Why Can’t I Boost My Reels On Instagram? Troubleshoot Common Reels Ads Issues
Find out what you can do if your ads are getting disapproved on Instagram and how to prevent them from being rejected in the future.
Reels is the future of video storytelling on Instagram. It already makes up 20% of the time spent on the platform. That means that if you’re not using Reels to tell your brand story, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
Are Reels good for business account?
Absolutely yes. There are a few key reasons:
1- Reels are highly engaging, and users are much more likely to watch a Reel than any other type of content on Instagram.
2- They’re also fun and creative, which gives brands a chance to show off their personality. Plus, Reels are easy to make and don’t require a lot of time or resources.
3- When you share content using Reels, the algorithm pushes your content to users who are not following you, giving you the chance to gain followers.
4- Users engage more with Reels content because they are entertaining, digestible, and relatable.
Why Are Reels A Great Way To Grow Your Followers?
Reels are a great way to grow followers because they’re highly engaging and the algorithm pushes your content to users who are not following you. When you use Reels the right way, you can increase your reach and get more people interested in your brand.
How To Gain Followers Using Reels?
Pull your audience in and entertain them with content that appeals to their ears, eyes and hearts.
1. Design for sound on
Over 80% of Reels are viewed with sound.1 Music can be an effective audio strategy for captivating attention and creating connection, particularly when it complements the mood of your story (i.e. relaxing, inspiring, energizing, chill, dreamy).
2. Dazzle with visual effects
Adding effects are a great way to inject a little fun in your Reels and enhance the story — in fact, over 40% of Reels use effects.1 Try effects like green screen to help you layer first-person video commentary onto content.
3. Inspire an emotional response
Entertaining ads tend to elicit emotions like happiness, interest and curiousity. Consider sparking intrigue by taking an edutainment approach and teaching your audience something new or helping them learn more about something they already love.
Boost Your Reels to Reach New Audiences
Can you boost Reels on Instagram?
Yes! You can now boost your Reels on Instagram to reach more people.
Here’s how:
1. Go to your business profile and click on the Reels tab.
2. Find the Reel you want to boost and click the “Promote” button.
3. Choose your objective (reach, website clicks or conversions) and target audience.
4. Set your budget and duration, then click “Confirm.”
5. Your Reel will start promoting as an ad once it’s been reviewed and approved.
Keep in mind that you can’t boost Reels with:
– Camera filters
– Shared to Facebook
– Gifs
– Tappable elements
– Copyrighted music
If you’re having trouble boosting your Reel, keep reading! We have some solutions that can help you get approved.
Which reels can be boosted?
Businesses can now boost their reels within the Instagram app to turn them into ads for the opportunity to reach new audiences and drive more engagement. Boosted Reels, summarized in the reel below, will appear in feed, Stories, the Reels tab and the explore page to help new customers find your brand.
To be eligible for boosting within the Instagram app, reels must be less than 60 seconds and have a 9:16 aspect ratio, which means they’re filmed vertically and have a full-screen format. At this time, Reels that use third party IP—such as copyrighted music, GIFs, interactive stickers or camera filters in a Reel—are ineligible for boosting, as well as reels shared to Facebook.
If you’re looking to boost your reach on Instagram, Reels Ads is a great way to do it. However, at this time, not every Reel can be boosted. Here’s a look at some of the most common problems and how to solve them.
Problem 1: Video Resolution
If you’re getting this error, most likely, your video has a filter effect.
How to fix this problem? Assuming that you want to keep using the filter, you can download the Reel using a website like Snapinsta.app and upload it again. You can also edit your Reel before posting it using a video editing app like CapCut.
Problem 2: Shared to Facebook
Reels are typically shared to Facebook, by default. If you are getting this error, you’ll need to publish your Reel again and remove the permission to share Reels to Facebook.
Provided that you are not violating any of the other prohibitions, your ad should be approved.
Problem 3: Contains Gifs
Gifs are not currently supported by Reels Ads. This means that if your Reel contains a Gif, it will not be able to be boosted.
To solve this problem, post your Reel without any Gifs or Stickers.
Problem 4: Tappable Elements
Tappable elements are not currently supported by Reels Ads. This means that if your Reel contains any tappable elements, such as links or call-to-actions, they will not be clickable when viewed on a boosted Reel.
If you have an original version of your video, simply upload it again but without any tappable element. Note that if you filmed your video directly on the app, you won’t be able to remove the element. So in this case, filming a new one will be the solution.
Problem 5: Copyrighted Music
Copyrighted music is not currently supported by Reels Ads. This means that if your Reel contains any copyrighted music, it will not be able to be boosted.
To solve this problem, create a new video using original sound instead of a song.
In Conclusion
By following these solutions, you should be able to boost your Reels without any issues. Remember to always check the requirements for Reels Ads before posting to make sure your content is eligible.
Boosting your Reels is a great way to increase your reach and get more eyes on your brand. So take advantage of this feature and start promoting your business today!
The Case Of Why You Should Create An Online Course (One That Sells)
If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a profitable online course.
No matter where you are in your life or career, you have something to teach the world. Perhaps you don’t have all the details today, but the idea of not having to sell your time to make money is getting you curious.
And, you’re not alone. A recent study showed that nearly 60% of Americans would take an online course if it fits their schedule and interests, but only 10% have actually done so.
Assuming you have the time and interest in creating an online course, let’s explore the case for why this is a great
The pros of creating an online course
1 – The barriers to entry are low.
In the past, creating an online course required expensive software and hosting platforms. But now, there are platforms like Teachable that make it easy and affordable to get started. You can create and host your course on their platform without any upfront costs.
2 – You can reach a global audience.
With an online course, you can reach people all over the world. You’re not limited by geographic location like you are with in-person courses or events.
3 – There are existing ecosystems that will help you reach the audience and sell your course.
Platforms like Teachable have built-in audiences of people who are looking to learn. And, they also handle all of the marketing and payment processing for you. This means that you can focus on creating great content for your course.
4 – The upcoming generations are very receptive to learning online.
If you’re thinking that online courses are a fad, think again. The latest data shows that e-learning is here to stay. In fact, the global e-learning market is expected to reach $325 billion by 2025.
Who learns online?
Data shows that people of all ages are learning online. In fact, according to the latest data from the US Department of Education, over 6 million students took at least one online course in 2016.
The breakdown by age group is as follows:
– Under 18: 2.6 million students (17%)
– 18-24: 3.1 million students (20%)
– 25-34: 1.6 million students (10%)
– 35-44: 1.2 million students (8%)
– 45-54: 0.9 million students (6%)
– 55 and older: 1.0 million students (7%)
All of the above reasons should be getting you excited about creating an online course, but there’s one more important factor to consider…
5 – It’s highly profitable.
While the average American worker makes $44,564 per year, the top 1% of course creators are making over $200,000 per year. In fact, some of the top online course creators are making millions of dollars per year.
How much can you charge for your course?
It depends on the length and depth of your course, but the average price of an online course is between $97 and $997.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. And you will see lots of courses for FREE. They are great for lead generation.
The bottom line is that creating an online course is a great way to make money and allow you to work remotely – indefinitely. You are the creator of your own economy.
So the next question is: how do you actually build a real business from your courses?
A course business is part of the CAAS Industry (Content As A Service).
SAAS vs CAAS? What’s the difference?
What is SAAS?
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model has become a popular way for companies to consume and pay for business software. SaaS represents a new category of software that delivers applications over the web. Rather than purchasing, installing, and maintaining complex on-premises software, organizations can now subscribe to simple, easy-to-use applications that are always up to date and accessible from any device with an internet connection.
What is CAAS?
Content as a service (CaaS) is a cloud-based content management system (CMS) that provides users with on-demand access to a library of digital content, including articles, videos, images, and more.
CaaS platforms are similar to other types of SaaS applications in that they are delivered over the internet and can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. However, CaaS platforms differ from other types of SaaS applications in that they focus exclusively on content management.
While there are many different CaaS platforms available, they all share a common goal: to make it easy for users to create, manage, and deliver digital content.
The benefits of using a CaaS platform include:
– On-demand access to a library of digital content
– Ability to create, manage, and deliver digital content
– Ability to customize the look and feel of your content
– Increased efficiency and productivity
If you’re looking for a way to create, manage, and deliver digital content, then a CaaS platform is a great option.
There are many different CaaS platforms available, but not all of them are created equal. When choosing a CaaS platform, it’s important to consider your specific needs and requirements.
Some of the things you should look for in a CaaS platform include:
– Ease of use: The platform should be easy to use, even if you’re not a tech-savvy person.
– Content Library: The platform should have a library of digital content that you can access on demand.
– Ability to customize: The platform should allow you to customize the look and feel of your content.
– Increased efficiency: The platform should help you increase your efficiency and productivity.
– Marketplace features: The platform should have marketplace features that allow you to sell your courses.
The bottom line is that if you’re looking for a way to create, manage, and deliver digital content, then a CaaS platform is a great option. When we were exploring all the CaaS in the market: Kajabi, ClickFunnels, Teachable, Simplero, Thunkific, WordPress Plugins, and Kartra, we decided to go with Kartra. Kartra has offers the best SEO features and is great for technical SEO. If you’re in the market for a CaaS platform, try Kartra for free.
Tips To A Profitable Online Course
1 – Find an audience that is eager to learn. There’s no reason for you to convince people about why they should learn something.
2 – Before creating the course, find similar courses and do some ethical “cyberstalking”. Pay attention to their teaching style, platform, and most importantly, how they engage with their students.
3 – Use an evergreen model to ensure long-term profitability. You certainly don’t want to create a course that becomes obsolete within months.
4 – Create content marketing that helps you gain brand authority. This will make people want to buy your courses because they trust you.
5 – The key to selling courses is not to be too salesy. Instead, focus on providing value and helping people reach their goals.
6 – Use an email list to increase course sales. This way, you can stay in touch with your students and promote new courses to them.
7 – Offer a money-back guarantee to increase course sales. This will help you build trust with your audience and make them feel more comfortable buying your courses.
8 – Provide bonuses and other incentives to people who buy your courses. This will help you increase course sales and keep your students happy.
9 – Focus on giving your users a stellar customer experience. This will help you increase course sales and reduce refunds.
10 – Don’t create a course until you have students who are ready to learn from you. Offer mini sessions for free so you can test your content with a real audience. Then you create paid content to expand from your free mini sessions. By doing this, you will be creating content for an audience that is ready to learn from YOU. This is the key to building profitable online courses.
Creating and selling a course can be a great way to make money online. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all courses are created equal. In order to create a successful and profitable course, you need to focus on providing value, engaging with your students, and using marketing strategies that will help you sell your courses. And sometimes, a profitable course is one that you give away for free, as part as your customer acquisition costs. Long term, this can be a profitable activity.
If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a profitable online course. Just remember that it takes time, effort, and dedication to succeed. So don’t give up and keep moving forward!
Done for you course creation services:
Hiring a team that can offer a done-for-you course creation services can save you time and energy; and most importantly, will cut your learning curve.
Why did we pick Kartra to build our courses?
Kartra offers what most teaching platforms do: all-in-one content building, marketing, and sales. But there’s one area where they stand out from their competitors like ClickFunnels, Kajabi, Teachable, and others: you are able to create inside Kartra and take it to your WordPress. This is a big deal, especially for technical SEO.
