reason Reader’s Digest and Time magazine are successful. Reader’s Digest has a readability index of about 65 and Time scores about 52. Give people the choice between reading something at that level versus run-on sentences of 40 or 50 words with several competing ideas, it’s clear which they’ll prefer.

Check out our another blog: How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy

What is good readability?

There’s no one size fits all, but the gold standard of readability for business communication is grade eight or lower.

You should limit long sentences and passive voice to 5% or less of the total content. Active voice rather than passive makes it clearer who needs to do what. By shortening sentences and using the active voice, you can make even technical subject matter more readable and engage without any “dumbing down.” The best writing makes complex topics easy to understand.

The clarity problem isn’t new, but organizations are now producing vast quantities of content for their audiences. And with that proliferation comes a quality control issue. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Plain Language Act to make U.S. government-created content less dense and confusing. Federal agencies must now use “plain language” to communicate more clearly with citizens.

There’s no equivalent plain-language law in the commercial sector, but, given how fiercely brands compete for audience attention, they should be addressing it voluntarily.

One financial organization my team worked with set an internal goal that all consumer-facing content must be of a grade eight to 10 readability level – an ambitious goal. Our organization also worked with government agencies that have similar objectives. For example, the Australian federal government aims for a grade five readability level as part of its digital service standard. All companies that create content for customers and other stakeholders should set similar goals for published content.

Behavior change is hard but doable

Getting people to change their writing habits is far from trivial. Large organizations that use numerous agencies, freelancers, and internal contributors face tremendous challenges with consistency and brand coherence. Simply getting people to test their content can be a big challenge.

Leadership should adopt a “people, process, tools” approach. The people element must focus on two factors: awareness and education. Many commercial and government organizations send employees to writing-for-the-web-style training courses to raise awareness of readability. These courses not only cover web pages but also inward-facing content including letters and product brochures.

The processing element focuses on mapping the current publication process and identifying which steps can be automated. Unfortunately, many organizations rush to roll out tools without an adequate understanding of what the current or future state of their process will look like. This rarely succeeds.

Check out our another blog: Four Ways To Write More Engaging Social Media Post

How to execute content evaluation

With the people and process elements sorted, now you’re ready to consider tools.

Choose your tools wisely

One of the biggest benefits of tools is that you can measure readability with objective metrics. You move from subjective opinions to quantitative measurement. These measures ease the editorial friction between content creators and editors/publishers. Companies should consider a two-pronged solution:

Lightweight clarity tools in the hands of writers can help them measure, edit, and revise work to an agreed upon readability metric before submitting.
Audit tools for the content team allow it to control, review, and score content across the enterprise. These tools allow editors and content leads to benchmark quality over time, track the readability (and engagement) of writers and their published work, and even test and vet new writers for clarity.

While web analytics can show page views, dwell times, and usage paths, they won’t reveal issues with the content itself. Rather than obsessing over poor content performance on the back end, consider an investment in technology that can improve content on the front end, tailoring words to how your audience’s brains want to process them.

Check out our another blog: 9 Brilliant Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content on Facebook

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

4 Google Tips Marketers Can’t Afford to Miss

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 04:34:00 +0000

Have you heard Google’s thunderous bellow? It’s shouting: “Hey marketers! Yeah, you guys, the ones producing all the content. SEO is still really important.”

Here are four recent instances of this:

1. Google drastically improved Search Console

Free software (formerly known as Webmaster Tools), Search Console is designed to help users understand and improve their websites. Got a new blog post? Great. Submit it to Search Console for indexing.

Want to know what your website visitors searched for to find your website? No problem. Use the new beta version of Search Console to check out 16 months of queries (recently increased from 90 days). These are the keywords people are typing in when visiting your website … what are you waiting for? Figure out which ones convert and produce amazing related content.

Google also recently asked users how to make Search Console better. And – wait for it – then implemented popular requests. Check out this recent post from Google for further details: How listening to our users helped us build a better Search Console.

Check out our another blog: 4 Ingenious Link Building Strategies on Social Media

2. Google added an SEO tool to its Lighthouse chrome extension

Google’s free Chrome extension, Lighthouse, gives developers hints and tips on improving their sites. Recently, Google added a new SEO component to this extension. Now Google will analyze any web page and tell you how to make it more search engine friendly. One frequent answer is to make sure the text is big enough – weirdly not even something most SEO professionals ever considered.

Check out our another blog: 8 major Google algorithm updates

3. Google launched a revamped SEO guide

No idea what all this SEO stuff even is? Or feeling like you’re behind the SEO curve? No worries. Google created a new SEO starter guide – it details everything you need to know to get your site ranking.

The guide also devotes a section to content and includes these tips:

Make content interesting and useful.
Know what your readers want.
Write easy-to-read text.
Organize topics.
Create fresh, unique content.
Optimize content for users, not search engines.
Write good link text.
Optimize your images.

Check out our another blog: SEO Ranking Factors Every Beginner Should Know

4. Google hired a new public search liaison

The SEO world spends a lot of time trying to figure out what Google wants – the more you understand, the better chance you have of increasing your keyword rankings, traffic, and, ultimately, leads.

Back in the day, there was a gentleman at Google named Matt Cutts. He joined a couple years after Google’s inception and was the head of the company’s webspam team. Matt had a deep knowledge of the algorithm and became the unofficial/official liaison between the search giant and the SEO world. Well, he officially resigned in December 2016 (though he had been absent from his role as liaison since July 2014) to join the U.S. Digital Service, a part of the federal government.

Since Matt’s departure, SEO practitioners have been joining Google Hangouts with Google engineers, visiting conferences where Google employees are speaking, pushing for answers to queries on official Google threads – doing anything to get a handle on how the algorithm is evolving. Google has been getting better at conveying its thoughts and desires on its blogs, including these:

Google Security Blog
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Google Analytics Blog
Google Chrome Blog
Google Blog
Google Search Blog

Then, out of nowhere, it announced in October that Google officially – for the first time since Matt left – had a new public liaison for search. Danny Sullivan, the former analyst and SEO journalist, was proactively contacted by Google and offered the role, which he quickly accepted.

Check out our another blog: How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps

Conclusion

There you have it – four clear and distinct signs Google wants you to take organic search seriously. Advice from the behemoth itself details how to improve your content and get it found by your target audience.

If you recall SEO as something a few dodgy agencies used to do back in the early 21st century, you’re right (though they’re pretty much all extinct now). Yes, it was a bit of a dark art once upon a time, but things have evolved and Google (and Bing for that matter – they publish great content optimization advice) is keen for you to make the internet a better place for everyone, and perhaps make a few quid for your agency or company in the process.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

4 Ingenious Link Building Strategies on Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 04:54:00 +0000

The role of social media marketing in link building isn’t so obvious. Some marketers are skeptical about social signals affecting their rankings. Some segregate their social media marketing and link building with different methods and objectives. But as it recently turned out, these people seem to be a minority.

There are many blog posts which highlight the ineffectiveness of link building on social media. Yet, they seem irrelevant now based on a new study on how SEO experts do link building.

The results showed that a majority of experts use social media primarily for link building and here are the findings:

88% of SEOs include links in social profiles

81% share their social media content

53% experiment with viral campaigns like social media contests

Here’s a chart explaining the efficiency level based on the category by SEO Power Suite.

This fact is, however, overseen by most specialists and if you’re one of them, this post is for you.

Include Links To Your Social Profiles

Many people are of the notion that social media for SEO is pointless for a simple reason that links from social media are unfollowed. Even YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Google+-avenues that were once exceptions to this rule-have now joined the bandwagon.

Reddit is the only exception here, but marketing on the platform is a herculean task. If you want to market your product on Reddit, it has to be extremely valuable to the sub-community, especially for link building to work. And if you post crappy content and try to rant about your product on Reddit, you’ll face the risk of being banned.

That said, you just can’t ignore link building on social media because it’s no follow. What about the social signals? What about the traffic that emanates from the links in a user’s news feed.

SEO specialist and affiliate marketer, Matthew Woodward shares some tremendous insights on building backlinks from social media in his tutorial.

On Facebook, for instance, Woodward suggests the following:

Add your website link to Contact
Add your website link anytime you post something on your timeline including pictures and videos
Pin your website link on to your group.

The same is applicable to your other social media business pages. Include links to images, descriptions, cover photos etc. There’s no harm in doing so, but there is a huge potential for traffic.

Check out our another blog: 5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

Make Your Content Stand Out

One of the main challenges of social media marketing is getting your content seen. With businesses posting on their social channels frequently, you should go the extra mile to make your content easily visible.

Here are some essential tactics.

Make Your Posts Easily Readable

This goes without saying, but there are many who don’t have the knack of writing well. Remember to keep your content engaging, concise and free from errors, especially if you want to be noticed.

Research Your Competitors

Spend time studying your competitors’ pages as you can find ample opportunities for content promotion. Try looking at industries related to your niche and not always your direct competitors.

Create Evergreen Content

Creating evergreen content should be your ultimate objective, especially if you want people to link to the post in the long run. For instance, a blog post on “Holiday marketing ideas” can attract new traffic every Christmas and Halloween.

Translate Your Existing Content

Now, this is again something that’s ignored by many people. If you want to get more exposure and more backlinks, translate your existing content.

Submit To Content Communities And Niche News Site

Every industry may not have a content community or niche news site, but most of them do. In digital marketing, for instance, there’s BizSugar.com, Inbound.org, and GrowthHackers.com. And there’s Triberr.com that contains posts on almost anything. Try finding similar websites related to your industry.

One powerful platform to share your posts is Viral Content Bee. On this platform, other users share your content on social media provided you do the same. Just remain active and keep on sharing.

Submit To Social Network Communities

Social network communities are of prime importance, especially for link building. There are LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Groups, Google+ Communities, and Subreddits. On these communities, engage with members by reading and writing valuable comments on their posts. Try answering their questions and they may end up borrowing your kick-ass content and linking back to you.

Learn To Craft Viral Content

Creating viral content is the hardest but quickest way to earn backlinks. Take the example of Brian Dean from Backlinko. Till date, he has published less than 30 articles but shared by thousands of readers worldwide.

While some content may go viral by chance, many are created by experienced marketers who have the dexterity of viral marketing.

Check out our another blog: Four Ways To Write More Engaging Social Media Post

React Fast

Nicholas Tran, Senior Director of marketing at Samsung Electronics America, states that if you want to succeed in social media today, you have to respond in real time.

Life never comes to a standstill on social media. Users keep reading, reacting, commenting and sharing. The key is to stoke a conversation that will attract more eyeballs and then actively engage.

The lights went off during the showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. Oreoz seized this opportunity and tweeted about it during the 34-minute hiatus.

Viewers loved the message which was retweeted over 14,000 times at the time of writing this post. It went viral and built tons of discussion, links, and traffic.

A key takeaway here for brands is to check what’s trending and avoid sensitive trends that can lead to risks.

Another example is the heartwarming story of Mexican bakers, who were supporting the flood victims after Hurricane Harvey. This was shared by Independent soon after the incident. It was widely shared by Facebook users and gathered more than 2.4 million engagements, according to Buzzsumo.

Check out our another blog: 9 INGREDIENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Be Creative

This is an area which is easier said than done. You can never imagine going viral by copying others-creating content that others are creating, even if it’s deeper, better or more vibrant.

You need to stand out from the rest to go viral.

An easy way to do this is to spy on your competitors and do exactly the opposite. Of course, it takes tremendous effort and brainstorming, but you’ll be rewarded in the long run.

For example, when American fast food restaurant, Taco Bell decided to promote their new app, they were sure that making loads of noise on social media would not attract the attention of users. So they deleted all their pages and left a single but effective message.

This post went viral and earned the company a huge amount of traffic and links. Very soon, the app became the most downloaded in the App Store in the “food and drink” category.

Check out our another blog: 9 Brilliant Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content on Facebook

Conclusion

Link building on social media is powerful and real. While there’s no excuse for not applying some of the tactics mentioned above (including links in your social profiles), you can stay ahead by creating viral content. The latter can also boost your rankings.

Try most strategies and tactics mentioned here, and find out what works best for you.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

Technical SEO : Everything You Need To Know

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 04:45:00 +0000

“If you post it, they will come.” It seems like a corny line from a bad move about digital marketing. But the truth is, this seems to be the ongoing advice in the SEO and inbound community today. There is a belief that content will solve all of your organic visibility problems. Sadly, this argument has never been validated by research and won’t produce results on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, content plays a very important and vital role when it comes to search. But it’s far from a magic bullet. While search engines have changed quite a bit over the years, they are still machines and need input to gain understanding. With the popularity of terms like machine learning and artificial intelligence, there is even more misunderstanding around how search works.

My goal in this post is simple. I want to give you an overview of search as we know it today, how it works, why structure data and technical SEO are still very (if not even more) relevant and the basics even site owner should cover when it comes to SEO.

When you type a query into Google what happens?

How does it know what links, knowledge graph or location will satisfy you? Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Ok great but how?

Behind every query and answer is a very large database. Since their launch in 2008, Google has been indexing (storing and organizing) the world’s information. Everything from newspaper articles and books, to blog content and social media posts.

Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. The Indexed Web contains at least 4.49 billion pages as of Monday, 19 February 2018. You can think of the web as an ever-growing library of content and Google, along with other search engines, are trying to make sense of it all.

All of this content is stored and organized, ready to be called upon if needed. But even more importantly, the content doesn’t just sit there. Google put it to use.

The thing about machine learning and AI is that it takes data, lots of data, to work. On their own, computers don’t learn. Just like you and me, they need to be taught. Unlike you and me, they are not naturally curious or able to use senses to derive meaning. So, in order for the search engine to understand our questions and return intelligent answers, it must first understand what we are asking.

Google is on a mission to translate “stings” into “things.” If you have no background in software or IT you probably have no idea what that means. A string is a sequence of characters. It doesn’t have to mean, it just is. Google is moving from “strings” to “entities or things.” In data science, an entity is a person, place or thing. So, in short, Google is trying to attach meaning to the content they have indexed.

Without getting too technical, Google leverages all of the content it has indexed to teach the algorithm. By analyzing the terms used in the query and looking for web pages that match that query, Google is able to deliver highly contextualized results. The full process is a lot more complicated, but in a nutshell that is how it works.

Check out our another blog: 25 Points of Basic SEO Checklist

The Age of Semantic Search

What we just described above is knows as semantic search. The goal of semantic search to understand the users intent and deliver the most accurate and contextual results. Instead of matching keywords, Google knows to look to the meaning and intent of the keywords when delivering results. This doesn’t mean that keywords are no longer important, it just means they are used differently.

