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10 Ways to Improve Sales and Marketing: An Ultimate Guide

Did you know that companies with aligned marketing and sales teams tend to close deals faster than those without?

Effective sales and marketing strategies are the keys to increasing your ROI. This saves your business from shutting down, especially during the first few years of a startup.

Nonetheless, marketing to improve sales is a continuous process. You must be willing to learn each day and adjust where needed to maintain your business’ position on top of competitors. 

How do you improve sales? Here are ten guiding tips to help you implement marketing successfully.

Pay Attention to Product-Market Fit

Does your product help to solve any of the consumers’ current issues?

Before introducing a product in the market, ensure that it can ease consumers’ pain. Make sure that it is something they badly need in their day-to-day life.

It will help if you conduct in-depth market research. Understand consumers’ needs and expectations, and then tailor your products or services to accommodate those needs.

It will be a waste if you invest your time, money, and resources to market a product that adds no value to the target customers. Understanding the product market helps you to tailor products as per the current trends.

Furthermore, establishing product-market fit helps you to differentiate your product from competitors. By knowing precisely what consumers need, you can make a few adjustments to your products to offer value.

You will also be better positioned to customize your products to fit different personas. In return, you will have an easier time marketing your products. Consumers are more likely to embrace them even without putting in much marketing effort, thus increasing sales.

The best part about looking at a product-market fit is that you position your business as a reliable and considerate brand.

Consumers will feel that you care about their needs and that you are ready to solve them proactively. With this, they are likely to recommend you to their peers, which is another easy marketing tactic to improve sales.

Observe and Respond to Customer Behavior

Again, your marketing efforts will be in vain if what you offer does not have any value to consumers. It will help if you conduct in-depth research to understand how consumers utilize your product or services. Consider if they are using all product features or just a few.

Moreover, you should ensure that consumers easily implement all aspects of your product or service. If not, you should work on upgrading or personalizing the products or services to accommodate buyers’ needs, even if it means that they have to pay higher.

If you realize that consumers love a particular product, you may try cross-selling other products to complement what you already offer. Be sure to educate consumers on how they will benefit from using the newly introduced product as well.

The other trick to increase sales based on customers’ behaviors is to offer consumers personalized training to educate them about your products. Besides increasing sales, the idea helps to strengthen your relationship with customers.

The trick is to offer consumers value rather than focusing on selling your products.

Regular Promotions to Improve Sales

Everyone loves free things. And it would help if you surprised your customers with freebies from time to time.

Promotions are not only a way of attracting new customers. You can run a promotion for the existing customers to appreciate them for their loyalty. They will feel valued and like they are an important part of your business’s success.

Consequently, buyers will keep coming back and will even recommend you to their friends and relatives.

Schedule quarterly or monthly promotions for existing customers and inform them in advance to have something to look forward to. With this, you are assured of increased interactions and sales before the promotion day.

If you cannot afford to run scheduled promotions yet, you may try the irregular ones, such as gifting and discounts on special occasions.

Focus on Benefits and Not Product Features

Your marketing campaign should educate consumers more about your product’s benefits and not features. Your product may have the most innovative features, but if they add no value to consumers, they will not in any way help you increase sales.

You may start by mentioning the product’s features to build consumer interest, then increase their desire to purchase by explaining the benefits.

Consumers make purchase decisions based on the benefits of the products or services. Not that the benefits should not be so obvious. Educate prospects on the hidden value of your products and how purchasing will improve their lives.

This is where you apply the sales vs. marketing strategy. In marketing, marketers focus on explaining the features of the products, their cost, and who can use those products or services.

On the other hand, sales focus on interacting with customers and answering relevant questions regarding your products.

Unlike marketing, whose goal is to promote your product or brand by communicating its value, the purpose of sales is to close deals to reach your sales target.

Touch on the strongest benefits to intrigue potential customers and show them that you care about their well-being and that you are not just after their hard-earned money.

Furthermore, focusing on the benefits instead of features of your products promotes transparency with customers, and that is precisely what you need to drive more sales.

Be Your Own Influencer 

A majority of companies have already adopted influencer digital marketing to maximize sales. And while letting other well-known persons spread the word about your brand is a wise move, being the influencer in your own company is even smarter.

By influence marketing, you should be capable of persuading and convincing prospects to try out your products. You already believe in your products, so you want them to believe in them too.

You must appeal to their emotions and convince them that, indeed, your products are the change they need. The goal is to maximize the perceived value of your services or products and, in return, drive more sales.

By being influential, you can quickly close deals. And it’s not because you have created the best product in the market, but because you have built trust and credibility, so buyers will likely trust your opinion.

Contrary to most people’s beliefs, you do not have to be popular to be influential. You only need to be strategic and intentional with your words and actions.

The goal is to make people believe in your opinions so that when you tell them your products are great, they will buy that and immediately get curious to try them out. The best part about influence marketing is that it costs less, but the returns are incredible.

Update Your Website Regularly

Optimizing your site for SEO is the secret to increasing the discoverability of your brand. SEO is a continuous process, and there is no better way to stay up to date than by auditing your content.

Make regular changes to ensure that all your materials focus on current events. Check if your articles highlight all your products, including the newly launched ones. If some of the benefits of your services were left out, update them.

Quality content is among the most effective methods of promoting your brand. And you should therefore invest in it willingly.

Make Use of Customer Feedback

One of the most effective tips on improving sales is paying attention to customers’ thoughts and suggestions.

Customer feedback is your way into their minds. It helps you understand how they feel about your products and brand at large.

Customer feedback helps you understand what your products or services are missing and how to improve them. You can also establish why they keep coming back so that you can capitalize on that to maintain them.

Furthermore, requesting customer feedback shows your customers that they matter. They feel like they are an important part of your journey to success. This makes them feel appreciated and will have no urge to move to another brand.

Surprisingly, customers can offer great suggestions that will open doors to opportunities you never thought about, which you can turn into sales.

Customer feedback is also the secret to expanding your product line. Listening to their opinions helps you to foresee market trends, and with this, you can launch products that will meet their needs in the upcoming season.

All these benefits are equivalent to better relationships with your customers and increased sales.

Sell Your Brand Before Selling Your Products

There is no way consumers will purchase your products if they know nothing about your brand. Your brand is a product by itself. Therefore, you should communicate its value first before attempting to sell what you offer.

You have to convince consumers that you are worth working with, and if things go well, they may consider promoting you.

There is no more effective strategy in this case than email marketing. This is where you send valuable emails to your contacts on general topics in your niche. By doing so, you will prove that you intend to help the recipients and not just sell your products.

Your emails should not be sales-y, not until the recipients have shown interest in your brand.

You may also use your website to sell your brand. Ensure you have a responsive web design, then share tons of useful blogs and articles in your niche to educate readers about the value of what you intend to offer later.

When selling your brand, money should not be your concern. Your goal should be to educate your target audience as you pass the core message of your brand.

Create Performance Benchmark

A successful sales marketing strategy is determined by measuring its performance regularly. Now that you have already figured out the effective tips and activities to help you close deals, you ought to measure the performance of those tips to develop a benchmark.

Start by measuring the correct performance metrics depending on the activities taken to improve sales. Other than activity metrics, focus on pipeline metrics which include your total close rate, cycle length, and open sales based on period and team.

Most importantly, measure lead generation metrics. These indicate the number of new sales opportunities.

Do not forget to check the conversion metric to determine the closed opportunities and which ones among those were won or lost.

Measuring your marketing strategy metrics helps you determine if you are on the right track and learn how to improve sales performance. If not, you can quickly adopt a different strategy to help increase sales.

Build Credibility

This is a no-brainer. You are likely to make more sales if you are credible and trustworthy. And luckily, there are limitless ways in which brands can build credibility. For starters, invest in quality customer services. The report shows that most consumers make their loyalty decisions based on customer service.

They expect to reach a customer service team that responds fast and is willing to guide them where they feel stuck. They want to be heard when they raise their concerns, and they hope to have a smooth shopping experience.

Adopt the best technology to give your customers a stress-free experience. And that should be from the moment they land on your site to when they make and receive their orders.

Conduct frequent surveys to get customer feedback on areas that need improvement. Then be prompt to compensate buyers where need be.

Such are some tips to improve your credibility and, in return, maximize repeated purchases and new buyers coming your way.

Maximize Your Revenue With Effective Sales and Marketing Tactics

Every business owner dreams of maximizing returns, which is only achievable by improving sales. Although marketing is a significant challenge in running a business, the above tips will help you improve sales performance, thus increasing revenue.

You can count on us for all your sales and marketing needs. Contact us today for professional insight on digital marketing, and let’s help you transform your business for the best.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/10-ways-to-improve-sales-and-marketing-an-ultimate-guide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=10-ways-to-improve-sales-and-marketing-an-ultimate-guide from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/666079747482271745

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Google SEO: 15 Ways Analytics Can Help Your Business to Grow

For your business to be successful, you need to have the ability to analyze information and use it to make concrete decisions that will allow your business not just to survive but thrive.

There are almost 30 million websites that use Google Analytics to track information, but the key is knowing what to do with it.

Do you own a business? Are you unsure of how to delve into the world of SEO? Do you want to better understand how Google Analytics can help you to grow your business?

Read on to learn more about how and why to take advantage of Google SEO for marketing your business and how analytics can take your business to the next level.

What Is SEO?

Before we look further into Google SEO tools and their benefits for your business, let’s define SEO or search engine optimization. It’s an essential tool for all business owners in the online world because it helps your website to be seen by as many people as possible.

To rank higher on search engines, SEO requires you to use specific keywords and phrases. In addition, having a popular website, a variety of photos, or paying can help your site to land at the top when relevant topics are searched.

Above all, having good SEO practices will help you get ahead of your competitors and come up in relevant searches so that potential customers can find more information about your business.

Now that we have a basic definition of SEO and how it can benefit you, it’s time to discuss 15 ways to use Google Analytics, in particular, to help you better understand where your business stands.

#1: Organic Search Is King

Shelling out money to pay for advertisements is always an option, but organic searches tend to yield better conversion results and cost far less.

Google owns a significantly larger share of searching than any other competitors like Yahoo, Bing, and countless others.

Because of this, focusing on Google, the most visited website in the world, and its guidelines makes much more sense than anything else. Learning how Google analyzes websites and ranks them through crawling will put you in the position to come in on top.

#2: Build Trust with SEO

Whether you sell products or services, if your business isn’t trustworthy and credible, you won’t rank on Google, and no one will spend their money when they’re unsure of the return they will receive. 

The Google SEO checker allows you to enter your website URL and access information about how Google views your site. It grades you based on 14 parameters, some of which include:

General information

Content optimization

Links used

SEO

Images

With this report, you will be equipped with the knowledge that you need in order to improve your site and its chances of showing in Google searches. You will also be more likely to convert people into customers because of the experience that they have when they do end up on your website.

#3: User Experience

Having good SEO practices naturally leads to fostering a unique and enjoyable user experience.

Your site will contain relevant keywords and compelling descriptions that inform the customer. As a result, it will be easy to navigate, not include any spam, and be more trustworthy from the first click.

#4: Local SEO Conversions

If you’re a business that operates with a storefront instead of being solely online, chances are reaching people that are near you in searches is crucial to you.

Google local SEO aims to optimize your website for a specific area so that local people can find your site quickly and easily.

This is supremely important not only for Google to remain relevant for the searchers but for your business to convert customers from your neighborhood and the surrounding areas. 

To get the maximum benefits from this, you should also optimize your Google business listing and any social media accounts that you have as well.

#5: The Immediate SEO Impact

At first look, it might seem like Google SEO tools are mainly helpful for information that will remain online permanently, but that’s not the case.

Using SEO to improve real-time search results is possible.

This means that you can utilize it to notify customers of things such as temporary sales in real-time so that they can take advantage of the opportunity before it’s gone. This leads to more sales for you and the opportunity to engage long-time customers from a tiny moment.

#6: Keep Up with the Times

The best Google SEO practices are constantly being updated and changed based on new information and current trends.

Because of this, if you take the time to study the changes and implement them as soon as you can, your business will be conforming to current trends and reaching more people because of this.

With constant change also comes frequent work. Keeping up with the SEO algorithm changes can be stressful, which is why it’s often in your best interest to hire a professional that can take this task out of your hands.

#7: The Cost

A straightforward way to help your business to grow is by spending less money. If you can save money when it comes to marketing, it will leave you more wiggle room in the budget to grow your business in other areas.

Even if you hire a professional to help you navigate your online practices, SEO is a much smaller investment than any other form of marketing.

In some ways, SEO is an investment into the foundation of your business rather than a marketing expense because it lays the foundation for how your business is seen online.

#8: Longevity

Every business has goals and strategies that they implement in order to achieve these goals.

Implementing solid Google SEO practices will be beneficial long after you begin. 

Taking the time to craft a website that reflects your business well and draws people in will have a lasting impact that many other things won’t.

#9: Use SEO to Establish Goals

Take advantage of Google Analytics and set up goals so that you can track the efficiency and progress of certain areas of your site.

You can track how many times a page has been viewed and when a form has been filled out. It’s important to track the number of organic visitors that SEO provides you with and the quality of these visitors.

If you’re getting a lot of people to click on certain pages, but then they aren’t contacting you, buying something, subscribing to an email list, etc., then this is a sign that you’re not implementing the exact right keywords to bring in the visitors that you want.

#10: Easily Track Top Performers

Many analytics dashboards will show you total website visits, but Google can break down your top-performing pages in a report so that you can track them and improve them over time.

If a particular page consistently attracts attention, paying special attention to it and ensuring it stays relevant is key. You can’t just assume that because it performed well at one point that it always will.

Consider changing photos or creating a more enticing call to action.

What about the areas of your site in the report that rank the lowest for visitors? Clearly, there’s room for improvement here too. In some cases, this data might even show you areas of the site that can be removed because they don’t truly provide any value and only serve to slow your site down.

#11: The Content Drilldown Tool

This tool will break down your non-sales page clicks and impressions.

Does your website have a blog? If yes, this is the perfect tool to track what type of content is trending! Writing blog posts takes time and money, so having a tool that can help you narrow down what topics you should be focusing on is important.

You can use this tool to lay the foundation for your blog’s framework and create a plan moving forward that will be more likely to capture people’s attention consistently.

#12: Keywords and PPC

Google Analytics can help you to track which keywords are converting into sales and which ones are dead ends.

In turn, this will help you to ensure that you don’t waste money on pay-per-click ads that are tied to poor-performing keywords and instead pour that money elsewhere.

Do you use Bing, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, or somewhere else to run ads? You can still monitor the results through Google and easily get a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t. 

#13: Track Bounce Rate

Imagine this: someone visits your site and lands on the home page. From here, they check out a few blog posts and the about page before ultimately reaching out through your contact page.

This is an ideal scenario.

Next, picture this: someone visits your site and lands on a blog post. Then, they leave quickly without viewing any other content.

If you have a busy site, it can be hard to track the number of each type of visitor you get. The first situation is great, but the second situation requires a second look at what went wrong.

Google can track the bounce rate or the percentage of people that leave after visiting one page. This number can highlight areas of your site that might provide a poor user experience and allow you to fix them quickly.

#14: Site Speed

Have you ever visited a website that loads so slowly that you eventually get frustrated and head back to Google to look elsewhere?

If your website is lacking in the speed department, you could be losing customers left and right to your competitors. You aren’t losing them because of bad keywords or a negative experience, but because of something as simple as load time.

One of the Google SEO tools tracks the site speed not only of your entire site overall but also of the individual pages.

If you see lackluster conversion, high bounce rates, or other disappointing metrics, be sure to check this out.

#15: Scroll Depth Tracking

If you were at a car dealership and the sales guy tried to get you to buy a car the second you walked through the door, would you say yes? Definitely not.

The same is true when people are online. They don’t want sale information, freebies, products, services, or anything else to pop up in their face the second that they get to a new website.

Yet, many businesses do this.

Instead, take advantage of the scroll depth tracking tool, which allows you to see how far people scroll down on certain pages. Using this data, you can make decisions about where to place buttons.

Google SEO Is Here to Stay

Google SEO provides you with countless tools and limitless opportunities to connect with potential customers and understand what their user experience is like as they navigate your site.

This article highlighted 15 general ways that Google Analytics can help you to grow your business along with more specific tools that you can utilize to analyze information and adjust your site accordingly.

Whether you’re familiar with SEO, just beginning to understand it for the first time, or consider yourself a pro, it can be helpful to have someone take the reins and take you to the top of the search results.

If your goal is to not only rank at the top of Google’s search page but see quality results from achieving this place, don’t hesitate to contact us today and see what we can do to help you. 

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/google-seo-15-ways-analytics-can-help-your-business-to-grow/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-seo-15-ways-analytics-can-help-your-business-to-grow from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/665517290182377472

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Top 15 Benefits of Local SEO Services

If you’re in the business world, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the hottest marketing tool, SEO. There’s a reason it’s so popular. In fact, 53% of businesses that spend over $500 a month on SEO consider themselves “extremely satisfied” with the results.

Well, your business could be benefiting from the same results, and we can tell you why! Let’s talk about local SEO services, what they are, and the benefits for your company.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is different from global SEO with a few key distinctions. Local SEO means that you are competing with local brands instead of similar brands around the world.

For example, a pizza shop in Boston will not be concerned with readers in Seattle, so it will primarily want traffic from the Boston/Cambridge area. An example of a company that would need to compete globally in its SEO strategy would be a company that generates its revenue primarily through a blog.

A blog that talks about personal finance will have to compete with thousands of other personal finance blogs for the top spot on relevant searches, and these blogs could come from any country or region around the world.

The way that a local SEO strategy is accomplished is by tailoring content to a specific area. If your content is loaded with references to your address with plenty of instances of keywords like “best pizza shop in Boston” or “Boston pizza parlor”, then Google will pick up on the nature of your business and location.

That company would also have their address listed on their website, local directories, online directories, and more to reinforce their location and the nature of their business. There is more to it than that, but that’s a good start. 

What Does a Local SEO Company Do?

If you are looking for local SEO solutions, you may seek the services of an SEO company. Make sure that they have local SEO experience before seeking their services, as you want their services to match the needs of your company as closely as possible.

SEO services involve a lot of factors, but they typically start by improving your website to optimize it for search engines. Your website is the home base of your entire digital marketing strategy, so this will have a positive ripple effect throughout it.

The process will involve keyword research, local market research, and more. From there, they will likely add more pages to your website to maximize your chances of ranking, and they will likely add a blog, which will give you endless opportunities to rank for relevant searches.

The services should also include optimizing your website’s page speed, format, and images, along with several other services that are more relevant to your industry or needs.

