Surprisingly, there are still a number of local businesses (and even some national ones) who are not making use of SEO, one of the most critically effective marketing strategies available to owners in the history of promotional outreach.
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Governments around the world have imposed a series of strict measures that restrict foot traffic and movement, which has forced some business owners to identify creative ways to deliver their products and services virtually or to temporarily hit the pause button on their operations. Conversely, other industries are experiencing unprecedented levels of demand and are working hard to keep up to avoid disappointing any potential customers. Which has led them to SEO not just companies in Fort Lauderdale.
The coronavirus outbreak has also seen online search behavior shift markedly, which has had an impact on the types of content search engines that are displaying for individual search queries. If your business has been feeling the COVID-19-related strain or you would like to use this time as an opportunity to refine your optimization strategy, let’s take this opportunity to run through a few ways your business can use digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) to your advantage.
A comprehensive audit takes both expertise and time but if your business is experiencing a slow period, now could be the ideal time to conduct a small-scale audit that will help you to improve the performance of your content.
Start by compiling a spreadsheet that groups content into different types, such as blog posts, emails, videos, and eBooks. From here, you can evaluate each piece in terms of its quality, how much traffic it drove, and how many social shares or backlinks it secured. This process might highlight new opportunities to optimize pieces of content with new keywords or CTAs, integrate new internal links, or identify ways to incorporate fresh content that will drive new streams of traffic to your site.
Your analytics data can tell you a lot about your ideal audience. Although you might already know a fair amount about your customers, there might be things you haven’t yet picked up on that could prove invaluable when ensuring that your SEO strategy is shaped to deliver the best possible results for your business.
Now could be the ideal time to look into what you can learn about the potential customers who opted not to shop with you or engage your services. You might also find it beneficial to look into data points that you might have overlooked until now, such as the types of devices your potential customers are using to browse your website or whether there are any commonalities between their geographical locations. This information could help you to make refinements to your SEO strategy that might seem small but could, in fact, be game-changing in terms of the level of success you can ultimately drive from your efforts.
The potential impact of the coronavirus on businesses that aren’t open to making significant alterations to the way they operate and approach the digital landscape, particularly those in established sectors that have long been resistant to change, cannot be overstated.
Previously offline businesses are adapting by wholeheartedly embracing a variety of digital technologies in order to establish a strong online presence for their brands. From gardeners to yoga teachers, sole traders and businesses are using their creativity to identify ways to overcome the losses they are incurring as a result of lockdown.
Google Hangouts, Houseparty, and Zoom, all of which offer video communication and conferencing tools, have seen their web traffic, the creation of new accounts, and daily usage soar in recent weeks. From group live-streaming classes to personalized one-to-one sessions, technology is helping many businesses to remain productive even throughout the most uncertain of circumstances.
In many ways, a level of predictability is essential to the running of a successful and functional business. But after years of Brexit-related uncertainty and now having seen first-hand the impact a global pandemic can have, it is not unreasonable to argue that uncertainty must now be deliberately factored into the future plans of all businesses as standard.
As Joe Cox at UK based SEO agency Superb Digital, states “Coronavirus is not only uprooting and decimating long-established sectors but it is changing the way we shop and consume…There is every chance that some of the shifts we’re seeing in online behavior and business activity, necessitated by lockdown, may become the norm.”
For businesses really looking to capitalize on the unique opportunities this unprecedented time in our history is providing, working closely with an experienced SEO agency will ensure you start to make progress and generate results much faster than you would be able to do alone.
Learning about and implementing effective SEO strategies is difficult to do well when you don’t have any prior knowledge. The SEO landscape is incredibly intricate and an understanding of the variety of approaches that are available to you will help you to identify the course of action that will deliver the best results, both now and into the future.
Source: https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/marketing/why-seo-is-more-important-than-ever-for-small-businesses
Reviews are an important part of building a positive online reputation and growing any business. Whether you’re completely online, a brick and mortar business, or you do business in both your physical store and online, you want your new and potential customers to trust you. Reviews from past customers will help you build that trust, especially when they’re displayed right on your website!
