Search engine marketing: May 2016

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Pay Per Click Advertising vs. Organic SEO

Pay per Click (PPC) advertising is a paid online advertising model, such as Google Adwords. Pay per Click results typically appear as "sponsored links" above or beside the normal (aka Organic) Search Engine results.

Organic search engine results are the natural, unpaid search engine results that are determined by the Search Engine. These are generally varied and contain a lengthier (though not always clear) description of the web page they are presenting.

While both Organic and PPC results are displayed on the same page, there are numerous differences between them:

Pay Per Click results can start showing up immediately as compared to organic search results which may take several weeks to appear. With PPC you are paying for your ads to be displayed when certain key phrases or keywords are entered in a search.

With Organic results you do not necessarily have to do anything to acquire an Organic Search Engine position. Providing your site is submitted to the Search Engine or alternatively your site has other sites linked to it, the Search Engines will crawl your website, "index" your pages and rank them based on how their "algorithms" assess the relevance of your pages content to the key words or phrases being searched. However, to achieve higher results in particular "key phrase" searches, many businesses are Search Engine Optimizing their websites.

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Advantages and Disadvantages:

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine rankings, even when paying a professional to SEO your pages, are more cost effective compared to a PPC campaign. According to a study conducted in 2012: 70% of the time search engine visitors click on organic search engine rankings while 30% click on the PPC results.

With organic SEO, there is no guarantee of a specific result. You are competing for position in the search engines and regardless how well each page is optimized there are other influences on how pages are ranked which may be beyond your control (things such as how many important sites link to yours and how much traffic your site gets also influence organic search results). If you are guaranteed highly specific results (i.e. "We'll get you the top spot on Google") by an Internet Marketing company, be wary.

Also the constantly changing search engine algorithms means the process needs to be reassessed periodically as you may have a great ranking one month but drop down a bit the next.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The major advantages of a PPC campaign are that you can get immediate results and greater control of your listings (your budget is the only limit!). Bidding on Google AdWords and Yahoo Overture starts from $0.10 per click which implies a very cost effective method of acquiring customers. The hidden drawback here however is that for competitive keywords and phrases the bidding can quickly soar to a very unattractive $15 per click! Achieving top positions for competitive keywords can quickly blow your budget.

The optimal scenario for any website owner is to achieve top Organic Search Engine rankings for all the keywords and phrases that are important to your business - this would deliver a steady stream of qualified traffic to your website every hour and cost you nothing. However, getting that position for anything other than niche markets and to maintain the position will require special services to optimize your website such as Search Engine Optimization. As a long-term strategy this is the way to go.

For those website owners who compete for highly competitive key phrases the top position in the Organic results is only achievable for one web site and PPC advertising is a powerful tool to reach the same audience. PPC also allows you to run advertising campaigns in the short term (such as a sale) that would be pointless to optimize for organically.

Benefits of Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is a hot topic nowadays and every company regardless the size and industry is working on their responsive design strategy. Responsive design gives companies opportunity to increase their sales and come closer to their users without significant investments, why, what, how?

Responsive design is the process of optimizing the layout in a way that all the important information is presented in an optimal viewing way; ease of reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling in any kind of device or screen size. In other words, it ensures that the website is effective and easy to use on any device. This eliminates the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.

BENEFITS OF RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN

COST EFFECTIVE

Responsive website design can drastically cut down on development time and cost. Rather than spending the time and resources building a separate mobile website in addition to your traditional desktop website, the responsive design approach enables you to optimize your business for all the devices with a single website. One website costs less than two, and the savings can be substantial.

ENSURES A QUALITY USER EXPERIENCE

Browsing a responsive site with a mobile device you don’t have to waste time with zooming, shrinking, and pinching your screen. The site automatically adjusts to your screen size. The simplified reading and navigation drastically improves the usability of your site. For example, According to Google’s Think Insights on Mobile, there is a 61% chance that users abandon sites that are difficult to use, this means that if they quit you site them will go to your competitor’s site and you may lose the client. Your website is a marketing tool and it’s crucial to optimize it. By providing a quality user experience on all devices, you’re on the right track to keep your visitors satisfied and coming back for more.