Benefits Of Local SEO Services

While it may cover a wide variety of services, local business SEO is truly critical in order to thrive in the digital age. Google and other search engines have total control over which users see which content and your business can either adapt to that or fall behind. However, ranking isn’t the only benefit to local SEO solutions. Here are some of the key benefits.

#1. Less Competition

The number one benefit of local SEO services is very simple; you have less competition. This means that you have a clearer path to the top of a Google search.

The reason this is number one is that having professional local SEO services could easily set you apart from your competitors and put your business at the top. It’s important to remember that the first result on a Google search gets a full third of the traffic from every page combined.

That means that the effects are long-lasting and can single-handedly keep your business afloat. Think about it. Putting ads in front of people every day will certainly help but nothing will compare to getting a third of the people who are hungry for pizza and searching for a place to get some.

Showing up in the top 3 is critical for local SEO, so professional services are even more important for this. The reason is that Google typically shows the top 3 results underneath the map when somebody searches for the keywords with “near me” or “in Boston” at the end. 

In order for a user to see the other results, they will need to click the drop-down menu and scroll. Most people won’t do this, as they will already be provided with 3 highly-rated competitors at the top to choose from, so making it into that group could easily be the difference between sinking and swimming as a company.

#2. Building Trust

You can always skip the line and pay for search ads on search engines like Google and you will show up at the very top, ahead of the organic results. However, users tend to put a lot more trust into the top organic results and choose to skip over the search ads.

This is why the top organic results get the most traffic. If you make it into that tier, users will start out their first interactions with your company with a note of trust, which will increase your conversion rates, and ultimately, your customer retention and brand loyalty.

Ads have a place in your digital marketing strategy, don’t think we are suggesting otherwise. However, reinforcing your company’s legitimacy through organic search will only have positive effects on your business.

#3. Organic Search is Superior

We mentioned that you want people to find you on Google more than on ads, and that’s for good reason. Organic traffic accounts for the majority of web traffic and it brings the right people to you.

You can target an ad campaign as well as you like but it won’t be as precise as the people who are looking for relevant information to your company. We see thousands of ads every day, so it’s easy to understand why people would be more likely to make a purchase when they are searching for something.

To put it simply, there isn’t a better way to reach a target audience than by letting them search for you, as opposed to the other way around.

#4. Improved User Experience

Improved SEO also means that your user experience was improved. Google’s algorithm factors in user experience in several ways, including page loading times, navigation, mobile-friendliness, and more.

A local SEO agency will be able to help you improve your user experience, which will not only help with SEO but with customer retention and conversion rates for your other marketing campaigns.

Whether we like it or not, users have become accustomed to using websites with vast resources and state-of-the-art technology, which has become the new standard. If you spend your days on Facebook, Google, and Amazon, you will be able to spot a DIY website from a mile away.

The only way to compete with that is by having a professional website that meets the standards of the average web user. This just happens to have the byproduct of improving your site’s SEO value.

#5. SEO is Measurable

Advertisements and other forms of marketing are measurable to a degree. However, with tools like Google Analytics and others, you can receive deeper insights into the kind of traffic you are receiving.

This includes the type of audience that is engaging with your pages, how long they stay, when they typically exit, how they navigate through your site, and more.

This provides you with a free roadmap to improving your website and content even further, maximizing your conversion rates, retaining customers, and expanding your reach. Following these metrics and working to improve upon them will help you dominate and stay ahead of your competition.

It will also help with your company’s overall market research. These insights will allow you to understand the voice of your customers, any evolutions or changes in your target audience, and the direction of the industry. This has plenty of long-term advantages when the information is used effectively.

#6. Up To Date Information

SEO is a constantly evolving field and you may have learned about it a few years ago and developed some skills in the field. However, it’s not that simple. There are constant updates from Google that SEO professionals need to be up to date with, and that’s why there isn’t a substitute for their services.

Your competition at the local level may be following their SEO strategy themselves or have an internal marketer handling their SEO strategy. Having professional services that know are familiar with all recent updates and who continue to follow new best practices is what will set you apart from your competition.

#7. Integration With Other Marketing Tools

We mentioned that improving your website can help with your ad conversions but that’s only one way that SEO services can affect your marketing strategy.

For example, your SEO efforts will help you develop more traffic to prompt users to sign up for notifications or email newsletters, giving you extra help on these campaigns.

Not only that, but conversion rates from social media marketing and other efforts will significantly improve if you have a more user-friendly website. Users tend to leave websites after only 3 seconds, so having an efficient website will help with all of your digital marketing efforts.

#8. Long-Term Results

The thing about SEO is that, unlike other marketing efforts, you essentially pay your dues and then you can reap the rewards for a long period of time. When you buy ad campaigns, you pay for every view or every click on your advertisement, then you have to pay for new ad content, and it’s basically an expensive, short-term campaign with conversion rates often below 1%.

However, with SEO, you simply need to climb to the top by establishing trust with Google’s algorithm. Once you’re there, you’re there, and your competition will have an uphill battle trying to get ahead of you.

All you have to do from that point is to continue optimizing your content based on industry updates and you will see the benefits for years to come. Sure, it can feel like a slow process at first, but your efforts will pay off in the long run.

#9. Realistic Goals

One of the biggest benefits that an SEO company can offer you is the ability to achieve realistic goals with your SEO strategy. You should be very warry about a company that promises you the top spot on Google in a week, as this is simply the antithesis of what SEO is about.

However, a serious company will be able to offer you a detailed outline of their strategy, how they intend to implement it, the price, and when you should expect to see results.

It’s important to remember that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Results will come with consistency and time but they may last for even longer. Look for a company that is down to earth and offering you realistic goals to keep your company successful over the long term. Take your time, do your research, and find the right SEO services for your company.

Start Ranking!

Now that you know the benefits of local SEO services, you may be interested in seeking these services for yourself. It’s a beneficial idea as long as you are patient and you have realistic goals and expectations. Stay up to date with our latest SEO news, find the right services for your company, and contact us with any SEO questions!

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/top-15-benefits-of-local-seo-services/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=top-15-benefits-of-local-seo-services from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/664875599887728640

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15 Reasons Why You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Are you struggling to generate traffic and leads? You’re not the only one. In fact, about 65% of businesses struggle with the same problem. 

Meanwhile, 80% of new leads never translate into sales. About 96% of the people who visit your website aren’t ready to shop, either.

Without a strong digital marketing strategy, you could struggle to attract fresh leads, too. 

Companies that excel at lead-nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower costs. Only 29% of brands nurturing their existing customers, though. Not every business has a digital marketing strategy in place, either.

On the fence about using digital marketing this year? Here are 15 reasons you need to start strategizing.

With an experienced digital marketing agency at your side, you can set your entire marketing strategy up for success. They’ll help you expand your reach, allowing you to grow your business.

Read on to discover the 15 reasons you need to start marketing online today.

1. Reach Your Ideal Customer

It’s not enough to put up a billboard or spread flyers throughout town. These marketing materials could reach anyone. Unfortunately, your marketing message might not appeal to every consumer.

Instead, you can use digital marketing to appear in front of your ideal customer.

For example, you can gather keyword research before developing a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Then, you can develop customized content based on the questions your customers are asking. When someone searches for a specific keyword online, you can appear in front of that customer. 

You can also use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to appear in front of consumers based on the keywords they use in a search. PPC platforms like Google and Facebook Ads also allow you to specify demographics.

You can appear in front of your ideal customer based on their age, location, or household income.

You don’t have to waste valuable time or money trying to appeal to every consumer anymore. Instead, you can focus on people who fall within a specific niche. 

You might have an easier time appearing in front of people who already want your product or service as a result. Since these consumers already want your offerings, you’ll have an easier time making a sale.

Personalization 

You can also develop a digital marketing strategy personalized with distinct buyer personas in mind. Personalization could set your entire marketing strategy up for success. 

About 84% of consumers say getting treated like a person can win their business. Meanwhile, 74% of shoppers get frustrated when content doesn’t align with their interests. Another 52% will switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize communications. 

Meanwhile, about 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations. 

Developing a marketing strategy using personalization can help you boost leads and sales. About 90% of marketers report a measurable lift after using personalization. 

Personalization could deliver eight times the ROI on your marketing budget while lifting sales by 10% or more. Meanwhile, 80% of consumers are more likely to shop when brands personalize.

You can use digital marketing platforms to focus on a specific target audience. Focusing on smaller audience groups will help you personalize. Then, you can connect with customers to direct them to become leads and sales. 

Personalizing your marketing strategy could give you the competitive edge you need.

2. Generate Brand Awareness and Recognition

About 59% of shoppers prefer purchasing from familiar brands. The more someone recognizes, appreciates, and believes in your brand, the more they’ll buy.

Unfortunately, consumers might not know your business exists if you’re not using digital marketing. In fact, it can take over five impressions before people become aware of your business. In order to develop brand recognition, you’ll need to keep appearing in front of customers.

You can use digital marketing to develop an omnichannel strategy. Omnichannel marketing allows you to create a cohesive experience for consumers. They’ll see your brand on different channels and touchpoints.

You might have an easier time building brand awareness and recognition as a result.

You only have seven seconds to make a strong first impression, though. Within those seven seconds, consumers decide whether or not they like your brand.

Consider researching digital marketing companies that offer brand services. Updating your brand will help you make a strong first impression with customers. You can communicate your value and help more people trust your brand.

Developing a distinct brand will help you stand out from competing businesses within your niche, too.

With help from an experienced digital marketing agency, you can stand out while drawing customers in.

3. Establish Your Credibility

It’s not enough to have a distinct brand, though. Consumers won’t choose your business if they don’t have a reason to trust you. You’ll need to establish your credibility.

You can add content creation and SEO to your digital marketing strategy this year.

Proving your credibility will help brand trust and loyalty grow. You’ll have an easier time converting curious consumers into paying customers. 

4. Gather Data

With digital marketing strategies, you can gather data from your campaigns.

Gathering data will help you make more informed decisions in the future. You could have an easier time improving your ROI as a result. 

5. Generate Website Traffic

You can also use different digital marketing strategies to direct more people to your website.

For example, you can optimize the content you post on your website for search engines. When someone searches for a specific keyword, your content could appear.

About 68% of all experiences online start with search engines like Google. With search engine optimization, you can rank higher on search engines. Then, you can direct more people to your website to learn about your business.

In fact, SEO drives 1,000% more traffic than organic SEO.

Generating more website traffic will help you demonstrate your experience and expertise. Then, you can start generating more leads. In fact, leads from SEO have a 14.6% close rate.

These people are already searching for your product or service. You can leverage that existing interest to generate more sales.

You can also use digital marketing services like pay-per-click advertising to appear online.

PPC ads can appear based on demographics or search terms. You can create text ads that appear on Google searches. Otherwise, display ads can appear on other websites or social media platforms.

When someone clicks on one of your ads, they’ll reach a landing page on your website.

You can use PPC advertising to improve your search engine rankings, too. Google will notice you’re generating more traffic and boost your rankings. Higher organic rankings will help you generate more traffic in the future.

Once you start generating more traffic to your website, you could have an easier time generating leads and sales. 

6. Remain Relevant

New marketing strategies pop up constantly. If you’re not up-to-date with the latest trends, consumers will take notice. They might think you’re behind the times.

They might turn to your in-the-know competitors if you’re only using outdated traditional marketing strategies. 

Before that can happen, consider partnering with a digital marketing agency this year. Their range of services can help you remain relevant.

For example, video content will account for 80% of all website traffic by the end of 2021. Video content is engaging and easy to consume. You can even use video content as part of your SEO strategy.

You can also share video content on social media. Look for digital marketing companies that offer social media management services. Consider looking for a company that can produce your video content, too.

For example, you can use live Q&A sessions to engage your audience in real-time.

You can also use platforms like Snapchat and TikTok to create VR or AR content.

Remaining up-to-date with the latest trends could help you reach younger consumers. They’ll recognize you’re in the know and start flocking to your business. 

7. Demonstrate Your Value

You can also use digital marketing strategies to demonstrate your unique value.

What can you offer that no one else can? Gathering research about your competitors will help you recognize the opportunities they’re missing. You can determine the pain points your customers are experiencing, too.

Then, you can use digital marketing strategies like SEO and content creation to show consumers how you can help.

Consumers will recognize the value you’re able to offer. You’ll have an easier time standing out from the crowd, too. You might have an easier time drawing consumers to your business as a result.

8. Get Ahead of the Competition

Chances are your competitors are already using digital marketing services like SEO and PPC. Remember, you don’t want to fall behind. If you want to get ahead of the competition, start reaching out to digital marketing companies. 

An experienced agency will help you get ahead of the competition.

For example, you can improve your SEO strategy to boost your rankings. Ranking ahead of competitors will ensure consumers see your website first. You can draw people to your business before competitors get the chance.

Remember, you can also work with an agency to remain up-to-date with the latest trends. You can use these trends to get a step ahead of the competition, too. 

9. Go Mobile

More people are relying on their smartphones to find answers when they’re out and about. If you’re not utilizing mobile marketing, work with an experienced agency. They can help you reach your on-the-go customers.

In fact, Google now uses mobile-first indexing to determine rankings. Run your website through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Make sure your website is optimized for smaller screens.

If it’s not, it’s time to update your website!

You can use geotargeting to reach consumers who approach your store. You can also use text marketing to draw people to your shop.

Developing a mobile marketing strategy will help improve your omnichannel marketing approach. Reaching consumers at multiple touchpoints can help you generate more leads and sales. You’ll never miss an opportunity to reach a potential customer.

10. Generate Positive Reviews

As part of your search engine optimization strategy, consider using local SEO. For example, you can focus on generating customer reviews this year. Generating more positive reviews will improve your online reputation.

Improving your online reputation will further boost your credibility.

On-the-fence customers can read reviews on your Google My Business listing. They might decide to trust you based on the reviews you reach. Then, you can boost brand trust to start generating more business.

If you’re neglecting these digital marketing strategies, however, consumers might decide to take their business elsewhere. 

11. Stay Social 

Remember, new social media marketing trends pop up all the time. For example, you might want to consider using influencer marketing this year.

Influencers already have a strong audience of loyal followers. You can leverage their existing brand trust and loyalty. An influencer can promote your product or service to their existing audience.

Consumers will trust the personal recommendation and consider giving your business a chance. Then, you can generate more leads, sales, and followers. 

You can also post user-generated content to leverage existing brand trust.

Social media marketing will help you engage your audience online. 

12. Inspire Action

Developing a digital marketing strategy can help you encourage specific actions.

You can use strong call-to-action language to encourage people to sign up, shop, or reach out. You’ll generate more leads and sales as a result. 

13. Build Trust and Loyalty

You can use your content creation and SEO strategies to demonstrate your experience in the industry. Establishing your credibility through content creation will help brand trust grow. 

Generating brand trust can help you retain loyal customers. You can generate repeat sales to grow your business. 

14. Improve Your ROI

You can also use digital marketing to improve your ROI.

Strategies like email marketing and SEO are cost-effective. You don’t have to spend your entire budget on a single strategy. Instead, you can generate more leads and sales without overspending.

Improving your ROI can set your business up for long-term growth. 

15. To Accomplish Your Goals

Think about your goals for the year. With digital marketing, you can boost brand awareness and website traffic. You can establish your credibility, build brand trust, and retain loyal customers.

Regardless of your goals, digital marketing strategies can set you up for success. 

Get Growing: 15 Reasons You Need a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy

Don’t let your marketing strategy fall behind the times. Instead, consider these 15 reasons you need to develop a digital marketing strategy. With digital marketing, you can reach customers and grow your business.

Get ready to improve your ROI with online marketing this year!

Need help? We’re happy to lend a hand.

Contact us today to discuss your marketing strategy. 

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/15-reasons-why-you-need-a-digital-marketing-strategy-for-your-business/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=15-reasons-why-you-need-a-digital-marketing-strategy-for-your-business from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/664252756297760768

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Everything You Need to Know About the Latest Google Algorithm Update

Does your homepage load in 2.5 seconds or less?

If it doesn’t, your website might have been affected by the google algorithm update this summer.

Google’s “Core Web Vitals” and “Page Experience” updates are all about user experience.

Here’s everything you need to know. 

Understanding the New Google Algorithm Update

Google updates its algorithm frequently. For perspective, think of the algorithm like any phone app you use frequently. Most apps require updates almost monthly. But, most of the time, a user can’t tell the difference between the app interface before or after the update because they’re usually designed to fix small bugs or make minor changes that improve the app’s performance. 

Google also updates its algorithm often with the subtly of a routine app update. But, occasionally, Google will make an update that changes its core functioning.

Thinking of the app analogy, although most app updates go noticed. Sometimes there are big ones that you’ll get an email or read a headline about. These types of updates significantly change the user experience and functioning of the app. 

Likewise, Google’s “core algorithm” updates can be thought of in the same way. These updates change the way Google’s algorithm ranks in a way that will be significant enough for users to notice. These usually come with a public statement or warning from Google. 

This summer, Google publically acknowledged the “Core Web Vitals” and “Page Experience” updates. This update changed Google’s core algorithm and will be one of the biggest SEO trends of 2021. It presented new ranking signals that focus on user experience. 

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Google’s “Core Web Vitals” update presented three new metrics that measure and rank websites. These additions to the Google algorithm focus on user experience. 

Think of “Core Web Vitals” like a category of search signals Google’s algorithm uses to comprehend user experience. Within this new category, there are three new core search signals. These three signals include:

Loading, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Interactivity, First Input Delay (FID)

Visual Stability, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

LCP, FID, and CLS are focused on measuring user experience. They look for measurables like loading time, interactivity, and visual stability. So, the faster, more responsive, and intuitively designed a website is, the higher its Core Web Vitals score will be. 

To break it down a bit, LCP evaluates how a user perceives page loading time. Specifically, it calculates the amount of time it takes for the largest piece of visual content to fully load on the page. 

Next, the FID signal measures page responsiveness. So, the amount of time it takes from when you click something for a web page to take you to that information. The longer it takes for a user to navigate a website, the lower the FID score. 

Last, the CLS measures visual page stability. Websites that shift when they’re not supposed to or don’t shift seamlessly when a user commands it will have a lower CLS score.

What Is Page Experience

Core Web Vitals are a packaged ranking metric under the Page Experience umbrella. The Core Web Vitals update focused on the Core Web Vitals mentioned above. The Page Experience Update focused on additional metrics that work alongside Core Web Vital metrics to affect Page Experience. There are four key metrics affected by the Page Experience update. 

Mobile-friendliness

Security

Non-intrusive pop-ups 

Google safe browsing 

Google prioritizes mobile-friendliness when it ranks a website. If you want more organic traffic, start by checking how to make a mobile-friendly website. The Page Experience update expanded the impact of mobile-friendliness in rankings. 