Learn how to do a website audit yourself and find ways to make your site more effective at generating leads – even in a recession!
If you’re like most businesses, your website is likely one of your biggest missed opportunities. In today’s day and age, people are increasingly turning to the internet to find products and services. As a result, a well-designed website can be a powerful tool for attracting new customers. Furthermore, a website provides you with a platform to showcase your products or services in the best light possible. In other words, a website is an essential tool for any business that is looking to grow.
So, what makes a good website?
There are a few key elements that you should keep in mind. First and foremost, your website should be easy to navigate and user-friendly. Secondly, it should be visually appealing and informative. Finally, your website should be optimized for search engines so that potential customers can easily find you online. By keeping these elements in mind, you can ensure that your website is an effective tool for attracting new business.
In this article, we will go over a website audit – DIY so you can explore potential missed opportunities.
Questions to consider when auditing your website
Before you can start thinking about auditing your website, you need to be clear on what problem your business solves. That might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how many businesses don’t have a clear answer to that question. Once you know what problem you solve, you can start thinking about how your website communicates that to visitors.
Is it clear and concise?
Do you use language that your target audience will understand?
Do you provide enough information to help people make a decision?
These are all important questions to consider when auditing your website. Because at the end of the day, a brand is what people think about your business. And you want them to think highly of you.
Keep your target audience in mind
If you’re in a situation where you have a strong brand but you’re not targeting the right audience, making some changes to your branding messaging can have a big impact. Along with a clear call to action, revamping your branding can help you reach your target market more effectively. Keep in mind, however, that it’s important to remain true to your brand identity. Don’t make any radical changes that could confuse or alienate your existing customer base. Instead, focus on making subtle adjustments that will help you reach your target market without compromising your brand identity.
Pro tip: Rebrand when there is no other option. Making subtle changes in a few website pages might be what your business needs today.
Your website goals
A website is no longer a static business card. In order to compete in today’s market, your website must be updated regularly with exclusive offers and a user-friendly interface. If your goal is to increase revenue, your website must be designed with this goal in mind.
Home page DIY audit
Some of the questions that will help you audit your website:
Is the home page eye-catching?
Can your visitors read about the problem you solve for them, within the first 5 seconds of landing?
Is the menu easy to navigate?
Do you have excessive text?
Do you have calls to action so that users know how they can do business with you?
Pro tip: The home page is not always your top-visited page. Be sure to check your Google Analytics so you can see how are people coming to your website and prioritize your top pages.
How do I generate leads from my website?
One of the main goals of having a website is to generate business. But before you can generate business, you need to generate leads. And when you’re auditing your website, one of the key areas to explore is how you’re generating leads. If you’ve never generated leads online before, this should be your starting point.
There are a number of ways to generate leads on your website, and which methods you choose will depend on your business and your audience.
Common ways to generate more leads on your website:
Some common methods include using forms to collect contact information, providing gated content that requires an email address to access, and running ads that target people who are interested in your products or services.
Pro tip: Combine your lead capture with a strong email marketing strategy so you can nurture your audience and add value consistently.
Free Website Audit Tools
Before you start making changes to your website, it’s important to do a comprehensive assessment of how it’s performing currently, from the technical point of view. Know that when a site has technical errors, Google won’t rank it. And this is crucial in order for you to determine where your focus should truly be.
This is what’s known as a technical website audit or a “website health check”. By taking a close look at your page views, bounce rate, average time on page, and other key metrics, you can get a sense of where your website needs improvement.
There are a number of tools that can help you with this process, including Google Analytics, Moz’s SEO Explorer, SEM Rush, and AHREFS, just to name a few.
By taking the time to do a thorough audit of your website, you can ensure that any changes you make will be based on data and will have a positive impact on your website’s performance.
What Should You Do Now?
Chances are, your DIY website audit reflects that it’s time to make some changes. But the most important part of taking the time to do this audit is to understand which changes matter the most.
If you found no traffic, or a very high bounce rate, and your Google Search Console has errors, this means it’s a technical SEO problem. This should be your highest priority. Hiring a senior-level SEO will take care of all your needs in one: from technical SEO, to optimizing for brand awareness, traffic, or conversion rates optimizations.
A good SEO strategy will also improve your website’s usability and design. They’ll make sure your website is easy to navigate and looks good on all devices. This will help improve your website’s user experience, which is another ranking factor for Google. Finally, a good SEO will also help you create high-quality content that is engaging and relevant to your audience. content that is engaging and relevant to your audience. And this is how you’ll turn your website into possibly replacing a sales team!
Join our Free Marketing Resource Center
You’re always hustling, trying new things, and looking for an edge on the competition. We get it. And we’re here to help. Our Marketing Resource Center is full of tips, tricks, and tactics that can help you market smarter and more effectively. Plus, it’s a great way to stay up-to-date on the latest industry news and trends. So if you’re serious about marketing your business for success, join our Resource Center today. It’s free, and you’ll be glad you did.
Inflation is a serious challenge for businesses – find out how to stay afloat and protect your company in this tough economy.
After relying primarily on price increases, business owners and executives are looking for creative ways to maintain profit margins and survive during inflation.
Here are a few fast facts based on the latest Consumer Price Index as of March 2022:
Food prices rose 8.8%, and the largest increase was in the “food at home” category (i.e., groceries).
Energy prices rose 32%, and the largest increases were in the “fuel oil and gasoline” categories.
Prices for items outside of food and energy rose 6.5% and the largest increase was in the “shelter” category.
So, how do you fight inflation, without increasing your prices?
According to a recent MFG survey of local business owners in Austin, Texas, the majority of business owners are fighting inflation by increasing their marketing efforts to increase their overall sales volume, followed by pricing strategies, and outsourcing.
Those are all great ideas, but there are a million strategies out there to improve your bottom line even as everything gets pricier.
Here are a few ways that businesses can adjust to inflation:
1) Increase marketing efforts to generate more sales volume. If your product is selling at the same price but you’re able to sell more units, your business will still come out ahead. Develop a strategic plan to nurture existing consumers and reach new audiences at the same time.
2) Know your numbers. Keep a close eye on your budget and know where every penny is going. The same goes for your revenue. Get granular data about your top-selling products. Knowing where you can make cuts will help save your business money.
3) Be creative with pricing. If you must increase prices, look for ways to do it in a way that won’t cause too much of a shock to your customers. For example, you could institute a small price increase for all customers or offer discounts for bulk purchases or preorders.
4) Consider outsourcing. In some cases, it may be more cost-effective to outsource certain aspects of your business rather than try to do everything in-house.
5) Keep your employees and customers happy. Inflation can be tough on everyone, but it’s important to try to maintain a positive attitude and keep your employees and customers happy. After all, they are the backbone of your business. Loyalty programs are a great way to keep customers coming back, and happy employees are more productive employees. A loyalty program is a system where customers can earn rewards for their purchases. For example, a business might offer a loyalty card that gives customers 1 point for every $1 they spend. Once the customer reaches a certain number of points, they can redeem them for discounts or freebies.
6) Implement better processes and systems. Review your current processes and see where you can make improvements that will help increase efficiency and decrease costs, especially in the following areas of your business:
Productivity
Customer service
Business development
Digitalization
Automation
7) Reduce advertising costs by utilizing digital marketing methods which are often more cost-effective. This means:
Focusing on SEO to make sure your website appears as the top result in search engine results pages.
Utilizing social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, to reach potential customers.
Creating email marketing campaigns to promote your products or services.
Using content marketing to attract potential customers to your website.
By utilizing these digital marketing methods, you can reduce your advertising costs and still reach a large audience.
How does inflation affect your marketing strategy?
If you’re not sure how to adjust your marketing strategy for inflation, here are a few tips:
1) Review your target audience. Make sure you understand who your target audience is and what their needs are. This will help you determine how to best reach them with your marketing message.
2) Focus on value. When consumers are feeling the pinch of inflation, they’re going to be more focused on getting the most bang for their buck. Make sure your marketing messages emphasize the value of your product or service.
3) Get creative with your messaging. If you can find a way to stand out from the competition and grab attention, you’ll be in a better position to succeed during periods of inflation.
4) Be flexible. Inflation can be unpredictable, so it’s important to be flexible with your marketing strategy. If you’re able to adapt quickly to changes in the market, you’ll be in a better position to succeed. If you are working with a marketing agency or lead a marketing team, be sure that you can implement new initiatives and pivot quickly.
5) Market to existing customers. During periods of inflation, it can be more difficult to attract new customers. Instead, focus on marketing to your existing customer base and try to increase loyalty and repeat business.
How can businesses benefit from inflation?
Your business can benefit from inflation, in the long run. By staying proactive, your path to leading your market would be much easier. Also, as time goes by and people get used to the idea of inflation, they will start to think about it less and carry on with their lives. In turn, this would lead to more customers for your business and help you maintain a good market share.
How can a fractional CMO help your business thrive during inflation?
A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a senior-level marketing executive who can be hired on a part-time or project basis to provide expert marketing guidance and leadership to businesses.
Why hire a fractional CMO?
There are several reasons why you might consider hiring a fractional CMO:
1 ) You’re not ready to commit to a full-time CMO. A full-time CMO salary is typically out of reach for many small businesses. But by hiring a fractional CMO, you can get the same level of expertise and experience without breaking the bank.
2) You need help with a specific marketing project. If you have a specific marketing project that needs to be completed, such as rebranding or launching a new product, a fractional CMO can help you get it done.
3) You need an experienced marketing leader. If you’re a small business without a lot of marketing experience on your team, hiring a fractional CMO can give you the expertise and leadership you need to take your marketing to the next level.
4) You need help with marketing strategy. One of the most important roles of a CMO is to develop and execute a marketing strategy that aligns with the business’s overall goals. If you need help developing or fine-tuning your marketing strategy, a fractional CMO can be a great resource.
5) You want to reduce your marketing costs by outsourcing but don’t have the capacity to lead a marketing team. By hiring a fractional CMO, you can outsource your marketing functions and still have someone in-house to provide leadership and strategic direction.
If you’re facing inflation and aren’t sure how to adjust your marketing strategy, a fractional CMO can help. A fractional CMO can provide the expert guidance you need to navigate the challenges of inflation and keep your business thriving.
MFG offers fractional CMO services in Austin, Texas
Learn more about our digital marketing services and how we can help you drive more business by visiting our website or contacting us today.
SEO marketing trends keep changing with time but understanding their essence and the latest practices in these trends can help. Learn all about these SEO marketing trends in the article below.
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are often used interchangeably, but they are actually two different things.
SEM is a type of internet marketing that involves paying for ads that appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO, on the other hand, is a process of optimizing website content and structure to improve SERP rankings organically (i.e. without paying for ads). Both SEM and SEO can be effective ways to improve visibility and traffic, but they should be used as part of a larger internet marketing strategy.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a bit difficult for people to understand. If you search for SEO on the internet, you will find endless information on the topic, but understanding it is a different story. Most of this information can be confusing and technical that doesn’t make sense to most people.
You have most likely heard of terms like on-site, off-site, technical, and local SEO. That’s not even the full list considering SEO applications and strategies are expanding each day. We are going to dicuss SEO, as well as the popular marketing trends that you can expect from businesses in 2022. It will help you improve your marketing strategies, and get the right results.