Webmasters and site owners tend to be a little behind the curve and then drastically overreact when they learn that what they’ve been doing isn’t working. Currently, I am seeing many in the SEO world claim that keywords no longer matter and the focus should be on good content.

The problem with that position is what is “good content”? The term “good” is subjective and it little to no help at all. Instead, site owners and SEO’s need to understand “who” they are targeting and “why” that person should visit their site.

This means taking the time to actually research the people we want to connect with. Uncovering things like, Where they hang out online and offline? What terms and phrases do they use? What problem (external and internal) are they looking to solve? These types of questions will help us understand the intent, which in return will help us create content that matches their needs. So in short, be a human being!

What Role do Keywords Play?

As I mentioned earlier, the role of keywords has changed, but that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. In fact, they may even be more relevant. In a post, I recently wrote on my site called, “ Keyword Research in the Age of RankBrain” I share in detail the role of keywords in today’s SEO strategy.

While Google is using AI, Machine Learning and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to understand the intent of a user’s query, keywords help give them context. For example, if you wrote a post about “the big game,” without keywords would have to ask a few questions to understand which game you are talking about.

Was it a sport?

If so, which sport?

Was it a championship or just a big game for that team?

As you can see, without keywords, the content is ambiguous. But, if I wrote a post about the “Super Bowl” you would know exactly what I was talking about. Keywords help search crawlers as well as users, understand context.

Check out our another blog: 5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

Technical SEO to the Rescue

One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO is technical search. This covers meta information, on-page optimization, and structured data. While these aspects may not be as sexy as link building and content creation, they are essential for any site that wishes to rank.

One thing that is different for on-page and technical optimization today, is that you should optimize by topic instead of a specific keyword. Here is what I mean.

Let’s say you want to rank your dental office. In the past, you’d create pages for each of your targeted terms and then proceed to optimize the page elements using those long-tailed terms. You would have separate pages for Teeth Whiting, Teeth Cleaning, Dental Clinic, etc. While this isn’t a bad thing, it’s not really worth the effort anymore.

Google is looking for topic experts. Optimization of topics is a great way to show your expertise. Look back to our dental example, instead of having many small pages with a narrow focus, we would create a detail page about dental services that outlines all of the services we provide. Each page section would be optimized around a service we provide.

This gives more context to your page and helps Google understand what you do, the services you provide and how they are connected. This also helps you user see the same material, which can help them make a purchase decision.

Structured Data

Structured data is a system of pairing a name with a value that helps search engines categorize and index your content. In short, its data about your data. We have to remember that search engines are large databases. Databases use structured data (called meta information) to better describe the data that are holding. Leveraging structure data will help search engines better understand your content and will enhance your SERP results.

Schema.org (a collaboration between Google, Microsoft, Yandex, and Yahoo!) is a semantic vocabulary of tags that you can add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs. Because of the technical knowledge required, many shy away from implementing schema.

While there are a number of ways to implement schemas, like WordPress Plugins or Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, I am a fan of using JSON-LD. The benefit of using JSON-LD is that you can insert that schema anywhere on the page and it has no impact on the style because the code is strictly for the crawlers.

A quick way to get started is using this free JSON-LD Markup Tool. Fill in all the data, otherwise, you’ll get warnings in Search Console, and then copy and paste it into the correct page.

Check out our another blog: SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018

Conclusion

While search has changed quite a bit over the past few years, the fundamentals remain strong. We must remember that search engines are machines. Machines that use data to learn about our site, products, and services. By utilizing technical SEO, and optimizing around topics rather than just single keywords, we can educate and inform search engines and their users about our site.

I hope that you found a few takeaways from this post. I want to encourage you to take a look at your site, how you are optimizing your pages and where you can leverage technical SEO for your benefits in the age of semantic search.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

10 Landing Page Optimization Tips That Will Help You Convert

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Mar 2018 05:08:00 +0000

Are your landing pages as effective as you want them to be?

As a website/business owner, this is a question that you should be asking yourself on a regular basis but how often do you actually take action and optimize your pages? Your landing pages are such an essential point of your sales funnel, and if they’re not optimized to their greatest potential, you’ll suffer high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and wasteful PPC campaigns. To optimize your landing page you can Digital Marketing Agency.

However, taking action on this matter isn’t as daunting as you might think. Today, I’m going to talk you through ten essential landing page optimization tips, enabling you to boost your conversion rates while simultaneously enhancing your ROI.

Find Your Foundations

The first thing you need to do and need to be doing is analyzing the current performance of your landing pages. It’s impossible for you to start improving your pages, or even knowing how successful they currently are, without analyzing your current statistics.

Whatever your hosting platform or framework is that you’re using, they’ll be a way to see exactly how many are coming to your landing pages, how many are converting and how many are bouncing off onto other websites.

You’ll also be able to see where these internet users are coming from, allowing you to judge the effectiveness of your social media and PPC campaigns. If you’re not currently using some form of analytical software, I highly recommend signing your web pages up to Google Analytics.

With this analytics in mind, you’ll be able to see just how well your pages are performing, enabling you to create realistic targets for how you want your landing pages to perform and so you have something to aim for.

Check out our another blog: 5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

Test Your Landing Pages

Next, you’re going to want to make sure that your landing pages are optimized and effective in the eyes of your users. Of course, depending on how busy you’ve been, you’ll probably have several landing pages that you operate.

You’ll need to test these landing pages using a method known as split testing, more commonly referred to as A/B testing. Ideally, you want to do this to two identical pages with a slight yet significant change on each, but you’re more than welcome to use two existing landing pages to see which people prefer.

You can set this up so half of your online user’s land on one landing page and the other half land on another. This way you can see which is the most effective. Of course, this works much better if you’re using two identical landing pages with the change.

For example, you could change the imagery used on one page or a different color scheme. You could also try changing the text content of your page. A/B testing is a continuous process that you’ll continuingly engage in, consistently updating and optimizing your pages as the months go by.

Even if you’re seeing a slight increase of 1-10% in your conversion rate, over time, this will build up to an optimal conversion rate.

Implement Video Content

Nowadays, the internet has never been more accessible and with speeds, both for desktop and mobile devices, becoming faster than ever before, implementing HD video media into your landing pages is now a viable marketing technique.

After all, it’s worth remembering that video content is one of the most popular forms of media, so what better way to give your users something they love. Another great technique is implementing influencer marketing into your landing pages.

Of course, implementing video content solely depends on the nature of your business and the products you’re trying to sell, but if you get creative, there are so many options open to you.

Using Exit-Induced Pop-Ups

Of course, while we may go about the internet and disregard many of those pop-ups that appear when we go to leave a page, they are still used for a reason, and you’ll still see them implemented on so many websites, both big and small.

This is because they are effective, and people do respond to them. However, you need to make sure that you’re using them correctly and effectively. The most important point here is to not ruin your user experience by having it pop up while people are looking at your content, but when they go to leave.

Then, there are two ways you can use these pop-up boxes.

Firstly, you can repeat your original offer. Sometimes, repetition is all you need and seeing your offer come up on the screen can be enough to get people clicking. Alternatively, you can offer a secondary offer, perhaps a lower price than originally attending, getting more people to think they are getting a better deal.

Work on Your Written Content

Landing pages are renowned for being highly visual pages traditionally, but it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll have text in place. However, when was the last time you considered how effective this text is in helping you secure a sale? Are you aware of How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

When it comes your landing page’s copywriting, look to make sure that you’re communicating the message that you want to communicate. Likewise, you’ll want to make sure that your content is accurate and free from mistakes, such as poor spelling, poor grammar, and misplaced punctuation. Otherwise, you’ll damage the credibility and reputation of your business.

Check out our another blog: 2018 Content Marketing Toolkit

Include Social Proof

Reviews are so important these days, and customers want to see what other people have thought about your product before purchasing it for themselves. If you’ve already sold some products, make sure that you’re asking them for reviews so you can post these on your landing pages.

This a great way to build credibility in your products and your landing pages and is a sure-fire way to boost your conversion rates.

Be a Secure Website

Online security is more important today than it ever has been before and therefore it’s so important that you provide the security level that your users expect on your landing pages. Make sure you have an up-to-date SSL certificate at the very minimum.

If you want to take things a step further, you can include a section of your text which shares the level of security and trust that your landing pages offer your customers. You may always want to include a customer service email or phone number, so people can get in contact if they have any doubts.

Consider SEO

SEO is so important when it comes to the success of your landing pages. Otherwise, people aren’t going to be coming to your website because they won’t be able to find it! This means you’ll need to take into consideration the keywords you’ve used on your landing pages and the effectiveness of your H1 and H2 headers.

Another crucial thing you’ll want to remember is the fact that people are using voice searches more and more which brings us to ‘key phrases’. Let’s say you have a landing page that sells running trainers.

“Internet users are far more likely to use voice search for queries such as ‘SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018’. Of course, this depends on your business but including a handful of these key phrases can help to boost your inline visibility dramatically” shares Ian Dunham, an SEO manager for Reviewed.

Check out our another blog: 25 Points of Basic SEO Checklist

Check Your Call to Action

The most important element you’ll have on your landing page is the call to action (CTA). Without a clear CTA, an online user is not going to know where to click or how to make their purchase, resulting in them becoming confused and bouncing off your page.

Be sure to make your CTA stand out from the rest of your page and consider the text that is written on your CTA button. This is a great element to A/B test when optimizing your landing pages.

A RESPONSIVE PAGE!

This is one consideration that you should already know about, but it’s surprising how many landing pages still haven’t implemented. Over half of all internet traffic is now on mobile devices so if people are coming to your landing page and your website isn’t optimized; they’ll simply leave.

Make sure that your landing pages and all its content is optimized for mobile devices and gives your readers the best experience possible, maximizing your conversion rates while minimizing your bounce rates.

Summary

As you can see, there are many things you can do and many elements of your landing pages to consider when it comes to making them perform optimally. Every landing page is different, and there’s so much you can do with them, all you need to do is think creatively and matching the needs of your target market.

Check out our another blog: 11 Success Tips for Your eCommerce Business

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

25 Points of Basic SEO Checklist

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 04:37:00 +0000

It is essential to drive organic traffic by improving search engine ranking and finally get the conversion. Let’s check the points one by one important from an SEO perspective with a free basic SEO checklist plus tools to analyze it. you can take help of any Digital Marketing Agency to help you out in this.

Basic SEO Checklist For On-page Factors

1. Tracking Codes

Add all tracking codes first in the basic SEO checklist. This can be event trackings such as phone or email. Google Analytics code for checking traffic and the Google webmasters or search console for technical details and resolving errors such as 500, 404 etc.

2. Robots.txt

It is a file used by crawlers to index or non-index pages based on the allow and disallow feature. All secured and non-indexable pages should be blocked.

Check out our another blog: Top SEO Trends To Follow In 2018

3. Meta Title

Title tags are the main indicators of what the web page is all about. It is clickable only when it explains the terms in the search query. You must check title optimization tips if you need to optimize it as it is responsible for ranking your keywords.

Duplicate Tags: It confuses the search engine to set relevancy of the page. It can duplicate title, duplicate tags & categories.

Missing Titles: Search engines and users understand from the title that what is a page all about so make sure to have the title for all web pages.

Long Title Tags: Title length should not be more than 65-70 characters.

4. Meta Descriptions

Meta Description is the text that is written below the title and required to describe what the landing page is all about and if a user finds that information useful then only he will click the page. It should include all the targeted keywords. It should be 150-160 characters.

5. Keyword Research

Keyword research is a very important step of basic SEO checklist, but including it in the meta tags according to recent updates is not essential. Only put 1-2 keywords in the meta tags. with keyword research be aware of how to rank keyword.

6. Redirections

301- Moved permanently

Whenever a domain or URL is changed then it should be redirected to 301 to a new domain or optimized URL for the convenience of users and crawlers.

302- Moved Temporarily

Whenever there is a maintenance then the URL should be temporarily moved.

301 vs 302

The difference between 301 and 302 redirections 302 passes the authority so can’t be used if you already decided your preferred URL version or domain.

7. Keyword Density

It refers to the occurrence of a number of words per article and should be maintained around 2-3%.

8. Anchor Text & Internal Linking Optimization

It is a text that is hyperlinked to another page on the website. It should be descriptive enough as it contributes to the relevancy. Internal linking optimization should be relevant including target keywords and point to pages optimized for it to increase the reach of the post or page.

Check out our another blog: 5 tips to crack the code of Online Marketing

9. Broken Links

It gives 404 errors as the page or image has been deleted, so should be fixed by permanent redirection as it gives an error of page not found and not good for user experience. So, should be fixed on priority in the SEO checklist.

10. URL

It should not be long, under 110 characters and static separated with hyphens. It should be different from the domain name and include target keywords.

11. Duplicate Content

It refers to the content present on 2 or more pages with different URL. This is treated as the duplicate and penalized so make sure to use canonical tags to prioritize one page by giving 301 redirections to pass authority to one page. You should know the importance of content marketing and how content marketing can save your digital marketing strategy.

12. Image – ALT tag

It should be used to describe images containing main keywords.

The size of images should be less than 100 KB.

13. Heading Tags (H1 /H2 /H3)

There are 6 heading tags in HTML by which H1, H2 & H3 are very important from SEO perspective. H1 is used for main heading, H2 for sub-heading & H3 for normal text.

14. Speed Test

The website should open in less than 5 seconds otherwise, For that, you have to minify CSS & js scripts by using a plugin for WordPress. Also, don’t forget to test the speed in the free tool or page speed test by Google.

15. Mobile Friendly Site

The website should be mobile friendly to be ranked high for the increasing number of mobile users day by day. So, optimize mobile site separately.

Check out our another blog: 3 Digital Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business

16. Schema Mark up Implementations

Increase the visibility in search engine result pages by enhancing the rich snippets that are displayed just beneath the page title. So, you will get better results, especially in local SEO.

For User Experience

17. Website loading time should be less than 5 seconds.

18. Proper navigational menu following website hierarchy.

19. Call to action header and footer for conversions.

20. Mobile friendly site increases the user experience and engagement.

For Content

21. The site should have a blog and press section to increase more awareness about product or service and updating fresh content regularly. For any content regarding thing check 2018 Content Marketing Toolkit: Tips, Templates, and Checklists.

22. There should be static pages for main services and word count should be 300 or more for ranking well. A Crawler needs at least 300 words to determine viability. So, target your page for more and relevant content justifying the Title.

SEO Checklist for Link Building or Off-page activities

23. Link Building: Links pointing to your website from the authoritative domain will be considered to be one of the ranking factors. Target low performing keywords as anchor text and do the regular link building activities to increase the domain and page authority of your website. For more details, check link building techniques.