Using HTTPS has been a small ranking signal since 2014. The Page Experience update emphasized the need for secure communication between browsers and servers. This means that the data that’s being exchanged is encrypted, which helps protect against cyber attacks.

In another effort to serve safe websites to users, Google favors websites that have certified their website’s identity to browsers, specifically to Chrome. This security certificate is called HTTPS. When a website is not secure, a warning is displayed in the browser’s URL box that tells the user the website is “Not Secure or Dangerous.”

Intrusive interstitials, a.k.a. pop-ups, have been negatively affecting page rank since 2017. But, the Page Experience update further defined what makes a pop-up acceptable versus unacceptable. 

Google launched safe browsing in 2007. In June 2021, Safe Browsing affected Page Experience with websites with malware or malicious scripting and phishing threats/vulnerabilities for users to be targeted by bad actors. But, as of August 2021, Safe Browsing is no longer a page experience ranking signal.

How Does Page Experience Impact SEO

Core Web Vitals are important not only because they’re likely to be a light ranking factor but because they provide a hard measurement scale for user experience. Additionally, when you improve your site’s usability, typically, KPIs like bounce and conversion rates improve. 

Improving your page speed also affects search engine results pages (SEPRs). So, ultimately giving your Core Web Vitals will have a holistic effect on your site’s rank. 

It’s worth mentioning that a quality content strategy shouldn’t be abandoned for the sake of improving your Core Web Vitals score. These new measurements are intended to further enhance website quality alongside other ranking factors like mobile friendliness and content. 

Google has some interesting statistics about how page experience and conversion rates are directly related. For example, their research says that pages that load in 2.4 seconds have an average 1.9% conversion rate. But, web pages that take 4 seconds to load have a conversion rate of 1% or less.

According to Google, page load times also have a “severe effect” on bounce rates. For example, bounce rates increase by 32% between pages that take 3 seconds to load versus 1 second. For pages that take 6 seconds to load, bounce rates increase 106% compared to pages that take 1 second to load. 

Another compelling statistic from Google is the correlation between first contentful paint and revenue. Google’s research indicates that websites with fast rendering times for mobile users generate 75% more revenue than websites with average speed. Then, websites with fast rendering times for desktop users generate 212% more revenue than websites with average speed. 

Analyzing Page Experience Reports

Some many tools and resources can be used to track page experience metrics. Most page experience metrics can be accessed from the Google Search Console. Tracking metrics in the Page Experience report haven’t changed. 

But, there’s a new reporting tool for the new Core Web Vitals metrics. Core Web Vitals reports are straightforward and easy to understand. They also create a clear system for you to measure the success (or failure) of website updates. 

Core Web Vitals Reports 

So, how can you get your Core Web Vitals scores? There are many tools and services out there that can track these metrics for you. But, these metrics can also be tracked in the Google Search Console.

Specifically, you can use the Core Web Vitals and Page Experience reports or Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. You can also use Google Lighthouse to troubleshoot Core Web Vitals troubleshoot fixes. 

Here are the scores your website needs to pass a Core Web Vitals test:

Largest Contentful Paint must be under 2.5 seconds

First Input Delay must be under 100 milliseconds

Cumulative Layout Shift must be under 0.1

With metrics that are in the “green,” all you need to do is make monitoring this metric part of your reporting process. But, action will need to be taken on websites scoring in the “orange” or “red” category. 

So, locate the problem areas in the metrics that are scoring poorly; simply open your report and identify the URLs that need to be fixed. In the Core Web Vitals report, URLs are labeled as “poor,” “needs improvement,” and “good.”

From there, fixes should be pretty straightforward. For example, if a URL has a “poor” Largest Contentful Paint score. Excessively large photos, animations, or long videos could be to blame. 

After changes have been made, you can “validate these fixes” in the report. Doing this initiates a 28-day “monitoring session” that will tell you if the changes you made “passed” or “failed.” So, if the changes you made didn’t get to the root problems you’re having, you can attempt another change 28 days later. 

Page Experience Reports

A Core Web Vitals report is a piece of the Page Experience report. Once you’ve completed a Core Web Vitals Report, you’ll want to analyze mobile-friendliness, HTTPS security, and if your site contains any intrusive interstitials. 

You can check to see if your website is mobile-friendly with this simple mobile website test. Checking the security of a webpage is easy too. Simply open a page in Chrome, and look at the security status symbol to the left of the web address. 

A lock symbol means your site is secure. An exclamation point in an empty circle means that the information on your website is not secure. A white exclamation point in a red triangle means your website is not secure and is potentially dangerous. 

Deciding if a pop-up is intrusive is pretty straightforward. Does it affect how accessible your website is to a user? If you need further clarification, Google defines “bad” pop-ups as:

Covering the primary content instantly after the user enters a webpage from the search results or trying to view content. 

A pop-up that a user must click on and close before being able to access website content

Above-the-fold pop-ups (like standalone) that are on top of original content. 

How To Improve Page Experience 

So how can you improve? Recall the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when you’re strategizing how to improve your page experience. Below are some core philosophies to prioritize when trying to improve a website’s page experience. 

Prioritize Fast and Responsive Pages 

If your website has pages that take more than 1 or 2 seconds to load, you don’t need a report to tell you that you need to improve page speed. You should prioritize fixing this first because website problems like these affect website revenue in addition to SEO. 

Create Visual Stability

Visual stability refers to the responsiveness of your website. The easier and more seamless a user can click through your website, the better your visual stability. Ask yourself if your website is functional and easy to understand.

Consider Visitor Experience

How easy is it for a visitor to find the information they’re visiting your website to find? Use this perspective to guide you in assessing how good or poor your visitor experience is. Pop-ups, autoplay videos, and music are some of the annoying website addons that will decrease your visitor experience. 

Think Mobile 

If you try to access your website from a smartphone, what does it look like? Is the content readable and scrollable? Tools like Google’s Micro-Moments can help.

You Still Need High-Quality Content

Sometimes when we focus on one area of improvement, we can forget about the others. Whatever you do, don’t sacrifice the quality of your website’s content for the sake of trying to improve Page Experience. If you feel like you’re in a position where you have to choose, you’re likely not solving your problem in the most effective way. 

If original photos, videos, and photos are slowing your site down, you don’t necessarily have to delete them. You can replace them with more condensed versions and place them more strategically on your website. There are many new content trends for 2021 that can help you brainstorm how to organize your website.

Ranking Factors Aren’t Like They Used to Be

It can be difficult for some people to comprehend just how quickly Google’s algorithm evolves. “Optimizing” a website used to be something any semi-intelligent person could figure out. But, search engine ranking has become increasingly technical and complex. 

Trying to digest this Google algorithm update may feel overwhelming, but you’re not alone. Comprehending and taking action to improve search engine performance requires a specialist. If you need help improving your website’s ranking, let’s chat!

Start a conversation with us. 

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-latest-google-algorithm-update/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-latest-google-algorithm-update from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/663305243335999488

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The Paid Search Strategy Guide: How to Maximize Your Investment

Are you looking for a step-by-step guide to paid search strategy to help ensure your PPC investment pays off? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, is an important advertising method for enhancing your SEO results. Organic search engine optimization is a critical part of any online marketing strategy, but a good PPC campaign can help improve your results dramatically.

Like SEO, paid search advertising uses search engines and the people using them to generate website traffic. But SEO is about organically improving your Google search ranking by making your website more useful and appealing to search engines. And as its name implies, paid search is about paying search engines to feature your website or landing page on top of relevant search results.

Pay-per-click can be an incredible business booster if used correctly. But it can also absorb a lot of money without producing many results if it isn’t handled properly. How can you make sure your paid search investment pays off?

That’s what this guide will help you accomplish. Keep reading to discover a PPC and conversion strategy to help you find leads and maximize your advertising budget.

Define Your Goals and Budget Carefully

The first step in creating an effective advertising campaign is to realistically define your goals and budget. Although it’s a basic step, it’s often the point where ad campaigns begin to fly off the rails. It’s all too easy to make plans and budgets that are either too rigid or have unrealistic expectations built into them.

To choose an ideal goal for your PPC campaign, first look at your current goal for your marketing department as a whole. If your marketing goal for this quarter is to increase website traffic, then your advertising campaign should support this.

While you’re deciding on your goal for paid search, take care not to interfere with your current organic SEO with your PPC goals. Find out what your organic share of voice is for keywords you’d like to include in your paid search campaign. If you’re already ranking highly for certain keywords organically, it’s usually best to use different keywords you want to rank for in your paid search campaign.

The appropriate budget for your ad campaign will vary depending on the campaign itself and the users it’s targeting. But in any case, make sure you identify a break-even point where your paid marketing efforts will begin producing a return on investment. This will tell you how much you have to sell to justify your campaign.

Analyze the Competitive Landscape

No planning phase is complete without analyzing the competitive landscape around your brand. This will teach you who your primary competitors are, why they’re seeing success in paid search, and how aggressive your campaign needs to be to compete.

There are tools available online you can use to identify websites that are competing for your audience’s attention. Seeing where your target audience overlaps with someone else’s is a great way to begin optimizing your ad targeting.

One of the most important things to do at this stage is to identify the keywords your competitors are using to successfully find their audience. Once you have a list of these keywords, rank them in order of how well they’re performing for your competitors.

Google Ads has a few features built-in to help you outrank competitors. One such tool is the target impression share feature, which automatically raises your bids to the top spot on a search results page.

Do Proper Keyword Research

You’ve already done a little keyword research by looking at your competitors’ top keywords. Now you’ll want to take that a step farther by identifying the best keywords for you.

Most of the time, the best way to begin keyword research is to brainstorm keywords that you think will perform well. It may seem counterintuitive to rely on your own imagination for keywords, but it works well. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine what words and phrases they would use.

If your website has a built-in search function, looking at past searches from your visitors is another way to find keywords. Knowing what people search for once they’re on your site is a good way to guess what they’d search for to find you.

Finally, use Google Search Console to identify existing organic keywords that are seeing a high click-through rate for your site. These should have an equally high click-through rate when used in your paid search campaign.

Define Your Account Structure Thoughtfully

After completing the above steps, you have now laid the groundwork for getting started with Google Ads effectively. Next, it’s time to set up your account structure.

Your account structure is your collection of Campaigns, Ad Groups, and individual ads and how they’re organized. Most accounts will have a handful of broad campaigns with a few Ad Groups in each one. Advertising budgets are set at the campaign level, while keywords are determined at the Ad Group level.

To define your Campaigns, look through the search terms you’ve identified from your keyword research. You should also identify specific actions you want users to take on your website when they click through from one of those search terms. This will inform the goal of your overall Campaign.

To define Ad Groups, identify keywords that will fit within the broader Campaign and segment them further into separate Groups. Since you set keywords at the Ad Group level, you’ll want terms with similar search intent grouped together.

Write Powerful Ad Copy

Effective ad copy is one of the most important parts of any advertising campaign. Even if your targeting, budget, and landing pages are all set up perfectly, with ineffective copy, your campaign is sure to fall flat.

Of course, entire books have been written about writing advertisements, and you could read several and still have more to learn. So it would be impossible to explain everything that goes into a good ad right here.

That said, one thing you should do to start with is familiarize yourself with the search engine’s ad text policies. While you can get away with imperfect copy, violating Google’s rules for ad text may get your ad removed.

Another good rule of thumb is to use the target keyword for your ad at least once in both the headline and the body text. Action terms, like “sign up” or “buy now,” are good to include near the beginning of the ad so users know what’s coming. Don’t forget the display URL, which should be easy to read and point to your primary domain.

Build Carefully Optimized Landing Pages

At this point in your PPC advertising journey, you’ll have paved the way for searchers to see your ads and find your website. From there, it’s just a matter of using good web copy and design to get them to take the desired action.

Much like ad writing, optimizing web design for conversions is an art unto itself. However, there are a few simple guidelines that can help direct your campaign toward success.

One of the most important things to get right is congruency between the landing page and the ad that came before it. The visitor has already read the ad, so they have an idea of what to expect from your website. But if your landing page deviates too far from what they were expecting, it may make them uncomfortable and cause them to click off.

Make sure your landing page is easy to navigate, with clear indications of what the visitor should do. There should only be one call-to-action, and it should be the most obvious feature on the page, with as few distractions as possible. This way, your website visitor will be most likely to convert into a lead or customer.

Keep Track of Negative Keywords

One pitfall that people new to PPC sometimes stumble into is setting their strategy to autopilot and forgetting it. In order to maximize your advertising investment, you need to be constantly monitoring your paid search campaign.

One thing you’ll need to check on occasionally is your list of negative keywords. You already know that SEO and paid search is all about optimizing for certain keywords. But did you know that it’s also important to select keywords that you don’t want your website to rank for?

This is because some keywords that are technically relevant to your ads may not be used with the right search intent. If searchers run into your website while trying to find something totally different, it will reflect badly on your campaign. For that reason, you should watch out for keywords that are directing people to your site that you don’t want to have associated with your ads.

Optimize for ROI

Just as you should be monitoring your paid search campaigns for unwanted keywords, you should be analyzing and optimizing your ads to improve ROI.

For paid search, return on investment is defined by the goals of your campaign, whether that be cost-per-click or cost-per-conversion. When you optimize paid search for ROI, it means paying less for ads while getting the same (or better) results.

In the short term, you can improve your campaign’s ROI by distributing your budget more effectively. You do this by abandoning poor-performing keywords and redirecting funds to better-performing Ad Groups.

Over the long term, one of the best things you can do for your ROI is to improve your Quality Score. A high Quality Score tells Google that your ad and landing page are relevant and satisfying to searchers. You can improve your score by improving everything about your website and ads over time.

Measure and Report Everything

As we mentioned earlier, a common mistake among beginner advertisers is taking a “set it and forget it” approach to ads. Instead, you need to be measuring everything about your campaigns and running analyses and reports regularly.

This means keeping track of your costs, monitoring the effectiveness of your keywords, and watching how people behave on your website, among other things.

The way you report on ad performance should depend on the goal of your overall PPC strategy. However, you’ll find most of the information you’ll need in Google Ads reports. There you’ll find reports on auction insights, search terms, campaign and ad performance, and more.

When you’re starting out, it’s a good idea to report your paid search results every month. Make sure to place an emphasis on increases and decreases month over month, in addition to the context around those changes.

Remember: what gets measured gets managed. Keeping careful track of your campaign will make it that much easier to produce results.

Let Riserr Handle Your Paid Search Strategy for You

By now you understand how a paid search strategy works. You’ve probably also noticed that Google search algorithms and advertising are complex and often confusing.

However, you shouldn’t let that complexity scare you. Like search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising is incredibly useful once you figure out how it works. But what if you simply don’t have time to figure it all out yourself?

That’s where Riserr comes in. With 11 years of experience getting results, our agency knows how to make sure your business succeeds on Google for you. Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation today.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/the-paid-search-strategy-guide-how-to-maximize-your-investment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-paid-search-strategy-guide-how-to-maximize-your-investment from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/662633341360750592

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Keyword Optimization: The Secret Guide to Boost Conversions

In today’s internet-focused world, having a site with a strong internet presence is vital to your business. Studies show that there are several billion Google searches per day. That says nothing about other search engines like Yahoo and Bing.

If you’ve been working to direct traffic to your site, you might find it an uphill battle. We’re here to help you with improving website traffic and search engine rankings. Read on for some vital information on keyword optimization.

Why Does Search Engine Optimization Matter

Almost everything you’ve ever seen on the internet is hosted on a page. It can be difficult to show exactly how many pages the internet has accrued. In estimate, there are about 1,000,000,000,000 – one trillion – pages on the internet.

Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – is one of the most integral strategies to get yourself to be the one in one trillion that people visit. Getting yourself to stand out in such a massive sea is unspeakably difficult, so any edge you can find is vital.

SEO affects your relevance to a keyword and how often you’ll appear in a search engine when someone searches that keyword. Proper search engine optimization will have your site ranking much higher than others, making it more visible. This is key to appearing in searches and remaining visible on the internet.

What is Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is one of the core features of search engine optimization. If SEO is an umbrella, keyword optimization is sitting comfortably beneath it.

Keywords are one of the main points of SEO, along with proper formatting and frequent posting, as well as several other points. You quite literally cannot practice good SEO techniques without also practicing strong keyword optimization.

A keyword appearing in your content will help with its ranking, but there’s a limit. You won’t want to overstuff your content, nor will you want to only use it once or twice. Proper optimization is one of the driving forces behind any popular website.

Keywords also may not be a single word but a phrase instead. It’s common for a keyword to be a multi-word term, a topic, or even a whole sentence. While shorter keywords are more effective and you should avoid large sentences, anything goes for search engine optimization.

Six Easy Methods to Improve Keyword Optimization

With an understanding of basic SEO and keyword optimization, how can you integrate the techniques? Here are six of the easiest methods to improve your keyword optimization. Practicing these techniques will increase your website traffic and search engine rankings quickly and effectively.

1. Organize Your Keywords

One of the first steps is to organize your keywords in a sensible, meaningful way. Consider searching what the most relevant keywords for your topic are. Rank them accordingly and begin placing them in your content.

The more relevant a keyword, the more frequently you’ll want to place them in your content. While some will be less relevant, maybe even bottom of the list, they’re still good terms to include. Still, you’ll want to include the more relevant terms as a priority.

With proper organization, your keywords will be significantly more effective. Throwing in keywords at random can still be beneficial in an organic search, but much less so. Prioritize and organize your keywords for the maximum benefit.

2. Avoid Keyword Oversaturation

Some believe that because keywords can help their website be better optimized for SEO, that means they should throw them in constantly. You’ve likely experienced this without even knowing while reading through a page that seemed to use the same phrase over and over. This is what many refer to as keyword oversaturation.

This isn’t an effective way to improve your search engine rankings in any form. All this will do is make your content feel as if it was made specifically to rank. This can be a massive blotch in your content for readers who now feel as if they’re reading spam and marketed towards, rather than reading a blog they have an interest in. 

Keyword oversaturation won’t just affect the way your content reads, though. This can actually make it so that search engines reject prioritizing your piece as it recognizes it as spam. Overstuffing your content with keywords then harms your search engine optimization, making you less likely to appear and therefore harming your website traffic.

Another practice that some have used in the past is “invisible keywords.” This is done by putting the words on the page as text, but changing them to be the same color as the background of the page. The thought was that this can stuff in keywords without harming the content’s integrity.

However, this still oversaturates your page and will harm your SEO keyword optimization. This practice has fallen out of trend, but some still recommend it. That said, make sure that you avoid using invisible keywords.

3. Format Website Properly

One way to optimize your keywords has nothing to do with actual organization, prioritizing, or proper saturation of them. Instead, it has all to do with your content itself and how the formatting affects your search engine rankings.