SEO Categories
Let’s divide SEO into the following sections for better understanding :
On-Site
Off-Site
Technical
Local
On-Site SEO
On-site SEO begins with high-quality content that goes directly on a site. It is because most search engines like Bing, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and others use bots to crawl on web pages to rank site results. Several elements including Meta Descriptions, Title Tags, Alt Tags, internal links all play a vital role for these crawlers. This signals the search engine about the page content and its relevancy.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO or link building includes adding links to authorized and credible sources to improve the quality and ranking of your site. It is an essential part of Google’s understanding of the SEO concept. We also suggest you avoid buying links because it is an older practice, and Google can easily track it.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO revolves around using site improvement s for better ratings. This includes meeting the site’s technical requirements to improve your search engine results. This may include site structure to user experience issues like core web vitals. You also have to ensure a consistent URL structure, which is one of the toughest areas of SEO.
Local SEO
Local SEO involves practices that improve your site’s local ranking. It also includes your site ranking with certain keywords used highly in your area. This kind of approach works best for smaller businesses and gives them a chance to rank higher in results, compared to the bigger sharks in the industry.
You probably have a lot of information to absorb by now, but there are some other things you should keep in mind. For example, we believe that SEO is not just about On-Site or Technical, or local SEO, etc. Instead, things like CRO also matter. Let us discsuss it in detail.
What is CRO?
You will need to implement CRO – Conversions Rate Optimization Strategies if you want to see conversions from your search engine marketing. These include a change that helps improve the conversion rates, i.e. visitors into potential leads. However, it is a bit technical and requires extra attention. For instance, your website should be optimized for the following things in 2022.
1- Website Speed
Your site’s loading and functioning speed is a big indicator of conversion rates. Users generally leave sites that take more than 3 seconds to load.
2- Website Mobile Response
Mobile optimized sites are a must-have in 2022 because 90% of the internet traffic comes from mobile devices. You will receive increased traffic once your site is optimized for mobile users. You can reach out to a mobile developer to make this happen.
3- Content SEO and Semantic SEO
Semantic SEO requires gaining a deeper understanding of your audience. You can think of it as keyword research but there is a lot more to it. Businesses need to take take a look into their traffic’s search and intention. This makes businesses think beyond ‘what questions they start with’. It also encourages users to look for things that the traffic may search for ahead, and provide it on site.
Note that keyword optimization is not enough to improve ranking. It is why users have to produce content that meets the intent and needs of the customers. Fortunately, Content and Semantic SEO address this need.
Reducing sites with sponsored, guest, and affiliate content
Making robust ranking changes in these sites accordingly.
4- Local SEO
Local SEO aims to optimize a site so that users in the area can easily find content. It also assists ranking ability with certain keywords and phrases. However, local SEO is not as simple as it seems. It doesn’t only include adding a location in your site keywords You will also need to take care of plenty of other things such as the Google Business profile, as well as your Schema mark-up, and more.
5- Internal & External Links – More Than Just a Signal
Internal links refer to a link from another page on the same website. This includes hyperlinks from other pages as well. However, areas like website navigation are also an example of these links. These internal links also pass the authority on your pages and allow readers to know more about your business. Notice that you won’t see a change in the Domain Authority, but you will still pass “page authority” through them. Internal links also allow pages with search engine rankings.
6- SEO Anything- including Social Media SEO
Social media marketing allows users to SEO optimize pretty much anything they can come across. This includes the following information formats.
Images
Audio
Videos
Text
Social media plays an essential part because it not only has an impact on SEO ranking but also the links shared on social platforms. These links increase brand exposure and allow traffic increase. Moreover, customer experience will impact your website stats such as time spent on your site, pages read, etc. All of these factors contribute to improving site reputation and response rates in search engines.
In 2022, we encourage businesses to be mindful of what their users want so they can create content for their audience. This is where conversions will happen, not from tactics but a strategic approach. Therefore, these simple methods can prove helpful for creating better strategies.
Bottom Line
Understanding SEO trends is a bit difficult for most companies because it requires strategies that focus on a broader approach. However, focusing on simple steps like user intent, updating expanding content, first-party data collection, and understanding differences across platforms can help you optimize your SEO strategies. We can offer a marketing assessment, for your SEO needs.
It all starts with knowing where your brand is at! Let’s have a chat soon!
Email marketing is a powerful tool for any business looking to increase their reach. It allows you to connect with your audience in a personal way, and it’s one of the best ways to increase sales. But how do you build an email list? The answer isn’t as simple as just “creating” one – there are many strategies that can be used to create an effective email list!
In this blog post I will my top 7 tips on how businesses can use SEO to generate more leads and convert more prospects into customers via email marketing.
How effective is email marketing in 2021?
Email marketing is the most effective way to generate leads online. 85% of marketers say email has generated more sales than any other digital channel. However, this number might change, after Apple’s email privacy update.
Apple is forcing marketers and publishers who use email to rethink some of the ways they’ve monetized or used their subscriber base.
The company will give its users the option to do away with tracking pixels, or small images that email marketers use to tell if you actually opened an email. There’s also a feature called “Private Relay” for subscribers to Apple’s iCloud storage service iCloud+ that would hide IP addresses. Finally, a feature called “Hide My Email” will let users share “unique, random” email addresses that can forward to their personal inbox, which they’re able to delete to control who contacts them.
Email campaigns will need to be adjusted; especially automated campaigns. In other words: personalization is key!
Content Marketing SEO can help brands establish brand loyalty and gain trust
If you want to grow your email list, then content marketing is how. Content marketing is not just blogs. It can be anything your audience would find valuable. It could mean how-to videos, white papers, infographics or any other type of content that’s worth sharing and talking about online – which is how you build trust with the people who engage with it.
Examples of content marketing:
Social media posts
Blog posts
Videos
Guides
Infographics
White papers
Email marketing campaigns
Video series
Virtual challenges
SMS – chat marketing, etc!
Creating valuable content will not only help you build trust, but your users will gladly receive your emails and recommend them to their network.
SEO principles can help you build your email list
As you create content, think about how SEO can help your business to generate leads and convert prospects.
2) Use banners or clickable text that link back to be able to capture contact information from
When you add an image related to your content, be sure to add keywords in the file name and captions so that you will rank well in images searches.
3) Create infographics with valuable information
Offer a downloadable PDF to convert the viewer into a subscriber.
4) Create how-to videos using your SEO keywords (including full questions)
Promote a freebies in exchange for an email address!
5) Make your content user-centered
Make it easy for them to subscribe.
6) Deliver what you promise
Give users what you promise them in your clickable banner. For example, if the banner was “sign up and get a 25% coupon”, then they should be able to easily download that coupon once signed up.
7) Link back to any posts that make key points and link them together.
These posts should be written with the aim of attracting new subscribers by making your content more searchable online.
8) Track and measure your content!
Get the full overview of how your content is performing with UTM codes and analytics.
9) Promote your content using social media
Especially where you can add your link: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook pages, Facebook Groups, etc.
Converting email subscribers into paying customers
Building brand loyalty is the new approach to driving conversions in the future. How does it cultivate loyalty? Simply by injecting authenticity into your email experience! Building a relationship with your mailing list is more important than acquiring massive lists. Make your subscribers feel special.
Best email marketing practices to increase conversions
Target specific segments of the email list and share personalized content.
Since you want to build a relationship with your users, invite them to your social media channels.
Keep your brand voice consistent.
Use different types of content to address each segment’s needs (e.g., video for lead nurturing, how-to articles for customer support).
Offer exclusive incentives for taking specific actions.
The more you engage with your email list, the more trust is built.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this blog post, but we want to leave you with just one last thought. If you can use the principles of SEO for your email list and turn subscribers into paying customers, then it’s worth doing. Let me know if you need help building your email list using SEO so that I can share some tips on how to get started. Thanks again for reading!
Are you a blogger or small business owner looking to make your blog more SEO friendly so that Google will rank it higher when people search for the same topic? This is the post for you!
In this post, I’ll cover the basics to help you get started and do some basic SEO on your blog.
What is SEO friendly?
Being SEO friendly means that you have created a blog and its content to make it easier for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. to find your site when someone searches for the same topic or keyword phrase.
The purpose of doing this is so people who are looking for information on the subject can easily find your post related content instead of having to go through hundreds or thousands of results.
There are many ways that you can do this, and I’ll cover some basic ones for creating a blog post with SEO in mind below:
Step One. Pick your focus keywords
Picking your focus keywords is the first step in making your blog SEO friendly. Be sure to choose a handful of keywords that are relevant to the topic of your blog so that you can target these words throughout your content and link back to them in your URL. More targeted keywords will be found by more people who are searching for what you offer, and this will lead to higher rankings in Google and higher traffic for your site.
The goal is for the content on your blog post to be helpful and insightful so people will want to share it with their friends and followers through social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter.
Step Two. Optimize your on-page content with these keywords
Use all of those great keywords in headlines, subheadings, image captions, videos, descriptions, etc. Make sure you use some form of call-to-action as well and entice readers to click, subscribe or buy.
Step Three: Create XML sitemaps
I’ll assume that for most bloggers, it’s not enough to make sure Google can find your content because you want your blog to appear in Google’s search results. To do this, create an XML sitemap that will let the big G know about all of your content and where it can be found on your site.
Step Four: Generate blog categories using your keywords
As you write posts, categorize them with keywords that are relevant to the content. This will help Google find your blog and rank it higher in search results for those topics.
Step Five: Generate tags using your keywords as well
Tags work like categories, but they’re better because people who use Google’s site-specific search can find your content much more easily.
Step Six: Add social media buttons to your blog
One of the best ways to get people who are not on your site to visit and potentially share it is by adding these widgets next to each post. You can include options like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever other networks you use for SEO purposes.
Step Seven: Create backlinks
Finally, go out there and create some quality backlinks from other sites to your blog. This will help Google find and rank you higher for keywords that are relevant to the content of your site.
A quality backlink is one that comes from a site with a high domain authority.
Step Eight: Create content frequently
Hopefully, you’re already doing this because it will help your blog rank better and keep people coming back for more!
Step Nine: Promote your articles on social media
Sharing your articles across all the social media platforms will help you generate traffic to your website, plus you’ll have the chance to expand your content based on the comments from your audience.
Step Ten: Monitor your blog performance
Monitoring your blog performance is essential because you want to make sure it’s running smoothly and that Google hasn’t penalized it for any reason.
Sign up for Google Search Console so you can get alerts about your blog performance.
As a forensic marketer, I am always paying attention to metrics (as you may know). The following are trackers that your blog must-have, so you can run reports, check performance, and plan future content:
Facebook pixel. Make sure your blog has a Facebook Pixel installed, along with custom events, so you can see important metrics such as article views and clicks on your call to actions. You can even build a custom audience from your article visitors.
Google Analytics tracker. A tracker will allow you to gather information on your article visitors, the time they have spent reading, other pages they visited, and depending on your settings, you can set up goals and campaigns to find specific users’ behaviors.
UTM codes. This tool allows you to easily add campaign parameters to URLs so you can track Custom Campaigns in Google Analytics. Watch the video below to see a quick tutorial on how UTM codes work.