Did you know that (according to Spiegel Research Center) almost 95% of shoppers check online reviews before making a purchase? Or that having the reviews displayed on your website can increase conversion rates by up to 270%?
Those are some pretty impressive stats, right? To better understand why reviews are so effective, let’s take a better look into why reviews are so vital to your business.
1. Reviews act as great “word of mouth.” In the digital age where people are more likely to rely on reviews instead of asking what their neighbor has to say about a product, it can be easy to see how reviews are the next big “referral program.”
2. Reviews make your company and products more visible. No matter where your reviews live (hopefully on your website, but we’ll get more into that later), when new reviews are being added consistently, the searching engines see this added content and will rank you higher. Content is still king, and new reviews will put you on top!
3. Increase your trustworthiness to potential customers. Taking into account the fact that most people are checking reviews before they purchase, you can see how honest and positive reviews can help you build trust with your customer base. The more positive reviews you have, the more trustworthy you will become.
4. Reviews have a direct impact on sales. Again, going back to the fact that more and more people check reviews before they make any decisions, the more honest reviews you have, the more likely people are going to be to make a purchase. Now of course they will be more likely to pull out their wallets if you have more positive reviews, but even increasing your reviews ranking by the slightest amount can increase your chances of making a sale. In fact, one study showed that just increasing your Yelp rating by just 1 star proved to have a 5-9% increase in sales.
5. Opens up a conversation with customers. We are seeing an increasing trend of users going out of their way to leave a negative review instead of contacting customer service and asking for help. For cases like this, we can actually be thankful that we have reviews. When a bad review happens, you as a company, have the chance to reply publicly and offer your help to correct a problem. Even though the initial review may be a negative one, what comes out of these situations (most of the time) is positive. Other potential customers will also see this interaction and customer service in the reviews and will be reassured that if there is a problem you are more than happy to make it right.
Now that you can see the benefits of customer reviews, you may be asking, “but how do I get reviews directly on my website?” Planned Growth has the answer with our Review Management service.
With Review Management by Planned Growth, you can:
Secure a Review
Push Reviews to multiple online platforms (Google, Facebook, etc)
If you are a service based customers with technicians, people from your team can “check-in” at a job
Start a live conversation with website visitors (an added bonus!)
Build better local SEO
Enhance your site with maps of checks, pictures added by reviewers, and new reviews mean new content!
Share reviews from your website right to your company’s social media sites
With real and honest reviews displayed directly on your website, your future customers won’t have to look far to see what people are saying about you. When you’re ready to take your company’s trust building game to the next level by adding reviews to your website, Contact Us at Planned Growth and we’ll put together a plan that will best benefit your business.
It’s no secret that Google has become an invaluable tool in today’s society. In fact, the average user searches Google multiple times a day. Whether it’s looking up the correct spelling of a word, the best restaurant to satisfy your cravings, or something more advanced like how to SEO optimize your website, Google has become the “go-to” place for all your information needs.
For businesses, having your website show up on the first page of a Google search is crucial. When your results show on the first page of a Google search result you improve your visibility, customer engagement, drive more traffic to your site, and it’s a great way to earn trust from your future clients.
Here are just a few stats that will really drive home exactly why Google rankings are so important.
As you can imagine from the stats above, the clickthrough rates only go down the farther down the search results you go. To put it into even more perspective, there are usually around 10 search results displayed per page, and the 10th result of the first page only receives about a 2.2% clickthrough rate.
So how can you get your search results to show up at the top of the first page without running ads? By utilizing Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Here are just a few of our best SEO tips that will help increase your chances of landing at the top of the first page of a Google search.
1. Get clear on your keywords.
Every page of your website is going to be different, especially if you have a blog with different topics. However, one of the most important things to remember when planning out your keywords is to make sure the keywords of different pages don’t compete with each other.
Keywords can be anything from single words to phrases. Keep in mind that your keywords are the actually words and questions that people will be typing into the Google search bar. When selecting your keywords, try to ask yourself what would your customers search for. Look at your blogs and think of the questions that your blog will answer and add those questions to your keyword list for that specific page.
2. Put your keywords to work!
Now that you’ve mapped out your keywords for each page, it’s time to utilize them by putting them in the appropriate places. Here is a quick rundown of where you should put your keywords.