By formatting your website, we mean proper sections for everything, different pages for different subjects, and the general appeal of your website. For example, you wouldn’t want to throw everything from your blog into one single category. Instead, you would want to separate it by category into different pages, allowing readers to click on a page and explore that subject.

This formatting helps for your keyword optimization to register better in a search engine. Having a subheading, heading, or category with a title similar or identical to a high-ranking keyword will help your rankings substantially. This is because such uses are prioritized by a search engine, helping your website stand out.

If you format poorly, you’re abandoning this perk as well as making your content considerably harder for your viewers. Keeping things organized makes your page easier to search, both by search engines and visitors. This increased relevancy can be all it takes for your website traffic to increase considerably.

4. Diversify Your Keywords

Keyword optimization might feel as if it implies a single keyword. However, utilizing only a single keyword can be extremely detrimental to your SEO keyword optimization. In fact, unless your content is very short, a single keyword may prove useless.

Instead, you’ll want to diversify your keywords and add in many of the same categories. Consider phrases that utilize the same keyword or common terms in the same subject as your keyword. 

For example, assume you have chosen to make a website focused on camping. You would want to use several variations of the term, such as camp, campground, camps, camping season, and camping tent. You may also want to use some loosely related terms like RV, glamping, or outdoor living.

It’s also a good idea to use some low-priority keywords that could be used in your subject. If your website is based on outdoorsmanship, adding in keywords like hunting, camping, fishing, woodcutting, or various tools and supplies can be extremely helpful. Every little bit helps to keep your website relevant and optimized for SEO.

That said, if you diversify too much, you might end up with some diminishing returns. Make sure that your keywords are as closely related to your topic as possible, or variations of your primary keyword. That way, your niche and those closely related to it are grouped together by search engines when these keywords are searched.

Do some keyword research to see what sort of terms are common in your niche. Many of these can be utilized, but be careful not to use terms that may already be saturated, as this will sometimes be a more difficult term to rank with. Balance out and prioritize your keywords and your search engine rankings will increase exponentially.

5. Build Small, Then Grow

In the internet age, it’s tempting to have everything be as big as possible. When you’re first starting out, you might feel overwhelmed looking at well-established sites with millions of visitors a month. 

When that happens, it’s tempting to try to go for broke and build your site as big as you can. Some invest in purchasing subscribers and visitors to get their site as much traffic as possible. While this isn’t necessarily awful, it can be bad for keyword optimization.

While it can feel disheartening not to have a great amount of traffic, existing for a decent amount of time can help with search engine optimization. All other factors remaining the same, a search engine is more likely to return a website with five years of activity over one that was founded last month. This can help with an organic search where some are just searching a keyword with no clear information, letting them find your site.

There’s nothing wrong with starting small to make your website successful. The building phase will help to cement your keyword optimization, assuming you continue to practice proper SEO techniques during this time. By the time you’re ready to start getting heavy traffic to your site, search engines will recognize you as an active and reputable site. 

6. Careful With Links

Linking has been one of the best ways to enhance search engine rankings since search engines existed. Put simply, the internet is built on links, both internal and external. Without these links, your site will be a series of floating pages, making them much less likely to appear in a search engine.

While linking is vital, you’ll want to be careful that you don’t accidentally mess up your keyword optimization doing it. For example, it might be tempting to put a hyperlink through one of your keywords. While this sounds helpful, it’s actually a bad practice for your keywords.

This is because a search engine will often cease to see that keyword as a keyword, instead recognizing it as a link. Recognizing the link is good for your search engine optimization, but not recognizing the keyword is poor for your keyword optimization.

You can have the best of both worlds by putting the same link somewhere just as relevant but not over a keyword. That way, you’re able to keep your keyword saturation without sacrificing the enhanced SEO that your link was bringing you.

However, this can be different for external links. For these, you’ll want to use a low-priority keyword rather than using one of your top priorities, such as your primary keyword. Consider using one in a part of a sentence near your primary keyword to help leave them both focused.

There are some links that are extremely detrimental to your page’s search engine rankings, however. Artificial links are uncommon but still see some use, especially among lower-quality websites. When an artificial link is discovered, a search engine will actively avoid putting a site up as a result.

That means all your hard work with your keyword optimization just went out the window. While some tolerate them, artificial links are generally considered a no-go in much of the SEO community. Focus on organic search and linking techniques rather than risking your site’s reputation on an artificial link.

Keep Your Momentum

Keyword optimization can be tricky, but once you get moving, you’ll have some momentum to keep yourself moving forward. Make sure that you’re keeping your momentum going with regular posts and activity.

If you have any more questions or concerns about SEO keyword optimization, feel free to contact us. Browse our informative blog for more tips and tricks on improving your website traffic.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/keyword-optimization-the-secret-guide-to-boost-conversions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=keyword-optimization-the-secret-guide-to-boost-conversions from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/661512182171910144

[racheljhaydentx]

How to Develop a Facebook Advertising Strategy That Works

There are more than 2.8 billion active users on Facebook every single month, and this statistic is only growing over time. More and more people are coming to Facebook so that they can connect with friends and family members. Most recently, Facebook’s group feature has caught the hearts of people at every stage of life.

Since Facebook has been able to maintain its good standing with most users, the social media platform remains one of the best for advertisements. However, you have to know how to build an effective Facebook advertising strategy.

With new rules surrounding Facebook profiles and advertiser conduct, Facebook ad campaigns have changed. In response, your advertising on Facebook has to change, too.

Whether you’re new to Facebook advertising or haven’t revisited your strategy since the privacy rules changed, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to teach you how to advertise on Facebook with today’s rules. Plus, we’re going to share some of our most coveted tips for advertising on Facebook.

1. Start With Pinpointing the Right Audience

When you’re running an advertisement on Facebook, you need to know what kind of audience you’re trying to target. In fact, Facebook is going to ask what kind of users you want your advertisement to reach.

Pinpointing users is more effective when it comes to lead generation and conversion. By putting all of your resources into this target audience, you’re making it easier to find people who want to invest in your product/service.

Rather than trying to guess your audience, Facebook is going to ask you specifically who you’re looking to target. Thus, you need to know your target audience.

Create Your Target Audience

Facebook allows users to define their audiences via several different factors:

Age

Location

Demographics

Interests

If your business has no existing target audience, your marketing team needs to develop a buyer persona as soon as possible. The more specific you can make your target audience, the better you can target their wants and interests.

Custom Audience

Facebook offers advertisements with custom audiences. Some people call these “remarketing ads,” because they allow you to target people that have already taken an interest in your advertisements.

Facebook with show these advertisements again or “remarket” them. Facebook developed this idea after research studies came about regarding business interactions and generating leads. These studies showed that potential customers need to interact with a business about ten times before they can make a decision about whether or not to take the next step.

Everytime that a customer sees an advertisement from your business, this counts as an interaction. However, Facebook can also sense if these individuals have interacted with your Facebook page, your website, or some other entity that’s tied to your business.

By reaching out to these individuals, you’re giving your business a second, third, and even fourth chance to make a good impression. You’re also helping some customers make up their minds if they’re unsure about the product/service that you’re offering.

Lastly, we want to point out the power of your email list. Facebook allows you to input a set of emails that you may want to target with your ads. Many advertisers use their email list to find people who have used the same email to set up their Facebook accounts. This helps increase the number of interactions that you’re having with the people in your email list.

They’re getting emails and personalized advertisements. Over time, they’ll be more likely to become a customer.

Lookalike Audiences

Like the name suggests, lookalike audiences include those people who are like your existing audience. In other words, this Facebook feature takes a look at your current audience and produces a list of new people based on that audience’s interests, demographic details, and more.

This works similarly to local SEO strategy.

Using Facebook’s advertising platform, you can specify the number of people that you want to reach. And, if you’re in a local area, you can specify a location.

Overall, lookalike audiences will help pull in more leads. Whether you’re having trouble pulling in prospects or you just want to expand your audience, lookalike audiences may be the way to go. By finding people who are similar to the individuals who are already interested in your business, you’re increasing the likelihood that these new audience members will take a liking to your business.

2. Pick the Right Kinds of Advertisements on Facebook

Just like Facebook allows advertisers to target different audiences, it also allows advertisers to chose different kinds of advertisements. Depending on your advertising goals and digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to pick different kinds of ads.

In general, there are three kinds of goals that advertisers focus on:

Awareness: increasing the number of people who have heard of your business and/or its products/services

Interaction: increasing the number of interactions that your prospects are having with your business

Conversion: increasing conversion rate (the number of people that become customers of your company)

Depending on your focus(es), you’re going to have a different level of creativity and detail in your advertisement. 

In general, there are three kinds of Facebook advertisements:

Carousel ads

Video ads

Story ads

Most recently, carousel ads have been growing among Facebook advertisers. This kind of advertising allows advertisers to show multiple kinds of products in one advertisement.

Videos ads allow advertisers to show eye-catching videos to potential leads. Video ads tend to be the hardest to create as they need to be attention-grabbing among the rest of the Facebook content. If you’re going to choose to use video ads, you need to bring together a quick, entertaining video.

Lastly, story ads on Facebook are similar to story ads on Instagram. With this kind of advertising, you need to make sure that you’re creating short-form content that lasts a few seconds. Stories are the shortest kind of advertisement.

While you’re choosing the kind of advertisement(s) that you want, you should keep your advertising capabilities in mind. Your team may be better at creating certain kinds of ads.

If you’re unsure about the kinds of advertisements that you want to choose, you can always test out the different kinds of ads and see which ones work the best.

3. Review Your Current Advertisements

If you’ve already run advertisements in the past, you should take the time to review those ads. Even if they’re a few years old, it’s helpful to create a baseline for your upcoming ads.

As you’re reviewing those older ads, you should look for ways to improve your advertising techniques. At the same time, you should focus on advertising to your company’s current goals rather than sticking to the goals that you used to have.

Here are some things to consider while you’re creating your new ads.

Don’t Forget to Entertain Your Audience

No matter what you’re selling or sharing, you should never forget to entertain your audience. If your ad is boring, it’s not going to pull in leads.

Make entertaining advertisements that are colorful, funny, eye-catching, and/or descriptive.

Avoid making ads that are boring or stuffy. You’re not likely to bring in interest with those kinds of ads.

Branch Out Into Video Advertisements

As we mentioned, video advertisements are one of three kinds of ads that Facebook offers. At the same time, Facebook Stories allow short-form videos.

With that in mind, you should try to make video advertisements. Some people believe that these ads are the most difficult to make, but they’re also the most rewarding.

This is not to mention that video content – in general – is becoming more popular. With the rise of platforms like TikTok, more and more consumers are becoming interested in videos. In congruence with this rise, Facebook has adjusted its algorithm to favor video content.

So, you should try to make entertaining video advertisements whether they be short-form through stories or long-form through regular posts. To make the creation process easier, you should think of these videos as a small commercial for your business.

Include a Call-to-Action

You shouldn’t post any advertisements without thinking about (and including) a call-to-action. There are several kinds of calls-to-action that you can try to use:

Click to learn more

Follow our page

Like this post

Share this post

Buy something

Leave a comment

Attend an event

These are great ways to interact with your audience.

However, you should keep in mind that each advertisement should only have one call-to-action. If you ask your audience to complete more than one task at a time, no matter the size of the task, they’re more likely not to do any of them.

You should focus on one thing that you want your audience to do. If you want more than one call-to-action, you should launch multiple advertisements. This way, one individual may see multiple advertisements with a single call-to-action for each.

Use Facebook Offers

Facebook Offers is a little bit different from Facebook advertisements. However, they both do a great job at bringing in more potential customers.

Facebook Offers allows businesses to promote coupons, offers, discounts, and more. By giving out these kinds of offers, you’re more likely to pull in more leads.

You can add these offers to your promoted posts on Facebook to ensure that your targeted audience sees them. Sometimes, a small discount is all that customers need to make a purchase that they’re skeptical about.

So, this may be the best way to encourage customers to make a purchase from your business.

4. Track Your Facebook Advertising Strategy

When marketers beginning making advertisements on Facebook, they tend to get overwhelmed. Facebook offers so many different analytics and numbers that many marketers get lost in the noise.

Nevertheless, analytics are still important. So, you need to make sure that you know what you need to pay attention to.

We highly recommend that new advertisers run smaller campaigns before they spend a lot of their money. You need to make sure that your advertising strategy works before you spend a great amount of money.

During this smaller campaign, you should get a few things in order:

Situate the audience that you want to target

Figure out what kind of Facebook advertisements that you want to use

Estimate the amount of money that you want to spend per advertising campaign

Choose the kinds of calls-to-action that you want to use in your advertisements

Once you figure out what you want to do with your larger advertisements, you can start creating bigger campaigns.

Optimizing Your Budget

Most recently, Facebook has moved to a more optimized budget. Before this change, Facebook advertising budgets were evenly allocated between a company’s campaigns.

This means that a company with a budget of $30 and three advertising campaigns would allocate $10 to each campaign.

Now, with Facebook’s changes, the allocation of the budget depends on the success of the advertisement. If an advertisement is doing really well, it is more likely to get a higher percentage of the budget. On the other hand, an advertisement that is doing poorly will receive a lower percentage of the budget.

This new method of allocation ensures that marketers aren’t going to waste their money on advertisements that aren’t bringing in new leads. At the same time, it increases the favor that advertisers have with Facebook.

Since Facebook is working hard to stretch the advertiser dollar, more advertisers are likely to use their services.

Set Up Your Facebook Advertisements Today

Now, you know everything there is to know about creating, implementing, and evaluating an effective Facebook advertising strategy. You know the ins and outs of the kinds of advertisements, advertising tips, and more.

However, even with all of this information, online marketing can be overwhelming. That’s why we offer online marketing services.

We can help you create, set up, and analyze your advertisements on Facebook as well as those on other platforms. Our experts can help you navigate every step of the advertising process.

Contact us today get started.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/how-to-develop-a-facebook-advertising-strategy-that-works/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-develop-a-facebook-advertising-strategy-that-works from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/660508150781345792

[racheljhaydentx]

9 Proven Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

Does your website see tons of traffic? That’s great, but now you need to check if those visitors convert into paying customers. Otherwise, the amount of traffic means nothing.

At the end of the day, you earn not by counting how many people visit your site but by how many proceeded to hire your services or buy a product.

Not sure how to increase website conversion rate? We’ve got 9 tips right here to help you get started. Check out these important steps to boost conversion below:

1. Know Your Goals

You can’t plan a successful conversion plan or design efficient conversion funnels without knowing your goals. How can you improve your website conversion rates without knowing what the endgame is?

Prioritize realistic goals. Instead of stating you need millions of conversions, aim for something more specific. For example, you can aim to increase conversions by 30% in three months to test the efficiency of a new web design. 

Now you can monitor your success rate. If you don’t hit that goal, it’s time to go back and check the metrics to determine what went wrong. Find out if the goal was too ambitious, if the method was wrong, or if there was a better approach you might’ve ignored. 

Don’t hesitate to break big goals into smaller ones too. You might not reach your main objective until the end of the year. To guarantee you stay on track, break it down into smaller objectives that you can monitor every few months.

Is your main goal to generate enough conversions to see enough profit so you can quit your day job? Break it down into financial goals per quarter. This way you can gauge whether you’re on track every three months.

2. Monitor Your Conversion Funnels

You can break down the path a website visitor takes before they commit and purchase something. This is the conversion path. Each segment is a conversion funnel and you should expect to lose some people with each step.

For example, a basic funnel is for a person to find use keywords on Google to find a product they want. Do you offer it? Great, if your site appeared high on the SERP results, there’s a chance most people will click and land on your site.

However, landing on the homepage is a bad idea. Now they have to search again to find the exact product page. If they can’t, you already lost a percentage of potential conversions. 

Do this analysis again to determine why people abandon their shopping carts or why they don’t click the Buy Now button even after showing interest in a product. Did they add it to their wishlist? Did they leave due to a confusing checkout process or because the shipping costs were too high?

Break down the conversion funnels and then check the metrics. Determine which steps lose the most potential conversions and then see if you can make any adjustments.

3. Using Heatmaps

Whenever you study user behavior on your website, make sure to use a heatmap. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the tool, heatmaps give you a visual representation of user behavior. Red spots indicate portions of a page that people engage with the most while a white portion hints that few to none touch that part at all.

Yes, it only gives you a broad picture, which could lead to a false interpretation of the data. However, it’s still a good tool to identify which elements and segments of a page see the most user activities.

What should you look for with the heatmap?

First, check if your call-to-action elements garner any engagement. If your Buy Now, Subscribe, or Add to Cart buttons don’t see action, it’s time to determine why. Those are the buttons that should appear red so you know something’s wrong if they don’t.

Your CTA elements might appear too small or they might be under the fold (more on that below). Visitors might not notice them due to a cluttered page design or because of poor color and font choices.

4. Improve UX

Google prioritizes smooth user experiences. One strong deterrent to a successful conversion campaign is a messy site. People should be able to identify elements on a page with ease instead of wondering what each button or link would do. 

Optimize your site for sales by prioritizing function over aesthetics. Keep in mind that a pretty website is different from a high-converting website.

Put more effort into making sure your site is easy and quick to navigate. 

Focus on redesigning your website. Start by determining how difficult it is to find something on your site. If you don’t have an on-site search bar or if it takes more than 3-4 clicks to get to any page, you have a high risk of losing potential paying customers. 

Why would they stick around if they can’t find what they want or need?

Page speed is an important element to prioritize. People might bounce out instead of proceeding to order something if pages won’t load quickly.

Another method to improve user experience is to provide a Back to Top button. It’s a simple addition but it quickens the experience for any visitor. It might also help a visitor who read lengthy reviews to go back up and click the Buy Now button!

5. Short and Quick Forms

Always put yourself in the shoes of your customers, especially when it comes to moments when you need to interrupt their shopping spree. Every time you present a customer with a form, make sure they can complete it in as little time as possible.

The longer and more tedious a form, the less likely people will stick around. 

Remember to cut down forms to their simplest design. Don’t ask for unnecessary information. If you can boil it back down to simply asking for their name and email addresses, that’ll work since it’s quick and easy to complete.

Do you need additional information? Leave a notification after they submit the form, reminding them that they can complete the rest later on.

This is especially important when you want visitors to make an account but don’t want to bug them for their address, credit card information, and contact number. You need that information for easier transactions but for now, the form should focus on only one thing first: getting visitors to sign up. You can get the rest by reminding customers they can now access a member page or account page and complete the rest of the form.

6. Above the Fold

Ever heard of the terms below or above the fold?

The “fold” refers to the portion of your page that divides what people can and can’t see before they have to scroll down. You can improve website conversion rates by keeping the most important CTA elements above that line.

Design your site by keeping the Buy Now, Add to Cart, and Signup buttons on the top of the page. However, you shouldn’t ignore the bottom half. You can either add a Back to Top button or feature similar buttons or links. 