Ready to boost your SEO? We are an Austin-based online marketing agency specialized in performance based marketing
Empower your blog with these 10 simple steps to make you the most search engine friendly blogger on the web. No matter what kind of content you are blogging about (health tips, business hints etc.), following these 10 steps will catapult your traffic and see a major rise in ranking.
Growing a business in pandemic times has been nothing but an easy task. With limited resources, every step that a business owner takes must be strategically calculated. Gone are the days when businesses have the luxury to invest in marketing tactics that don’t bring quick results.
Are you up to crafting a quick-win marketing strategy? Then you’ll certainly want to add Local SEO to the mix and we’re here to tell you why!
What is Local SEO For Dummies
Online marketing and advertising are nothing new, as millions of people use the Internet for business every day. Not every store or business is online as ecommerce is not universal, but every business should use online marketing to maximize available modern tools.
Part of online marketing is SEO or search engine optimization, and there are different focuses within SEO. One vital part of SEO is local SEO. Local SEO focuses on optimizing your website, including content, link building, and on-page optimizations targeted for local viewers, so your website ranks higher in local searches.
Let’s say you own a beauty salon and you want to drive new customers. How do you think your future customers find a hair salon? They will probably search for “hair salon near me”, “best hair salon in Austin”, “hair salon specialized in highlights near me”. A winning SEO strategy will position your hair salon at the top of their options. Wouldn’t it be cool if those who are ready to book their hair appointment could find your amazing hair salon before they see your competitor? Of course you’re saying yes (we can read your mind).
Who needs local SEO?
Local SEO might not be a top priority for businesses that serve a large area or cover an entire country as everywhere is local to large companies. However, local SEO is critical for businesses that serve a focused area such as a certain city or state.
When you use local SEO correctly, customers can easily find your store information rather than searching through layers of search results. Google has amazing features that allow your potential customers to engage with your business, before they even call you. They could take a tour, read reviews, watch videos, and before and after pictures. Those actions are called “consideration steps”. So, a winning SEO should get you more clicks, but even better, more revenue.
Local SEO might be yet another thing you must improve, but it is well worth the effort for businesses that rely on community.
How Do You Check Your Local SEO Rankings?
Start with the Google Search Console tool. If you haven’t created an account yet, create an account on Google Search Console.
Your local SEO rankings are on your Google Search Console. To see which keywords are bringing traffic to your website, explore the performance menu on your Google Search Console.
Filter your results, starting with “near me” . This will show you the queries (which are also keywords), impressions, and clicks. Export the report so you can save that data.
Identify the keywords that are bringing the most impressions and clicks.
Run a Google Search (using incognito mode) using the exact keywords, for example: “botox near me”. This will display what your future customers are seeing, when they search.
A Pro Tip: Filter your performance report by mobile search so you can explore your data from mobile searches as well. Google doesn’t always show the same results for mobile searches.
How To Find Your Local SEO Keywords
Your Google Search Console is a great place to start. Also, if you have Google My Business, you will be able to see which terms are delivering visits to your listing.
From your Google My Business- go to Insights – New profile performance
Google will show you searches that triggered your Business Profile.
Grow With Local SEO
Your Google ranking will influence users when they are considering doing business with you.
Your friends might appreciate you. However, if they need a service, they will do business with companies that they can trust. That’s why Google reviews exist.
Local SEO is considered as the digital word of mouth. If Google doesn’t talk about your business, your future clients won’t know that it exist.
Many people will search for businesses near them, whether that be lawyers near me, sporting stores in a specific city, or any other location-based search, and you want your business to come up in those results.
What Improves Your Local SEO?
A strong local SEO strategy focuses in maximizing the following:
Business listings
Images
Videos
Reviews
Social media
Website
Google My Business
Unlike many SEO providers will tell you, local SEO isn’t about keywords.
Local SEO requires a multidisciplinary set of online marketing skills, performed with one simple goal: getting you conversions.
Your Local SEO is based on your current rankings, as that will dictate the opportunities that you have. For this reason, a strategy is personalized.
What is a black hat SEO technique?
Black hat SEO techniques are considered spam by Google and they will get you penalized. For this reason, you must ask your Local SEO service provider if they will be using any of those practices. In particular, ask if any of their clients have gotten flagged by Google. If the answer is yes, stay away.
Does black hat SEO work?
Black hat SEO still goes on, it still works (for a short time), is still successful at zooming a website up search engine rankings, and still makes some people of lot of money.
The keyword here is: short time.
You certainly want to grow a business with a long term approach in mind.
Local Vs. National SEO
SEO extends across many areas of online marketing, but there are differences between specialties. Local SEO focuses on search results for a particular area, while national SEO aims to make a business rank higher across an entire country or the globe. While both tactics use general SEO practices, national SEO will target more general keywords or phrases rather than area-specific terms you find in local SEO. You can use both local and national SEO elements, but you cannot expect to get local results using nation SEO methods as they target different goals and use different search keywords.
Google My Business Strategy
Getting a local business listed on Google My Business (GMB) and other online directories is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get a local business to start showing up for local search results on Google. Google My Business connects businesses directly with their customers — whether they’re searching on Google Search or Maps.
Most SEOs who work with local clients consider claiming their GMB listing the first step in their SEO strategy. Surprisingly, 56% of local businesses haven’t claimed their Google My Business listing, according to Local Business Institute.
I know you want to optimize your website and landing pages with SEO, but you might just need to focus on GMB first.
How much does it cost to put your business on Google?
Google My Business is a free tool. However, the strategies and efforts needed to implement those, so you can rank will require time and resources.
Finding a reliable provider for your Local SEO services will be worth every penny.
Local SEO Services
Local SEO also gives new businesses far more of a chance than national SEO as smaller businesses can enjoy their niche market rather than competing against massive corporations with larger budgets. A new business can hit the top ranks with proper local SEO, which gives more small businesses chances to flourish with a broader customer base. Local SEO also helps your business nail down a micro niche to control. Once you find your market corner, you can truly stand out from the crowd by using local SEO to make sure customers know your business in conjunction with your industry. Over time, your business will become synonymous with your niche and industry in your local area, which means your brand’s reputation only grows year after year.
Businesses that focus on local SEO must focus on more than just local keywords as your content also impacts your local rankings. Do not assume local keywords will carry your business to a good rank and ensure your posted content is relevant to your local customers. There is no point in wasting resources to make globally appealing content if you only target people in the midwest. Use your marketing budget to position your business with strategic content and backlinks to pull even more people into your local content.
SEO Can Be Tricky, Hire Help If You Need It
For how important SEO is for all businesses, it is still a relatively complex topic that takes time to understand. Most business owners do not open a business with SEO skills in tow, and it can be hard to learn on the fly. And sadly, many SEO guides and teachers explain SEO wrong. They offer keywords and traffic, without providing a clear plan on how to grow the bottom line. Learning the details of SEO is important, but if you want to fully use the tools, you must understand how everything leads to your ultimate goals. It is not enough to fiddle with numbers if you never understand how those numbers feed into your bottom line.
You can implement basic SEO without much effort or training. While basic SEO can get your business going and start the process of lifetime rankings, it will take a more knowledgeable hand to dial in your SEO. Anyone can learn more advanced SEO methods, but you can also call a professional marketer to do the hard work for you. Instead of needing to learn a new disciple, you can cut hundreds of wasted hours of your life and leave the details of SEO and online marketing to a professional agency. You can even find agencies that specialize in local SEO and helping small businesses. If you are stuck on SEO, you can still get all the benefits by calling in professional help.
Go Further With Our Local Marketing And SEO Services in Austin, Texas
Another fantastic way to pull in local business in tandem with local SEO is to partner with another local business or influencer. If you sell beauty products, it is worth finding an influencer in your city to work together on a campaign. Hometown heroes, favorite local businesses, and other popular businesses can shine a spotlight on your business while creating a positive result for everyone involved. Your industry never operates in a true bubble, so reach out to a hair salon or nail studio to work out a partnership, so everyone gets a boost. Combining all the local SEO tactics will get any business off to a good start, but you should use every method to make your business go further. Anyone can go from beauty product enthusiast to beauty business owner by doing proper research and using the best marketing methods available.
Got SEO Questions? We got SEO answers!
We are a boutique firm with a focus on growth metrics for small business owners individually assessing their unique “pain point” and building a solution for that business. We decode your numbers using Forensic Marketing principles to build a strategy unique to your revenue goals.
I wish someone had explained to me, in layman’s terms, what does SEO mean? How is SEO done? And how do you hire for SEO?
So that’s what I am doing today. Demystifying the most important considerations that a small business owner needs to have before hiring for SEO or Search Engine Marketing Services. And also, I’m covering a list of must-haves for those savvy entrepreneurs who are confident about developing websites and managing keywords, but don’t have a computer science degree and have no desire to go back to school to learn how to develop Java Codes, data warehousing, data mining, and other advanced digital marketing skills.
… Why? Because … what you don’t know is costing you money. Not everything is DIY! Especially in the SEO world.
Search Engine Marketing SEO vs Social Media Marketing – Which One Has More Impact?
A small business marketing budget tends to be limited — but that’s a good thing! When you don’t have endless cash flow, you need to be more assertive. You’re forced to learn to spend your money where it’s really going to count.
If you’re considering hiring marketing services, or starting to market for your own business, perhaps you are debating between social media marketing or search engine optimization (SEO) services.
A Real-Life Example of How Do We Use Both, Social Media and SEO
Imagine you’re planning a trip to California. You’re not sure about which city to travel to just yet. How would you go about making that decision?
You might search on Google and get some ideas. But you might also check out some pictures, hashtags, locations in particular, etc. And … you might just post in social media the typical post “I’m planning a trip to California and not sure which city is best, San Francisco or San Diego?”
What you just did- searching in different places and seeking advice in different ways- is called “the future buyer’s journey”.
The reality is that you need both SMM and SEO, but the good news is that social media marketing is easier than SEO and you could learn how to do it and save some marketing budget. As long as you have a social media strategy and the time to implement, the skills needed are not as technical as the SEO skills.
So… if you will do social media marketing, why would you still need to hire someone for SEO? Can your SEO wait until you get more budget? The short answer: yes you need to hire someone for SEO and that should not wait.
Prioritizing SMM vs SEO (Which One Goes First?)
Google and social media are both needed, but they will serve a very specific purpose that varies by where they are in their journey, which is why you want to have a big-picture strategy- the overarching approach to reach your goals.
When we develop a visibility strategy for the companies we consult for, social media becomes their main source of referrals and word of mouth marketing.
In general, social media marketing will mostly generate you sales if, and only if, you’re using direct sales tactics. This means:
You post very frequently
You stay in front of your audience
You inspire them
You educate them
You message them
You follow up with them
That’s great, but … it depends on YOU. If you have time to do all the process of social media marketing: planning the content, writing the content, preparing the visuals, scheduling the posts, on top of doing the social selling work, that’s good. But this doesn’t mean that it’s a scalable model.
You might want to leverage someone else’s time. Someone who actually enjoys doing that work so you can do the tasks that a CEO does. If you have time, you might want to learn social media strategies and digital marketing skills that can help you do that work in less time.