Check out our another blog: Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide & SEO Terms Glossary

24. Social Media Optimization: Share the link on social media channels regularly to increase visitors. As a result, you will get better results as social signals matter in the ranking of a website. There are 5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business to help you out in this.

25. Reputation Management: Increase business situations as much as you can to increase the citation flow. Fixed business listings for the wrong citation. Increase trust flow of a website by doing link building on high authoritative websites.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

5 Reasons Why Your Business Need A Mobile App

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 04:24:00 +0000

If you want your business to move with today’s fast-paced contemporary mobile world, it is the perfect time to have your mobile presence launched an app. What better than including a mobile app in your marketing toolkit, to enhance your advertising efforts for an extensive branding reach? Not only a mobile app helps in promoting your business on a Smartphone but also delivers a tangible value to the users making their lives simpler and uplifting your brand reputation. If you want to build a mobile app for your business you can hire any mobile app development services provider. Let us see how a mobile app plays a critical role in getting your business on the right track, and concurrently grow your customer base:

1.Customer Experience Improves Drastically

When there is a mobile app in place, customers’ access your products or services 24/7 without worrying about the accessibility. This, in turn, not just satisfy existing customers, but also tend to bring new customers on board through word of mouth, when people talk good things about your app.

Check out our another blog: 5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

2.Boost Your Brand Value

Mobile apps today represent brand image of a business. When you have a wonderful app in place, people would be talking about it all over the place, especially when it has a distinctive value to offer. Since most users today own a Smartphone; an app with memorable UI/UX is surely going to click, boosting brand value.

3.One More Advertising Channel

A mobile app is not just a mere tool to present your offerings to a prospective audience but even acts as a marketing channel through which you can have your app design, as well as user feedback promoting your business. Additionally, since you can have social media platforms integrated, you can have your social media profiles connect with your app. Other than that, features like push notifications and in-app messaging play an important role in notifying users.

Check out our another blog: 11 Success Tips for Your eCommerce Business

4.Bring New Customers On-Board

Today’s consumers are always on the move, always wanting to get connected with the web. Hence, an app can be vital in being the best portable companion, keeping users constantly aware of what’s new with the products or services. This helps in not just retaining existing customers, but even bringing new customers.

5.Add Multiple Revenue Streams

A mobile app can provide multiple ways to earn an ongoing revenue stream with the likes of in-app advertising, premium upgrades, affiliate programs, and more. These all are additional ways to earn money other than promoting your own products or services through an app. Hence, you can have not only your revenue increased, but also increase your customer base over time, leading to increased number of sales. When you have to advertise integrated within the app, more traffic will bring in more revenue over time, not to forget escalating the sales of your products or services.

Check out our another blog: 10 Website Design Tips for Small Business Websites

In A Nutshell

So, we saw how a mobile app can help your business improve customer experience, pushing the value of your brand to new heights, acting as one more channel of showcasing your business, bringing new users on board, and adding up multiple streams of revenue.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

5 Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 04:20:00 +0000

Social media offers diverse benefits for business owners. The evolution of different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn means that you need to be aware of general as well as channel-specific hacks to fulfill your social media marketing objectives.

Here are five social media hacks that will enable you to save time and gain wider exposure, more followers, higher conversion rates and better engagement.

Check out our another blog: 9 Brilliant Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content on Facebook

1. Know what’s hot. If you can post information that is current and relevant to your niche and most importantly your customer, you’ll give your audience a reason to read your posts on social media and from there visit your website. One really great search tool is uvrx.com. Powered by Google custom search, it throws up results for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and other platforms. Social-searcher.com is another search tool designed to allow users to check out how their chosen keywords are being treated by social media networks. It offers analytics data, revealing other folks you can follow online, sentiments associated with keywords, and the types of posts that are doing well.

2. Social media is speaking a new language. And the language is one of the images, videos, and infographics. These types of media are generating excellent engagement numbers for businesses that have made it standard practice to employ them in a pertinent and creative manner. Vine, the video-sharing app for Twitter; Instagram; and Flipboard for iTunes are just some of the apps that enhance the appeal of your posts and make them stand out on your followers’ pages or timelines. Creative calls to action used with such media can help bridge the gap between entertainment, information and lead generation. You must know how to write more engaging social media posts.

3. Grow your base. Reaching followers, subscribers and "friends" is central to creating a successful and enjoyable social media campaign. One way to find new customers is to run paid ads on Facebook or Twitter as a way to increase "likes" and followers, promote blogs or make other offers; another is to tap the LinkedIn premium subscription that allows you the opportunity to reach out to potential prospects or partners via InMail. A fairly basic but often overlooked hack to attract more subscribers to your Facebook page is to immediately direct message the link to new followers on Twitter. Similar creative, cross-fertilizing techniques should be employed on all social media platforms to capture the interest of members of your audience when you’re already on their radar.

Check out our another blog: HOW TO INCREASE BLOG TRAFFIC

4. Save time. Whether you’re running a one-man show or an enterprise-level social media operation with data being fed into customer-relationship management systems, you need to automate certain processes. If you don’t, then these will tend to become chores that you may begin to avoid, thereby decreasing your effectiveness. Some activities that you can place on auto mode include posting updates across platforms, sending email and SMS updates on favorite topics, and uploading social media content to remote storage. If This Then That offers handy solutions.

5. Embrace change and be in the know. When a social media platform changes its guidelines, you have two options. You can take the change in stride and adapt -- or give up. When you opt for the former approach, you give yourself an opportunity to occupy the space left vacant by those who gave up the fight. For example, a recent Facebook update prohibited informing contest winners of results through Facebook; this restriction has since been relaxed, however. Last month, LinkedIn introduced enhancements such as the ability to block profiles and unwanted messages. These have clear benefits for popular LinkedIn groups that have had to deal with a lot of spam until now. It pays to be in the know. Make a strategy before going in the market, there are 9 ingredients for a successful social media strategy .

While most social media hacks are little more than commonsense activities, the ones that may surprise you with their effectiveness are those that you come up with through observation and learning. Entrepreneurs can become busy and can easily forget to allow time each week for creative thinking. Do some strategic thinking on a regular basis and keep coming up with ways to extract better results from your social media marketing.

Check out our another blog: 6 Ways Social Media Impacts SEO

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

11 Success Tips for Your eCommerce Business

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 04:31:00 +0000

11 Success Tips for Your eCommerce Business

The global eCommerce industry is booming and retail sales are expected to top $2.35 trillion this year. Needless to say, a quality eCommerce software solution can do wonders for your online business. This article provides effective tips to boost your eCommerce venture.

1. Don’t Hurry the Launch

A common mistake made by eCommerce entrepreneurs is rushing their website launch. Ideally, they should wait till all the groundwork has been done before announcing their project to the world. This homework includes taking care of paid advertising, social media, content marketing, SEO, etc. So, after you register your domain name, put up a “Coming Soon” sign on your site till you are fully ready for the launch. For these things, you can take help of any ECommerce Website Design company to help you out.

2. Make the User Experience Delightful

The biggest disadvantage of an online store compared to a brick-and-mortar store is that customers cannot take a firsthand look at the products. You cannot resolve this problem, but you can still provide a delightful experience for shoppers. You should hire competent e-commerce development service providers if you are not comfortable doing it yourself. Use a simplified shopping cart to ease checkout, offer promotions and discounts, and ship the goods free to the customer's’ address. Happy customers may well return to your online store for repeat purchases and talk about their good experience with their friends and contacts. You should make a user-friendly website, keep an eye on top eCommerce web design trends.

3. Do Thorough Testing

The success of your eCommerce venture depends on thorough analytics and testing. Put yourselves in the shoes of the buyer and take an objective look at the features that are working and not working, and find out the reasons for failures. This will enable you to rectify the errors quickly. Use quality A/B testing solutions for the purpose.

Check out our another blog: 9 Things You Need to Know to Be a Successful Web Designer

4. Make Good Use of Social Media

Social media has become a popular internet phenomenon and you should not outsource this activity. In fact, take a hands-on approach and handle social media monitoring and marketing yourself as much as possible. You can learn about the lifestyles and buying attitudes and behaviors of your customers, and this will help you to personalize your strategy for each high-value shopper. Hire the services of an experienced social media manager and take the time out to get involved personally too. How social media impacts your business is a very important thing you should never ignore.

5. Include Social Elements

This tip is a follow-up to the previous one. Enable your buyers to provide their feedback on product reviews and testimonials, and add follow buttons as well as social login choices to boost customer engagement in your products and business.

6. Go Mobile

Smartphones are becoming the preferred device of the millennial generation for internet browsing, searching, and shopping. Therefore, go all out to provide a great user experience for mobile users. They should be able to easily find your online store, select their preferred products, and check out them effortlessly. Needless to say, your business may well fade into oblivion if your site is not mobile-optimized.

7. Manage SEO Effectively

The eCommerce industry is getting crowded with a lot of new players entering the market regularly. Therefore, it is important to carve out your niche and identity in this crowded space. The way to do it is to manage your SEO activities and campaigns effectively. Hire skilled SEO strategists to improve your online store’s visibility and rankings on popular search engines. Interested shoppers should be able to find your site easily on the internet. If your e-commerce store is on Magento you can also install a good Magento SEO extension to take care of all your on-page SEO issues. You should know how to prioritize your eCommerce PPC campaign builds.

8. Collect and Analyze Customer Data

It is important to gather customer information and details to grow your website and also for future launches. Invest in a quality business intelligence software solution and hire the services of experienced analysts who can crunch the collected data. They should be able to provide actionable insights that you can use to craft targeted marketing campaigns to engage specific customer segments. The valuable insights can also help you to make smarter business decisions.

9. Establish Strategic Partnerships

Your online store cannot stand on its own. You need to form strategic partnerships with established vendors and brands who can add quality to your products and services. Make use of their knowledge and expertise to improve your online business.

10. Implement an Effective Content Strategy

Content marketing can help you to generate a steady stream of organic leads. To build a strategy you should be aware of Content Marketing Toolkit: Tips, Templates, and Checklists. Admittedly, it can be a bit expensive to create and publish quality content, but the investment is worth it. You can start a blog, share your articles and posts on social networks, and connect with leading websites and industry publications in your niche.

Check out our another blog: Mobile SEO: Welcome to The Future of SEO

11. Keep Learning and Evolving

Finally, be keen to learn more about your business, customer tastes, and the latest eCommerce trends to evolve and grow continuously. You are sure to make mistakes as you go along but do not get disheartened by temporary setbacks. Learn from the experience and use it to improve your business.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that eCommerce offers a lucrative business opportunity, but you need to make strenuous and smart efforts to be successful in this crowded field. You can consult a reliable B2B software marketplace such as the FinancesOnline.com review site for detailed analyses of the best shopping cart systems to select a suitable one for your needs. We also hope our useful tips are a good contribution to you in this regard. If you are already implementing or know about other effective eCommerce strategies, feel free to share the details with us in this space.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 05:18:00 +0000

SEO Marketing Strategy: Tips for Success in 2018

Businesses should use 2018 to break the bad habit of viewing aspects of an SEO marketing strategy as a one-time exercise. Too often, some companies optimize a website page and never adjust it.

Though 61% of marketers in a 2017 HubSpot study say increasing organic visibility is their highest inbound marketing priority, they don’t always follow through.

You can tell they don’t fully embrace an SEO strategy any time:

SEO page titles lack a keyword focus.
SEO page titles merely mimic the content headers.
Page URLs are a mile long.
Nothing is ever modified (take a quick look at the Wayback Machine, a popular archive of more than 300 billion web pages).

Now is a good time to take a closer look at SEO marketing data because search is getting worse for all types of B2B and B2C businesses.

Your keyword phrase that continues to rank No. 1 organically is no longer the top result seen by searchers because of design changes to Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). That lack of visibility jeopardizes the effects of your organic traffic – leading to fewer clicks, leads, sales, page views, and conversions. Online marketing is not a rocket science you can learn how to crack the code of online marketing.

SERP elements (like videos or images) have been around for years, but they appeared intermittently. In the last couple of years, their use has intensified and shows no signs of slowing down.

Featured snippets are the summaries for the searcher’s query that appear at the top of the page (below the ads from Google AdWords).

Here are some other SERP elements:

AdWords – up to four at the top with optional extensions can make each ad deeper

Knowledge Graph – boxes that include data ranging from companies to celebrities on the right of search results page

Sitelinks – multiple links to subpages within the website result visible below the primary website

Local packs – several local listings appear together (often under a map marking the location of each one)

Carousel listings – interactive visual display of results for things like movies, songs, and restaurants

Reviews with star ratings (make some organic results deeper)

Image packs – often a single row of images appearing on the results page

Video

In-depth articles

Twitter content

To go more in-depth on these elements, Moz has good tips on how to get your website included in the specialized SERP features. Search Engine Land touches on some of them as well and explains some other notable ranking trends, such as schema markup (instructions that help search engines understand types of content).

Even if your website isn’t included in SERP features as often as you would prefer, you still can work to improve your regular organic results by updating and/or expanding your content.

Use these three steps to make SEO updates.

Without trying too hard, larger enterprises can rank for many keywords because they’re credible in the eyes of search engines (the number of pages and backlinks help). Unfortunately, too many businesses don’t make enough updates to exploit their potential. They’re like a smart student who is a constant underachiever. Google changes its algorithm time to time, and these changes may affect your website ranking. Therefore, keep yourself updated with major Google algorithm updates.

Check out our another blog: Mobile SEO: Welcome to The Future of SEO

1. Find your SEO sweet spot based on data; set realistic expectations

You can target any keyword or phrase, but you face two primary challenges. The word may be too competitive or not searched, which would offer little to no value for your business.

Use a tool like SEMrush to better understand what keywords would be reasonable to pursue.

Also, look at how your website ranks for your keywords today. For example, does it typically rank in the top five positions for a keyword searched an average of 500 times a month on Google? What about searches conducted 1,000 times or more?

A thorough review allows you to size up trends and see potential sweet spots by recognizing how existing keywords perform – their ranking position in relation to search volume. If you are a beginner in SEO, you should know the SEO ranking factors.

Here’s the thing: Set realistic expectations. It doesn’t make sense to pick a relevant keyword with 2,000 searches a month and expect a top ranking if you can’t crack the top 30 for keywords with only 1,000 searches a month.

Or maybe your targeted keyword averages 50 searches a month. That may be OK, depending on what you sell and how many leads you need to get to a sale.