HIGHER RANKINGS IN GOOGLE SEARCH

In April, 2015 Google officially claimed that responsive design will affect search rankings on mobile devices. Why it is important for Google? Because google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”Aug 20, 2015 and this is exactly what responsive design offers: clean and user-friendly layout.

EFFICIENCY

It reduces operational efforts by improving efficiency. One update to the website cascades across all device types, rather than updating separate desktop and mobile websites. If you have multiple versions of your website that you’re tracking in Google analytics think of all the time and money you can save by condensing it all into one report.

ON-THE-GO ACESS

With smartphone sales on the rise, people want to be able to visit your website and find what they need easily and fast while they’re “on-the-go” and enjoy this experience rather than freaking out from poor navigation experience.

INCREASES SALES AND CONVERSION RATE

Responsive design removes some of the barriers that having multiple sites can present, i.e. in functionality, performance and consistent look and feel. Having a website that looks clean, modern, sleek, and easy to ready creates customer satisfaction and builds trust and trust builds revenue. Your responsive website makes it easier for users to Shop Online. If you’re selling anything on your website, a responsive design makes it super easy and enjoyable for users to browse and shop.

TIME-TO MARKET

Critical benefit of adopting a responsive design is that it takes less time than creating an additional stand-alone mobile site. Nowadays you need to adapt to the changing trends fast.

Website Design Techniques

Responsive web design involves designing websites that offer the best user experience across all screen sizes. Responsive web design differs from other techniques such as creating a mobile version of a website, because it shows the user the exact same website (that is, the site is served from the same address, using the same HTML whether a user is viewing on a mobile or a desktop) rather than detecting their device and redirecting them to a different optimized website.

FLUID GRID SYSTEMS

One of the main principles of responsive web design is designing to a fluid grid system. Traditional websites, when viewed on a small screen, require the user to “pinch and zoom” and scroll horizontally in order to read the text and content on the page.

If a website is designed to a specific grid, then each column of that grid can be made to behave differently on different devices / screen sizes.

HIDING AESTHETIC ELEMENTS TO OPTIMISE SCREEN REAL ESTATE AND USER GOALS

On a desktop screen, you have a lot of screen real estate to play with. To engage the website visitor, we often use large imagery on the homepage using an image rotator. This works because we have a lot of space to play with and large image rotator will probably still only take up half the screen. However, on a mobile device where screen real estate is a precious commodity, image rotators, which won’t give the same impact that a large desktop screen will, can often be removed to make way for more important content.

WE SHOULD CONSIDER MOBILE VISITORS FIRST

This final point seems somewhat counter-intuitive. On many of the sites we monitor, on average about 25% of visitors are using a mobile device, leaving (obviously) 75% of website visitors using non-mobile device.

The blaringly obvious approach here would be to cater to the majority of your visitors, right?

While that logic is used a lot throughout the web design process, it’s not as applicable here. The reason is that if we design for desktops first and view mobile visitors as a secondary priority, we tend to pack our designs full of features and functionality that work beautifully for desktops but don’t necessarily “scale down” very well. We then start making compromises based on functionality limitations in our designs rather than design decisions based on our end users’ goals.

While we push mobile-responsive design heavily, we appreciate that on occasion a mobile-responsive web design approach just doesn’t give the user experience required for some applications. Sometimes your mobile users will have vastly different and distinguishable goals than people who are viewing on a desktop, and a collapsible grid system just doesn’t cut it. In these circumstances you need to completely change the way your website behaves and offer a distinctly different template, set of information, goals and navigation to your users. While not going in to too much detail about that here, such situation may call for a native mobile app, or user-agent detection to serve a completely different website.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Content Marketing Techniques

Like any marketing method, however, content marketing needs focus. It's not enough to simply publish content. Instead, marketers must define who they want to reach and how they're going to do it.

Content marketing is one of the best ways to bring organic traffic to websites these days. It’s undoubtedly the easiest way to boost the SEO and page ranking. Here we have compiled a list of effective content marketing techniques for you to get good leads for your business.

Improved Landing Pages

The content marketers should focus on developing engaging and interactive as well as robust landing pages with minimal designing and more rich in features. Usually it takes just 3-4 seconds to decide whether they will spend their time on the landing page or website or not. If a landing cannot provide enough to the visitor within those crucial seconds then bounce rate will see an unwanted rise.