Search engine marketing, on the other hand, it’s not all about you directly sending messages to users. While many SEO gurus will say that you need to blog frequently and stay on top of your people, in reality, if your digital assets are in order, your business should be getting traffic and qualified leads as you’re reading this article.
If you’re overwhelmed, tired of running all bases of your business, and you’re looking for help with acquiring customers, SEO is your very next move. This can be even better than hiring a sales rep.
The One Thing That Matters When Hiring For Marketing
At some point, your brand will be in the minds of many people and you’ll get business coming to you. But … until you reach that point, strategic marketing is needed so you can execute a plan that takes you from where you are today to where you want to be, in the shortest time.
If you’re like most of my clients, you prefer visuals! One of my favorite tools to strategize is overarching models. It’s when you take the big-picture approach and see where everything is and visualize where you want it to be.
Overarching Strategies provide a general framework for the plan’s goal-specific strategies and define the scope of what the department must undertake and implement to achieve the plan’s goals. As the term overarching suggests, these strategies impact everything the department undertakes and expects to achieve.
If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan to grow your business, you’ll be at risk of losing money in the long term. This is why… what truly matters is that your marketing resources are strategically connected to your business vision. If not, you might find yourself growing a business on a treadmill. Next year will come and you’ll still be in the same place.
How To Hire For Search Engine Marketing (SEO)
Just like you won’t give yourself a fancy haircut, you’ll take your SEO needs to an SEO expert.
Generally speaking, you should expect a personalized service.
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all SEO plan. And if there is, from the agency you’re about to hire, please step back.
Number One: Do They Know Your Needs?
Your SEO strategy starts by understanding your current online visibility. If you’re not even on the radar, you’ll need the heavy lifting work so you can get on the map as quickly as possible.
Here’s the tricky part. How can you pick the right talent if you have no idea about what SEO is? Perhaps you’ll search in Upwork or Fiverr for “best SEO” and there’s a good chance you won’t understand what they say they do.
The mandatory question here is: what is your goal? What do you need?
Your brain will play you! You will say “I want sales” which is normal. But the problem is… you can’t go to an SEO guru and tell them “I want sales”. They can’t give you sales and neither can social media marketers. Marketing and sales are two separate departments. This is why even the best e-commerce sites convert at 3%. It’s truly a numbers game.
Your SEO needs will vary, based on your business status and goals.
Your SEO strategy starts by understanding your current online visibility. If you’re not even on the radar, you’ll need the heavy lifting work so you can get on the map as quickly as possible.
Make sure to discuss your needs with your SEO specialist beforehand so you can be on the same page and have the right expectations.
Number Two: Ask For Conversions
Remember that search engine optimization (SEO) can be described as strategies and tactics used to ensure that future clients can find you when they are searching online for solutions that you offer. I call SEO “hacking Google love”.
In theory, the higher a website naturally ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. In practice, ranks alone won’t pay your bills.
Your website can have 100,000 monthly users that have no intention to buy from you.
Believe it or not, there are many SEO specialists that only focus in ranks. I hear very often stories where business owners have paid several thousand dollars and can’t see results from the SEO marketing.
Not too many SEO specialists are equipped to be specialized in conversions.
Number Three: Hire A Senior-Level SEO
Hiring a senior-level SEO consultant will bring you higher ROI.
Personally, I prefer to hire experienced professionals who have 1) at least 10 years of experience and 2) industry knowledge. It takes them less time to find the answers I need and I get to execute faster.
Clarify with your SEO specialist what’s their experience and make sure they are experienced in technical SEO. A good question to filter their expertise is: how will you optimize my pages for qualified traffic? And for conversions? Can you show me?
Number Four: Request A Strategy Session
When it comes to SEO, just like social media, you have the marketing – execution and the strategy. Not every SEO specialist is a strategist. They can learn … but you might not want them to learn with your business!
Number Five: Clarify If You’re Getting Local or National SEO
If you’re a local business owner, your SEO needs will be different than if you’re, for example, a national company looking to sell on e-commerce. You’ll need Local Search Engine Marketing.
If you’re a franchise owner, e-commerce business owner, service-based professional, your needs will be different.
You see how this is turning more complex and why, if you don’t know what you truly need, you’ll hire the wrong people? If you can relate, my suggestion is to take 3 steps back and consult with a strategist.
Number Six: Take A Holistic Approach To SEO
Optimizing your brand so that it gets picked when people are searching for the services or products that you offer takes more than just typing keywords.
Factors that impact your SEO success:
Creating and publishing excellent content.
Using keywords and keyword analysis.
Link building to improve the website authority.
Using social media links on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Improving your site’s navigation to provide an excellent user experience.
Using marketing and sales copy that converts.
Your brand’s baseline and brand reputation.
Number Seven: Start With Technical SEO
Ask your SEO specialist which tools will they use. Tools like SEMRush, Screaming Frog, and Google Search Console can help analyze technical SEO, but they won’t fix the technical problems.
I always love sharing my story of how I discovered the truth of SEO a few years ago. I genuinely thought that just writing content and sharing on social media, consistently, was going to help my SEO. While our agency website got from 0 to 15,000 users per month, traffic would go back and forth. After a while, following the plan of “type or die” got me anxious. I took my website for a checkup with a technical SEO expert and this was my reaction:
There’s a good chance you have some of them and you just don’t know. And most tasks will require intermediate or advanced webmaster skills.
Fixing your technical SEO problems can be a rabbit hole. This is why I recommend discussing your brand with a senior-level expert to get certainty of what you truly need.
How Much Does It Cost To Hire SEO Strategy?
Consulting fees for a senior level SEO will go from $150- $350 per hour. But not all your needs will require a senior-level expert which is the beauty of this!
You can get a great robust SEO project done with about $2,500- $5,000.
Why do some SEO agencies offer SEO packages for $300 per month?
There are SEo agencies that offer plans where they monitor your brand for $300 a month and might work in some backlinking. But that’s not what you need the most!
What you need today is a healthy website, full of strategic content, positioned in platforms where people can find you.
Be honest! You can be writing all day, but you hate numbers! You see your Google Analytics, CTR %’s, Google Search Console reports and … now what? 😩
Data can come from anywhere. Insights come from intelligence.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when the word “forensic” is mentioned? Well, most of Gen X and millennials associate it with crime investigation. Watch one episode of a crime television show, and you will hear the word forensics mentioned after every minute. However, the word has a broader use than you might have imagined.
This is particularly true when it comes to the marketing field. Marketing these days has become a never-ending game of one-upping the competition. Whether it’s inbound marketing or outbound marketing, or email marketing, you never know who is going to best you in the days to come.
Because of this uncertainty, people often contemplate giving up. In several cases, people are unable to determine a scalable, steady, predictable, and logical path. Lack of clarity drives them insane, which leads them to make wild and risky decisions. Luckily, forensic marketing is there to save the day. In simple words, forensic marketing provides you the cold hard evidence that pinpoints which of your marketing efforts is not working.
However, forensics is not just restricted to marketing or criminology. It is also present in various other fields’ kike law, medicine, and accounting.
Marketing Needs Forensics
Let us briefly discuss the role of forensics in these fields:
Forensic Accounting: This form of forensics helps to find out accounting anomalies in standard practices and records
Forensic Medicine: helps to point out inconsistencies in medicines and treatments that patients go through. The discrepancies are gauged through patient response.
Forensic Attorneys: The job of a forensic attorney is supporting and concluding court cases by closing the gap between law and science. Attorneys thoroughly go through crime scene evidence that might help them to conclude the situation.
So, have you noticed what forensics in any field have in common? Well, they all help to point out irregularities and inconsistencies. Imagine incorporating forensics for your company’s marketing efforts. If done right, the only thing stopping you from achieving your goal would be an act of God.
Is Forensic Marketing A Real Thing?
Forensic marketing is as real as it gets. Think of it as data mining. Tons of companies use data mining to extract useful information out of raw data. They use software that helps them see specific patterns, which offer them a lot of helpful information about customers. It allows businesses to come up with efficient marketing strategies, which decreases their costs and increases their sales. In short, the process of forensic marketing consists of several steps.
Finding the right balance for your marketing strategy is the ultimate goal of forensic marketing. Utilizing forensic marketing will provide you with scalability and predictability that will lead to the massive growth of revenue.
Another aspect of forensic marketing is being aware of the next step that you will take after identifying issues, weaknesses, and challenges. If you are unable to rectify a situation, chances are that future outcomes will become even worse. It does not matter whether you are a VP of marketing or Chief executive officer; your ultimate goal should be to identify and fix weaknesses and optimize your client’s marketing efforts.
Reviewing your current marketing activities and sales process helps you to make the necessary amendments to achieve your targets.
The World through a Forensic Microscope
As I have already discussed earlier, most professional services have a forensic component these days. Be it tax specialists, lawyers, or accountants; you will find some level of forensics in their specialties. Uncovering what has unraveled is the primary purpose of using a forensic approach in marketing. Much like crime scene investigations, the forensic marketing microscope helps to find the culprit behind your company’s revenue and leads or lack thereof.
Assessing current marketing through forensics is quite simple. Here is what happens:
Your business (or your client’s business) provides a solution for a group of people. That is your target audience. You want to get visible in front of that group so they know about your solution. But you also want to influence them so they become your client. This is where forensics comes handy. It’s all about turning insights into actionable steps so the business can achieve its goals.
Marketers Have a Hard Time Proving the ROI from Their Digital Marketing Efforts
Most marketers have quite a difficult time when it comes to proving the returns from their digital marketing efforts, be it from content marketing or social media marketing. Being a marketer, I have noticed that we often juggle heaps of projects. So much so, that many marketers, later on, find themselves in a turbulent whirlwind that never lets them do their jobs properly. The result is the inability to report on ROI of all of the marketing responsibilities they take on. Finding accurate data and presenting it becomes increasingly hard.
According to a reputable survey, marketers from various countries were asked what their biggest challenge is when they try to attempt their marketing’s ROI. The vast majority of these marketers reported that attributing to their digital marketing ROI was most problematic for them. A significant reason why proving ROI for digital marketing, especially when it comes to content production, is quite tough is because most analytics platforms base their reports by, on page SEO, local SEO, paid searches, email, social media insights, ad performance, and other channels. Surprisingly, even sophisticated attribution models do not tell whether the money you spend on your marketing efforts was worth it or not.
Despite that, there are a few things you can do to improve your efforts. First of all, use a top website analytics platform like Google Analytics for reporting your campaigns with accuracy. In addition, use tracking codes for all marketing activities that make use of your content. UTM codes are a good example of that. Furthermore, report your content by using a custom dashboard.
By having these, you will find It easier to report the impact of each of your marketing efforts. It will also help you combine your financial and campaign reports. It is not as these challenges cannot be conquered. However, you have to step back from the production lime, find suitable key performance indicators for the business, and use tools that match your needs. Sure, you might find it painstaking in the beginning; however, with time, you will see a significant improvement in proving ROI on your digital activities.
Organizations Want to See Conversion Rates and Real Sales, Not Just Clicks
Conversion rates are, without a doubt, the most crucial digital media and digital marketing metric. All of your online marketing efforts, especially content marketing, aim at a single purpose, and that is to convert your website visitors into loyal customers.