This type of page design prioritizes convenience but make sure your CTA buttons don’t get in the way. Gone are the days when it was fine to feature big red arrows pointing at a Buy Now button. That kind of design is too blatant and tacky.

It’s important to keep social media links away from the top half, however. Everything above the fold should focus on getting customers to buy something. If you add a link there to your Facebook business page or Instagram, there’s now a chance for people to abandon their cart and get lost on social media.

7. Highlight Testimonies and Reviews

Did you know most people trust online reviews even though they come from total strangers? Many retail sites don’t allow people to leave reviews unless they bought the product first, which credibility each testimony. Reviews with photos and videos are even more convincing. 

Highlight reviews. Let people see that the products available work as advertised. If there are some issues, let people read about them so they can figure out on their own whether or not it’s worth pushing forward.

Negative reviews can seem scary at first but don’t try to hide them. Doing so will only look bad on your part. Instead, let people see that you’re willing to address those issues by responding positively and apologetically to negative testimonies. 

Got products with hundreds of positive reviews?

Boost conversion rates by highlighting those products on the homepage. Let people see what sells and which products rate the highest. Generate buzz for these products and watch the sales rise.

After all, those products must be worthwhile if they sell that much and still garner good reviews!

8. Abandoned Cart Campaigns

Don’t feel discouraged when shoppers fill up their carts and then suddenly leave your site before completing their orders. Today’s shoppers abandon their carts more than ever before. Some of the reasons are simple to understand and fix:

the checkout process is too tedious

checking out requires making an account

delivery takes too long

limited payment options

A slow page can also cause someone to abandon their cart. It’s also possible that they couldn’t apply a discount voucher they had or a competitor site offered the same products for a lower price. You might have a confusing website design and they simply can’t navigate forward to complete their order, so they give up.

However, you shouldn’t let this be the end of the journey.

Instead, focus on getting those customers to come back and complete their orders. Use a plugin or tool that notifies returning visitors and reminds them about their cart. If the shopper is on your email list, make sure to send out messages to convince them to complete their order!

Don’t give too many incentives, however. Some people might keep items in their carts hoping you’d offer them discount vouchers to bring them back. Instead, send out emails right when the items they have in their carts go on limited discount sales.

9. Test Everything

Got a good plan to deal with abandoned carts? Did you redesign your site and go over all your conversion funnels? The next step now is to test everything.

However, the goal isn’t simply to test whether one plan works or not. To increase website conversion rate, it’s smarter to conduct A/B split tests. This is when you test not only one version of a plan or design but multiple ones, all at the same time.

Here’s how it works: say for example you altered the sign-up forms. One uses a landscape design and asks for a person’s name, email address, and credit card information for verification. A second design is more mobile-friendly and doesn’t require credit card details since the customer isn’t buying anything yet. 

Now run a test involving a small sample of people, during days your site sees the most traffic. This will help you determine which design works better and by studying the metrics you can even find out why.

Of course, it’s a safer idea to hire SEO experts to run tests for you. They have the tools and training to better understand which options worked better and why.

Boost Website Conversion Rate Today

Now you know how to effectively boost website conversion rate. There is no one-solution-fits-all method so you’ll have to combine all of these steps to rework your site, UX, forms, and more. Only then will you be able to further push leads into paying customers.

Of course, improving your site’s conversion rate is only the start. If you need help with site design, SEO, or other marketing methods, we’re here to help. Don’t hesitate to give us a call today and allow us to pave the way for your business’s success.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/9-proven-ways-to-increase-your-website-conversion-rate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=9-proven-ways-to-increase-your-website-conversion-rate from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/659220843738628096

[racheljhaydentx]

The Telltale Signs You Need to Hire a Digital Marketing Consultant

Are you struggling to boost traffic to your website or generate fresh leads? You’re not the only one. In fact, 65% of marketers have the same problem.

Meanwhile, 80% of new leads never translate into sales. About 96% of your site visitors aren’t ready to buy, either.

If you’re struggling to generate leads and sales, consider hiring a digital marketing consultant. They can help you adjust your marketing strategy with lead generation in mind.

On the fence about hiring the best digital marketing consulting agency in town? Here are seven signs you shouldn’t wait.

After reading this guide, you can make a more informed decision with your business in mind. You can even learn how to choose a marketing consultant based on your needs.

Don’t give your competitors the chance to take the lead. Instead, discover the telltale signs you need to hire a marketing agency with this guide today.

Signs You Need a Consultant ASAP

First, let’s determine whether or not you need to consider hiring a digital marketing consultant. Here are the seven telltale signs you need help.

Otherwise, neglecting to hire a consultant could leave you with a lackluster marketing strategy. You could struggle to draw in fresh leads and sales.

Don’t it come to that! If these signs sound familiar, consider hiring a digital marketing consultant right away. With their help, you can boost brand awareness, website traffic, and sales.

1. You’re Not Sure Who Your Customers Are

If you don’t know exactly who your customers are, you won’t appeal to their interests. You’ll struggle to appear in front of them online. You could struggle to understand the problems they’re experiencing, too.

If you don’t understand their pain points, you’ll fail to provide the solution they need.

Your customers will take their business to one of your competitors instead.

Before that can happen, talk to a digital marketing consultant. They’ll help by gathering research about your target audience. The more you know about your customers, the stronger your marketing strategy will become.

If you’re targeting a broad audience, your consultant can create distinct buyer personas for each group. For example, you can define your customers based on:

Location

Age

Household income

Education

Language

Marital status

Gender

Buying behaviors

Interests

Hobbies

Pain points

A female college student will have different needs and interests than a single father of three kids. 

Once you know who your customers are, you can personalize your content with their needs and interests in mind. 

About 70% of customers expect companies to understand their needs. In fact, over 50% will switch brands if the company doesn’t personalize communications. About 74% get annoyed when website content doesn’t appeal to their interests.

Personalizing your content can even improve your ROI. In fact, 80% of customers will make a purchase if you personalize. Personalization can deliver eight times the return on marketing spend, too. 

Personalizing your marketing strategy could set your business up for success. 

2. You Don’t Have a Distinct Brand

Your brand helps you stand out from other businesses in the industry. Without a distinct brand, you could fall into the background. You’ll struggle to generate awareness and recognition, too.

If you don’t have a stand-out brand, consider hiring a digital marketing consultant. They can help you build your brand guidelines. These guidelines will include your:

Mission statement

Vision statement

Unique value proposition

Voice

Tone

Personality

Logo

Color scheme

Image/photography styles

These elements can help you stand out. You can also develop your branding with your target audience in mind. Then, you can appeal to your audience and draw them to your product or service.

It’s important to keep your branding consistent across every marketing platform. If your brand isn’t consistent, talk to a consultant. They can help you update your branding. 

Make sure your branding is fresh, too. If you last updated your brand 10 years ago, consider an upgrade.

3. Your Website is Slow and Outdated

If your branding is outdated, there’s a chance your website is, too.

An old, outdated website could scare away visitors. In fact, most people won’t return to a site after a bad experience. They’ll leave and take their business with them.

Instead, make sure to talk to your marketing consultant about updating your website. They’ll make sure your site is fast, mobile-optimized, and secure.

A fast, organized website can improve the user experience (UX). Visitors will have an easier time finding the information they need. They could become more likely to convert as a result.

Then, you can generate more leads, sales, and conversions.

If your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, you could leave your business and customers vulnerable. Make sure you see “HTTPS” in front of the domain name.

Is your site optimized for conversions? Make sure there’s a lead opportunity on every page, too.

Otherwise, make sure to follow Google’s Core Web Vitals. These vitals can further improve the user experience. A positive user experience can improve your clickthrough rate and dwell times.

Your search engine ranking will improve as a result. Then, you can reach more customers and draw more traffic.

Run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test. Contact a marketing consultant if your site is slow or isn’t optimized.

A single-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversions by up to 20%. In fact, people who have a bad experience on your site are 62% less likely to make a purchase. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or data-driven your campaigns appear. 

In other words, a slow, outdated website could hurt your entire marketing strategy. 

You can learn more about the importance of websites for businesses here.

4. You’re Not Creating Content

About 90% of all marketers use content marketing to generate inbound leads. In fact, 53% set content creation as their highest priority. Over 70% say content marketing increases leads and engagement.

In fact, content marketing generates 3 times more leads than traditional marketing strategies. 

Marketers who prioritize daily blogging are 13 times more likely to experience a positive ROI, too.

Over 30% of marketers don’t have a documented content marketing strategy, though.

If you’re not creating content for your website, your website could start to look stale. Meanwhile, you’ll miss a chance to generate traffic. If you’re not attracting new visitors to your website, you’re missing out on new leads.

Content creation gives you a chance to demonstrate your experience and expertise. In fact, Google prioritizes content that demonstrates EAT. EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Establishing EAT within your content can encourage brand trust and loyalty.

If consumers don’t trust your brand, they won’t shop from your business. Instead, you can use your content to give them a reason to trust you. Once you develop brand trust, you can encourage brand loyalty to grow.

Brand loyalty can help you retain long-term customers and generate repeat sales. Your ROI can rise as a result.   

Unfortunately, many businesses struggle to create fresh content. If you’re not creating content, consider hiring a digital marketing consultant. They can help you develop a content marketing strategy. 

You can create content in different formats, including:

Blog posts/articles

eBooks

Webinars

Videos (tutorials, company culture, testimonials, etc.)

Polls

Quizzes

Checklists

You can use your content marketing materials as lead magnets. For example, you can encourage someone to provide their email in exchange for your eBook.

With a strong content marketing strategy, you can attract more website traffic and boost leads.

5. You Don’t Have an SEO Strategy

Nearly 70% of all activities online start with a search engine like Google. Only 0.78% of people look at the second page, though. If you’re not ranking at the top of a search engine results page (SERP), you need help.

Otherwise, you could miss a chance to reach customers. The best digital marketing consulting agency can help. With search engine optimization (SEO), you can boost your rankings.

In fact, SEO drives 1,000% more traffic than organic social media. Leads from SEO have a 14.6% close rate, too. 

About 60% of marketers say inbound strategies (SEO, content, etc.) are their highest source of quality leads.

SEO can help boost your ranking on SERPs, which can help:

Boost brand visibility, awareness, and recognition

Generate traffic to your site

Increase leads, conversions, and sales

Boost your ROI

Establish you as a thought leader in the industry

Establish your credibility, fostering brand trust and loyalty

You can rank ahead of your competitors to generate leads before they get the chance.

Google’s search engine algorithm changes throughout the year, though. If you’re not up-to-date with the latest SEO trends, call a consultant. Your digital marketing consultant can establish your SEO strategy.

With their help, you can start reaching more customers online. 

6. You’re Avoiding Social Media

Social media platforms gain 1.3 million users every day. That’s 15.5 new users a second. Today, 4.2 billion people use social media around the world.

The average user spends nearly 2.5 hours on social media every day. If you’re not using social media marketing, you’re missing a chance to reach customers.  

Many businesses are still wary about using social media. If you’re not sure where to start, consider hiring a digital marketing consultant. 

First, they’ll help you determine which platforms will help you reach your target audience. To focus on younger consumers, you can use TikTok and Snapchat. Older consumers are more likely on Facebook.

Then, your consultant will help you create social media content with your audience in mind. For example, you can create Stories, Reels, and other engaging posts. They’ll help you determine which hashtags to use to expand your reach, too.

Social media marketing can help you connect with your customers online. 

7. You’re Struggling to Generate Leads

If your current digital marketing strategy isn’t helping you generate leads, it’s time to make some adjustments. Consult a marketing agency right away. They can help you make an omnichannel marketing strategy.

You can appear in front of customers at different touchpoints and attract them to your website. Then, you can create conversion opportunities on your site to generate leads.

With help from a consultant, you can give your business the boost it needs.

How to Choose the Perfect Consultant

Do these signs that it’s time to hire a consultant sound familiar? If so, it’s time to start your search. Here are a few tips that can help.

1. Establish Your Goals

First, take the time to establish your marketing goals. For example, you might want to:

Boost brand awareness

Become a thought leader

Generate website traffic

Gain social media followers

Boost leads and conversions

Generate sales on your eCommerce site

Improve your ROI

Once you establish your goals, you can determine which marketing services you need. 

2. Look for Relevant Experience

Try to find an established digital marketing consultant. Make sure they have years of experience. Then, make sure their experience is relevant to your business.

For example, if you work in the IT industry, try to find a consultant that’s worked with IT businesses in the past. Their previous experience could strengthen your marketing strategy.

3. Review Their Services

Take the time to review the services each consultant offers. Make sure their services align with your goals.

If you want to generate awareness, traffic, and leads, look for someone who offers search engine marketing services. Are you concerned about your reputation? Look for reputation management services instead. 

4. Consider Their Reputation

Every agency will try to convince you that they’re the best digital marketing consulting agency in the industry. Don’t take their word for it.

Instead, ask for references and reviews. Check their BBB and Google My Business listings for reviews, too.

You can also determine if they’re capable of accomplishing your goals by reading case studies. Look for case studies that cover the services you need.  

5. Check the Contract

Take the time to review each consultant’s contract. Make sure they’ll develop a customized plan based on your needs. 

Ask about their payment structure before signing on the dotted line, too. 

Set for Success: 7 Signs You Need a Digital Marketing Consultant ASAP

Do these seven signs you need a digital marketing consultant sound familiar? Don’t wait to ask for help. The sooner you develop a marketing strategy, the sooner you can boost your business.

With a consultant at your side, you can set your business up for lasting growth and success. 

Ready to boost your digital marketing strategy? We’re here to help.

Get started with a free, no-obligation consultation from our team today.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/the-telltale-signs-you-need-to-hire-a-digital-marketing-consultant/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-telltale-signs-you-need-to-hire-a-digital-marketing-consultant from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/658613069177618433

[racheljhaydentx]

What Is the Difference Between SEO and PPC?

One of the big hurdles in starting your digital marketing campaign is the fact that there are so many darn acronyms to contend with. You’ve got SEO, PPC, PPO, and numerous others. 

Not to mention all of the nuances and particulars that go into each one of those concepts. We’re going to break down the differences between the main two today. 

We’ll look at the difference between SEO and PPC, giving you some insight into these two marketing tactics and how they can benefit your business. Let’s get started. 

What’s The Difference Between SEO and PPC?

The important thing to note is that PPC and SEO are two different branches in the digital marketing tree. 

Both are methods of marketing your business, although each one poses its own particular benefits. There may also be certain times to use each one to complement the other and find the most success. 

A deep understanding of each will help you to get a well-rounded digital marketing platform, or at least understand what an SEO agency is doing when they explain their efforts to you.

You’ll find that search engine optimization and PPC advertising aren’t as complicated as they seem to be. That said, they can take up a lot of time and effort. As you work through both ideas today, ask yourself if you have the time and energy to devote to these practices. 

A lot of small business owners find that it’s too difficult to manage their normal work as well as the responsibilities of digital marketing. In those cases, it’s a good idea to hire an agency to help you with your campaign. 

Professionals can eliminate the learning curve and start to bring you results right away. Further, the results they bring might be a lot more significant than the ones that you could make time for with a busy schedule. 

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the effort that websites make to try and rank better in the search engine results pages. Each search engine has its own particular search algorithm, so tactics will change a little bit depending on the search engine you’re going for. 

That said, most of the web traffic comes from Google. So, most websites on the internet optimize their sites for the Google search algorithm.

When you try to rank well in results pages, you’re doing it for a specific keyword phrase. You can’t just try to be “high-ranked,” because Google doesn’t categorize websites and rank them by niche. 

Instead, they do a particular equation for each keyword search and produce the results accordingly. That means that the entire process starts with finding the right keywords to try and rank for. 

The Importance of The Keyword

The entire process starts with the keyword. When a user wants to look something up, they type a specific keyword phrase into the search bar. 

After that, Google runs that keyword phrase against roughly 200 factors. The AI sifts through the billions of sites in its index and pulls out the sites that would be most relevant to the keyword search in question. 

In a matter of milliseconds, the user is faced with a list of Google’s best pages in relation to the term that they searched. Slight variations in the keyword search will lead to changes in the results that show up. 

So, “great bicycle” might have one set of results, while “great bike” might have another. It’s that nuance that makes search engine optimization so challenging, but it’s also what provides enough unique ranking opportunities for small businesses to have success.

If massive companies could rank at the top position for all of the searches in a particular niche, there wouldn’t be much use for small businesses to try to get exposure through search engines. 

Finding The Right Keyword

The challenge, then, becomes finding the right terms to rank for. While Google produces unique results for each search, it’s still true that the most powerful companies or businesses in a niche tend to rank for the best keywords. 

The most popular search result pages are bogged down with the most popular brands, it makes sense. Small businesses should look for keyword phrases that have a lot of traffic, but relatively low competition. 

Keyword research is the process of finding terms that strike some kind of manageable balance between those two factors. It’s also about finding terms that are popular within your target demographic. 

The beautiful thing about keyword research tools is that they allow you to get insight into all of those details. You can see how popular a term is, look at the competition, and know who’s making those searches. 

Optimization Approach 

Once you’ve got a keyword selection, it’s time to start implementing them into your content. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of optimizing pages today, but we’ll give you a good idea of how to approach the process. 

The idea is to optimize your main pages for the terms that will bring you the most success. If you can get your product, contact, and other main pages to rank in the top five results of Google, you’ll be in great shape. 

Those are the pages that will bring in the most money, so it makes sense that you would put the most effort into them. 

You can’t stop there, though. Those pages won’t rise up the ranks unless they’ve got a little bit of help behind them. Note that a web page’s strength is measured by itself as well as in relation to its main site. In other words, the quality of your specific page matters a lot, but it helps if your website is popular. 

Content Creation Effort

After your main pages have been optimized, your job is to put out a regular stream of search-engine-optimized content. That content should be created in response to the keyword research that you do. 

When you find a keyword that fits your goals, you can try to find the question that’s implied within it. For example, our “new bike” keyword would imply that the user is looking for a new bike. 

If not, they’re curious about new bikes, biking, outdoor activities, and other things within that niche. 

So, you can take that keyword and create a piece that addresses the user’s implied question. It doesn’t have to be direct and dry, though. You could write a post about how to find new biking locations, the best time of year to buy a new bike, the best bike brands, or whatever else comes to mind. 

The idea is to create something that’s natural to your brand while incorporating the keyword phrase in a natural way. 

Polishing Your Website

The other end of search engine optimization is called “off-page” SEO. These are factors that relate to how your site works. 

User experience is important to Google. Within the user experience umbrella lay site speed, response time, site architecture, design, and more. Those factors are difficult to adjust if you’re not a graphic designer or web designer. 