3. Make sure Google knows your location!
If you have a brick and mortar business it is vital that Google knows where you are so your website comes up when people search for “near me” locations. You can accomplish this by putting your address in the footer of your website, in the “contact us” or “about us” pages on your site, and even including the name of your city and state in a few of your blogs.
4. Mobile optimization
A few years ago Google completely revamped it’s algorithm and ranking system by showing mobile optimized sites first, and this is still the case today. The world runs on mobile now and if your site isn’t mobile optimized, your other SEO efforts will have been for nothing. This is a vital step!
5. User-friendly
In addition to your website being mobile ready, it is also extremely important that your website is user-friendly. If your website is engaging, easy to read, and easy to navigate, your visitors will stay on your website longer. Believe it or not, Google also takes into consideration how long a user stays on a site, therefore, when your site is user-friendly it will be ranked higher.
BONUS TIP: Another great way to increase your Google rankings is to set up your Google Businesss Listing. It’s free to set up and if you have a local business the advantages of setting up your listing are huge!
So there you have it, our best tips to get your website on the first page of Google. For even more information on SEO, internet marketing, web design and hosting, or business automation, please feel free to hop over to our services page or contact us today!
The Internet minute was an idea seen all over the digital world in 2017, although the concept was first introduced several years ago. This concept made experts contemplate the micro rather than the macro – or the statistical minute rather than annual statistics. The results were stunning and include the following big reveals:
In just 60 seconds, the following happened online in 2017:
As a business owner, if you can allocate just 10 minutes a day to work on your social media blitz, then you have enough time to build your online presence.
However, before you implement your daily plan, there are a few critical guidelines that should be adhered to such as:
With only 10 minutes daily to work on your business social media accounts, time management is crucial. This means you need to be disciplined and not get distracted by anything – at least for that 10 minutes. The best 10-minute social media plan is not trying to cram everything into 10 minutes but work on specific tasks each day.
Monday – Check updates, notifications and get updated. Take a few seconds to post a quick reply to comments, feedback, and reviews. You should have templates that you can post automatically with the option for personalization.
Tuesday – This is the day to set aside for accounts reviews, calendars and installations. The objective for this day is to remove any social content gaps, not just for this week, but even up to the following week. At the same time, set aside a couple of minutes to write one or two posts for your followers to keep your brand in the consciousness and build engagement.
Wednesday – Wednesday is time to focus on advertising and promotions. The goal is to make sure that your advertising strategy matches your target market and network engagement. You should also consider geomarketing so your ads target your area and only place ads on the posts that generate the most interest from your followers.
Thursday – The general concept of social media is that “it’s about me and my activities.” You need to get out of this mold and work on making your social media accounts also about topics that would interest your followers. On your free time, search the Internet for community, industry, and national news or human interest stories, preferably something that has not yet been picked up and gone viral. Then, on Thursdays, you can post one or two stories that you think will enhance your profiles.
Friday – Friday’s ten minutes should be reserved for analytics of the week’s work. This is the time to tap tools that can help you measure and generate an in-depth analysis of your social media accounts. You should be able to find out which posts had the most views or generate the most leads and work with these results for the following week’s work.
If you happen to occasionally go beyond your 10-minute allotment, don’t stress. Some days your social media accounts will require a little more time due to special circumstances or situations.
Based on 2017 research, over 80% of B2B quality leads come from social media and from these leads 59% are culled from LinkedIn compared to 24% from Facebook and 28% from Twitter!
According to Mediakix, an influencer marketing firm, LinkedIn continues to be the professionals’ choice when seeking recognition, talent, or attention. Based on April 2017 figures, there are over 467 million LinkedIn users and the platform enjoys a 9% annual growth rate among American adults. In addition, over 57% of all companies globally opt for a LinkedIn account over and above any other social media platform mainly because they want to project the image of being a force in their respective industry.
Referencing B2B leads, LinkedIn stays ahead with 80% leads generated while only 13% on Twitters and around 7% on Facebook. This proves that number of users is not necessarily a major factor with B2B leads.