No matter the number of searches, you can improve rankings more quickly by forgoing the giant leap (in most cases) to No. 1. Target a keyword phrase where, for example, your site ranks eighth and take steps to push it to No. 5. Or choose a keyword phrase where your site is in the 12th position and work to make it appear in the seventh spot.

Although SERP design changes mean that moving to the fifth or seventh result won’t have as big of an effect like a few years ago, higher rankings are still important.

2. Tweak your SEO page titles

Are your keywords at the beginning of the SEO page title? Are you consuming precious space with your company name? Including your business in the SEO page title is certainly a good way to reinforce your brand – if the SEO page title appears on the SERPs. But is the presence of those words jeopardizing your ability to rank?

For a company like Sears, the name is short so its inclusion is not an issue. But for a company like Proto Labs, its name could be problematic. For example, one page uses this SEO page title – Proto Labs: Choose a Rapid Manufacturing Services. In social media platform title of your post attracts everyone, you should know the ways Social Media impacts SEO.

Essentially, the company is telling search engines that it wants to rank for “Proto Labs: Choose a Rapid” because those are the first few words.

To do better in search, this manufacturing services summary page’s title could be 3D Printing, CNC Machining, and Injection Molding Manufacturing Services.

It’s not an ideal SEO page title because of the multiple distinct services, but the structure may give rise to rankings for some long-tail keyword phrases.

I go into much more detail in SEO Page Titles: 15-Point Checklist for B2B and B2C Brands, which explains the best ways to work in relevant keywords that accurately reflect the page content.

3. Explore other options that support SEO keywords

You need to strike a balance with page design, clarity, and SEO strategy. You don’t want to ruin content with keyword stuffing. Stuff your keywords in the content. Keyword analysis is the initial stage of SEO. There is a guide for you How to rank your keyword in 10 steps.

But there often are opportunities to naturally work in your primary keywords and close variations:

Revise content headers (headlines) with relevant keywords and include H1 tags.

Add captions to images.

Rename images.

Add or update image alt text.

Create internal links from other popular pages on your website.

Add more text to thin pages that have few words.

Pursue inbound links from other websites.

Create new content (and revise it over time)

When you create new content based on your priority keywords, you have several advantages with an SEO marketing strategy. An existing page may rank 20th for a keyword, but a new page may rank third. Work the keyword phrase into the SEO page title, content header, image, image alt text, etc.

All sorts of keyword phrases can be triggered by the content you create. You may have a couple keywords in mind. But a few months later, analyze that page through SEMrush and you may see other keywords for which that page ranks well. You can take help of content marketing toolkit: tips, templates checklist.

For example, maybe you targeted “bulk bag filling equipment” and find out the page also ranks well for “bulk bag filler frame” – a phrase that is beneficial to your business. Continue to make adjustments to help that keyword phrase rank even higher.

Check out our another blog: 6 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Important For Your Internet Marketing

What else is at stake in SEO marketing in 2018?

SEO experts play up all sorts of variables, but not all variables have the same weight. Content and inbound links trump everything all the time. But, collectively, the smaller ranking factors are worth monitoring, fixing, and measuring. There are Digital Marketing tips to grow your business in 2018.

Website design, technical considerations, and sufficient responses to questions (i.e., voice search) can all help your keywords rank better. Important factors to consider include:

Mobile-first
Page load speed
Voice search
Machine learning and AI
Traffic and engagement metrics
HTTPS encryption

For more about ranking factors, check out these guides from SEMrush, Searchmetrics, and MOZ.

The biggest companies don’t need to get everything right to do well with SEO. For example, some businesses miss the mark with SEO and images and still rank well.

But it’s puzzling why some businesses don’t try harder with analysis, revisions, and new content with their SEO marketing strategy. It’s a great opportunity for smaller companies to nail down as many SEO best practices as possible.

Regardless of the effort, you can expect a tough road ahead. You’ll always have an organic presence. It’s just a matter of whether your visibility erodes and how well prepared you are to respond quickly to the evolving world of SEO.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

9 Things You Need to Know to Be a Successful Web Designer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 04:36:00 +0000

9 Things You Need to Know to Be a Successful Web Designer

Web designer. An exciting and fascinating career for a creative problem-solver like you. Turning text and images into gorgeous sites that customers love to visit and companies are proud to show off.

But just the idea of getting started in web design can be overwhelming. What do you really need to know? Should you learn to code? What tools do you have to have? How about managing clients?

Don’t worry! You can get going in digital design more easily than you can imagine. Just start with these foundational skills and you’ll soon be on your way to an amazing career on the Web. For help or any web design related thing you can contact Top Web Design Companies.

Psst! You can learn ALL these skills in Skillcrush’s Web Designer Blueprint, an entirely online program designed to take you from zero to a web designer in 3 months flat.

And Skillcrush is also launching a brand new Visual Designer Blueprint that will cover everything from color theory and typography to becoming a Photoshop master! Get on the first to know list to find out the minute it’s open for enrollment. It’s the perfect digital course for creative types. If you want to open your own small business be aware of 10 Website Design Tips for Small Business Websites.

TECH SKILLS

First, let’s find out about the technical side of what you need to know. All those strange acronyms and terms can seem intimidating, but they’re really pretty easy—and super fun!—once you get to know them.

1. VISUAL DESIGN

Seems pretty obvious that you need the design to be a web designer. But what this includes when it comes to the digital realm might be different than what you expect. In this case, design principles are what sets the look and feel of a site. It ranges from proportions to typography, grid systems to color theory, and it’s your chance to dig into creating mood boards and type hierarchy and experimenting with web fonts and color palettes.

2. UX

Here come those funny abbreviations! UX stands for user experience, or how people feel (calm, frustrated, etc.) when they use a website. Of course, you want the users of your sites to feel as happy as a puppy romping in a field of dandelions!

To do that, you’ll research your users and create “personas” (profiles of imaginary ideal users). You’ll lay out the pages and content with a sitemap. You’ll figure out the path users take on your site in user flows. For example, do they always click straight through to social media? Or are they just looking for contact information? And you’ll build wireframes to sketch out the key parts of each webpage.

3. DESIGN SOFTWARE

Like any craftsperson, to do your work, you’ll have the right tools. And knowing your way around the industry standards will be helpful in any case and critical in many. While designing a site can be done right in a web browser now, tools like Photoshop and Sketch are ones that almost all designers use for important parts of their job like creating mockups, designing assets such as logos and images, and of course, modifying and enhancing photos. So, you should get them in your toolbox too. As new trends and technologies are being used in web design make sure you are updated with the changing faces of web design.

4. HTML

You might not have imagined that a web designer would need to code. But, nowadays, it’s an expected skill for most design jobs. And, hey, it’s a pretty easy way to get your tech on and actually build websites from scratch! HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, which is the coding language used to put content on a web page and give it structure. That means it’s how you turn a bunch of words into headlines, paragraphs, and footers. And it’s also how you get the “cool” content like photos, videos, and graphics on a website.

5. CSS

And then there’s HTML’s partner, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is the code that tells browsers how to format and style HTML for a web page. In other words, it’s what makes all the text and other content look good. With CSS, you can adjust the colors, change the fonts, or add a stunning background – and so much more! This is where your eye for design really shines and how you can put your creative stamp on every site you create.

BONUS! JAVASCRIPT

While you can code up your designs using just HTML and CSS, if you can also program using JavaScript, you’ll have a huge leg up against the competition. JavaScript allows you to take static elements on your site and make them interactive—think: Twitter feeds that update automatically, websites that look different when you’re logged in, image sliders, and more!

Check out our another blog: How to get web design clients

SOFT SKILLS

Now that you have the design and tech part down, you only need to add some management to keep yourself organized and effective in your web design work.

6. TIME MANAGEMENT

Whether you go freelance or work for a company, you’ll need to stay on top of your schedule and your projects to be a standout web designer. This can mean getting to know productivity apps like task lists or calendars or, especially if you’re in a large organization, learning project tracking tools like Trello or JIRA. Whatever the tools, mastering the art of prioritizing and tracking your work will be essential to your success (and sanity!) in the busy world of web design.

7. COMMUNICATION

Staying in touch and getting your point across are also must-have skills for a designer. You’ll be keeping clients up-to-date on the progress of their projects plus pitching ideas and explaining your creations. And you might even be called on to do some copywriting or editing for sites, especially if you’re running your own one (wo)man shop. So, buckle down on your writing and your speaking, and you’ll be sure to get your point across in every situation.

8. SEO / MARKETING / SOCIAL MEDIA

The skill set of SEO (search engine optimization), marketing, and social media might seem like it’s meant more for a salesperson than a web designer. But, since the Internet is the way so many companies sell today and since you’ll also need to sell your web designer talents (when you’re looking for a job or for freelance clients), you should wrap your head around them, too. Even knowing the basics of each and keeping them in mind for both client and your own sites will get you a long way in your web designer journey. If you want to be a successful web designer you should know How To Make Search Engine Friendly Website?

9. BUSINESS / CLIENT MANAGEMENT

And, as an employee or as a freelancer, understanding the bottom line will help you make sure you or your company is profitable and sustainable. You don’t have to go back for your MBA, but you should have an idea about the goals and finances of your employer or your own business so you can use them to guide your work. And, if you’re designing directly for clients, you should have a plan for making sure that your cash flow and project backlog are both healthy and doable in the short and long term.

As you can see, there’s nothing mysterious or mind-blowing about the skills you need to be a web designer. A foundation in the tech side and a good handle on the organizational parts will both get you going and be there for you as you build your knowledge and your career in web design.

Check out our another blog: How to Fix Traffic Drops after a Website Redesign

And you can learn ALL of these skills with the Skillcrush Web Designer Career Blueprint! You’ll get 24/7 access to the fully online course and lots of support from friendly instructors and your fellow budding web designers in the special online student community. And you’ll even learn how to find, land, and complete your first paying web design project — all in just 3 months! You don’t need any design or coding experience to get started. So, join us now to get that exciting and fascinating career in web design you’ve been dreaming of.

And if you’re looking for an even DEEPER dive into all things visual design, make sure to get on the first to know list for our brand new Visual Designer Blueprint. It’s perfect for creative types obsessed with colors, fonts, and all things visual.

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

5 tips to crack the code of Online Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 04:52:00 +0000

5 tips to crack the code of Online Marketing

Someone rightly highlighted the importance of digital marketing with these words, “Brands which fail to establish an emotional connect with the millennials will be outshone sooner or later by the ones that do.”

And it is not the big brands that are making digital marketing count. It is the smarter creed of startups and small-scale enterprises that have successfully cracked the code of digital marketing. You can hire Digital Marketing Agency to rank you up in Google search results.

What can you as a business learn from them? Well, here are some of the key metrics that I’ve figured out. Take a look at them, and how you can succeed at the game of digital marketing -

Build your marketing plan in steps so everyone can see how their work adds up.

Content Marketing

In words of marketing prodigy Seth Godin - content marketing is the only marketing left.

Take a look at the trends for the past few years. You will get to see that brands that have invested in creating top quality content have managed to create a powerful presence in the market.

One of the examples of effective content marketing comes in the form of Leadpages, a company that deals in designing customizable, landing page templates, and also provides testing services. Thanks to their powerful content marketing efforts, Leadpages were able to get their customer lifetime value to customer acquisition ratios quite high. Know the basics of content marketing and know about how content marketing can save your digital marketing strategy.

In words of the company’s CEO Clay Collins, “A content team of four people could outperform an 80+ person sales team at most companies.”

Here’s what they focused upon as part of their content marketing strategy -

Popularising their blog by creating beautiful, useful and compelling content

Spreading marketing resources such as e-books, case studies, infographics and courses

Conducting weekly webinars to build a community for spreading their content

And the results? Leadpages has become a multi-million dollar company, and one of the fastest growing companies in the US.

Check out our another blog: Mobile SEO: Welcome to The Future of SEO

Video Marketing

If we talk about the trends, video marketing ranks right up there in the present scenario. YouTube and live video streams have become the next big thing in marketing.

As per statistics, companies that leveraged video marketing to good effect were able to grow 49 percent faster than the companies that did not.

Just like content, you can leverage different types of videos in marketing. Starting from engaging and funny videos to creating tutorials - there’s a lot that you can do as part of your video marketing endeavors. And, thanks to the rise of live video streaming, it has now become easy to keep your community engaged and hooked by sharing live story videos and what not.

Lowes Home Improvement is one of the most prominent names when it comes to pocket-friendly and successful video marketing.

Social Media Marketing

‘We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” - Erik Qualman

Social media keeps us connected to the world. Over the past few years, it has become a lot more than just something that people use as a pastime. In fact, studies show that social media plays a massive role in user’s buying choice, with customers being 71percent more likely to purchase a product based on social media referral.

As they say in the marketing world, ‘social today is not just a tick in the box, it’s bread and butter for a brand’s survival.’

The best example of cost-effective social media marketing campaign that worked really well - Know Your Lemons - Worldwide Breast Cancer! In this unique campaign, the organization encouraged women to stay safe against breast cancer by checking their breasts regularly and looking for early physical warning signs. Using a standalone member’s page on Facebook, they were able to raise their fundraising target by 317 percent using just a smile ‘donate’ call to action. Nowadays, writing an engaging post is very important. There are four ways to write more engaging social media post you should know.

As you can see, you don’t have to break your bank in order to succeed in social media marketing.

Search Engine Marketing

The good old SEO - you would have heard about it for sure. It is a mix of different practices that are used to get on top of results in search engines. How could a list of cost-effective marketing strategies be complete without SEO? If you are much into e-commerce read How To Prioritize Your E-Commerce PPC Campaign Builds.

It is the oldest form of digital marketing and still ranks right on top when you talk about getting results. With the right SEO tactics, you can eventually gain limitless traffic to your website. And, it won’t cost you a dime. There are plenty of tutorials and online courses available that can help you master the art of SEO.

In fact, you can hire professional services for the same that will cost you much lesser as compared to any of the other services. Switch to TopinDigiXpert.

Check out our another blog: How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps

Remarketing

Lastly, we are going to focus on one area that’s fairly less discussed i.e. remarketing. Targeting users who have already visited your website, remarketing lets you tempt potential buyers who had left your website for some reason or the other.

It works based on cookies - the trail that users leave while visiting your website. With the help of these cookies, you can easily target social media accounts of users, or any other websites they visit, to display your ads and increase the chances of them getting converted.

Though it falls underpaid marketing, the ROI is pretty good. Hence, you can expect to get a lot more than you are investing; making it an easy, quick way to boost your business sales with online marketing. For design or develop you can hire any eCommerce services provider who can provide you full service.

Do you have something more to add to this list? Share in the comments, and we’d love to know about it!