There are a number of specific values that Google places on different aspects of site speed. It’s worth talking with a web designer about these when it comes to your site. Site architecture might be one of the things that you have some control over if you manage your website. 

This refers to the way that your pages are laid out. The idea is that one page should never be more than two or three clicks from any other. If your site is organized in a logical way, users should be able to get from place to place without much trouble. 

Free Ad Space

When you start getting good rankings, the time spent at the top of the results pages is like a constant advertisement. It’s also free to sit at the top of the results pages. 

While it may cost some money to get your site in a position to rank, ranking itself is free. Depending on the popularity of the keyword, those rankings could make the difference for your business. 

What Is PPC?

PPC stands for “pay-per-click.” 

It’s a form of advertising that allows you to place your content in social media feeds and search results pages without having to go through the process of optimization. 

One of the benefits of PPC is that it allows you to reach very specific audiences. You can reasonably pinpoint your target audience on multiple platforms and place your advertisement in front of them. 

You might know these kinds of ads as “sponsored posts” that show up on social media. You’ll also see them at the very top of a lot of search results pages, typically holding the first two or three spots in the search. 

What’s With The Name?

The name “pay-per-click” refers to the way that you’re charged for the advertisements. You’re only required to pay whenever you receive an engagement on the ad. 

An engagement could be a like, share, comment, or click. When someone sees your ad but doesn’t engage, you aren’t charged. It’s a great way of getting exactly what you pay for. You can also set a budget so your ad is removed once you reach the maximum amount you’re willing to pay. 

Pricing isn’t uniform for all ads, though. You pay more for the ad space that’s going to get more attention. These prices are decided through a process of auction. 

Different individuals name a price for the keyword to rank for, and that price goes up as more and more people bid. The average keyword price per click is around 60-80 cents, although a lot of keywords can go for a higher price.

In some cases, you’ll luck out and get a popular keyword phrase for a lot less than it’s worth if nobody bids on it. 

Ads Require A Quality Site

One thing to keep in mind is that ads won’t work unless your site is up to par. If your ad is great but your site seems suspicious, you aren’t likely to get a lot of ROI.

So, it’s important to make sure your user experience and site function are good before you invest a lot into PPC ads. That said, ads are very effective when your site can complement them and lead users to a sale. 

It can be smart to use SEO and PPC at the same time. The traffic from a good ad will boost your SEO metrics, and the work that goes into an SEO campaign will help your ads become more effective. 

If that’s your plan, though, it might be smart to wait until the back-end SEO is complete so that users are able to work through your site without any hiccups.

Locating Your Target Audience

Another thing to consider with PPC ads is that your audience isn’t going to be present on every platform. You might dump a lot of time and effort into Facebook Ads when your target demographic is more present on Instagram, for example. 

It’s important to know where your people are spending their time online so that you can reach them more effectively. If your niche is more geared toward Google searches, then you could consider spending more of your ad budget on Google Ads. 

The point is to do your research before you start putting ads out into the internet so that your time and effort aren’t wasted. 

A good way to streamline that process and make sure you get results is to work with a marketing agency. Agencies can offer effective SEO and PPC services that make the entire process easy. 

Interested in Learning More About Digital Marketing Services?

Now that you understand the difference between SEO and PPC, you can start to think about how you want to implement them into your business plan. There’s a lot to think about, but there are a lot of resources out there that can help you along the way. 

We’re here to bring you the digital marketing information you need. Explore our site for more ideas on SEO, PPC, content creation, and more. 

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/what-is-the-difference-between-seo-and-ppc/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-the-difference-between-seo-and-ppc from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/657964057140314112

[racheljhaydentx]

The Website Design Process Explained

Are you a business owner looking to create a website for your company? Or, do you own a business and want to broaden your audience?

Websites not only make it easier for your audience to engage with your business but they also make it easier for people to find your business in the first place. 

There are well over 1 billion websites around the world today and with that, the number of internet users is growing as well. This is why the internet is one of the best places to promote your business. Learning the best website design process will help you to gain a bigger online audience and increase your traffic.

If you want your business to succeed, creating a company website is key. If you want to know how to build a website, check out this guide of everything you need to know about the website design process. 

Planning Your Project

The first step in building a website is to figure out what you want your website to accomplish. What goals do you want your website to meet? Who are you trying to reach?

Outline your project to create specific goals for your business. This will help you to keep track of your progress and give you a guide for taking the next steps for designing a website. 

Identify your target audience so that you can create and produce content catered to them. This will keep your audience engaged and interested in your business, so this is an important step. 

Identify competitor websites and get a feel for what your website can achieve. Knowing what your competition looks like will give you a sense of what works and what doesn’t in your field. This will help you to plan the layout of your website later on.

Make sure you do preliminary SEO and keyword research for your business website so that you can bring in traffic and attract your target audience. Your SEO research is key to having a successful website. Make sure that you identify your exact niche so that you can cater your content to them. 

Making a Strategy 

Once you identify your goals, you can begin to make a strategy for putting your website together. Planning out what needs to go into your website, how long it will take, and how much money you will spend is an important part of building a website. 

Doing this will help you to avoid scope creep, which can be harmful to small business websites. Scope creep is when your project starts to expand beyond your means, taking longer, or costing more than expected. 

Having a strategy and defining your scope will keep your website on track, on schedule, and on budget. This will help to keep you from having any unwanted setbacks or hiccups in your website design process. 

Wireframes

The next step in the website design process is to build your foundation. Creating a wireframe and sitemap framework will give you an idea of the layout your website will have. 

Your wireframe will be a visual guide that shows you where you will be inputting content. This will help you to get an idea of what content to bring in, what size content, and how much. 

This will be a template for your entire website. It will be the architecture that you build off of later, so make sure that it suits your needs and looks how you want it to. 

Test out a few different options until you find one that you like. You can test it out with sample content to see how your website will look when it is completed so you get a better idea of what you are working with. 

Content Collection

The next step is to start collecting and creating content for your website. This is where you can use the SEO and keyword research that you did when planning your project. Creating a content strategy will allow you to keep your website consistent and your audience satisfied. 

Make sure that your content is working for you to bring more attention and traffic to your website. Using your keywords throughout your website will help you to appear on search engines, so using them in your content will help to get your website noticed. 

Make sure that your content is not too confusing and is accessible to everyone. This will allow more people to engage in your website and can potentially broaden your audience. By following web content accessibility guidelines, you can make sure that your website is usable and accessible to everyone. 

Keeping your content simple, accessible, and frequently using your keywords are the keys to a successful website content strategy. 

Design Details

Now that you have a content strategy you can start to develop your brand. This will help you to keep your website to look organized and keep your content consistent. 

Your brand will serve as a style guide for you to follow. Decide on a few colors to use for your template and be consistent throughout your website. Too many different colors can make your website confusing and look chaotic. 

Decide on what fonts you want to use as well. Similar to the colors, too many fonts can be confusing so try to refrain from using too many. Pick one font for all of your headers and one for your text and stick with them throughout your website layout. 

Add in your visual elements to your website like media, logos, and banners. Your visual elements should work with your website, not against it. Make sure that your pages are not overcrowded and that your colors work well together. 

It is also important to make sure that your visual elements don’t take away from the rest of your website. Think about what the most important elements of your page are. What do you want your audience to see first?

Put your important elements in the most obvious places, and make them the most noticeable part of the page. It may be tempting to add in a lot of flair and stylistic elements to your website, but making sure the most important parts of your page stand out takes priority.

Start adding in your content and make sure that it works with your brand and your layout. Play around with different colors and themes until you find a design that best fits your business. 

Test Your Website

Before you can launch your website, you need to test it to make sure that all of the elements are working correctly. You can identify if there are any bugs or errors that need to be fixed before it reaches your audience to reduce the risk of any unwanted confusion. 

Testing your website will also help to make sure that your website translates to all devices as well. This is especially important nowadays since so many people use their mobile phones to access the internet.

Making sure that your website adapts to different devices will give you a better chance of reaching a larger audience and bring in more traffic. 

Website Launch  

Once you have planned, designed, developed, and tested your website you can finally go live. Launching your website for your business can be exciting at first, but your work isn’t quite done yet. 

How will you get the word out for your new website? Promoting your website on different media platforms will help you to draw in your target audience and bring traffic in. 

There are many options for promoting your website. One popular option is using paid advertisements. This will give you quick and easy exposure, but it may not be right for your business. 

Take into account any costs of advertisement to make sure that this option fits into your budget.

You can also gain lots of traffic with your organic SEO, so if you are using your researched keywords you will see results without having to pay for them. That makes SEO an important part of your website promotion. 

Maintaining Your Website 

Now that your website is open to the world to see, you might notice more bugs or issues that didn’t come up before. As traffic starts to flow in, keep track of your website analytics. 

Track your conversions and pay attention to what is working with your target audience and what isn’t working. You may notice that your traffic gets confused by your navigation or doesn’t often leave your homepage. 

This could mean that your layout usability is not as good as it should be or your design is not simple enough. This will allow you to make some changes and help you to keep your website running smoothly and efficiently. 

You can also keep track of where your audience is scrolling and clicking on your website, or even at what point they decide to leave. By using heat maps, you can see how well your efforts are being received by your audience and if your content is getting engagement. 

This will allow you to see what parts of your website may need improvement or if your content is working with your target audience. 

Don’t Stop There

Once your website is up and running, it is important to remember to keep up with your audience. Understanding and addressing your audience’s pain points and concerns is the key to having a successful business website.

Your audience will tell you what is working for your business and what is working against it. All you need to do is gather that information. 

There are a couple of ways that you can collect feedback from your target audience. Don’t be afraid to try out several different options so that you make sure you are getting accurate results. 

You can conduct surveys on your website so that engaging customers or site visitors can respond to how their experience was on your website. This can either be an option after a transaction is completed or it can be placed on your landing page. 

Whatever location you decide, a survey on your website is a great way to gather feedback from your audience. 

You can also gather feedback by sending out an email to your audience. This is a great way to reach your audience anywhere. While having a survey on your actual website is a great method for people currently engaging with your content, you won’t be able to reach people who have used your website in the past.

That makes email marketing a great method of gathering feedback from your audience. Instead of relying on your audience coming to you, you can reach out to your audience. 

Finally, you can utilize social media to gather feedback. You can do research to find what social media platforms your target audience uses the most and use those platforms to reach out to them. 

Whether you create a link for a survey on your website or utilize poll options on social media platforms, this is a great, easy way to gather audience feedback. 

Website Design Process Made Easy

If you are wanting to create a website for your business but don’t know where to start, don’t worry. The website design process doesn’t have to be difficult. Creating a website for your business can be made easy by following these web design tips. 

Make sure you set goals for your business, plan out your strategy, follow your brand style guides, and keep track of your website progress. These tips will help you to create and maintain a successful website for your business and broaden your audience. 

Do you want to learn more about creating and designing a website for your company? We got you covered. Reach out today and find out how we can help you design your website!

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/the-website-design-process-explained/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-website-design-process-explained from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/657349930838573056

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How to Get Backlinks: A Complete SEO Guide

Google claims that backlinks are one of its top three ranking factors. Unfortunately, over 66% of pages don’t have backlinks. Without SEO backlinks, you could struggle to improve your ranking on Google search results pages.

A higher ranking can position you in front of more consumers online. Then, you can boost brand awareness, gain credibility, and generate more leads.

What are backlinks, exactly? Backlinks send readers on other sites to your site.

Learning how to get backlinks could prove crucial to your search engine optimization strategy. The more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it gains from Google.

Not sure where to start? Here are 10 tips to get backlinks to your site.

With these tips, you can boost your SEO rankings and set your business up for success. Get started with these 10 easy tips today!

1. Add Links Where You Can

First, take the time to “add” your own links across the website. Adding links involves going to websites that don’t belong to you and creating links there. This tactic includes:

Creating job search listings

Posting comments on other blogs

Posting on forums, communities, and Q&A sites

Creating social profiles

Submitting your company on business directories

It’s important to note that since these links are easy to create, they usually have a low value in Google’s eyes. They won’t give you a competitive advantage, since your competitors can create the same links with ease.

However, you shouldn’t neglect this link-building tactic entirely. When learning how to get backlinks, it’s important to diversify your strategy. Diversifying your SEO backlinks can maximize your online reach.

Beyond that, these link-building tactics can help you gain online visibility. People will have an easier time finding your website and blog content.

They might decide to create a backlink to your content as a result. 

Make sure to claim your Google My Business listing while you’re at it. This listing will help consumers find your name, address, and phone number (NAP). It can also help more people find your website.

Claim your website on other business directories, too. Focus on directories that are well known. These sites gain traffic, which can help you generate more visitors to your own sites.

Don’t forget to optimize your social media profiles, too. As you update your profiles, make sure your website appears on each one. 

Otherwise, post comments on other blogs directing people to relevant content on your website. Blog comments are considered “nofollow” links. While they might not quote as part of your link-building strategy, remember, you want to diversify your links.

Again, these low-quality links can still help you gather traffic, which could earn you a backlink in the future. 

2. Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy

About 99% of the websites ranking in the top results of Google have at least one external link along with a number of internal links. If you want to learn how to get backlinks this year, you need to improve your overall content marketing strategy.

Otherwise, people won’t want to link to your website.

In fact, developing high-quality content can encourage other companies to link to your content without you asking. You could save yourself valuable time while boosting your SEO ranking without additional effort. 

About 70% of all activities online begin with a search engine. Creating content to cover a range of search terms can help you appear for more queries. Consumers and other companies will have an easier time finding your content online. 

Unfortunately, 75% of searchers never look beyond the first page of results. If your blog content isn’t ranking on the first page, people might never see your content.

Improving your content marketing strategy can help you generate more traffic. People will see your experience and expertise and want to link to your posts. You’ll start generating more website backlinks as a result.

Here are a few ways you can improve your content marketing strategy to generate more backlinks.

Case Studies

Case studies can allow you to showcase the great work you’ve done for your clients. Your insight into a specific process could become valuable to others. Other businesses within your industry might decide to link to your case study as a result.

Make sure your case study includes data-driven, insightful details.

Expert Roundups

If you find the opportunity to, participate in an expert roundup. This is a cost-effective way to gain links from other bloggers.

You can encourage other experts within your industry to add their own tips to your roundup. They’ll likely want to link to the post on their own blog. 

Otherwise, look for opportunities to participate in someone else’s roundup. Make sure the roundup is focused on businesses within your industry.

Interviews

Interviews give you the chance to showcase your experience and expertise. You’ll get the chance to demonstrate that expertise to a wider audience.

Offer helpful tips and guidance to boost your credibility.

Ask the publication that interviews you to link to your website.

Local PR

Local newspapers and online publications can help you gain news coverage, too. Consider contributing expert advice in a regular column. Otherwise, share your success stories and boost your credibility.

Publish Ultimate Guides

As you start sharing more high-quality content on your own website, consider gathering your content into an ultimate guide. You can learn how to get backlinks by offering people a comprehensive reference tool. Journalists and other bloggers will want to reference your guide within their own content.

For example, let’s say you’ve written multiple blog posts about search engine optimization. You can gather those blog posts into a guide and create a dedicated landing page on your website.

People can link to the main landing page or the individual posts. Either way, you’re gaining multiple SEO backlinks to your site!

3. Ask for Links

Consider developing an outreach program and start asking for links. Before you do, make sure to give people a compelling reason to link to your website. Remember, people won’t link to your content unless it’s worthwhile. 

For example, you might want to consider guest blogging. With guest blogging, you’ll create a unique post to share on someone else’s blog. Then, you can add a link to your website within the quote.

In this case, focus on the fact that you’re creating fresh, engaging content for someone else’s website.

You can also use the skyscraper technique. 

With the skyscraper technique, you’ll find a piece of content relevant to your interests that already has a lot of backlinks. Then, you’ll create a fresh post that’s even better.

Visit the websites that are already linking to the original post. Then, show them your superior piece of content. They’ll want to link to your website instead. 

In this case, you’re offering websites a great piece of content they can share with their audience.

Other great ways to ask for links include:

Sending an exclusive press release to industry-specific publications

Giving journalists an expert quote for their article

Asking people to give you credit for using your unique image

Helping people fix broken links on their websites

Mentioning other businesses or their work within your own content (encouraging them to do the same)

Offering link exchanges

Posting positive feedback about someone’s product or service in a testimonial

Find legitimate ways to ask for links. Using these tips to get backlinks can boost your ranking through white hat SEO tactics.

4. Update Old Content

If you find an older piece of content online, take a look at the backlinks the piece is already using. Look for backlinks that are old and outdated. If the piece is referencing old content, make a fresh post on the same subject.

Then, encourage the website to use your content (which includes fresh, more relevant data and information) instead.

As you create new posts, make sure to share your content on social media or through an email campaign. Sharing your content can expand your reach, helping more people find your fresh post.

Take a look at your own blog archives, too. Do some of your old posts have outdated information?

Update it! Otherwise, consider reformatting an old post into something new and fresh.

For example, maybe you have a lengthy blog post that’s full of statistics and data. Reformat that post into an infographic. Then, share your brand new post online!

Either way, updating old content could help you generate new backlinks to a website. 

5. Contact Journalists

Remember, you don’t have to gain website backlinks alone. Consider working with journalists to gain more SEO backlinks, too.

Most journalists receive email pitches that are overly promotional. Journalists are looking for content that will benefit their readers. You can earn high-quality backlinks by offering content journalists want.

First, look at each publication. Determine the publication’s target audience. Then, consider what content would interest that audience.

Consider current topics that are timely and newsworthy, too. 

Then, pitch content the journalist might find newsworthy. Focus on the benefit you’re offering them, such as an exclusive story.

6. Reclaim Unlinked Mentions

Make sure to reclaim unlinked brand mentions you gain, too. 

You might not realize that people are mentioning your business unless you’re tracking mentions. You can use Google Alerts to keep track. As you gain mentions, consider contacting the businesses that are discussing your brand. 

Then, ask them to add a link to your website. Make sure the link you provide them is relevant to the context. For example, maybe they mentioned a specific product.

Encourage them to link to that specific product page. The company that mentioned your brand can provide their readers with a better user experience.

Meanwhile, you’ve learned how to get backlinks and new customers. It’s a win-win.

Keep a lookout for online brand mentions to gain fresh website backlinks.

In the meantime, make sure to avoid these mistakes with your link-building strategy.

7. Use Images

You can also use your branded images as a means of gaining new website backlinks. For example, you can create:

Charts and graphs (make sure to use original data)

One-page templates (like checklists)

Photo galleries other brands can use

Diagrams to explain complex concepts

Infographics

Make sure to maintain brand consistency as you develop these graphics. Brand consistency can help you generate awareness and recognition.

As people start using your images, ask them to link to your website. You’ll gain more SEO backlinks while demonstrating your experience and expertise.