Here are some tips on how to tap into the power of LinkedIn to generate B2B leads:
The assumption of many is that LinkedIn is a social media platform for jobseekers and while there is some truth to that – it’s not the true reality for this platform. LinkedIn is a treasure trove of high quality, original B2B content that can be used as a source from a business perspective. Start working on organic, well-written content because this will allow you to sponsor content to your target audience. This platform is also the first stop for B2B marketers looking for content to distribute because content on LinkedIn has the potential to be seen 9 billion times!
The main advantage with joining groups is opportunity to personalize and establish real connections based on shared interests. Joining groups and connecting with industry leaders also validates your presence and content.
The LinkedIn Campaign Manager has many products that you can use to target specific markets and cliques based industry, job description, seniority, or education, among others. Some of these products are InMail, Sponsored Updates, Lead Gen Forms, and search features. Business decision leaders check their LinkedIn InMail which ensures that your email (if you use this feature) won’t get lost in Spam or junked automatically to Trash.
A few tips on how to be effective when using InMail include:
You’ve worked hard on your emails and content – and that’s great! However, don’t forget to also perfect your LinkedIn profile and sanitize your online presence. Most definitely, your content and email will drive interested professionals to seek, maybe validate, what they have read from you. And if they see something amiss with your profile, they might just decide to turn around and ignore your efforts.
Finally, have a realistic strategy before you embark on your B2B lead generation. Without a good strategy, you’ll forever remain on first base.
Getting targeted visitors to your website and establishing a solid brand as you turn a profit is not as easy as it sounds. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that if they have an aesthetically pleasing, properly optimized website with good content and a great product or service offering, they’ll make a lot of money. Although these factors can certainly help, they aren’t always enough to make a business successful. Instead, entrepreneurs who do all of the above, pay close attention to their analytics and make necessary tweaks based on their analytical data are ten times more successful than those who take a “build it and leave it alone approach.”
In fact, entrepreneurs who screen their traffic and evaluate their visitors’ activities are more likely to experience success than those who simply build a site and do nothing after that. The good news is that you don’t have to do everything yourself. Digital enterprises like Planned Growth have mastered all aspects of marketing and analytics, and help our clients solve the problems of tracking, by giving them access to refined analytics. At Planned Growth, we help you make informed and sophisticated changes to your website based on actual data, not opinions or hypothesized ideas.
Analytics are important to you as an entrepreneur because it enables you to measure the strength and performance of your content and ad campaigns in real time. It also allows you to easily access your campaigns so you can evaluate them in an efficient manner. Planned Growth gives you access to important site analytics, which segregates your clicks and views using various parameters. Then, we send you professional reports after every analysis that you can evaluate and share with your team for maximum effectiveness.
Good analytics will help you in a number of ways. Here’s how:
Research shows that a broken link, underdone webpage, or an unfocussed online campaign brings about a meteoric fall in the interest level among customers. In today’s fast-paced world, every digital communication is worth a million dollars and raises a lot of awareness for you. So instead of missing out on these channels, you can use analytics to propel your marketing efforts for quicker and more stellar results. For instance, analytics allow you to view email list analytics, engage metrics, and even bounce rates. You can easily see how your subscribers are increasing every month. This enables you to build a good analytic framework that helps grow your potential subscriber and client list and enhance engagement metrics, email open and click-through rates, shares of each email you send, and more!
Planned Growth understands the value of good analytics and therefore, we give you access to all the right analyzing principles and tools to more effectively work through your campaigns. We help you dive deeper into the SEO auditing process so you can evaluate SEO performance, integrate the activities of your campaign and ensure timely reportage.
The digital world truly has a lot of potential to change the dimensions of your business and give it the right push towards success. By using analytics properly, we can help you propel you to success.
What a year 2017 was for marketing! If you had to describe it – it would probably liken to an explosion due to the way social media and data management practically took over the Internet and gained traction as the most powerful tool online. It makes one wonder what 2018 will bring – and the experts are all pitching in with what they believe will be the year’s marketing trends.