Conversion rates include more than just sales. Free quote requests by visitors, calls, and filling contract forms also are considered as conversions. Any action that increases the chances of your business making a sale can be referred to as a conversion.
I have seen quite a lot of people become overwhelmed by metrics in their early digital marketing days. You should always watch click-through rates and CPC while keeping return on investment in mind. Do not make the mistake of diverting all of your attention to clicks. It is a recipe for disaster. Organizations care more about real sales and conversion rates.
If you haven’t done it yet, before moving forward with your content marketing plan, tracking your entire sales process is a must. Facebook provides a great feature to track clicks and actions with Pixel Event Setup Tool. You can use it to track your blog and call to actions, for example. This will be the only way for you to show that your content marketing is turning into real users.
Importance of Measuring Conversions From Your Content Marketing
If it is not abundantly clear by now, improving conversion rates is the cheapest possible way to improve profits from your content marketing efforts.
If this was not enough, here are some more reasons that solidify the importance of conversion rates:
Conversion Rates Indicate Failure and Success
As a content marketer, you typically pay attention to keywords, keyword density, and other SEO tools that help you craft the best content marketing strategy. But your work doesn’t end there.
Besides your SEO metrics, a content marketer needs to track their conversion rates from their content marketing efforts. This is the only way you can tell if your content marketing is working.
You Save Money with Better Conversion Rates
Higher conversion rates allow you to cover a lot of ground without having a big ad budget. You can even reduce the current ad budget and use cash leftover to test new marketing tactics. Your banking account will appreciate it.
Conversion Rates Tell You About Your Readability
Readability is a major factor in online content and can greatly increase your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) levels. Readability is the practice of making your writing understandable and easy to digest for your target audience. Marketing to your audience is critically important.
If your conversions are healthy, chances are your readability is healthy as well. On the other hand, if conversion rates are not optimal, exploring readability scores is a must.
A common mistake I see is that marketers only track conversions from their sales page. However, they seem to miss other elements that are important to drive conversions for a website, such as brand authority and brand trust. How do we measure those?
Conversion Rates Are Impulsed By Trust
If your audience can relate to the content that you have created, then they are more likely to trust your brand. But that’s not enough for them to purchase from you.
“Businesses that fail to establish trust — the foundation of any relationship — will lose to businesses who can,” said SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie in a statement accompanying the survey results. The survey conducted by his company found that brand trust affects the bottom line in a variety of ways.
As a forensic marketer, sometimes I need to step back from the quantitative metrics and explore deeper the qualitative ones, such as trust, empathy, relatability, approachability, charismatic. Maybe your conversions are not happening simply because the brand doesn’t inspire trust to the audience. Or it’s not delivering the information that users expect, in comparison to similar products or services.
Tips to Improve Conversion Rates
Since we have discussed why conversions are so important, let us talk about some helpful tips that could potentially boost conversion rates from your content marketing efforts.
· Be impeccable with your online presence. Users will search you! Grow your company’s social media, add a business listing, add it on google maps, provide the necessary email addresses etc. Do everything possible to attract people to Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts. Display social proof on your pages if you happen to have a decent following. Also, remember to use title tags and meta tags to improve its online presence.
· Have a clear definition of what is a conversion. Your initial goal from your content marketing is to build awareness. You need to measure your performance based on the number of users your content marketing is attracting. Optimize for traffic, engagement, and email subscribers, until you reach at least 5,000 visitors per month. Then you can optimize for sales.
· Niche! Although aiming for a wide audience is a great idea, you should also focus on the particular demographic that appreciates your product the most.
This can be confusing but trust me, it takes me seconds seeing your blind spots. That’s why you want a forensic strategist in your team!
Real Case
There was a local Tech Company that saw a noticeable decline in its sales and leads all of a sudden. This happened in late June 2019. The company got in touch with its marketing agency and asked what the problem was. The agency did not find any issues and claimed that everything was all right. They said “all you need is to increase your PPC budget”.
Tech Company agrees to boost their PPC budget to $20,000 a month. Guess what happened next? Do you think sales went up?
If your answer was no, you were right!
Things did not improve, however. In fact, they got even worse. The sales saw a massive 40 percent drop despite adding a lot of extra budget for enhancing the marketing efforts.
This is when they called me on-site to perform a Forensic Analysis for their marketing to figure out the missing pieces. They did know that something was wrong but could not figure out what it was. All their marketing agency provided was invoices and click rates, which are not enough.
Their marketing agency could not provide an explanation of why sales were not happening, simply because they were just doing 1 tactic: PPC. The center of their tactic was the money factor, instead of the user. But the client isn’t a marketer, so they don’t know what they don’t know.
From my analysis, I found critical conversion metrics that were missing- all related to their top funnel marketing. They had no content marketing strategy in place, except for the product description and call to action. I showed them their top competitors and their content marketing. We drafted a top-funnel content marketing plan that will drive them up to 40,000 new visitors – all organic. By adding organic traffic, their marketing budget went from $25,000 a month to $7,500 but now it includes content marketing, social media marketing, and PPC. We are now monitoring sales patterns so we can craft advertising campaigns, based on what their users want!
Our 6 Steps of Forensic Marketing Consulting
We are highly proficient when it comes to forensic marketing, whether its for a local business or for a wider one. Our efforts have provided first-rate marketing solutions for various renowned clients. Here are our 6 steps of forensic marketing consultancy.
Before Taking a Case – Assessment
The first thing that we offer is a marketing health check. It is completely complimentary. I was very adamant of making it part of our assessment because it was a system I had since my law firm days. I do not take cases that are hopeless and unwinnable. It saves time and money for both parties. I have turned down cases numerous times, as I know how much clients appreciate honest pros.
Our forensic consultancy will help you with coming up with a brand development strategy. We use web analytics tools, determine local search ranking, along with other ranking factors to see how fat we can take your brand. It will also help you to find opportunities to take your optimization to the next level. Our thousand-dollar worth assessment is free and takes you 45 seconds to complete the form. Then from our end, about 3 hours. This phase is complimentary.
Structure Our Case: Low Hanging Fruits First
After completing our assessment, we come up with a plan of action, along with projected results and budget. The most common deliverables are optimized landing pages, web pages, and competitor keyword analysis. With these, clients see results within a few weeks.
Once the client officially hires us, we then perform deep-dive research to find the areas of opportunities where our clients can see results in the shortest amount of time. This takes around 5 days. And when the client is a marketing agency the process is even faster.
Forensic Audit
It would be fair to say that forensic auditing is probably the most essential part of our job. Our clients provide us analytics, and leave the rest to us. As we always say, data can come from anywhere, insights come from intelligence.
UX Research
We perform a thorough UX research to see whether the online experience you are providing your customers is worthwhile or not. We also conduct UX mapping to improve your digital marketing efforts.
Marketing Strategy
Once we have enough data to establish patterns (30-60 days) we make a holistic strategy for optimal marketing. We then create a marketing calendar with realistic goals in mind. We also make sure that our implementation is bulletproof and free from cracks.
Support (911 Style)
We set up our projects with regular alerts to notify us if there are any errors. We get to work as soon as there is a notification. You can contact us or message us at any time you want, as maintaining transparency is of utmost importance to us. It helps to establish trust with customers and improves communication.
Have you updated your website yet? Have you noticed a drop in your visibility or got a notification from Google that your website needs to get fixed? Need marketing tips for your website?
It is no secret that SEO’s entire landscape is going through a radical change. Local listings are going through massive changes as well along with regular algorithm updates, so much so that keeping up with them can get quite tricky at times. No need to worry, however, as I will discuss with you in detail how you relieve the burden.
Users First, Aesthetics Second
A common mistake I have noticed people making are that they tend to become overly obsesses with how Google works to bring users to their website. What they seem to ignore is that the platform favors people who create great content, and outstanding experience. This is measured by the time users spend on your website and other factors including your Google reviews
Wait, Google reviews affect my SEO? Yes.
When you focus on creating the best user experience is far more beneficial in the long run in comparison to stuffing keywords and attempting to trick Google to improve your website’s ranking.
Google is no longer the keyword rewarding haven that it used to be. Now it cares more about providing users with excellent user experience. Don’t believe me? Check Google’s webmaster guidelines. Google’s ultimate goal is to give users the best possible search engine experience, letting them find the exact content or website they are searching.
Quite often, you will find people hiring web designers to improve their website’s appearance and visibility. In most cases, web designers have little to no knowledge regarding SEO strategy. Some of them don’t even have the slightest idea of attracting paying customers online.
So what do they end up doing?
Well, most of them usually install a lackluster template and ask their client to give them some relevant keywords to create their website. Essentially, there is no marketing strategy or planning whatsoever.
For most of my clients, I lead development and web design for their websites. The first aim I have for every website is improving its user experience and visibility, and second, it’s to add long tail keywords to conform to Google search. This isn’t a process based on what I think. Luckily we have access to data that allows us to create a solid content marketing strategy that brings profits. Remember, SEO is not about choosing keywords.
Some of you might not know this, but user experience and SEO sometimes go hand in hand. Incorporating inorganic keywords with a subpar design is a disaster waiting to happen. So yes, optimize the design for SEO, just like I do. Also incorporate all the basics of UX for improved marketing.
What Is UX (Think Amazon)
For those who do not know what user experience is, let me explain it to you in the simplest and most relatable way I can. In a lot of cases, I have seen people use UX interchangeably with “Usability” and “User Interface Design”. Although both of them are crucial aspects of user experience design, they are merely its subsets. UX covers a wide array of several other areas as well. A UX designer who is worth his or her salt concerns themselves with the total process of integrating and acquiring a product including function, usability, design, branding, and various other aspects. UX’s story begins way before the users even hold the device in their hands.
Let us use Amazon’s UX as an example. The company was not in the best of places initially. It had its fair share of ups and downs. So what changed? Well, the company started focusing on its UX. We can learn a lot from the UX of the world’s biggest online seller.
See the image below. Amazon adds categories that are friendly. You don’t even need to click. Just swipe and find what you want!
Since the company improved its UX, its revenue entered the Billion Dollars club. In 2018 alone, the company bought in around 260 billion in retail sales, which is close to 50 percent of the United States’ online expenditure for the year. The crazy part about that it was not just a one and done thing. Amazon has been on the up and up since then, and is responsible for half of United States’ retail sales for the last couple of years. What’s the reason behind this success, well; it’s the user friendly experience.
Everything you need to make your decision is right there! Again, no need to click!
You might be wondering what’s so great about Amazon’s UX that led it to become a giant in the online retail industry. Well, let us look at some noticeable strong points from its UX.
1.It is a Search Engine Marketing Driven UX
This company’s UX is specifically designed for increasing the chances of visitors buying something whenever they visit their website or app. Prominent search bars on every single page is a huge reason why people often end up buying something when they go to Amazon. In addition, the platform also refines and filters every search result in a comprehensible and open fashion.