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Utilize Social Media Channels for Marketing

Another effective technique for content marketing is utilizing the social media platforms for generating sales, leads and web traffic in an organic manner. Facebook, Google+, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter offers various avenues to get in touch with targeted audience and build a commendable presence in online sphere. Driving users from social to the website becomes streamlined with the use of social media platforms.

Manage Content in an Effective Manner

Managing numerous amount of content across the website, official pages, groups and blogs is a tremendous task for any marketer. Being in the content marketing requires the business to think more like a publisher than a pure business establishment. The focus of the content marketing is to remain connected with the audience to generate desired traffic, sales and conversion.

Give More Significance on Images and Photos

Images speak a lot more than written words and same confirms with the blog posts’ success. Brands should try to make the posts more appealing and interactive for the targeted users by giving emphasis on the images within the posts.

Embedded Calls to Action

A call of action button embedded in posts helps in driving clicks and traffic. Online marketers should use the call of actions in an advanced manner to reap in the benefits and give a direction to the users for clicking on it in simple words.

Use Videos with Distinction

Creating animated and simple 2D videos with engaging content is easier with the presence of multitude of third party software available online. 64% visitors are more likely to purchase products after watching a video. 80% users recall watching a video before visiting a website.

Online Reputation Management Basics

Online reputation management, from the name itself, is monitoring your brand image on the Web. The fact that you’re managing your business’ reputation online makes it complex, as there could be a large reservoir of information attributed to your brand. That’s why it’s important that you know how to address false claims and to keep your positive image out in the open.

The Internet allows customers to freely share their thoughts and opinions regarding products or services through online reviews and such, and rave reviews can do wonders for a business’ reputation. The opposite is also true; scathing remarks about a business can deter consumers from making a purchase. As more people turn to the Web for information before making a purchase, your business will need online reputation management services to make sure that your products and services are given a fair chance.

Before you head on to your online reputation management campaign, you should create a plan first. Brainstorm how your business will address false claims and how it will respond to negative issues. That way, you will be prepared in case it becomes an issue. One way to manage your business’ image is to optimize your online presence. You can do this by having your own website, claiming your Google Places page and creating multiple social media accounts. It should be named after your business to minimize negative search results. Thus, you are in control of what would appear on search engine result pages.

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Online reputation management requires you to constantly monitor what people are saying about your business. Although it could be tedious, this could help you know who to acknowledge for positive feedback, and who to address when negative issues arises. Moreover, monitoring what people tells about you or your brand can help you prevent false claims from spreading on the Internet.

Encourage your customers to share their experience with your business, and acknowledge and promote those who give positive feedback. Optimizing it can also make sure that only the good things about your brand will appear on the first page of SERPs.

There will always be someone that will say something negative about you. That’s fine, since you really can’t please everybody. Just make sure to provide a superb customer service so that your customer won’t fume madly and create havoc on your online reputation. Additionally, false claims should be addressed in a timely fashion. There could also be trolls who just want to bring out the worst in you, so remember to choose your battle.

Blog Writing

When it comes to marketing online, you’ve probably already heard that “content marketing” is one of the best ways to spread the world about your site and position yourself as an industry expert. But content marketing is not the same as churning out blog posts day after day.

There’s more to a great blog post than just words on a screen. What follows is my list of essential ingredients for a successful blog post. If you’ve been focusing on just publishing words each day, step back, consider this list, and find out how your blog might improve.

The most important part of a blog post is the headline and suddenly everyone is trying to do Buzzfeed style headlines. “This is why the Apple watch is not round.” “You’ll never believe what Facebook will unveil next.” With such headlines, you raise the expectation level of the audience but when they read the actual article, they are often disappointed. Write boring headlines that may not be cute or clever but are accurate. Your readers should be able to guess what the article is all about by looking at the headline itself.

Avoid guest blogging. Yes, it would help raise your profile if you manage to write for a reputed and authoritative site but 99% of the guest blogging is done with the sole purpose of gaining links and that’s just waste effort. Also, as your website grows popular, you’ll find that big sites are approaching you to for permission to republish your stuff. They will promise you eyeballs in return for your content but that won’t actually happen – people will just read your content on their site and move on.