If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 04:58:00 +0000

How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps

Ranking for a keyword in organic search is a repeatable process. You won’t get the results you want 100% of the time, especially if you’re a new website trying to rank for a popular keyword, but if you take content marketing and SEO seriously, you can start to make things happen. Things like rankings, and traffic, and sales, oh my!

Here are the ten steps to rank for a keyword in Google.

Step 1: Lay the Groundwork

This is really more of a pre-step than a first step. You’ll need to have some basics in place before you can hope to rank for any random keyword. Read about major Google algorithm updates to know more about ranking algorithms. These pre-requisites include:

A strong website – The longer your website has been around, accruing authority and links, the better. It’s also key that your entire site follows SEO best practices – start with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines if you don’t know what that means.

A network to draw on – In order to rank quickly for a keyword, it’s very useful to have a built-in network to share new content with – a blog following, an audience on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, email contacts you can reach out to for occasional help with a link. If you don’t know what that means, it’s time to start thinking about link building as relationship building.

Don’t rush this stuff in your race for Internet gold. If you don’t do things right the first time, you’ll just have to do them again later.

Check out our another blog: How To Make Search Engine Friendly Website?

Step 2: Do Your Initial Keyword Research

You may think you know what keyword you want to target but fact-check your instincts. Use several keyword tools to get a sense of the search volume for the keyword as well as the competition before you finalize your keyword choice. Your main considerations will include:

Choosing a keyword with good volume, but not too much volume – In general, you don’t want to target a keyword that has low relative search volume if there’s an equivalent term that is much more popular. For example, there are usually over twice as many searches for “blah blah jobs” versus “blah blah careers.” However, don’t always automatically go for the keyword with the highest volume; some keywords are simply too competitive and not worth your time. You’re not going to rank for “airline” unless you are, in fact, an airline.

Choosing a keyword that’s relevant to your business model – You’re more likely to succeed in ranking for a keyword if the term is relevant to your site and your business. You’re also more likely to get some real return on your ranking – remember that rankings in and of themselves aren’t particularly valuable unless they’re driving worthwhile traffic and leads. For example, a party planning business might target “how to cook for a party” – but “how to cook rice” isn’t really going to be relevant to them or their target audience.

At this stage of the process, you should also make a list of close variations on your primary keyword. These will be helpful in writing and optimizing your content later on. To decide keyword or any SEO related help you can hire any Digital Marketing Agency.

Step 3: Check Out the Competition

Once you’ve settled on a keyword, do a search for it on Google and a few other search engines to see what your competition is already doing. Pay particular attention to:

The domains and URLs – How many are exact match domains? Does every URL in the top 10 include the keyword?

The titles – How do the title tags incorporate the keyword?

The type of content that’s ranking – Product pages? Blog posts? Videos?

The types of businesses that are ranking – Are they huge brands? Small businesses? News sites?

How authoritative those sites are – You can use a plugin to check the age of the sites in the top 10, the size of their link profiles and so on.

You’re looking for ways that you can differentiate yourself. You’ll need to do at least as much as your competitors are doing to beat them. Ideally, you should be doing more, and doing it better.

Step 4: Consider Intent

The more specific the keyword (think long-tail keywords), the easier it is to gauge the searcher’s intent, and the easier it will be to serve up what those searchers are probably looking for. In search marketing, “intent” is our best guess at what the person using the search query really wants. Consider the following keywords and notice how much easier it is to guess the intent from the words alone as you go down the list:

glasses
eyeglasses
discount eyeglasses
discount eyeglasses frames
discount eyeglasses frames for kids

Ask yourself, what kind of content best serves the keyword? In this case, it would obviously be a selection of kid’s eyeglasses for sale. From the first term, you can’t even tell if the person is looking for eyeglasses or drinking glasses. And even for the second, the person might just be looking for pictures of eyeglasses; there is no clear intent to buy. An e-commerce business is mostly going to be trying to rank for commercial keywords.

Google’s founders have said that the perfect search engine would serve only one result. You want to be that one result that satisfies the searcher’s need so they don’t bounce back to the search results, looking for a better answer.

Step 5: Conceptualize the Content

Next, form a plan for the actual content you’re going to create that will – hopefully – rank for your chosen keyword. There are many paths to ranking for a keyword, including but not limited to:

An article
A blog post
A product page
An index or directory of links (to other pages on your site or around the web)
An authoritative guide
An infographic
A video

How long will it take to create the content? Who should create it? Will you be doing everything in-house or outsourcing? Do you have all the resources and budget you need? Don’t get defeated: No matter your size or your budget, you have the ability to create a blog post. Content like infographics and videos will require more resources. Sometimes, the best way to answer a search query is with some sort of tool, like a mortgage calculator. If this is the case, you'll need engineering resources. Check How content marketing can save your Digital Marketing strategy.

Step 6: Execute

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Execute on your plan. Again, you shouldn’t rush any of these steps, but it’s especially important not to rush this one. More and more, search engines are looking for high-quality content that benefits the searcher, not keyword-stuffed spam or pages full of ads that only benefit you. If you’d rather buy traffic than put in the effort it requires to earn “free” organic search traffic, investigate PPC. “SEO isn’t easy” should be your mantra.

Step 7: Optimize for Your Keyword

In reality, steps 6 and 7 should be intertwined. Optimize your content while you’re creating it, rather than applying optimization after the fact. This is where the list of keywords you formulated in step 2 comes in. Leverage those keywords where you can in your content, but not to the point of sounding like a crazy robot. Remember that there are a lot of “invisible” places for keywords, and I’m not talking about using white text on a white background or anything else that violates Google guidelines. I mean stuff like image file names – users won’t see these if they’re not looking for them, but they can increase your keyword rankings.

For a full list of on-page optimization factors, check out SEOmoz’s guide to the “perfect” page. Another good tip is to copy Wikipedia, whose pages tend to have stellar on-page optimization. Be aware of content marketing toolkit so that you can easily optimize the keyword.

Before you hit “publish,” it’s a good idea to quickly double-check your keyword research. It’s possible that your content has evolved during the development and creation phases, and you’ll need to make sure that there’s still alignment between keyword and content.

Step 8: Publish

It’s (finally) time to push your content out into the world. Depending on the type of content it is, you may need to be careful about scheduling this step. This isn’t usually a consideration for evergreen content, but it may be important for content that’s tied to something in the news, an event or a trend. You may also need to coordinate with PR or other interested parties at your company, for example when launching content related to a new product or service.

Check out our another blog: Top SEO Trends To Follow In 2018!

Step 9: Promote

This step is important and should come immediately after publishing – in fact, for big pieces of content, it’s great if you can do some media outreach before the piece goes live. Make sure you do what you can to get your content in front of as many eyeballs as possible before it even has a chance to rank for the keyword:

Share your content through your business’s social accounts – Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn et al. If you can, do this through your personal accounts too.

Use social buttons or widgets on your site to promote independent sharing – Make it easy for readers and viewers to keep the chain going. They’re more likely to tweet or share your article if all they have to do is click a button.

Build links to your content – Whatever the future of PageRank, link building is still a huge part of SEO (even if it is the most annoying part). Check out our blog archive on the topic if you’re looking to learn about link building.

Accruing page views and social shares will help you accrue links, which will help you earn that ranking. You can check how to promote your content on Facebook.

Step 10: Analyze

You’re not quite done yet! The web is a living medium, and it’s never too late to better optimize your content. Check your keyword ranking manually (be sure you’re signed out and not seeing overly personalized results) or with a rank checking tool. Also, use your analytics to see what keywords your content is actually ranking for – they might not be the exact ones you initially targeted. If, after a couple of weeks or so, you’re not ranking for the right keywords, you have more work to do. Make sure that your content:

Is truly optimized
Is truly high-quality
Is truly visible

It’s also possible that the keyword you chose is too competitive and you need to scale back your ambition. Try targeting less competitive keywords until you’ve built up more authority.

That’s it! This is the process we follow to rank for hundreds of keywords related to search marketing. Whatever your business niche, you can make the same process work for you. So GET STARTED! If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

6 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Important For Your Internet Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 04:37:00 +0000

6 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Important For Your Internet Marketing

“More than 34% of the people worldwide use email. That’s about 2.5 billion people. It’s predicted to increase to 2.8 billion email users in the next 2 years. Yup, email’s popular. The Radicati Group, who came up with that info, also reckon that the world sends about 196 billion emails daily. Out of this 196 billion emails the majority, 109 billion, is business email.

Let’s put it simply. Email marketing is a vibrant and powerful way to connect with people. Bringing it home, think about your own experiences. Do you even know anyone who doesn’t have an email address? You probably receive a number of HTML emails each week (I sure do). You read them, get inspired by them and even look forward to the next one. Email is a big part of our lives. A very big part.

Email marketing is also a very personal way of reaching your target customers. Messages from your friends and family are sitting next to email updates from your company. That’s why email marketing works at it’s best when it is personalized. Email can be tailored to customer actions so that every communication is relevant to their interest. You can cover topics like changes in your company, victories, request feedback to your customer – this list is virtually endless. With 2.5 billion users, email isn’t going anywhere.

Still thinking Email Marketing is not something for your company? Let us give you 6 reasons why Email Marketing is a channel you should not be ignoring.

1. More effective than social media (for customer acquisition)

Don’t get us wrong, social media is an extremely important component of any business’ marketing strategy. Social Media is a great channel for interacting with your audience and strengthening your personal relationships with them. And because of that, it is an important first step towards reaching your ultimate goal – the conversion.

But when it comes to converting people into members, customers or supporters, email marketing is the way to go. A study by Custora from 2013 found that customer acquisition via email marketing has quadrupled in the four years preceding 2013. Email marketing then already accounted for nearly 7% of all customer acquisitions that occurred online.

2. Economic and Cost Effective

It’s easy, effective, and inexpensive. Email marketing allows business owners to reach a large number of consumers at a rate of nearly nothing per message. For small-business owners on a budget, this makes it a better choice than traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, or direct mail. You don’t have to take my word for it. A joint study from Shop.org and Forrester Research found that 85% of US retailers consider email marketing one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics. Because of its cost-effectiveness, you can hire any Email marketing service provider to handle your campaigns.

Compared to traditional marketing efforts where printing, postage etc. can take up a lot of cost for your direct mail campaigns. With emails, you are still able to create the same imagery with the added benefit of having follow-up information instantly available with one click to your website.

Perhaps just as importantly, with the correct maintenance of an email list, the cost benefits increase as does the ROI through the close relationship established with the recipients. Together with the higher response rates that email marketing attracts, you, therefore, get more positive responses, more quickly and at a lower unit cost! Win-win situation!

3. Personal and Customisable

In email marketing, what you’re really doing is segmenting your audience into lists, and sending each list a tailored email message that resonates with your reader and can provide them with something of value.

When you write a post for one of your social media channels, you address your audience as a whole (“To all of our fans, we would like to say..”). But by using your email marketing software correctly, it allows you to address people individually by name, split certain topics only for certain members of your list and eventually arrive privately in their personal inbox. According to research from Adestra in 2012, emails with subject lines that include the recipient’s name are 22.2% more likely to be opened.

Email does not have to be SPAM – and it should never be! It can be used thoughtfully to build loyalty and trust with your brand. Email marketing is important for building relationships with prospects, leads, current customers, and even past customers because it gives you a chance to speak directly to them, in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them. Be friendly and personable. You are not invading their space if you have chosen your message and your recipient wisely.

4. Action Oriented

Whether you realize it or not, everybody is trained to do something with an email -reply, forward, click-through, sign-up, or even straight buying. Think about this! Email is transactional by nature and you can use it to direct traffic to your website and ultimately drive sales. As you develop your small business or startup marketing strategy as a whole, using email will allow you to see results straight away.

5. Measurable

There’s no guesswork in email marketing. When you use any email marketing software, you can track who opened your email, which links were clicked, and how many people unsubscribed. You can easily get a picture of how your email campaigns are performing, make adjustments and improve your effectiveness. Email marketing metrics are important to remember as you monitor and measure your internet marketing strategy as a whole.

A lot of email marketing software allows for split testing of your emails. As A/B testing comes from direct mail, it should go without saying that A/B testing in your email marketing campaigns is essential. A/B testing can reveal a great wealth of data about your subscribers. Do they generally respond better to tempting subject lines such as “Free”, “20 percent off”, or “Now on Sale”? Or, are they more open to a softer intro, maybe informing them of what to expect in your email. All these things can be tested, measured, learned from and improved upon.

6. Mobile devices allow people to check their email constantly

Because mobile devices have become so common, people are checking their emails all the time—in line at Starbucks, during their office commute, in the waiting room at the doctors' office, at the grocery store, everywhere.

Some people think that with the growing popularity of social media platforms, email should be forgotten and may be pushed to the side.

A study last year from ExactTarget reports that 91% of people use their smartphones to access their email. This compared to 75% of the people who use their smartphones for social networking. Not using email as part of your internet marketing strategy means you are missing out on a channel that a majority of the world uses!

How To Prioritize Your E-Commerce PPC Campaign Builds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 04:46:00 +0000

How To Prioritize Your E-Commerce PPC Campaign Builds

Over the last couple of years, the prioritization of e-commerce PPC campaign builds has shifted dramatically. With the rise of Google Shopping and with dynamic solutions now available to advertisers, standard Search Network text-ad campaign builds fall down the priority list. In today’s world of e-commerce PPC, I prioritize my campaigns as follows:

Google Shopping (Product Listing Ads or PLAs)
Remarketing (All Types)
Search Network Text Ads & Ad Extensions
Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs)
Google Display Network

Google Shopping

According to RKG’s Q1 2014 Digital Marketing Report, PLAs accounted for nearly half of all non-branded paid search clicks. In addition, PLAs produced significantly higher ROI and conversion rates compared to non-branded text ads.In other words, having a well-maintained product feed with appropriately segmented Google Shopping campaigns is the cornerstone for successful e-commerce PPC accounts. Google Shopping is so important that my first request to the client is to be granted access to Google Merchant Center and the associated feed. I want these Shopping campaigns properly set up right away so they can hit the ground running. Managed correctly, these campaigns will yield fairly quick results, as click volume tends to be high while costs are generally lower than text ads.While setting up Google Shopping campaigns, you may also consider Bing Product Ads. Though click volume is still low, setup is similar to Google and is showing positive ROI.