The company’s state of the art search function benefits from an algorithm that personalizes content according to all stages of the buyer. It gives them relevant recommendations, which makes their current and future purchases quite convenient. I’m sure most of you have seen the Amazon’s home page (if not, what are you even doing). Most of its elements have the influence of search functions, which includes:
– Shopping carts
– New products
– Recent browsing history
– Personalized recommendations
When users come across relevant products, they find a clear path to purchase without any hassles or second guessing. Because Amazon’s UX focuses on personalization, visitors not only get a tremendous site experience, they also become loyal customers. Essentially, the reason behind Amazon’s UX success is that everyone knows how to do basic online searching. It does not matter whether visitors open Amazon with a specific product to purchase. But, the sites easy usability and first rate user experience caters to everyone.
The best part about Amazon’s UX is that it caters to both younger and older generations. Those who do not know how to follow online visual cues just have to click the product boxes present on the home page. The boxes appear as the product image as well as a blue hyperlink, which helps to convert and accommodate all users. The company’s text oriented and linear UX approach runs on usability and personalization.
2.Amazon’s UX Reassures Buyers
In order to improve their conversion rate, Amazon conducts regular split tests on its product pages. The adjust page elements to increase trustworthiness, value, and convenience. It reduces buying friction and increases sales by tenfold. Take a closer look at product pages on Amazon, and you will notice that there is lots of whitespaces to emphasize on the key selling points of the product. You will also see that the product rating is directly underneath the product to highlight social proof and guarantee visibility for validating the quality of purchase the user will most likely make. The product’s benefits are just adjacent to its image, which makes it look more credible.
When you go to the order detail side, you will see bold black text that says “Free Delivery,” and “Free Shipping.” Amazon is well aware that their customers want their products delivered fast and for cheap. The company incorporates these power phrases in its platform’s UX to prompt action, while also reassuring people speedy delivery with savings.
In situations, when an item is expensive, signing up for the company’s reward Visa program allows shoppers to avail a 50 Dollar discount on their purchase. So, it is quite clear that every element on Amazon’s page is there to reinforce positive sentiments for every purchase no matter how pricey or cheap. Amazon also highlights key benefits on its product pages to reassure shoppers, essentially optimizing their conversion rates.
The UX Essentials in Website Design
We spend hours and hours online using web apps, navigating websites, and reading news online. In several cases, you do not get the best online experience. Why does that happen?
Well, it is because of poor designs that do not take user experience into account. Sure, you can spot design errors from afar; however, things get slightly trickier when the person handling the project is yourself. I have found myself in such situations more than I’d care to admit.
Be that as it may, designers are responsible for creating an excellent design to improve user experience no matter how difficult it is.
Let us look at some UX best practices that you can incorporate in your website:
1.User-Centric Design
Just forget what the website has to say for a bit and redirect your attention towards user experience.
Put yourself in the shoes of a future buyer that is in the awareness stage (they don’t know anything about your products or services) Can your website inspire them?
Then, think about the future buyer that is in the consideration stage (they know they have a problem but they are not looking to buy today) Is your website engaging? What can we offer them to motivate them to come back?
Put yourself in the shoes of a future buyer that is in the decision stage. They are looking to solve a problem. Can your website educate them so they can make the decision faster?
Then, Text, layout, graphics, and other interactive elements work synergistically for presenting users with first-rate experience rather than information. If you focus on making your page unique in the face of tons and tons of information and websites on the internet, you will most likely have excellent conversion rates.
Most modern websites these days contain interactive and visual qualities that seek emotional responses to stand out in an utterly competitive online world. Just make sure you select a website that gives your future users the experience they expect.
For example, if you are an Eye Care Doctor, you won’t have a website that looks like a Fashion Boutique. If will distract your users from reading your content.
2.The Fine Line between Creativity and Common Designing Elements
The last things you want for your website are reinvented design elements. It causes users difficulty in figuring out the UI interface. Instead, focus on having an interface that looks familiar and eye-catching at the same time. Do not relocate or change elements like login access, link placement or other standardized components.
Sure, going for a non-traditional design does seem like a cool idea, but ultimately, it falls flat on its face because most users do not have the slightest idea of what to do with it. Therefore, try to strike a balance between usability and creativity. Less is more.
To show you how big of a misunderstanding there is, I’ll ask you this question: which pop-up do you think was more successful?
Guess what?
The first pop-up performs over 30% better!
You might think the bottom one should’ve won. It follows all the common pop-up best practices. It has:
An image that serves as a CTA
A provoking headline
Bright colors
A great giveaway.
Why the first pop-up won? It has four words and a button that says “Submit”. You must make it easy for your users if you want them to take action!
3.People Prefer Scannable Websites
Although having readable content is well and good, not everyone has the time or energy to go through every word written on your website. Especially your home page.
According to an interesting study involving eye-movement conducted by Nielsen, the theory that internet users are prone to read content in the form of chunks is supported. The pattern which our eyes follow in this attempt is an F-shaped pattern. This pattern can also appear to be E-shaped at times.
This naturally means that a web design loaded with tons of content is a big No-No.
If you want your users to ‘read’ your services rather than skim through them, make sure to follow this tested pattern.
4.The Importance of Establishing Visual Hierarchy
Your visual design should highlight essential interface elements in a way that attract the user’s focus. When it comes to design, there are various ways to highlight these things.
Using a single color and changing the font size to emphasize or highlight any particular service induces a welcoming effect on the user.
5.Users Value Simplicity and Clarity
It takes no more than half a second for users to evaluate a website’s design. Therefore, it is important that you determine what will catch their eye at first glance. Make action buttons easy to find instead of placing them at awkward areas.
Also, keep making constant reevaluations to see whether there are other improvements you can bring to your site or app. Website designs should always be easily usable for users while adding extra functionality according to a user’s needs. Do not make extra functions appear all at once as it can be quite distracting. Everything should be consistent, simple, and clear. A website’s visual aesthetics can make navigation quite easy for users as it allows them to figure out colors relevant to specific areas of the interface.
Sounds like obvious, but your website development should start with defining your audience. You should be well aware of the audience you are creating the website for as it helps to incorporate relevant functions and content to attract the user.
Once there is a clear picture of the audience, designing the site will become remarkably more straightforward. You can also take some inspiration from your competition; however, make sure that your identity is unique. It would also be wise to incorporate user feedback in your web or app design. Considering actionable feedback from the end-user is extremely valuable.
7.UX Qualities for Your Consideration
At its core, user experience is what you provide to your consumers. Focusing on the basics will help you accomplish your goal of improving your website’s user experience. Let us look at some key points that will help you get started:
– Make sure that your content is original and useful. It should be there to assist the users and fulfill their needs.
– Your system should perform smoothly, page load time should be quick, especially when users interact with it. Make sure that everything in your site flows smoothly and does not have hindrances.
– Improve your site’s efficiency. Users should be able to accomplish repetitive tasks easily and quickly, without any worries.
– Everything on the website should be there to delight the user. It should establish an emotional connection with them that eventually leads them to investing in the product.
– Make your websites content and interaction moves seamlessly moves through the product. Users should find no difficulty or hindrances when it comes to learning about the product. Users should be able to accomplish their goals on subsequent visits.
– Make the site easily discoverable; users should be able to achieve their task on their first visit.
– Do not make the website seem distant and robotic. Try to make it as humanly relatable as possible. Be approachable, transparent, and trustworthy. Also, opt for human interaction over machines.
– You must provide users with context so that they know where they are in the interface
– Credibility is of extreme importance. You have to make users trust and believe what you say.
– Make your content as easily accessible as possible, especially for people who have specific disabilities. Don’t forget your “contact us” page!
– The website’s usability should be simple and easy. Also, users should be able to find it easily.
– All of the content on the website should be easily navigable and locatable onsite as well as offsite.
– The website’s design elements should bring about appreciation and emotion.
8.A Common SEO Myth
There is a colossal myth associated with SEO that irks me to no end. I want to bring an end to this. People think that SEO backlinks, meta tags, and keywords are surefire ways to lure in profitable users. That is not the case! In fact, there are no guarantees whatsoever.
It is entirely possible that the hits you are getting from your website are from various countries where you do not even have clients. A large number of people use mobile devices to conduct their searches.
It is glaringly evident that the online mobile market has taken over in the past few years. Therefore, you need to optimize your website for mobile browsers if you want to improve your site’s visibility on search engines. If you are not confident on how the website will measure up, go to Google and enter the URL of your website in its mobile friendly test.
9.Using Marketing Analytics to Optimize User Experience
Pay attention to analytics. Hey can make or break your website’s success. User explorer from Google Analytics, in particular, provides in-depth information regarding every user’s engagement with your website. As soon as you lay your eyes on this data, you will instantly know what your audience likes and what it does not like.
Pay attention to creating consistent, qualified traffic. Five hundred users for every month should be your goal. However, before you start, generate tons of clickable pages and banner ads to attract users.
The more metrics you have at your disposal, the more data you have regarding your content. It will be of tremendous help in reaching your 5000 users goal.
Now that you know everything you need to know about excellent UX, there should not be anything stopping you from making a world-beater of a website.
Are you looking for a law firm marketing plan that has actually been created by a lawyer who is now a digital marketing strategist? You’ve landed in the right place.
In this article, my goal is to give lawyers and law firms a legal marketing game plan that adjusts to reality. So what exactly is reality? The most successful attorneys are not successful because they rank #1 in Google. They are successful because people know about their excellent work.
Does that mean that lawyers should not use digital marketing and social media marketing? Not really. But, certainly, their online marketing needs to be done differently. Social media marketing for lawyers is different than social media marketing for e-commerce, for example.
Keep reading, because in this article you will learn all about what it takes to market yourself differently for the better.
What Is Multichannel Marketing And Why Does It Fail For Law Firms?
So, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is multichannel marketing?
Multichannel marketing is pretty much taking you back to the days when a potential client opened the yellow pages, found your office, and called to make an appointment. Think back to the dark ages…before the Internet was really even a thing.
Marketing was a static message. You needed a message for the Yellow Pages, made for people to understand. You had your brochures with another message. Then, radio commercials, TV, etc. All of that advertising was created in hopes that the user would find you in one channel and respond. So, you needed to create different messages, depending on the channel in which you would advertise in order to get those end-users to respond.
That’s essentially a multi-channel approach. However, in today’s ‘digital everything’ age, users don’t behave that way.
In most cases, potential clients will use many different channeling outlets to figure out more about your law firm before actually contacting you. This is so essential for potential clients because it gives them the power and ability to do their own research.
Your potential clients come to your office prepared. In some cases, you will find that they have done extensive research before considering to even call you in the first place! You might have several stories when your clients think they know more than you! Because they learned on Google! Right?
How can we market to meet our users’ expectations? That’s the main question! Let’s just start by agreeing with one main rule: stop following a multi-channel approach.
Here’s an example of the “old fashioned and out of date” multichannel marketing.
The old way of multi-channel marketing.
We see the multichannel model failing, even in other forms of advertising like:
Paid leads
Paid display banners
Paid search
Legal listings (lawyers.com, avvo.com, etc.)
Print ads
Etc…etc…
Lawyers Don’t Want Leads From Google Searching
Contrary to what traditional marketing agencies will tell you, the way your law firm will grow is not from the volume of website visits, calls, or emails. As a lawyer and marketer, I would not set up a marketing plan strictly focusing on quantity. I know for a fact that the best clients are the ones who were referred by existing clients. I would prefer more quality contacts.
The chances of selling to a new customer are between 5 and 20 percent, while the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60 and 70 percent.