Keep creating fresh images and graphics throughout the year to gain more opportunities for backlinks. 

8. Study the External Links Report

Companies with active blogs produce 67% more leads than those without blogs. Meanwhile, companies with blogs generate 97% more links than others, too.

These companies also generate five times more conversions than those without active blogs.

As people start linking to your fresh, high-quality website traffic, keep track of who mentions your business. You can use the Google Search Console Reports’ External Links report to keep track. You can determine who has linked to your content in the past.

Then, you can see which posts they thought were worth linking to.

Use that data to make more informed decisions with your content marketing. Create similar content to gain another backlink!

9. Utilize Forums

Take the time to participate in different forums that are relevant to your industry. Then, show people that you’re an industry expert. You can start driving traffic to your website as a result.

People will start seeing your high-quality content and begin linking to your posts. 

10. Work With Influencers

About 90% of marketers believe influencer marketing is effective. In fact, over 40% say influencer marketing is their top ROI-generating marketing strategy. You can work with influencers within your industry to gain website backlinks.

For example, you can ask an influencer to review your products. They can share a link to your product page within their post.

Then, you’ll generate a backlink and start generating more referral traffic.

At the same time, you can leverage the influencer’s existing reach and brand trust to boost your own!

How to Get Backlinks: 10 Link-Building Strategies for Online Success

Don’t miss a chance to boost your SEO rankings to start reaching more customers. Instead, use these tips and learn how to get backlinks with ease. With these tips, you can boost your domain authority, improve your rankings, and reach more customers. 

You don’t have to use these tips to get backlinks on your own. Instead, consider working with an experienced SEO agency. Our services can help boost your SEO ranking.

Start with a free consultation today!

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/how-to-get-backlinks-a-complete-seo-guide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-get-backlinks-a-complete-seo-guide from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/656684305484070912

[racheljhaydentx]

15 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses

Thanks to everybody being online, digital marketing has become the new business cards, billboards, and TV commercials wrapped into one. In fact, the industry is valued at around $300 billion, and that number is only expected to rise.

Well, if you’re running a business, you’re missing out on huge opportunities by lacking in your digital marketing strategy. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be too hard to improve!

Every business’ digital marketing strategies could always use some improvement, so let’s talk about some helpful tips to keep building your customer base!

Free Digital Marketing Strategies

You read that right. We’re talking about some digital marketing strategies you can use to grow your business for free!

Now, full disclosure, almost any of these options could be improved if you put a little bit of money into them. However, any and all have the option to get started with zero dollars in your pocket.

Search Engine Optimization

Showing up on the first or second page of a Google search result can literally be the difference between a successful business or one that folds. SEO may even be the most valuable marketing tool out there, as over 40% of sales are made by organic web traffic. The best part? If you know what you’re doing, it’s free!

What is SEO? It’s optimizing your website content to rank higher on search results for Google and other search engines. Think about how important that is. When’s the last time you looked at the second page of a Google search? Exactly.

It’s obvious why it’s so important. People see thousands of advertisements every day and are happy to ignore them. However, people searching for your specific services are the ones most likely to buy from you.

If you’re a local business that relies on making local sales, it is a lot easier when you’re only competing against people in your area. If you’re competing against everyone, like an eCommerce store or a mobile app, then the competition gets really stiff. There’s a lot to know about SEO, but here’s what you can do to at least get started.

Start A Blog

This is the bare minimum you can do. Utilizing keywords about specific, informative topics that people search for is a good way to start building organic traffic.

For example, if your business sells windows, having blog articles like “how to stop air from flowing out of your windows” or “how to properly clean a window” will bring people onto your site when they look for that information. From there, you can direct them to your services.

Not only is it good for directing people to your services, but it also gives you a lot more chances to rank highly on Google. All it takes is one to start building momentum. Think about it. If you have a homepage, services, about us, and contact page on your website, that’s 4 chances to rank highly on a Google search. However, if you have a blog, you could have thousands of opportunities.

Add Pages

Adding pages will also increase your chances of one of them having success. Have a page for each product or service that you’re selling, and give detailed descriptions of each of them.

If you run a pet grooming business, have a page for dogs, one for cats, and one for each specific service you offer. From there, you can go over the products, the prices, and so much more. Use every tool to your advantage.

Build Backlinks

This is the most challenging one when you are starting. Google’s algorithm could see the best article ever written on a given topic, but it could be from a website it’s never seen before.

What that means is if you write the best article in the world about teddy bears and the Wall Street Journal writes the worst one ever, the WSJ one will still rank higher. Why is that?

They’ve been linked millions of times on external pages. That’s how Google does off-page ranking. The more your website is linked to, the more it will trust your website as a source to display to the public.

You could try reaching out to other blogs and websites to see if they can give you shoutouts, and try to make a deal with them to do the same if you can’t afford their rates. This is definitely the hardest part about starting with SEO.

Get Help

Now, there are online tools you can pay for if you want to, and there are also professional services you can use to get you the best results in your SEO journey. Now, with the right research and some diligence, you can definitely give your website a little boost for organic traffic, but there are a lot of benefits to hiring professionals, including building quality backlinks.

Social Media

Next up in the free list is that thing you have open in the other tab. Every business, big or small, should have a social media presence. Social media literally has half the world for an audience.

If you’re a business that can operate anywhere, like a blog or online store, then you absolutely need to take advantage of this opportunity. Your reach is absolutely limitless, especially if you’re on multiple platforms.

Now, unlike SEO, this can be more difficult if you’re a local shop, because it’s harder to target people. However, you can add a location to your profile, make sure it’s clearly written in your bio, and advertise it to people at your store. This can be on flyers, newsletters, on your building, email chains, receipts, or wherever you want. Just add a quick “Like us on Facebook” to whatever you hand people. 

Post Content

Own a pizza shop? Make an entertaining TikTok of you spinning pizza dough in the air while looking directly at the camera or cracking a joke. Run an online shoe store? Make a funny video of what happens when you run in old shoes.

You can make it relevant, but don’t make it feel like a commercial. Be funny, be creative, and try to engage your audience.

Be sure to post on a fairly regular schedule. Knowing the times when people are most active is a really good way to start building followers. Be sure to use plenty of hashtags, check out what’s trending, and use it to your advantage.

You don’t have to post every day. Just try to make a post as often as you can, and be as consistent with your timing as possible. You can even make content in advance and drop it at various times. These could be promotional offers, funny content, or whatever you want!

Go Viral

We can’t guarantee your cat video will go viral, but we can make it a lot easier! Promotional content tends to go viral. Make a post with a special offer. “Drop a like, follow us, and share, and you’ll win a–“

This kind of content gets people to share. They have nothing to lose, and they might win something, which makes it a great way to build some followers.

Optimize Your Profile

Don’t worry, this isn’t as complicated as SEO, but the two work together! Just make sure your profile picture is a legible picture of your company logo, and give as brief of a description as possible in your bio. Something like: “Local daycare in Burlington, VT.”

From there, the next thing on your bio should only be a link to your website or contact information, depending on the nature of your business.

Make sure you sign up for a business account on every platform you sign up for. If possible, get your profile verified. That blue checkmark goes a long way toward making you look credible and professional!

Interact

Interact with the public. Respond to comments, share positive feedback, share questions and answer them, comment on other people’s posts. Just be professional and maybe use a sense of humor!

You can also build traffic off of other people’s successes. Try commenting on viral videos that are relevant to your business. If you run a pet store and you see a cat video on TikTok with 10 million likes, drop a funny or interesting comment on it. 

Assuming you optimized your profile and your title clearly says your brand name (and especially if you are verified), people might be inclined to click on your profile and drop a like! If you post something really funny, you could make the top comment, which means you’ll be the first thing people see after the content. It’s an easy way to build followers.

Budget Options

Unfortunately, not all things in the marketing world can come free. However, if you have even a small amount of money to spend, then here are some digital marketing ideas to throw into your strategy!

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is not only a great way to build backlinks for your SEO, but it’s also excellent for getting traffic directly over to your website. It will typically cost some money to get another website, especially a prominent one, to link to your website.

You do get what you pay for though. If you are a stock trading business, a link from The Wall Street Journal is going to help you build traffic a lot better than your college roommate’s blog on Medium.

Now, if you have a friend with a website or if you can reach a deal with another website host, you can make this option free. However, you can definitely find quality sites that would be willing to help you out for an affordable rate.

Advertisements

You can pay for search ads, banner ads, or whatever you want. These can be pretty affordable to start out, and the more effective they are, the more money they’ll be putting into your pockets to buy more!

Pay-per-click or PPC ads are designed to be affordable right off the bat, hitting your target audience as closely as possible, and you’ll only have to pay for the number of impressions your ad campaign made.

If you’re looking to spend money to improve your digital marketing strategy, you can scale this as big as you want! Most people are online, so the world is your oyster if you have the cash!

Search Ads

Search ads are very effective because they show up on the top of the search. If SEO isn’t your thing, you can literally pay to jump the line and be the first link people see on their Google search.

Banner Ads

These are the ones you think of when you think of digital ads. They show up in your news articles, on the side of web pages, and anywhere else on a website. You can get great PPC rates for these.

Video Ads

These can be very handy, and surprisingly affordable, being between 10 and 30 cents per view. Anybody can glance over a search or a banner ad, but if people are made to watch your 30-second pitch, you might be able to sell them on it!

Build That Audience!

Now that you know some great digital marketing strategies to throw into your routine, there’s no time like the present to get started. Every minute you aren’t using these is a minute of wasted opportunity. Once you have them set, you can just sit back and watch the traffic roll in.

Keep up to date with our latest marketing news, and find out more about how blogging can improve SEO!

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/15-effective-digital-marketing-strategies-for-businesses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=15-effective-digital-marketing-strategies-for-businesses from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/656091705747128320

[racheljhaydentx]

The Benefits of Working With a Professional SEO Company

Working out the kinks of an SEO campaign can be really challenging. That’s especially true if you’re doing it on your own. 

You’re a small business owner trying to find more customers. You’ve got expertise in your field, and the last thing you thought you’d be doing was researching target keywords!

It can take up a lot of time, and there’s a big learning curve in digital marketing. It might be beneficial to get a little help. 

We’re going to explore the reasons that working with a professional SEO company can be more effective than going through the process alone. Hopefully, you’ll see that there’s a way to get great results and free up a lot of time for yourself to do the work that you enjoy. 

Let’s take a look. 

The Benefits of Hiring a Professional SEO Company

The best way to appreciate the value of an SEO company is to understand the fine points of an SEO campaign. 

As you start to see what the process entails, you begin to appreciate how much room for error there is. Additionally, you notice how long the process can take and the amount of knowledge that goes into getting results. 

It’s easy to think of digital marketing and online methods for sales as simple. There’s a myth that you just have to get yourself online and the results will start to flow in. It’s all algorithms and luck anyway, right?

While there are scattered success stories of people who have happened upon fortune through digital marketing, the reality is that there’s a lot of competition. Plus, just like any other method of sales, there’s an element of skill that comes into play. 

People online are still, well, people. They’re thinking through decisions and making choices based on the information presented to them. They’re not, as some marketers would have you believe, “bound to make the purchase!”

Any company that guarantees sales or a certain amount of results is pulling your chain. Instead, the previous results of companies should be your indication as to how well they’ll help you. 

The point is, there’s an art to good digital marketing. A business has to toe the line of optimization and persuasiveness. That’s a hard thing to do when you have little to no experience with digital marketing. 

Overview of Optimization

Even if you have a good idea of digital marketing already, it doesn’t hurt to have a little refresher from time to time. For those who aren’t familiar with how it actually goes, the following information should help fill in some blanks. 

Search engine optimization is a process that helps websites rank in SERPs (search engine results pages). Search engines operate with the use of an algorithm that indexes and ranks websites based on around 200 different factors. 

SEO uses what we know about those search factors to tailor websites and increase rankings. Before people started to value search engine rankings as a way to increase business, it might have been easy to slip a few optimization methods into your site and see your results soar. 

Now, however, many businesses in your niche are using optimization to compete for the same results as you. That means that some effort has to go into matching or exceeding their efforts to achieve results. 

We’ll now go through some of the essential points of digital marketing, exploring how an agency can improve your results compared to how things would go if you did them alone. 

Keyword Research

The keyword is the central point of any Google search. Google needs the keyword to reference its archives and find the sites that best match it. 

While it may seem trivial to the user, it’s very important to be specific with the keywords that you optimize for. Slight differences of terms can lead to big changes in rankings, audiences, and more. 

It makes sense, then, that SEO starts with keyword research. You have to figure out what you’re trying to rank for before you can start optimizing. There are a number of sophisticated keyword research tools that allow you to see what users are doing on Google. 

When you know your target audience, you can reference that group in the keyword research tool and see which keywords are popular in your niche. Odds are that there are a few very popular keywords followed by a group of less popular ones. 

The trick is finding terms that are popular enough to draw traffic, but not so popular that the results are bogged down by industry titans. In most cases, the most popular term in a niche has pages of spots that are held by big companies that are hard to compete with. 

As a smaller business, you can still see a lot of growth from optimizing for less popular terms. There’s a lot of traffic to go around, and you’ll be able to rank well enough to generate rankings. 

How Agencies Can Help

First off, agencies know how to seek out terms in the popularity sweet spot. Based on your target audience, niche, location, and more, they can identify the terms that you’ll rank best for. 

Additionally, they can determine which terms best suit your business. By examining holes in your niche or adjacent niches, a company can help you expand your business reach. 

Let’s say that you run a coffee shop. You’re doing good work optimizing for your local niche and you’re present in most rankings. An agency might notice that there’s a gap in the rankings for nearby bakeries. 

While you’re not a bakery, your business can still reasonably rank for bakery-related posts. Breaking into that niche will help you draw a number of clients and increase your domain authority. 

Domain authority is basically how important you are in your niche. When that goes up, the reach of your rankings extends and you start to improve results naturally. 

Back End and Site Performance

Another huge factor in optimization is how well your site functions. Google values quality websites that are easy for users to engage with, so how well-oiled your website is makes a massive difference. 

The tricky part is, managing the back end functions of your site is a challenge. There’s a little coding, a little analytics, and a little tech-savvy that comes into play. You have to think of things like link health, site architecture, site speed, and usability. 

The links on your site should all work and be ordered logically. Site architecture refers to the way users can move through your site. Is it well-ordered or is it complicated and hard to navigate?

In most cases, a person should be able to enter your site and get wherever they want to go in two or three clicks. It may seem easy to manage, but it gets more complex as you produce more and more content. 

Further, usability isn’t something that can be intuited. It might feel like user experience can be judged by a quick run through your site, but there’s data that suggests otherwise. You can look at Google’s data on your site to determine how long people stay on your site, where they get caught up, and how you can improve those statistics.

These things are all unique in how they’re treated, so there’s a lot of knowledge that goes into figuring them out. 

How an Agency Helps

The first advantage of having an agency for site features is the fact that they already know what they’re doing. The learning curve is gone, and they have experience managing these factors well. 

That experience goes a long way when you’re managing something as important as your business website. If you were to do it alone, you might make a mistake that could cost you a large number of rankings. 

Google is very particular in the way it ranks, so small adjustments could actually be negatives. In severe cases, those mistakes can get you unindexed. 

In other words, Google takes you out of its archives. That tends to happen when you’re clearly violating the terms of service or trying to cheat the algorithm in some way. So, while you might not be unindexed for small mistakes, you still don’t want to lose ground on little things.

Content Creation

The main force of your SEO campaign comes from content creation. It’s essential that you refine your home page and service pages, but the content is where a lot of the work goes. 

It’s difficult for your primary pages to rank on their own without a number of secondary pages to lift your site up. This is because all pages do better when one page is succeeding. Alternatively, single pages that might struggle alone rank well when the site is successful at large. 

It’s sort of a “rising tide raises all ships” sort of thing. The goal is to create content in response to as many popular keywords in your niche as you can. In most cases, this happens through the creation of blog content. 

Blogs are excellent resources for optimization because they can be curated to any keyword and they hold a lot of opportunities for keyword placement. The difficult thing, though, is creating blog posts that are effective. 

You should create blogs in response to keyword research. Many people think that blogs are opportunities to write about whatever they want to, or whatever they have expertise in. If your business niche aligns with your personal interests, you might get lucky in that way. 

Otherwise, the content on your blog should address the question or concern outlined in the user’s keyword searches. 

For example, keyword research tells you that “best breve recipes” is popular in your area. You can infer that people in your area want to know how they can make a great breve. In response, you can create a blog post that discusses breve recipes and uses “best breve recipes” in key areas throughout the post. 

Repeat that process over and over, and you’ll see your website rankings soar over time. 

What Agencies Do to Help

Content creation is one of the biggest advantages when you hire an SEO company. Content creation is a lot of work, and it takes a skilled hand to write optimized post after optimized post. 

The on-page factors that go into a great post are numerous, and it’s a challenge to keep all of them in mind as you go through the process. Further, it takes time that you might not have. 

Small business owners are notoriously pressed for time. It makes sense, too, considering all of the work that they already have to do. Researching keywords, writing posts, and refining optimization could take all day if you wanted to perfect it. 

Then it would take all day the next day. Then the next day. You get the idea. 

It’s worth it when you see the increase in rankings and sales, though. That said, you can’t spend all of your time doing work that doesn’t directly apply to your business and products. 

You’re faced with the decision to either hire an in-house marketing professional or work with a professional company. In most cases, going with the company is the wiser choice financially, and you get the benefit of a full team to work with. 

There’s also an advantage to having someone on your team who does the work day-in and day-out. Digital marketing agencies have copywriters who are trained at writing engaging, SEO-optimized content that gets results. 

So, not only will you have a large volume of content, but you’ll also have a lot of content that’s enjoyable to read. That’s something that a lot of businesses cannot claim to have. 

Interested in Learning More?

If you think that SEO services might be able to help you out, you’re in the right place. We’re here to help you learn more about working with a professional SEO company.

Explore our site for more insight into how to hire an SEO company, understand SEO services, and much more.  

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/the-benefits-of-working-with-a-professional-seo-company/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-benefits-of-working-with-a-professional-seo-company from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/655974633457238016

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13 of 2021’s Biggest SEO Trends

Are you having a difficult time drawing in website traffic and fresh leads? You might want to reevaluate your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. After all, Google introduces 500 to 600 changes to its search algorithms every year.

If you’re not up-to-date with the latest SEO trends, your ranking could suffer for it. 

Instead, give your SEO ranking the boost it needs! By following these 13 SEO trends, you can improve your ranking. A higher ranking can help you appear in front of more potential customers.

Then, you can generate more website traffic, increase leads and conversions, and improve your ROI.

In fact, search engines generate 300% more traffic for websites than social media. Nearly 80% of searchers never click past the first page of results, though. If you’re not reaching the first page, you’re missing a chance to boost business!