Remarketing

There are six subsets of remarketing that are pivotal to campaign success. These subsets include:

Standard Remarketing (static text and image ads)
Dynamic Remarketing
Standard Remarketing on Facebook
Dynamic Remarketing on Facebook
Remarketing for Dynamic Search Ads (RDSAs)

The theme is that we have both standard and dynamic versions of remarketing and RLSAs. The standard versions may produce good results (and are worthwhile to have), but the volume generally isn’t as high when targeting dynamically. Just like Google Shopping, getting to the product level with remarketing has significantly improved performance, especially cost per conversion. AdWords Dynamic Remarketing allows advertisers to create many types of audiences, which can have tiered bids. In other words, shoppers who abandoned their carts will yield a higher bid than those who simply viewed a product. Using Google’s predetermined audiences, here’s how a campaign structure may look with sample bids.

Google’s Display Network isn’t the only platform to run remarketing campaigns. Companies such as Perfect Audience and AdRoll allow for Facebook remarketing, both static and dynamic. Running a Perfect Audience Product remarketing campaign for one of our clients, we saw nice, ancillary results on top of Google and Bing advertising. The table below depicts conversion and revenue metrics that look at both the Last Click and Assisted (via the Multi-Channel Funnels report in Google Analytics).

Volume wasn’t as high as Google and Bing, but results were in line, especially when looking at the campaign performance from a holistic perspective. RLSA and RDSA campaigns are also important to your remarketing efforts. The latter uses the combination of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) and Remarketing List for Search Ads.A DSA campaign is created and layered with a remarketing audience (I generally start with “all visitors”). The idea is that visitors who have already been to your site will see a highly-targeted, product text-ad across Google and it’s Search Partners while comparison-shopping.The concept is similar to Dynamic Remarketing but applied to the Search Network. White Shark Media’s Andrew Lolk writes about some great results he saw while running this type of campaign. If you want to design eCommerce website, jump on Top 7 eCommerce Web Design Trends to Watch for in 2018.

Search Network Text Ads & Ad Extensions

Here, we enter the more familiar territory, as text-ad campaigns are built around site categories, products, and any other theme. Here, we also research our keywords and segment them into themed ad groups and campaigns.Text ads still get a fair share of clicks on their own, but we also have the ability to implement ad extensions to make our ads stand out more. In fact, I’ve always found that overall, ad headline CTR increases whenever ad extensions are implemented. More than ever, it’s not necessarily the actual content that gets the click, but rather the prominence of the ad. Here is an example of a seven-line text ad utilizing four ad extensions.

I do want to emphasize that good text ad can still convert. As long as the ad speaks to the query and landing page, quality traffic will come through. Against other ad formats, text ads don’t stand out as much, but they still can be as relevant.

Dynamic Search Ads

My rule of thumb is that roughly 75% of your website should be represented in standard text ad campaigns before running DSAs. Your root product brand keywords should then be made negatives in the DSA campaign. For example, if you have a campaign around “Reebok shoes,” then “Reebok” should be a negative keyword in the DSA campaign.Additionally, your bid should be lower than your Search Network keywords. It’s inevitable that DSAs will garner irrelevant traffic, so taking these precautions ahead of time will help the campaign succeed.I’ve seen great results from DSAs, often seeing a lower cost per conversions than non-DSA Search Network campaigns. The caveat is that both average order value and conversion rate tend to be lower. With low bids, you’ll attract the less competitive traffic.For example, an advertiser will most likely bid higher on a $100 product keyword yielding a 20% margin vs. a $10 product keyword at the same margin. That said, because my bid is so low and I’m only aiming for the remaining 25% of inventory on my site, I’m okay with going after this traffic. To handle various eCommerce services you can hire an eCommerce service provider company.

Google Display Network

Through careful and layered targeting, the AdWords Display Network can produce decent results. I list this campaign type as number five because the results often take much testing and patience.We also have to keep in mind that low conversions on the Display Network aren’t necessarily a negative. The awareness of these ads may be helping other channels convert.Nonetheless, I would only start testing Display Network campaigns when Shopping, Remarketing, and Search are all achieving profitability.

Conclusion

The approach to running profitable e-commerce PPC campaigns has shifted. The keyword is no longer the primary driver of qualified traffic; advertisers must understand audience tendencies. Both performance and time management needs to be taken into account when prioritizing PPC builds.

10 Website Design Tips for Small Business Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 04:45:00 +0000

10 Website Design Tips for Small Business Websites

Your website is perhaps one of the most important constituents of your small business. The impact your small business website has on potential clients could either be to lure them or turn them away for good. Most business owners are not clear about what contributes to a successful small business website. Research data proves that a majority of consumers turn to the internet when seeking information about local business. Hence it is imperative for you to have an online presence.

Sometimes designing a website can seem like a daunting task for those not too well versed in the technique and may need to hire a small business web design company. If you decide to exercise that option, then ensure that your small business website design incorporates factors which attract the kind of traffic you want on your site.

To help you design a website that is noticed and achieves its purpose, we have listed 10 tips which are quick and easy.

Avoid clutter:

The first and foremost trick is to let your small business website breathe. Clutter and too much information will put off even the most patient viewer. An uncluttered website will also lend a professional air to it. Too much information on a small website will add to the confusion and potential customers will soon lose interest. Your website should help your viewers to understand your business better in an uncomplicated manner and get all the information they seek. The website should be SEO friendly so that it will quickly get traffic.

Keep objectives in mind:

Before building your small business website keep in mind what your objectives are and what results you are looking for. These could pertain to providing information, generating leads or even increasing sales.

Incorporate keywords:

For search engines to better understand the data on your small business website page and connect you to potential customers, it is imperative for you or your small business web design company to incorporate keywords strategically and generously in your website. However, when you do so, ensure that the keywords are sprinkled across the web pages in a natural way, rather than appearing to be a later addition. If you are designing eCommerce website, here you can jump on Top 7 eCommerce Web Design Trends to Watch for in 2018.

Keep web design fresh and unique:

Your small business website design is a reflection of your brand, so make sure the impression it leaves on potential customers, is a good one. If your website looks just like thousands of others on the net, viewers will soon lose interest. When you design your site, ensure that your logo looks professional and unique. First impressions can at times be last impressions.

Easy navigation:

You wouldn’t want viewers to go through a labyrinth of instructions and complicated navigation just to explore your site? Bad navigation would entail several clicks for a potential customer looking for specific information about your product or services. When planning your small business website design, ensure that the navigation plan is uncomplicated and quick. For this, you will need to prioritize the content which you want viewers to access first.

Because of any reason if you have to redesign your website, Make sure you are aware of how to fix traffic drops after a website redesign.

Professional appearance:

The first impact that your small business website has on viewers could perhaps also be the last. Make it worth their while. Smiley faces, animated pictures are a complete no-no and only make your website look frivolous. Use colors that are in sync with your logo and your brand. Choose a font that is consistent throughout your site. Photos or graphics that you use on the site should complement each other and give a professional look.

Writing your own content:

Before you even start building on your small business website, formulate your thoughts and write what it is that you want to be conveyed to the viewers. Even if you choose to hire a small business web design company for your website you should be able to present your thoughts to them in basic terms. For fresh and unique content you can hire any Digital Marketing Agency to help you out in this situation.

Convey to consumers what you can do for them:

A common mistake most small business website owners make is to focus on what they do, rather than what benefits they can provide to their potential clients. Before going online to your website try reading the content as a potential customer, instead of an owner.

Showcase products and services clearly:

The main aim of any small business website is to present its products or services effectively. If the website fails in showcasing the product in an effective manner then the entire purpose of creating a website is defeated. The photos or graphics of the products or services should be appropriate, clear and attract the viewers’ attention immediately. With the change in the new year, there is a lot of change in web design trends in 2018.

Easily accessible:

People with certain disabilities like color blindness or those with slow internet connections could be some of the viewers to your small business website. Or you could be a small business catering to local clientele. Easy accessibility is what will endear you to potential customers.

Even when your small business website goes online and you think the hard work is over, keep in mind that this is the first step only. A company’s website is never really complete, no matter how perfect it may seem. As your business grows or changes, you will need to add new elements or delete what may have become outdated. The above-mentioned points will help you improve your website but the one intrinsic rule remains the same – your customers’ needs and demands.

Mobile SEO : Welcome to The Future of SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 05:01:00 +0000

Mobile SEO: Welcome to The Future of SEO

Well, this is well-known fact that the mobile phones are the most revolutionary product of this century. Not very far, the mobile phone was just for making a call and receiving a call. But now everything is changed. Now mobile phone is not just for making calls, sad listening to the calls; now you can use it for playing games, listening music, FM Receiver, and much more.But the most important application of mobile is “Using Internet”. And a prediction says, “Soon Mobile Will Overtake Desktop Internet Uses”. Digital Marketing Agency also works on Mobile SEO, Mobile Optimization is very important according to Google.

Before moving further, let us have a quick look at some statistics on the mobile phone users:

Not promising enough? Data is not too much, why not have a graphical view and feel the difference.

Now that’s the clear vision, seeing the mountains of users. Yes, that’s what I am saying, Mobile SEO is the thing you need to focus on. So did the bell ring your ears?

That’s why you need Mobile SEO for your business.

As you can see how the world is moving towards the mobile, that is why it has become necessary for every business owner to be smart enough to optimize their mobile platform/site by doing right Mobile SEO.

I Have Done Enough Desktop SEO and My site is Also 100% Responsive, Why should I do Mobile SEO?

Most of us have this thinking, but is it right? It’s well said that Think before the act. The most important thing is that most of the times search made in Mobile Phone is different than the search made on the desktop. Thus mobile SEO is little different than the desktop SEO. Google also announced that they have separate changes for mobile and desktop. In Google Algorithm Updates it is also mentioned about Mobile SEO.

What makes Mobile SEO different from Desktop SEO?

The answer is quite simple, The Search. Search made in Mobile is different than on the desktop. The thing to understand in this regard is how the user is engaged. So, here are some factors on which the Mobile SEO depends.

How Search Is Made: As I mentioned several times that the mobile has different search than desktop so it’s self-explanatory.

User Engagement: Desktop is a bigger screen than a mobile phone, so if the search is made on the desktop it hardly matters that you are at first position or fifth, people will click your link. But in mobile the scene changes because here drop in position means your link probably not get a hit. Understand what I am trying to say. No??? This will clear your doubt.

Social Media engagement also affects SEO factors, here you can also check How Social Media impacts SEO.

This is a Desktop View of a Search for “Top 10 Smart Phone”

And this is mobile View for the same

Now tell me what difference you got?

Yes, you are right. In the desktop you can see 4 to 5 search results in front of you but is it the same case on the mobile device? No, it’s not. This is my point. And scrolling, don’t tell me you love scrolling. I hate scrolling for a long time with my thumb. So now you can understand why it is an advantage of being on top for mobile search.

Want to know SEO ranking factors? Jump on SEO Ranking Factors Every One Should Know

Different Ranking Algorithm: If you think there is the same algorithm for desktop search and mobile search then you are absolutely wrong and also I can say your observation is not good. Sorry if I have said something wrong. But if you see the above two images carefully, you will get the answer. Go back and watch them properly. Till then I am waiting for you here…

Gone through it? What you noticed? Yes, now you got the answer that there are different search algorithms because for the same keyword search there are two different sites at the top position. In desktop search, Techradar.com is at #2nd position but in mobile view, it is at the top position. Google changes its algorithm time to time, you should be aware of all the Google Algorithm Updates.

And the most important point is

Local Search: Search in mobile is localized. Why so??? Because most of the time people do search on mobile when they didn’t have the desktop in front of them. So, there are chances that the person searching for something might be in hurry. Thus localized search will help him more. That’s why for mobile search results, Google places Listing now known as Google My Business will appear more than that for Desktop Search. For local search result, you can hire any Digital marketing agency to help you out in this.

Wait this is not over yet I also have a mind-blowing fact for you that will surely turn your mind to mobile marketing and Mobile SEO.

Mobile Email: Increase in the affordable smartphone in the market has grown the Mobile Email Market very rapidly. Currently, 46% of the email users access their email via the mobile device. Strange??? But it’s true. So, if we see the future in 2018 we are expecting 80% of the email users will access their email account through mobile devices.

So are you ready for your mobile optimized site?

Mobile IM: Mobile Instant Messaging Services is also showing strong growth. In 2014 the number of accounts for Mobile IM is 1,423 Million. And it is expected that it will reach 3.8 Billion accounts by the end of 2018. Just imagine an annual growth rate of about 29%. Don’t you want to get the most out of it? So be ready now. Optimize your website for mobile and get great revenue out of it.

8 major Google algorithm updates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 04:28:00 +0000

8 major Google algorithm updates, explained

Almost every day, Google introduces changes to its ranking algorithm. Some are tiny tweaks; others seriously shake up the SERPs. This cheat sheet will help you make sense of the most important algo changes and penalties rolled out in the recent years, with a brief overview and SEO advice on each. Read on or get the cheat sheet in a free PDF.

But before we start, let’s do something fun. What if you could see which of the updates impacted your organic traffic, and in what way? Surprise surprise, you can, with a tool called Rank Tracker. All you need to do is launch Rank Tracker and create a project for your site. Then, click the Update Traffic button in Rank Tracker’s top menu, and enter your Google Analytics credentials to sync your account with the tool. In the lower part of your Rank Tracker dashboard, switch to Organic Traffic:

Did any of your traffic changes correlate with Google’s updates? Let’s find out what each of the updates was about and how to adjust.

1. Panda

Launch date: February 24, 2011

Hazards: Duplicate, plagiarized or thin content; user-generated spam; keyword stuffing

How it works: Panda assigns a so-called “quality score” to web pages; this score is then used as a ranking factor. Initially, Panda was a filter rather than part of Google’s ranking algo, but in January 2016, it was officially incorporated into the core algorithm. Panda rollouts have become more frequent, so both penalties and recoveries now happen faster.

How to adjust: Run regular site checks for content duplication, thin content and keyword stuffing. To do that, you’ll need a site crawler, like SEO PowerSuite’s Website Auditor.

To check for instances of external content duplication, use a plagiarism checker like Copyscape.

If you have an e-commerce site and cannot afford to have 100 percent unique content, try to use original images where you can, and utilize user reviews to make product descriptions stand out from the crowd.

2. Penguin

Launch date: April 24, 2012

Hazards: Spammy or irrelevant links; links with over-optimized anchor text

How it works: Google Penguin’s objective is to down-rank sites whose links it deems manipulative. Since late 2016, Penguin has been part of Google’s core algorithm; unlike Panda, it works in real time.

How to adjust: Monitor your link profile’s growth and run regular audits with a backlink checker like SEO SpyGlass. In the tool’s Summary dashboard, you’ll find a progress graph for your link profile’s growth. Look out for any unusual spikes: those are reason enough to look into the backlinks you’ve unexpectedly gained.