Always use good images or screenshots with your blog posts. This helps for two reasons – one, when people share your content on social sites, your story may stand out in the crowded news feed because of that image thumbnail. You can also use images to draw the visitor’s attention to any part on the story that you want to emphasize and if your articles are long, images can work as visual break points. And it goes with saying that you should only use free images that are in the public domain or under Creative Commons.

Good and useful content will spread on its own but, occasionally, you can also pitch other bloggers in your niche. The other set of people who you should pitch are your blog commentators and people who have previously shared your stories on social sites. They love your blog and will happily evangelize your content again.

Your “about” page is your chance to convert a new visitor into a regular one. Show off your best stuff, link to your popular stories, makes it easy for people to subscribe to your content and include mentions in the mainstream media – this will make your bio more credible to someone who doesn’t know you.

Page views give an ego boost but the more important metrics are the returning visitor count, the bounce rate and the amount of time that people are spending on your pages. If they are landing on a page and leaving in a split-second, you should diagnose the reason – maybe they aren’t finding the information on the page, maybe the title does not accurately tell what the page is all about, maybe your site is slow or the typography is to be blamed.

Everyone can have a blog but what separates you from other blogs is your expertise in the field, your writing skills and most important credibility. The editorial should be completely separate from the business side of the blog.

Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Wordpress – In and Outs – Part 2

For WordPress professionals, the platform is second nature and the benefits of using WordPress for building websites are completely obvious. However, we often forget that clients don’t possess that same knowledge.

All they want is a website and they don’t care about what’s running it. Others, however, do care and sometimes have open doubts about whether WordPress is worth their time and money because they lack the necessary information.

Do WordPress Websites Rank Well?

Another important concern for clients is whether WordPress can take their site to first place in Google.

WordPress is extremely search-engine friendly out of the box, giving your client site a head start in their quest for search rank domination. However, that’s not all. There are also plenty of built-in tools and WordPress plugins to further improve the SEO of WordPress websites. While search rankings depend on more than that, the CMS offers a solid basis to start from.

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Are WordPress Websites Mobile Friendly?

Mobile friendliness might not necessarily be an important agenda for clients. Not everyone is aware that mobile traffic continues to eclipse that of desktop computers.

Also, even the WordPress back end is by now mobile compatible and in addition to the official iOS and Android mobile apps can be used to take care of websites on the go.

So, the answer to the question whether WordPress is mobile friendly is an unequivocal yes.

Is WordPress Easy to Use?

The topic of taking care of the website after it has been handed over is another frequent concern.

As mentioned earlier, cost is often a consideration and clients are hesitant to invest in a technology that causes them to constantly pay someone else to make even the smallest changes to their site.

Plus, the platform has powerful multimedia capabilities with built-in support for images, videos, and audio files as well as extensive media file management options including image editing.

Is WordPress Suitable for Teams?

Website administration is increasingly a team effort with entire departments dividing tasks among them. If our client is concerned about WordPress’s ability to accommodate this workflow, you can tell them to stop fretting.

Multiple user roles with defined capabilities enable them to give anyone as much access as they want to. If none of them fit their needs, creating additional user roles is just as easy.

So, Is WordPress the Way to Go?

To anyone not familiar with the platform, the benefits of using WordPress are far from obvious. Viewed from the outside, it’s just one CMS among many.

Especially with new or potential clients, this issue frequently comes up, and without a strategy for addressing their doubts, this can mean a sudden dead end for a promising project.

For that reason, it’s vital for WordPress professionals to prepare for client hesitance and educate them on the benefits of using WordPress for their website.

Wordpress – In and Outs

Many projects and business opportunities fall through because WordPress professionals fail to address these doubts in a convincing manner. For that reason, in today’s article, we will go over some common questions and objections commonly raised by would-be clients and how to overcome them.

Isn’t WordPress Only For Blogs?

This one is a classic. Loads of people outside the WordPress community still associate the platform purely with blogging.

Apart from that, it’s true that WordPress originated as a blogging platform. However, several years ago it shifted towards becoming a full-featured CMS and a lot more stuff has happened since then.

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Is WordPress Really Free?

Cost is often one of the main considerations for client projects, and the non-existent price tag is one of the main benefits of using WordPress. Instead, the platform is an open-source project that is being maintained by a network of dedicated volunteers all across the world that develops, test, and improve it constantly.