Improve your ranking and remain relevant. Reach a wider target audience with these 2021 SEO trends today.

1. Core Web Vitals

Google wants to offer its users the best possible online experience. With that in mind, it focuses on websites that consider user experience (UX) design. A website created with UX design trends is fast, organized, and easy to use.

If your website is old and nonfunctional, however, consumers will grow frustrated. They’ll leave without clicking through your content. Your bounce rate could start to rise as a result.

A high bounce rate tells Google that your website doesn’t offer a positive user experience. Instead, Google looks for websites with high dwell times and clickthrough rates. These metrics indicate that users are exploring your content with ease.

A high dwell time and bounce rate can have a positive impact on your search engine ranking. As your ranking improves, your site will appear at the top of a search. 

A top-of-page ranking can help you appear in front of more customers. You can generate more website traffic, which can further benefit your ranking.

In order to further improve the online user experience, Google announced the release of its Core Web Vitals in 2020. The Core Web Vitals are a set of user-centered ranking factors. Updating your website with these factors in mind can improve your website UX.

You can learn more about Google’s Core Web Vitals here.

There are three main components of Google’s Core Web Vitals:

Cumulative Layout Shift – measures how elements move as a page continues to load

First Input Delay – measures interactivity based on inputs (such as mouse clicks)

Largest Contentful Paint – measures your website’s loading performance

You can update your website with each of these areas in mind.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS focuses on how page elements move while the page is still loading. You can improve a website’s CLS by:

Preloading custom web fonts

Setting fixed dimensions on pages

Limiting embedded content and iframes

These changes will ensure your website is stable and functional. 

First Input Delay (FID)

FID considers your website’s interactivity. Consider what happens on a page when visitors type or click around. Think about how long the browser takes to react as well.

You can improve FID by:

Deleting unwanted files or code

Splitting long Javascript tasks up

Minifying and compressing Javascript

Enabling browser caching

Eliminating unnecessary third-party scripts

Updating your website can ensure your pages are more responsive.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The LCP concerns your website’s loading performance. To measure LCP, Google looks at how long it takes the largest element on a page to load. These elements might include video content, images, or text.

When improving the user experience, it’s important to consider your page load times. A single-second delay in mobile load times can hurt conversion rates by up to 20%. If consumers have a bad experience on your mobile website, they’ll become 62% less likely to make a purchase.

Instead, you can speed up your website by:

Choosing better hosting

Using page caching

Minifying CSS and Javascript codes

Optimizing your images

Using a content delivery network

The faster a page loads, the easier it is for visitors to find what they need.

2. Mobile-Optimization

As you follow the latest SEO trends, it’s also important to consider recurring trends. While mobile optimization isn’t new, it’s gaining more and more importance.

Consumers interact with brands twice as often using mobile devices. Meanwhile, conversion rates on mobile are 64% higher, too.

Google now uses mobile-first indexing to determine rankings. In other words, it looks at the mobile version of your website when reviewing your content. If your website isn’t optimized, it could rank competitors ahead of your site.

Don’t let the competition take the lead. Remember, a higher ranking will allow them to appear in front of customers first.

Instead, make sure your website is mobile-optimized. Run your site through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to double-check.

Keeping your website mobile optimized can benefit your organic SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies. A mobile-optimized site is easy to use on all devices. Otherwise, you could neglect a huge portion of your audience.

3. Artificial Intelligence

Google’s machine learning capabilities are growing more advanced every year. Its machine learning abilities are now able to learn more about customers. Google’s ability to understand search intent could impact your organic SEO rankings.

First, make sure to learn as much as you can about your target audience. What problems are your customers facing? What solutions can you provide them with?

Consider what they expect to find during a search. Then, create personalized content that appeals to that need.

Personalizing your content can help you better appeal to your target audience. 

Make sure to focus on the value you’re offering customers, too. Consumers will see you have the answers you’re looking for. As they visit your website or search for your brand, your ranking could improve further.

RankBrain is continuing to gather information about customers to determine future ranking factors. Make sure to keep up with the latest SEO trends. As Google gathers more consumer data, these trends will continue to change. 

4. EAT

EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google looks for EAT on your site to make sure you’re offering high-quality content. Demonstrating EAT can also show Google you’re a quality source of information.

You can add EAT to your content marketing strategy by:

Developing your personal brand

Including author names and professional biographies with each post

Demonstrating your experience and expertise within your posts

Showing Google that authoritative experts are offering helpful advice

Sharing your website content on other trusted platforms

Connecting and collaborating with influencers in your industry

Telling your brand’s story (including how you help customers)

Backing up any claims you make within your posts by referencing research

Linking to high-authority websites within your content

Generating backlinks from high-authority websites

Adding client reviews and other forms of social proof to your site

As time passes, return to your old posts. Make sure the information you’re offering is still relevant. For example, you might want to update old statistics every few years.

Otherwise, leaving outdated information on your site could have a negative impact on your credibility. 

5. High-Quality, Long-Form Posts

As you create content for your SEO strategy, try developing high-quality, long-form posts. Make sure to focus on quality over quantity. For example, you can focus on offering readers helpful, actionable advice.

Make sure to consider the readability for each post, too. For example, you can use:

Headings and subheadings

Bullet points and lists

Shorter sentences and paragraphs

Avoid jargon. Add a search function to your site to make content easier to find as well. 

6. Predictive Search

Google doesn’t require user queries to provide consumers with the information they need. Instead, its artificial intelligence abilities allow it to offer predictive search.

Predictive search uses consumer behaviors to learn about each user. Then, it can determine what content will interest or help the user.

In order to appeal to predictive search, make sure you understand your audience’s search intent. Keep creating high-quality content with EAT and the intent in mind. 

7. Voice Search

Almost 50% of consumers are using voice search for general web searches.

In fact, nearly 41% of voice search answers come from a featured snippet. About 75% of voice search results rank in the top three for a search query. Websites with stronger link authorities tend to rank well for voice searches.

You can appear for voice searches by focusing on long-tail search queries. Most voice searches are questions. Consider what questions your customers tend to ask.

Then, use those questions as your target keyword.

Try to give a brief answer at the beginning of your content. That answer can appear for a voice search or featured snippet. Then, go into more detail within the post.

Keep creating fresh content with your customers’ questions in mind.

8. Featured Snippets

Featured snippets appear at the top of search engine results pages. They can appear as summaries, lists, videos, bullets, recipes, and other formats. Appearing for a featured snippet can put you at the top of a page.

You could appear in front of more customers as a result. 

What if you rank first for a search query and appear as a featured snippet? You could gain 31% more traffic compared to those with the first position without the snippet.

Appearing for a snippet can boost your brand awareness. It can also help you generate more traffic to your website. Remember, generating more traffic can further improve your SEO rankings.

As you use these 2021 SEO trends, try to find ways to optimize your content for snippets. For example, you can add a brief summary to the start of a post. You can add a table of contents to the beginning of a post, too.

Then, you can link to each section within a long-form blog post, improving the user experience. Consumers will have an easier time finding the information they need. At the same time, you could appear for a list snippet.

Make sure to use Schema to format your website content, too. 

9. Video Content

Video content could account for 80% of all web traffic by this year. Try to create more video content on your website. For example, you can reformat an old blog post into a new, engaging video.

Videos are easy to consume and interesting. Don’t forget to share your videos on social media, too. You can use social media to draw in more traffic, further boosting your ranking.

Consider adding a transcript to your videos. Then, include your target keyword within the content. 

10. Image Optimization

More people are using image searches to find what they’re looking for.

For example, a consumer might look through images to find a specific product. Then, they can click on the image to visit your website. 

Make sure to optimize your images for keywords. First, use high-quality, unique images on your website. Then, update the file name with a relevant keyword.

Update each picture’s alt text as well. 

Adding your keywords to your images can make it easier for Google to crawl and index content.

11. Semantically Related Keywords

Take the time to gather keyword research for your organic SEO. You can also hire SEO services to keep your keyword strategy up-to-date. Choose keywords based on how your clients speak (rather than writing for search engines).

Then, use primary and secondary keywords throughout your content.

12. Local Search Listings

Nearly 50% of all search engine users on Google are looking for local information. In fact, over 70% who search for local businesses visit stores near their location. Nearly 80% of these searches result in purchases.

Don’t neglect your local SEO strategy. You can:

Claim and optimize your Google My Business (GMB) listing

Create fresh posts for your GMB listing

Generating customer reviews on your GMB listing

Feature reviews on your website

Develop your backlink strategy

Use location-based keywords within your content

Does your store have more than one location? Add location pages to your site, too.

13. Data and Analytics

As you follow these SEO trends, make sure you’re reviewing your website data.

Which trends are boosting your traffic and engagement? Consider which posts are failing to generate attention, too.

Then, make informed adjustments to your strategy. Keep updating with your target audience in mind. You can find new ways to boost your ranking and remain relevant online.

Boost Your Business: 13 SEO Trends to Boost Rankings in 2021

Don’t let your competitors rank ahead this year. Instead, keep these 13 SEO trends in mind. Following these 2021 SEO trends can help you reach the top of a page.

You can then boost your visibility, generate more website traffic, and increase sales!

Get started with these SEO tips today.

Need help improving your SEO rankings? You came to the right place. Request a free consultation with our team today.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/13-of-2021s-biggest-seo-trends/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=13-of-2021s-biggest-seo-trends from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/655291385501630464

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How Do Social Media and SEO Work Together?

Over 90% of marketers say the main benefit of social media marketing is gaining online exposure. If you want to boost brand awareness online, it’s not enough to stay social, though. Instead, you can use search engine optimization (SEO) to boost awareness, web traffic, and generate fresh leads.

In fact, you can use both social media and SEO to accomplish your digital marketing goals this year.

What is the connection between SEO and social media marketing, exactly? How can the two work together to benefit your business? Keep reading to find out.

Understanding the relationship between social media and SEO could give your business a competitive edge. You can gain more online exposure, boost your credibility, and generate fresh sales. In fact, your ROI could improve as well.

Give your business the advantage this year. Keep reading to discover how to use SEO and social media together today!

1. Boost Brand Visibility

First, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t consider social media a direct ranking factor. However, social shares could impact your search engine optimization strategy. Social media can give you an opportunity to reach more customers and attract them to your content.

You could find new opportunities for link-building, which can also benefit your search engine rankings.

One of the biggest benefits of social media and SEO is their ability to boost your online visibility. Generating more brand awareness and sharing your content could help you generate links. Gaining quality backlinks can boost your domain authority.

As your domain authority improves, your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) can as well.

It can take an average of six impressions before you start generating brand awareness. Without awareness, people won’t recognize the valuable content you can offer. They’ll fail to recognize your experience and expertise as well.

Instead, you can use social media to share your valuable content. As more people read your posts, you could generate brand awareness and recognition.

People could even continue coming back to your website to read your posts. In fact, 56% of marketers believe personalized content promotes higher brand engagement. Another 59% prefer familiar brands.

You can use social media to boost your brand’s visibility. More people will see your content. They might even share your content with others.

As more people read your content, you can increase the chance someone will link to your content. Then, you can generate more backlinks, benefiting your SEO strategy.

Start creating informative, high-quality content on your website. Then, share it on social media.

You can generate more content promotions, encourage bloggers to link to your content, and boost your ranking. 

Diversity

As part of your link-building strategy, it’s also important to generate links from a diverse range of sources.

Improving your visibility with social media marketing could help you generate diverse backlinks. Trying to accrue diverse links manually can take time and energy. Instead, you can simplify the process through social media.

Make sure you’re creating content people want to share. Offer valuable tips and tricks people can’t find anywhere else. Then, find multiple ways to share your content through social media.

For example, you can reformat a blog post into an infographic, short video clip, or animation. Then, link to the blog post within your social media post.

You’ll start appearing in front of a diverse audience. As you amplify your reach, you’re also delegating many components of your link-building strategy.

You won’t have to do as much work in terms of promotion and outreach!

2. Improve SEO Ranking Signals

Remember, social media alone isn’t a ranking factor. However, social media could impact other metrics that impact rankings.

For example, Google looks at your website’s dwell times and clickthrough rates when determining SERP rankings. It also considers your bounce rate. You need:

High dwell times

High click through rates

Low bounce rates

Otherwise, a high bounce rate indicates people are leaving your website without exploring your content. Google might think you’re failing to meet the reader’s search intent as a result.

Instead, you can use social media to attract people to your website. Offering content your customers want to read will keep them on your site. You can also use interactive content (such as polls and quizzes) to boost your clickthrough rate.

As these metrics improve, your SEO ranking can, too. 

Use social media to drive more traffic to your search engine-optimized content. Your social media visibility, brand awareness, and engagement will rise. As more people engage with your content, you can strengthen your SEO rankings. 

Take the time to research your target audience. Then, create personalized content with your customers in mind. 

About 74% of consumers get frustrated when content has nothing to do with their interests. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences. Personalization can drive as much as eight times the ROI, too. 

Today, about 50% of consumers would pay more if brands provide personally relevant content.

Personalizing your content can increase how long people spend on your website. Your SEO rankings could rise as a result.

Meanwhile, your ROI could improve, too. 

3. Speed Up Content Indexing

Immediately after creating a blog post for your website, share it on social media. Sharing your content right away can help you drive traffic right away. Google will then receive a signal that the page needs crawling and indexing. 

Using social media can speed up the content indexing process.

If you’re not generating traffic to your content, Google might not realize you have anything new to share. It might take time before it crawls and indexes your site again. You could miss a chance to boost your ranking as a result.

Instead, keep this mutually beneficial relationship between social media and SEO in mind. 

While social media can boost your SEO rankings, high-quality content could boost your social media engagement. Generating more engagement on social media can help you generate a loyal following. Then, you can keep connecting with customers, giving you more opportunities to boost sales. 

4. Improve Your Content Strategy

You can also use social media marketing to better inform your content marketing strategy.

As you post content on social media, take the time to review your post metrics. How many people are liking, commenting on, and sharing your posts? Consider which posts generate the most engagement.

Then, spend more time and energy developing similar posts. 

Social media gives you an opportunity to test different forms of content. Once you determine which posts gain the most engagement, you can adjust your content strategy. You can develop more content you know will appeal to your target audience.

Then, you can boost your clickthrough rates and dwell times on your website. As these metrics improve, your SEO rankings will, too.

What if people aren’t interacting with your social media posts? There’s a chance your captions are weak. You can use that information to improve your SEO titles and meta descriptions, too.

Content marketing is the backbone of an effective SEO strategy. Without strong content, you can’t boost your ranking. 

Using the data you gather can help you make more informed decisions in the future.

5. Increase Search Demand

Sharing your high-quality website content on social media can help you boost social media engagement. It can also help you generate more traffic to your website. As you gain more traffic, you’re also gaining visibility. 

Gaining more visibility can increase your search demand. A consumer might remember reading one of your blog posts in the past. They’ll search for your website directly through Google.

As people search for your brand name, your search demand will improve. Generating more search queries that are related to your company could boost your ranking.

In fact, consumers might start seeing your Google My Business (GMB) listing on SERPs. They can click on your listing to find your address or website. You could generate more website traffic or foot traffic as a result.

Remember, generating more website traffic from different sources can benefit your SEO ranking. Google will see that people are looking for your website directly. You’ll continue improving your ranking, helping you reach even more potential customers. 

6. Understand Your Target Audience

One of the most important SEO trends to consider right now is search intent. Google’s search algorithm allows it to better understand what consumers need. Then, Google can provide consumers with search results based on their intent.

If you’re not writing with the consumer’s search intent in mind, you could struggle to boost your ranking. Consumers now expect personalized content. If you’re not writing content based on their needs, they’ll look elsewhere for help.

Your bounce rate could rise, which could hurt your rankings.

Social media marketing can help you better understand your target audience. For example, what questions do people ask when commenting on your posts?

You can use their social media comments to create content that answers those questions.

You’ll have an easier time appealing to the user’s search intent, which can boost your SEO ranking.

7. Gather Keyword Research

You can also use your social media strategy to gather keyword research. For example, you can use their comments to understand the language they use. Then, you can use that same phase as a target keyword.

Gathering keyword research can inform your content marketing strategy. You can create content with specific search queries in mind. For example, you can find long-tail Q&A keywords for your posts.

In fact, about 8% of all search queries are phrased as questions. About 12.29% of search queries have featured snippets in the results. Meanwhile, the number one result generates nearly 32% of clicks. 

Using long-tail keywords could help you appear for voice searches or featured snippets. Featured snippets appear at the top of SERPs. You can boost your visibility by reaching the top of SERPs.

You’ll rank ahead of the competition and generate more website traffic as a result.

Consider which hashtags your social media audience follows, too. Pay attention to the topics they’re interested in. Then, create content with those topics in mind!

You can find more tips for gathering SEO keywords here.

8. Discover New Ideas

Discovering the connection between social media and SEO can help you discover new content creation ideas, too. 

Pay attention to which social media posts your followers are already liking and sharing. Consider the latest social media content trends as well. For example, video content is becoming more popular, including Stories and Reels.

In fact, video content represents 80% of all internet traffic. Virtual and augmented reality traffic could increase 20-fold, too.

You can start creating video content for your blog posts. Then, you can share your videos on social media to boost engagement. Consumers will then visit your website to explore the other content you offer.

You can remain relevant by following the latest trends, helping you stand out from your competitors. 

9. Gain SERP Space

Your social media accounts will rank on search engine results pages. Social media channels like Facebook and Instagram can become prominent citations. It’s important to keep your SEO accounts updated as a result.

Make sure to optimize your social media account profiles. For example, you can add keywords to your profile descriptions. Make sure to link your accounts to your website, too.

As people click on the link to your website, you’ll generate more traffic, which could boost your SEO rankings. 

10. Drive Website Traffic

In order to boost your SEO rankings, you’ll need to show Google you’re a relevant resource. To prove you’re relevant, you’ll need to generate website traffic from multiple channels.

Above all else, social media marketing can help you generate more website traffic. 

You can get your brand out there, draw more traffic, and start boosting your ranking over time.

As you rank higher, you’ll also appear in front of more consumers. You can increase your chances of generating fresh traffic as a result. Then, your ranking will improve even more!

Step Up Search: 10 Ways Social Media and SEO Work Together

Understanding the connection between social media and SEO could give your business a competitive advantage. Don’t risk ranking behind the competition. Instead, start using social media and SEO integration to take the lead.

You don’t have to build your social media marketing and SEO strategies alone. We’re here to help!

Contact our team for a free, no-obligation consultation today.

from Riserr Marketing https://riserr.com/how-do-social-media-and-seo-work-together/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-do-social-media-and-seo-work-together from Riserr https://riserr1.tumblr.com/post/654657184503840768