The stats that we know Penguin takes into account are incorporated into SEO SpyGlass’s Penalty Risk formula. To check for penalty risks, go to the Linking Domains dashboard, navigate to the Link Penalty Risks tab, select your links, and click Update Penalty Risk. When the check is complete, check with the Penalty Risk column, and make sure to look into every link with a score over 50 percent.

3. Hummingbird

Launch date: August 22, 2013

Hazards: Keyword stuffing; low-quality content

How it works: Hummingbird helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher intent (as opposed to the individual terms within the query). While keywords continue to be important, Hummingbird makes it possible for a page to rank for a query even if it doesn’t contain the exact words the searcher entered. This is achieved with the help of natural language processing that relies on latent semantic indexing, co-occurring terms and synonyms.

How to adjust: Expand your keyword research and focus on concepts, not keywords. Carefully research related searches, synonyms, and co-occurring terms. Great sources of such ideas are Google Related Searches and Google Autocomplete. You’ll find all of them incorporated into Rank Tracker’s Keyword Research module.

Use these insights to understand your audience’s language better and diversify your content. By creating comprehensive content that satisfies searcher intent, you’ll win both in terms of engagement and SEO. We’ll look at comprehensiveness in more detail later in this post when we discuss RankBrain.

4. Pigeon

Launch date: July 24, 2014 (US); December 22, 2014 (UK, Canada, Australia)

Hazards: Poor on- and off-page SEO

How it works: Pigeon affects those searches in which the user’s location plays an important part. The update created closer ties between the local algorithm and the core algorithm: traditional SEO factors are now used to rank local results.

How to adjust: Invest effort into on- and off-page SEO. A good starting point is running an on-page analysis with WebSite Auditor. The tool’s Content Analysis dashboard will give you a good idea about the aspects of on-page optimization you need to focus on.

A good way to start with off-page SEO is getting listed in relevant business directories. Not only do those act like backlinks, helping your site rank; they rank well in Google themselves. You can easily find quality directories and reach out to webmasters asking to get listed with LinkAssistant.

Just click Look for Prospects, select Directories, and enter your keywords. It’s a good idea to specify category keywords plus your location (e.g., “dentist Denver”). In a moment, the tools will return a list of relevant directories in your niche, along with the site owner’s email addresses.

5. Mobile

Launch date: April 21, 2015

Hazards: Lack of a mobile version of the page; poor mobile usability

How it works: Google’s Mobile Update (aka Mobilegeddon) ensures that mobile-friendly pages rank at the top of mobile search, while pages not optimized for mobile are filtered out from the SERPs or seriously down-ranked.

How to adjust: Go mobile and focus on speed and usability. Google’s mobile-friendly test will help you see which aspects of your page’s mobile version need to be improved. The test in integrated into WebSite Auditor so you can check your pages’ mobile friendliness quickly. You’ll find it in Content Analysis > Page Audit, under the Technical factors tab.

6. RankBrain

Launch date: October 26, 2015

Hazards: Lack of query-specific relevance features; shallow content; poor UX

How it works: RankBrain is part of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. It is a machine learning system that helps Google understand the meaning behind queries, and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries. Google calls RankBrain the third most important ranking factor. While we don’t know the ins and outs of RankBrain, the general opinion is that it identifies relevance features for web pages ranking for a given query, which are basically query-specific ranking factors.

How to adjust: Optimize content for relevance and comprehensiveness with the help of competitive analysis. With the help of WebSite Auditor‘s TF-IDF tool, you can discover relevant terms and concepts used by a large number of your top-ranking competitors: those are a brilliant way to diversify your content.

7. Possum

Launch date: September 1, 2016

Hazards: Tense competition in your target location

How it works: The Possum update ensured that local results vary more depending on the searcher’s location: the closer you are to a business’s address, the more likely you are to see it among local results. Possum also resulted in greater variety among results ranking for very similar queries, like “dentist denver” and “dentist denver co.” Interestingly, Possum also gave a boost to businesses located outside the physical city area.

How to adjust: Expand your keyword list and do location-specific rank tracking. Local businesses now need to be targeting more keywords than they used to, due to the volatility Possum brought into the local SERPs. As you check your rankings, make sure you’re doing this from your target location (or, better yet, a bunch of them). You can do this in Rank Tracker under Preferences > Preferred Search Engines. Click Add Custom next to Google. Next, specify your preferred location — you can make it as specific as a street address.

8. Fred

Launch date: March 8, 2017

Hazards: Thin, affiliate-heavy or ad-centered content

How it works: The latest of Google’s confirmed updates, Fred targets websites that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. The majority of affected sites are blogs with low-quality posts that appear to be created mostly for the purpose of generating ad revenue.

How to adjust: Review Google Search Quality Guidelines and watch out for thin content. If you show ads, make sure the pages they are found on are high-quality and offer relevant ample information. This is basically it: Don’t try to trick Google into thinking your page is something when it really is a gateway page full of affiliate links. Most publishers make money off ads, and that’s totally legit as long as you are not cheating.

6 Ways Social Media Impacts SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Feb 2018 04:52:00 +0000

6 Ways Social Media Impacts SEO

Correlation is not causation, but there’s no doubt social media impacts search engine optimization.

Search engines like Google do not allow signals from social media sites to directly affect ranking. Yet social media gives marketing professionals many ways to put their businesses front and center on search engine results pages.

Consider these six ways social media impacts SEO:

1. Social sharing drives traffic to websites

Posting links to quality content can garner shares, likes, and comments. It also encourages social media users to migrate to official business websites.

Engaging with prospective clients via social media helps you keep your brand top of mind. By driving social traffic back to official websites, you’re able to increase organic search ranking. This lends greater authority to your site in the eyes of search engines. Take help of any Social Media Company to help you out in this.

TIP: Regularly share links to website content on appropriate social media sites. Some platforms, such as LinkedIn, lend themselves to posting long-form content directly.

2. Social media profiles rank in search engines

If you type the name of a business in a search engine, its social media profiles will likely pop up along with its official website. If you are into blogging you should be aware of 9 tactics to promote your blog content on Facebook.

If a company is able to rank not only its website but its social profiles as well, it will take up a valuable real estate at the top of SERPs. This can help businesses beat out potential competitors in terms of visibility.

TIP: Make sure all pertinent social profiles are active and consistently engaging with audiences. What’s most important is targeting the platforms that resonate most with your prospective customers.

3. Capturing external links is easier with social media

External links and the authority of the websites doing the linking comprise the most important factor for achieving high rankings in Google, according to Moz.

You can use social media platforms to share and promote your content. This increases the likelihood of other websites referring and linking back to it.

TIP: Craft high-quality content to post on social media. People are more likely to link to content they want to read and share themselves.

4. Social media boosts brand awareness

Facebook had 1.71 billion monthly active users during the second quarter of 2016, and there were 317 million monthly active users on Twitter as of the third quarter. Both these figures, supplied by Statista, illustrate just how important social media has become for generating brand awareness. To increase brand awareness there are 4 ways to write more engaging social media post.

TIP: Consistently engage with social audiences by asking questions, starting discussions and commenting on news and trends.

5. Local SEO relies on social media

Google, Ipsos Media and Purchased reported 80 percent of smartphone users perform mobile searches to find businesses near them. In short, geography plays a major role in user experience, and search engines are paying attention.

Social websites such as Yelp make it simple for businesses to leverage locality. These sites offer an opportunity to show geographic placement and provide an arena for customers to discuss the business. The more people review or engage with your business online, the more likely it is search engines will take notice and incorporate you into local SERPs.

TIP: Ensure the geographic information for your business matches across all platforms and websites. Differences in the address, phone number or other information could lead to a lower SERP ranking.

6. Different search engines are partial to specific social media activity

Google accounts for nearly three-quarters of search engine market share, according to Search Engine Watch. However, it’s not the only game in town. Ingredients for successful Social Media Strategy can help you to engage more people on social media platforms.

Bing is the second most-used search engine. Speaking to Search Engine Land, Bing said it looks at the social authority of users, including how many people follow them, when assigning weight to SERPs.

Meanwhile, Google is naturally partial to Google+. Using this platform helps Google+ profiles show up in SERPs, once again putting businesses directly in front of consumers.

TIP: Account for other search engines besides Google when crafting SEO strategies. Implement plans that will cast as wide a net as possible.

While social media may not have a direct connection to SEO, it certainly influences online marketing success. As the number of social media users continues to rise, it’s likely social signals will become more powerful in terms of ranking. By producing content worth sharing and taking advantage of the platforms available, you can maximize the benefits you receive from social media.

Conclusion

Will Google ever include more social media signals in its ranking algorithm?

Maybe, maybe not.

Regardless of what the future holds, it’s clear that social media can, in fact, help your SEO efforts. Social media offers many long-term benefits.

Even if social media isn’t a direct Google ranking factor, it is one of the best ways to promote content and be found online. Which is, ultimately, what SEO is all about. If you have questions or would like additional insights on any of these topics, let us know by adding a comment OR you can contact us TopinDigiXpert.

How To Make Search Engine Friendly Website?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 05:06:00 +0000

How To Make Search Engine Friendly Website?

Designing a professional website with the stunning theme is not enough to make sure a better ranking for your website. You have to consider the significance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) while developing your website.

Try to go for a complete research on how to make SEO friendly website so you can receive high traffic and better ranking in search engine’s result page. There are billions of websites on the internet. I want you people to be aware of SEO ranking factors, it will help you to optimize your site.

Search engines run their own algorithms to find best results available for readers. Search engines provide some guidelines that how they make sure to provide the relevant result to end user. Using search engine optimization tricks correctly can help you to design search engine friendly websites that are more specific to search engine’s guidelines.

Make your Navigation Simple

Try to design website navigation simple and descriptive for users and crawlers. Putting the navigation on top of the page is the best idea for easy navigation of the website. A simple navigation is what makes a good website. You can also put navigation buttons on the bottom of the page because both top and bottom locations of the webpage are proved eye tracking positions for both humans and crawlers. To make your site navigational you can take help of

web design company.

Use Keywords on Different Location

Keywords are very important for creating search engine friendly websites, but that’s not meant that you stuff your website content with keywords everywhere. Remember, search engines hate keyword stuffing.

Use LSI keywords, but in a smart way. Put your keywords in image ATL tags and title. You can also put your keywords in meta tags, description, URL, footer links and heading tags of your website. Digital Marketing Agencies choose appropriate keyword according to business, Anyone can take help from them.

URL Should be SEO Friendly

When we are discussing how to make SEO friendly website, don’t ignore the URL structure of your website. Each and every web page of your website should have an SEO friendly URL so both user and search engine crawler can easily detect the information you are providing on the website.

Here is an Example of Both Poor Looking and SEO Friendly URL Structures

Poor URL structure

www.myexample.com/sbs?/6978/mic5245

SEO friendly URL structure

www.myexample.com/SEOBaisc/how-to-make-seo-friendly-website

Don’t Ignore the Power of Social Media

Some webmasters believe that social media doesn’t have any impact on search engine ranking then why should we care about it. Yes, it is true that social media activities don’t have a direct impact on search engine ranking but, that’s not meant we should totally ignore it. The key to successful social media traffic is how to write more engaging social media posts.

If your website includes good and valuable content for readers, it will naturally have more likes and shares on social media and this sharing will prove that you have something useful for the readers. More likes and shares will add brand awareness about your website. That is all that makes a good website and search engines will give high priorities to your website.

Try to add social media sharing buttons on each page of your website. If visitors like your post they can directly share that on their timeline.

Apply SEO Tricks on Pictures

Applying SEO tricks to only text content is not a guarantee for search engine friendly websites. You have to apply the same tricks for pictures also. Try to add multimedia content on your website and optimize it properly. Whenever you use pictures on web pages, make sure to fill ALT tags for pictures.

Do not use pictures that are too big because large size images can result as slow down your webpage loading time. Check this link know how to speed up the wordpress website. Try to use keywords in ALT tags of images, but in a natural way. Actually, total optimization of the website is necessary there are some guides of ultimate digital marketing.

Keep your Content Unique and Update

When writing content for your website, you have to be very sure that your content is unique and up to date. Search engine spiders are that much smarter today that they can easily detect the copied content very easily, so don’t even think to copy content from some other website. If you are providing some facts in your content, make sure that they are from relevant source on internet. Content can change your all Digital Marketing strategy from top to bottom.

Add a Sitemap for your Website

A sitemap is a really helpful tool for the search engine to know about all web pages your website includes. It helps your website in two different ways, first, it helps the search engines to index all your web pages and second, it helps in better ranking of your website.

Remove Hidden Texts from Website

Hidden texts are the form of texts which are included in the body of main content, but not displayed when end user reads that blog. In old days these hidden texts were used to hide keywords in content that were only visible to search engine spiders.

Today, search engine has very strict rules for such hidden texts and your website can even be penalized if it includes any hidden text. I will recommend removing all hidden texts from your website if it includes any. If you have redesign your website be aware of how to fix traffic drops after a website redesign.

At last, I’ll recommend you to concentrate more for on page optimization as it will surely help you to remove all weak points from your website and grab a better ranking for your website.

Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide & SEO Terms Glossary

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 04:34:00 +0000

Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide & SEO Terms Glossary

The shift from a transaction-based economy to a relationship based economy has only made digital marketing strategy a lot more relevant in the present ecosystem for businesses. With digital transformation making spectacular progress, changing the rules of engagement, it is all the more important for businesses to be on top of their game, not only in terms of the products or services offered but also in terms of marketing to potential prospects. And the changing demographics also make it necessary to have a laser sharp focus on marketing to the rising and dominant segments of Millennials and Gen Z. With the strategic importance of digital marketing behind us, let’s go granular to get a grasp of digital marketing basics.

Finding your way around terms and methods that sound similar may be tricky. While it is true that the terms do sound similar, they actually refer to methods that are different, which require being integrated/incorporated in a manner that fetches the best results. Therefore, when you come across terms such as SEO, SEM, SMM, SMO etc., you are likely to end up getting befuddled. Without understanding the terms, launching a digital marketing campaign may actually be of little or no use. Therefore, fundamentals of digital marketing every beginner should know before agreeing to a campaign. This little digital marketing guide will help to clear the clutter surrounding the terms and their actions.

More often than not, you may have come across SEO terminology that did not quite ring a bell. Be informed that with SEO terms glossary, it pays to know exactly what each term means, to be able to draw the link between the term and your marketing campaign. While it is best to leave it to the experts to execute, it also pays to be aware. So, here’s a little glossary to begin with. Please note that is not intended to be comprehensive but is more of a compilation to help you get along.