With themes and plugins widely available, developers don’t have to start from scratch but can build upon existing material, saving time in the process.

And no, there are no hidden charges, not now, not in the future.

Is WordPress Reliable?

A follow-up question to the above is often whether if the platform is built by a bunch of volunteers, it means you have to expect shoddy quality.

WordPress is maintained by a community of thousands of highly professional coders, testers, and developers who produce updates, patches, and new features on a regular basis.

Apart from that, the platform is also based on mature and fully-tested technology like PHP, SQL, and JavaScript, which meets the coding standards set by the World Wide Web consortium and follows best practices laid out by Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

But Does It Scale?

Especially bigger clients can have a hard time believing that WordPress is the right solution for them.

They think that while it might be fine for small businesses and personal websites, real companies should probably invest in something more “professional”.

WordPress is usable in almost any hosting environment from the smallest shared hosting to high-end servers and can be used to power anything from single blogs to entire Multisite website networks.

Is WordPress Safe to Use?

The list of famous WordPress users above should be a sufficient indication of the maturity of the platform and, in fact, dispel most client doubts.

In fact, a WordPress security team consisting of more than 25 experts is tasked with the sole job to keep the platform safe and it does so in cooperation with leading security researches and hosting companies.

Combined, these measures will reduce the risk of being hacked to a minimum and make WordPress as safe as anything operating online can be.

Lead Generation

Lead generation and sales teams should work hand in glove. After all, both teams work toward the same goal: closing sales. Developing a seamless integration between lead generation and sales takes a bit of work, but the result is measurable increases in ROI and capacity, as it takes less work for the same sales.

Optimize Strong Content with Relevant CTAs

Optimize high-performing content by adding a call-to-action (CTA)—or updating an old one. Ask users to sign up, share, or follow.

Keep Prospects Warm with Exit-Intent Pop-ups

Immediate pop-ups will turn off many web visitors, but a key strategy in using exit-intent pop-up can keep prospects warm. By providing a “yes” or “no” option with your exit-intent pop up, the report suggests this strategy can increase conversions by 30 to 40 per cent. Creating clear action triggers with simple text and responsive design is also highly effective.

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Tell a Story through SlideShare

SlideShare is a slide hosting service that allows users to upload presentation slides to share online. Over 70 per cent of SlideShare traffic comes from targeted searches by professionals looking for specific solutions making leads more relevant. The key is using bold headlines and visuals and simple, relevant key words. By using fewer words and more pictures, you can break up the slide presentation with targeted text. Conventional wisdom states you can share up to 60 slides to tell your story, the report highlights one big idea with each slide.

Use Video Content to Educate and Set Your Brand Apart

Taking video content to the next level and establishing your brand as an industry leader and go-to business can be achieved from an educational and informative standpoint, the report suggests. By creating excitement with headlines that promise to solve or identify key ‘pain points,’ a good strategy is to link the website with information about resources or content that generate the opportunity to connect. A good rule of thumb is to send reminders, follow-up emails and industry news once you have gotten connected.

Gate Premium Content

While the study suggests that 77 per cent of users expect that they will have to provide basic information for white papers and eBooks, it remains important to make it worth their time and effort. Some key methods of gating premium content is by using intelligent, interesting forms to avoid repeat fill-out requests, while creating an SEO-optimized landing page for each piece of gated content.

Co-Brand/Co-Author your eBook

Authoring or co-authoring an eBook is a strong brand strategy in B2B marketing, the report suggests. By creating a strategic partnership it remains a great way to get a fresh, new audience, and as co-authors there is the opportunity to market professionally produced content.

Offer a Free Assessment, Trial, or Demo

A free offer or free assessment is a great way to learn more about prospects’ likes and dislikes, goals, challenges and pain points. Consider providing a link that helps prospects understand if your product is right for them, the report suggests.

Keep it Simple – Create a Personalized Direct Mail Campaign

Reach out to customers who you have done business with in the past, but also as a reminder to anyone who has signed up for your email list but hasn’t taken the next step. By segmenting customers and buyers based on buying patterns and time lapsed, a target list with a personalized message will result. Further, remind the contact that your organization is offering a free report or white paper. Keep your customer service team in the loop so that when a potential customer makes contact, they have the distinct impression that your company already knows them.