Last year one of the phenomenons to catch the imagination of the world was Pokémon Go. The game is an experience unlike no other – magical reality! In 2018, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence will all converge to create incredible consumer experiences. It will personalize real-time interactions and be more appealing to the eyes, ears, and mind. These applications will transform marketing and the right choice can mean the difference between ranking number one and increasing patronage and revenues or dropping out of the race completely.
As the backbone for data-driven marketing, DMPs enjoyed a remarkable breakthrough in 2017 – and proved itself to be worthy of the investment and effort. Companies with DMPs were able to store, use, manage, and analyze consumer behavior and third party data and improve their bottom line. This kind of integrated technology is expected to grow even more in 2018 targeting high-value audiences with immense success.
Analysts reveal that quality live videos provide a shocking 113% ad view growth rate year-on-year. More importantly, live streaming itself is growing faster than expected and is expected to reach $70.5 billion in revenues by 2021 – that’s just 3 years from now!
A study revealed that 81% of Millennials and Gen Z’ers watch at least one hour of online video a day and majority tend to make purchasing decisions based on what they see on social media and videos. Live streaming, when you think about it, is the most powerful medium for social technology, and soon, for consumer behavior.
In 2017 about 30% of consumers relied on their mobile devices to browse and access the Internet. As phones become faster and more features are added, it is expected that mobile use will expand and make cross-pollination between different platforms seamless and quick.
Already, mobile use is dominating online activities and in the US 71% of all digital minutes use mobile devices. The average mobile time of the typical American adult is 87 hours a month and only 34 hours on a desktop. Of all the trends expected to explode in 2018, progressive web apps (PWA) appears to be the next big thing. PWA is simply web applications that work like apps making user experience more responsive and engaging.
Experts predict that by 2020, around 85% of customer interactions will be automated and run by bots. The bots are fast becoming so genuinely human-like, already 27% of consumers can’t tell the difference.
There are quite a few other predictions about 2018, including the revival of LinkedIn as the social media platform to be on, optimization of voice-enabled gadgets, enhanced graphics, better social media analytics, and continued growth of social media as a major influencer.
To push out a viable, sustainable and popular website or online business, you need to cull the work of different experts who can create content, layout, design, execute your vision, market, and help you manage operations until you are able to fully take over the reins. Doesn’t sound too difficult, right? Wrong.Continue reading
Voice search began decades ago with speech recognition systems introduced in the 1950s with the Audrey system from Bell Laboratories. Today, most people are familiar with the voice commands integrated into the Windows Vista, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant. There has also been a plethora of virtual assistants, speech and voice recognition apps like Alexa, Vlingo, Dragon Professional, and Voice Finger.
Is your website optimized for voice and speech recognition systems and apps?
According to a study on Google by Northstar Research, around 41% of adult Americans and 50% of American teens use voice search daily. Websites would be wise to jump on this bandwagon as expectations are high that voice search will continue to grow in popularity and use around the world. For 2017, it is expected to be one of the top SEO trends.
Websites have to be adjusted to accept voice-based queries because these are very different from the traditional types queries. For instance, voice queries tend to be longer and more explanatory using complete sentences and questions – as if the person searching feels the need to explain his search. With typed keywords, the general perception is to focus merely on short keywords so you can envision how drastic the dynamics have become.
Start by focusing your SEO efforts on long-tailed keywords and phrases. This would also mean adjusting your content to a more conversational tone and changing some content to be more specific like your FAQ page. Long-tailed keywords generally have three to four keywords. They are used to target specific markets and demographics. Those who use long-tailed keywords in their search tend to know what they want and are in a buying mode already.
Fortunately, long-tailed keywords also help improve your ranking faster than single keywords because you are less likely to be competing with many brands and businesses.
Claim your business. Voice searches tend to be localized searches or depend heavily on verified businesses. Thus, make sure your business is listed in popular and respected business listings like Yelp, Google, Foursquare, Maps, or even Facebook.
Test your website using a voice recognition app. The best way to know if your website will pop up with a voice search is to search it! Find an app and use it. Ask other people to do the same and analyze the results. If need be, change your long-tailed keywords, review your Home and FAQ pages.
Finally, make an effort to improve and generate positive reviews and feedback. Your online reputation will play a huge role in voice search especially if you make an effort to read and respond to reviews and feedback.