AdWords – Also known as PPC (Pay Per Click), this is a service for which you pay Google to run ads.

Affiliate Marketing – This is something that earns you money when you market a product or service that is not yours; earning a commission on confirmed sales or leads that have been generated by your site.

Alexa Rank – This is a metric that shows how you rank in terms of website traffic, with number one being the best.

Algorithm – This is a set of rules spelled out by Google which populates a list of websites, on the basis of a keyword or set of keywords.

Analytics – This deals with the monitoring of a site’s traffic by Google.

Backlink – This refers to a link in another website that brings a visitor to your website.

Bing Ads – Similar to Adwords, on the Bing network.

Bounce rate – Refers to the percentage of visitors who terminated a session abruptly, while visiting your website.

Broken link – Refers to a link that ceases to exist after it has been created earlier. This is the typical site 404 message that you come across.

Call to Action (CTA) – This refers to some action or buttons that persuade a user to take some action to engage with the website.

Clicks – Indicates the number of visitors who click a PPC advert or reach you on the basis of a search.

CMS – Content Management System – Refers to a programme typically used to update content on a website by the administrator.

Conversion – This indicates the number of positive results coming through actions taken by visitors to the website.

Duplicate content – This is something that needs to be avoided at all costs. It refers to the content that is not unique and that which has been possibly copied from elsewhere. This could also result in adverse negative ranking by Google. You can also read How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy.

Dynamic – This is more about the content in a site being in a state of flux, to adapt as per the users' geographical location or preferences.

External Link – Refers to a link on a webpage which will take the user to another website/webpage.

Forum – This refers to a website where users discuss issues of common interest by posting content and interacting with other users.

Google Partner – This refers to an entity that is AdWords certified, and the badge indicates that the entity is a partner, with expertise in the products or services of Google.

Hyperlink – Refers to a link which when clicked will take the visitor to another page within the site or elsewhere on the Internet.

Impressions – Indicates the number of times a page carrying ads, has been viewed by a visitor.

Internal linking – Refers to hyperlinks that take a visitor to other pages in the same website.

Joomla – Is a popular open-source content management system used for managing content on a website.

Keywords – A string of work or words that will take a user to a search result featuring website content containing those words.

Keyword Research – Refers to the research carried out using different tools to mine and understand the exact word/words and sequence of words used by individuals while searching for a product or service.

Landing page – Refers to the page where a user first lands, as a result of clicking on a search result, a hyperlink, email link or banner.

Link building – Refers to the activity where hyperlinks are solicited from websites to fare better in search engine rankings.

Local search – This refers to search criteria where users launch a search for services or products close to the actual location from where the launch is searched or a specific geographical location.

Meta Description – Refers to the snippet of HTML code, that abridges the content of that particular page.

Meta Title – Refers to the descriptions of a web page, which is used by search engines to look for results relevant to that page.

Natural Listings – This refers to results that occur as a result of search initiated and not through ads that encourage a visitor into clicking. Also known as organic search.

Onsite SEO – Refers to Search Engine Optimisation techniques deployed on the website.

Offsite SEO – Refers to Search Engine Optimisation techniques deployed beyond the website.

Page Views – Refers to the number of views of a page by visitors.

Paid content – Refers to ads paid for by the advertiser.

Pay per click (PPC) – Refers to a form of digital advertising where the advertiser pays an amount decided mutually, whenever an ad pertaining to the advertiser is clicked.

Ranking – Refers to the SERP listing and the actual position of a website in the listing.

Retargeting – This refers to the positioning of an ad or message of a website on a user’s screen continually, after he or she has paid a visit to the website. This is possible by channeling the ads to the recipient on the basis of cookies.

RSS – Rich Site Summary – Refers to the standard web feed formats relied on to update published information through feeds.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Refers to optimizing of a website to secure better rankings in the Search Engine Results, driven by keywords. Know about Top SEO trends to follow in 2018.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – Refers to the results page, after launching a search for a product or service on a search engine.

Site Audit – This refers to the systematic assessment of a site to ensure that it complies with all requirements for a site, to ensure that it is fully optimized to gather hits.

Traffic – Refers to the number of unique visitors to a website.

Total Reach – Refers to the total number of users that the advertisement has reached out directly.

Unique Visitors – This is different from the number of hits. It refers to the number of unique visitors to a site, who may have repeatedly visited the site.

Video Marketing – Explainer videos and video marketing are an important tool to effectively market a service or a product, through visual imagery.

WordPress – Refers to a popular content management system relied on by developers.

XML Sitemap – This refers to a list of pages that entities want search engines to locate, available in a standard XML format.

For all the above things you can take help of any Digital Marketing Agency. Now that you have more or less got a grasp or at least a toehold on the digital marketing juggernaut, you may now want to create content that is optimized. Well, the next post in this series will lead you through the verbal segues and the points that matter in crafting a blog that will attract eyeballs. A blog needs to pass two strong tests before it achieves its objectives. It needs to offer valuable information to the reader in a crisp and riveting manner. A very long winded post that does not offer information of value will not find many takers. Similarly, the content needs to address the issues around the keywords, without creating it with the sole intention of spinning something around a keyword. This is bound to fail. Offer something of value, and let the keywords fall naturally into place. If you are a businessman there are 3 Digital Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business in 2018.

How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 05:23:00 +0000

How Content Marketing Can Save Your Digital Marketing Strategy

In a television series, this is the beginning of the episode where we are integrating you up to speed on early single development moments you may have missed.

If you're molded into the Content Marketing Institute for any length of time, you are no doubt familiar with the importance we place on the idea of developing a documented, strategic plan. Each year in our research, we find that a cohesive, documented strategy is one thing that separates successful vs. unsuccessful content marketers. If you are much into blogging you should know how to write more engaging social media posts.

In the 2018 B2B research, 62% of the most successful content marketers have a documented strategy vs. 16% of the least successful. As content is a king, its growing shape of business uniquely.

One thing we’ve had to repeatedly clarify is that content marketing doesn’t simply replace your broader integrated marketing strategy. Many of the “content-marketing-is-dead” articles make the false assertion that we proposed businesses stop classic advertising, PR, cold calling, and all other forms of classic marketing in lieu of content marketing.

Content marketing is and has always been, best served as an integrated infusion into a broader marketing strategy – a multiplier. Content marketing is the opportunity to make everything we do better.

For many businesses, content marketing is but a small fraction of their overall integrated marketing, perhaps helping one aspect of a broader strategy. For other companies, it may be the vast majority of what they do. Your balance is uniquely yours as part of your strategy.

But, interestingly, I’ve started to see an increasingly larger opportunity for content marketers to play a true leadership role in that broader marketing strategy. Content marketing strategy can be the foundation for a nonexistent integrated digital marketing strategy.

Let me explain.

Today’s integrated marketing strategy isn’t

In 2017, I traveled more than 185,000 miles working with enterprises to operationalize nascent (or broken) content marketing strategies. In most cases, I noticed the one thing paralyzing their content marketing strategy was the lack of clarity for the broader digital – or integrated – marketing strategy. Promote blog content on Facebook help you to boost traffic to the blog.

“Tell me about your overall marketing strategy” is one of the first discussions I want to have as part of understanding where a new content marketing approach can help the best. And, time and again, the most common answer is something along the lines of “well, see, that’s one of our big challenges.”

Now, while hardly scientific, here are some interesting observations. Of the 30 companies:

96% of the companies (all but one) said they were siloed and had an increasingly difficult time aligning their enterprise digital marketing efforts across products, channels, regions, or even functional areas (brand vs. PR vs. demand generation).

85% of the B2B companies and 60% of the B2C companies were “frustrated” because, while they were “doing a lot of digital,” they either didn’t have a cohesive strategy or digital was a separate effort and, ironically, often competitive with what other functional areas were working on.

56% (17 of the 30, mostly B2B) said their company had no current integrated digital marketing strategy where they could roll up a broader view of all the PR, paid media campaigns, social media efforts, lead nurturing, or content-focused platforms.

Content marketing: The heart of a digital marketing strategy

One interesting opportunity I’ve seen of late is how a foundational content marketing strategy can act as a catalyst for the broader, integrated digital marketing effort. More and more, as marketing teams are reorienting themselves toward a digital transformation, we see the need for content to serve as the fuel.

In B2B, the entire lead generation strategy centers on customized content interactions that build trust over a long and complex buying journey. Paid digital media is driven by the need to stand out, and promotes differentiating thought leadership more and the buy-now call to action less. B2B marketing is becoming hyper-focused on targeting messaging into specific accounts. The PR, influencer, and analyst relations teams are laser-focused on developing earned coverage of differentiating viewpoints across myriad digital channels.

In B2C, today’s digital marketing is about the content-driven customer experience – and how to develop content that earns the ability to be organically shared. We look at how paid media, native opportunities, and branded content can help the business get beyond the fraud, the bots, and the blockers. We look to social strategies, and how programmatic, search, and influencers can return the big data to make our marketing more efficient.

Example: Tech company finds integrated digital approach

I’ve been working with a division of a 50-year-old global technology company in the midst of transforming from a large event- and sales-driven (i.e., telesales) strategy into a digital content and marketing-driven strategy. It is beginning to assemble its first integrated digital marketing strategy for the division. Yes, really.

The primary challenge is that, historically, all marketing campaigns (including the digital bits) have been managed by product marketing teams. They create brochures, PowerPoint decks, and case studies for salespeople, generally in anticipation of participation at an industry-related trade show. The events happen; badges are scanned; lunches are had; and telesales takes over, calling on these leads.

New event? New product launch? Rinse and repeat. These are one-off, siloed campaigns. And, in some cases, it even has different products competing for the same audience at the same event. You should know how to increase traffic by 284%.

The idea of a division-wide, holistic, and integrated paid strategy is alien to them. There’s never even been an integrated approach that drives visitors to a content platform, nurtures them through an engagement journey, and then aligns and integrates into the PR, event, sales, and funnel process. And this doesn’t even get to the idea of rolling all these product campaigns into a broader, integrated strategy that includes multiple products, solutions, or services.

The initial thinking was to let the product managers devise the first and second quarter 2018 campaigns, and combine them to find the synergies to integrate. But, after talking it through, the company came up with a different idea for how to develop the plan.

It decided that the integrated marketing strategy should start with a goal-driven and story-first approach. The team assigned the overall business goals of the division to outcomes reached through different content platforms.

Finally, every product manager will build every 2018 digital marketing plan around four focused purposes:

It will build a pipeline.
It will increase the revenue value of pipeline.
It will increase the velocity of the existing pipeline.
It will increase the value of existing customers.

THE CHANGING FACE OF WEB DESIGN IN 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 04:38:00 +0000

THE CHANGING FACE OF WEB DESIGN IN 2018

One of the interesting recent developments in web design trends is actually the trend away from trends… or in another word what is happening is a kind of regression to simpler ways, at least from those in the know.

On the other side of the coin, there’s a big shift happening in certain types of corporate sites, especially some British and American media sites, where there’s a tendency to overload pages with so much extraneous content that it can severely impact on the ability of the user to see the content they actually arrived to see. If you are an organization or freelancer there are some tips how to get web design clients.

CAROUSELS ARE FINISHED

There’s a place for carousels, but the abuse of them is going to end, simply because it’s been so overdone that people are tired of them.

Unfortunately, on some sites, they’re being replaced by something even more obnoxious, which is an autoplay video banner, but this can be expected to die out naturally as developers finally figure out that too many users are on mobile connections and slow broadband for this to be a practical idea.

Carousel abuse, by the way, is simply a situation where they’re used for no other reason than to use them, serving no real purpose to better inform or entertain the viewer. If you recently redesign your website know how to fix traffic drops after the website redesign.

GEOLOCATION TRIGGERED CDN WILL FALL OUT OF FASHION

At first, it’s going to rise, then people are finally going to figure out it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to, and then (if there’s any sense left in the world) people will stop using this extremely bad idea.

What is meant to happen is the site looks at the IP address and then attempts to fetch CDN resources from the CDN server closest to the client. It would be fine except some sites try to get too fancy. They also look at the client locale and try to serve location-specific content to the client.

This inevitably leads to DNS resolution conflicts, causing even major sites such as Google and Facebook to malfunction on some client machines. It has become an issue because designers have forgotten that people travel.

INCREASE IN TRUE RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Designers are better informed now about the need for responsive web design, and they’re getting a lot better at implementing it. We should expect to see a lot more sites getting the responsive design right, and that can only be a net gain for the users.

As a designer what you’ll want to be conscious of is that the focus on responsive design (which is a good thing) doesn’t result in a lackluster desktop browser experience (which would be a bad thing). We need to think about how we’re using space to make sure it is efficient and always delivering a quality user experience.

RISE OF THE NARRATIVE THEME

More commercial marketing agencies are going to realize the value of building proper relationships with users, and so we should see an increase in narrative themes, ones that draw us in with a story and informative text, instead of just presenting a wall of products for us to choose and buy.

That doesn’t mean we should go crazy with text and video, it just means we should dial down the commercial focus, instead focusing on building trust, and then convert that trust into sales.

HUGE PROBLEMS AHEAD WITH INTERNET NANNY STATE

Browsers and ISPs continue to take a hardline stance in terms of trying to protect users from their own lack of savvy, and this, in turn, is punishing honest developers and small business sites who can’t don’t need security certificates and can’t afford the extra cost. Web Design companies have the expertise to do so.

What we really need is for the Internet users to become more savvy, implementing their own safeguards, instead of technology providers stepping in to do it for them.

DEATH OF THE 1-3-1-6 LAYOUT

This layout pattern was at some point decided as what should be the future of web design, because at the time it was first used, it looked kind of cool. As with many overused fashions, however, people have started to find it irritating.

The layout also is flawed from the point of view that it’s not well suited to good responsive design (even if it can be made to work in responsive design), and encourages overloading with unnecessary elements. If you are in eCommerce business here are top 7 eCommerce Web design trends to watch in 2018.

Again, it is a problem of including elements just so they’ll fit the layout and not because they add value to the user experience.

THE SCOURGE OF OVERLOADED PAGES

An overloaded page is one that contains a ridiculous amount of external resources, especially JavaScript, where the external resources contribute nothing positive to the user experience. These resources are included solely for the benefit of the site owner, either for making money, collecting information or just because the designer is a plug-in junky.

Overloaded pages can be annoying for anyone, but they’re especially annoying for mobile users, users running older hardware, and users with slow connections. For these services take help of any top web design companies.

It’s the kind of thing that in the past we’d expect to see on trash sites, but lately, it has become a problem on many different kinds of sites, including mainstream media sites.

Now Go