So, in theory, what do lawyers need to do in order to grow their law firm? Avoid marketing practices that are predicated in attracting cold traffic, and instead focus on:
Provide excellent service.
Engage with their community online and offline.
Produce educational content.
Use social media channels to nurture their community with educational content, in a way that ignites relevant conversations.
I understand that it is so tempting to pay for Adwords, pay per click, newspapers ads, magazines, etc. But it will be better if instead, you craft a marketing strategy that actually helps you to communicate with your audience and warm them up so they can get you referrals.
The Omnichannel Marketing Approach
In today’s Now Economy, consumers demand highly relevant and personalized experiences as they interact with brands on a multitude of devices. As their expectations increase, an omni-channel strategy becomes mission-critical for marketers.
Omnichannel marketing really puts the customer at the core in order to ensure a completely consistent, unified experience at every touch point as opposed to simply enabling that touch point. Multichannel means many, and omnichannel means all (the customer is literally at the center).
Think about omnichannel as a holistic approach. The user is the center of your marketing and not the other way around.
A Law Firm Marketing Plan Example
The key ingredient for building your refreshed marketing plan for your law firm (or office if you’re a solo) is to put yourself in the users’ shoes. What do they want to see? What do they want to hear?
Multi-channel marketing consists of putting words in consumers’ mouths, whereas omnichannel marketing focuses solely on listening to what the client wants then delivering.
Let’s craft a simple marketing plan that gets you clients for your law firm, following the omnichannel approach.
Take A Look Of Your Online Marketing With The Users Experience In Mind
Think about what goes on in the minds of those potential users, when they have a need and believe they need to speak to an attorney. Let’s say, a worried mom that was involved in a car accident this weekend.
Worried mom researches online “car accident attorney near me”.
Found law firms advertising on Google, didn’t click in any.
Checked for the first law firm, organic, and found https://www.thevalentinelawfirm.com/. The website design is great! Clear, specific, represents trust and approachable. A great vibe!
Didn’t click on any page from the website.
Worried mom takes a look at the website for a few seconds and found the social media platforms. Great!
Worried mom checks that the lawyer has videos so she can now associate a face with the name. Great!
Additional points: Worried mom sees that some of her close friends are following this law firm. Fantastic!
This exercise should take you to identify the kind of content that your users are expecting to find when they are searching. The key to turn users into real leads is to provide them with the information they need, in a way that makes them easy to access.
Build A Content Marketing Plan Based On What Your Target User Can’t Find on Google
I’m sure you’ve considered writing a blog. However, when it comes to actually writing it, you can’t really think of topics that your users will find interesting. Who wants to read a law blog? Right?
Think about your blog as your library of resources that can facilitate conversations with your prospects.
Your content marketing doesn’t always have to be a long blog. It can be a checklist with items that are needed in case of a car accident. Or, if you’re a divorce attorney, a calculator of child support, with the appropriate disclaimers of course.
Create content based on a niche so that those users can find the information and follow you easier. You will be able to add other topics later. But now that you’re refining your content marketing plan, try to stick to a specific topic so users can identify your name with the kind of clients you want to take. Make it easy for them!
Build A Strong LinkedIn Profile (If You Haven’t Yet)
Don’t forget to add LinkedIn to the mix. Studies have shown that 92% of B2B marketers include LinkedIn in their digital marketing mix. Now, remember, to market a law firm is different than marketing for e-commerce. Your users are not expecting to see promotions. They are expecting to see real value from your social channels, including LinkedIn.
One simple goal for this platform is to get your profile to the all-star status. This impacts the number of views that your profile will get.
If you’re not sure if your profile is all-star, check on your dashboard and look at the top right. You should see the rank. Sometimes you get the all-star by just following the suggestions from LinkedIn.
I wrote a detailed article with everything you need to boost your LinkedIn profile and you can check all the details later, here.
Best Practices For A Strong LinkedIn Profile
1) Photo. No logo. Not your team. Not your office. A professional photo showing you approachable and trusted. Not sure if your photo makes the cut? Try this software! Photofeeler.
2) Your specialty. What do you do? Speak directly to your potential leads. Assume they search for you. Use common and clear words.
3) Your “summary” should be creative. Please, don’t be boring here! If you make it the exact same way as your competitors are writing their summary, nobody will be compelled to read it. Use emojis and bullet points.
4) Video! This is a great way to show your authority. Especially if you’re looking to build your authority.
5) Contact info. Most people forget to add their contact info or they hide it.
Don’t forget to add your content to your profile. For example, if you create a checklist or an article for your blog, you can add those on your LinkedIn profile via articles or media items on your profile.
As you will see below, LinkedIn will help you ignite referrals. Always keep that in mind. Give your clients reasons to share your content. If, for example, you’re participating in a conference to keep learning about something, share something thoughtful about your experience. Ignite those conversations!
Solidify Your Referral Marketing
Since we are taking an approach to online marketing that more user-centered, building authority and ultimately, building loyalty is what will pay your bills.
One word that should be on top of your head- referrals! And we are not kidding! Up to 76% of marketers are prioritizing customer loyalty over customer acquisition in 2018. (IDG)
Yes, we want to ignite your referral marketing engine.
Referral marketing is the preferred marketing source for many businesses including law firms. Business to business companies with referrals have a 70% higher conversion rate, and they report a 69% faster close time on sales.
Helping your customers become brand advocates is a smart business move no matter which way you cut it. Here’s an area where LinkedIn comes handy.
Don’t be afraid of connecting with your clients on LinkedIn. When their connections look for recommendations to hire a lawyer, your clients can easily tag your profile and you will be able to stay on top of those conversations.
Omnichannel Marketing: One User, One Voice, One Message, One Flow
Your law firm marketing should be simple. One ideal user. Craft the information that will help them build trust and loyalty. Stay in touch with them via social media, in particular, LinkedIn.
Don’t forget that what makes a law firm successful is excellent work. But if people don’t know about it, you won’t grow.
We’re currently helping clients revamp their marketing strategy. Who do you know that would benefit from great strategy? Share this article. Or if it’s you, please complete this 30 seconds assessment and we will schedule a complimentary session!
If you’re wondering why your business isn’t bringing in new customers, look no further than your ranking on Google. It can be overwhelming with all the information on the Internet about ranking higher and optimizing your site so your customers can find you. From content creation, SEO (search engine optimization), backlinking, the list of ways to rank higher can feel endless and exhausting.
As a business owner, you want to succeed, right?
No one goes into business wanting to fail. It’s important to understand what percentage of small businesses fail–because many do actually succeed. You need to know the facts rather than listening to anyone out there trying to put fear in your mind and convince you to walk away from your dreams.
What Percentage of Small Businesses Fail? The most recent stats from Fundera show:
20% of small businesses fail in their first year
30% of small businesses fail in their second year
50% of small businesses fail after five years in business.
Before you throw in the towel, you have to remember that many of the reasons why small businesses fail are in your control. For example, ineffective marketing is one of the top reasons why your business may not be getting the attention it needs in order to grow and prosper.
Your marketing is something that you have power over.
If you don’t really understand HOW to market or WHO you’re marketing to, we’re here to help you.
Google My Business: How It Works
According to Google, 50% of all the mobile consumers who search for a local business in a day visit it as well. Furthermore, 18% of them end up making a purchase.
GMB is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. That includes adding your business name, location, and hours; monitoring and replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching for you, and more.
If you’re just getting started with local SEO, your Google My Business listing is a great place to focus your early efforts. After all, when people search for a product or service near them, they’re usually very close to making a purchase — one in two people who conduct a local search (think “watch repair near me”) visit a store that day. So it’s important the information about your business that shows up when people search Google is as accurate, complete, and optimized as possible.
Imagine that your exact customer or client has been searching endlessly for a specific product or service. Your business happens to be the solution. And just when they want to give up on trying to figure out which phrases to use to get the answer to their question on Google, YOUR business shows up first in their search results.
How Does Your GMB Listing Looks Like In Local Results?
Your primary listing at Google that is editable in the GMB dashboard and publicly accessible at 3 locations:
Google Search (knowledge panel)
Google Maps
Local Finder
Small businesses readily rely on consumers in their own backyards, as opposed to a national audience, to keep their doors open. So what are you doing to ensure everyone in a 25 mile radius knows you exist? If you’re not showing up in “near me” searches you’re likely missing out on a bevy of business and frankly, we’re not happy about it.
When people search using Chrome on their smartphones with an “emoji + near me,” you might be surprised by what they find:
You got it! Google knew that I was looking for a great burger joint around my home!
This is the power of local SEO, also referred to as local search engine marketing. Google has revamped its tools to help local business owners show up effectively to promote and market their businesses online.
What is a “Near Me” Search?
Grab your phone and type in “running store” and you’ll see that Google tries to fill in the rest of the search with “near me”. They figure, whatever you’re searching for you’ll be happier with your search results if it suggests stores that aren’t clear across town from your current locale. Makes sense, right?
Why Should I Worry About Showing Up in “Near Me” Searches?
Think with Google recently reported that “76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.” There’s also been a 500% increase in “near me” mobile searches that contain some variation of “can I buy” or “to buy” over the last two years. Source: Think With Google. That’s pretty impressive.
If Google knows your business’ location and the user’s search query is requesting for nearby business’ this is precisely why you absolutely need to invest in local SEO marketing alongside standard SEO.
How To Rank Your Local Business In Google? 7 Strategies To Win Your Local Search Rankings
There are specific strategies that you as a small business owner can implement after reading this article to start showing up in your Google local listings.
Number One: Keyword Search (The Magic Starts There!)
Before you put together your list of targeted keywords, you have to identify who your customers are and what they’re searching for online. After you’ve identified the personal traits of your customers, think about the ways in which they are searching for what you have to offer. This strategy will work when you carve out the time to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
You’ll also want to analyze your competitor’s winning keywords. Why? Because the whole point of SEO is to outrank your competitor’s search results. Once again, take the time to identify your competitors and how they rank for the keywords you’re targeting.
A very simple way to verify your competitors ranking? Use your mobile and search for their services. Let’s say you have a cleaning business. Type “cleaning business near me” and see what comes up! By studying your local competitors using Google search, you will be able to have insights for your local SEO plan for your website.
It’s relatively easy to identify target keywords that will drive traffic to your Google My Business Listing. The key here is to identify the right keywords that will drive the right traffic to your business. There are many popular keywords tools to help with the local keyword search. We highly recommend semRUSH to create your local business keyword plan.
Pro tip: If you own multiple locations, you can create a keyword plan considering local seo for each location.
Number Two: Your Services Pages | Product Description Pages
When it comes to your products and services. Don’t be shy! This is an opportunity for your business to stand out using keywords that your target audience is typing into Google. You want your services to shine and be at the top of the query list.
A few things to keep in mind when writing out your services and product pages.
✔️ Focus on the benefits, not simply the features. You want to speak to the results that your customer is going to gain by working with your business. For instance, as a result of your services, will your customers save more money? Make more money? Get more leads? Then spell it out!
✔️ Create rich, meaningful copy that speaks to your customers. Don’t be stingy with your words. Write detailed information about your services, the benefits, and how your customer can learn more. Remember, skimpy copy = no sale.
✔️ Make sure your website is mobile friendly.
Pro tip: Use your Google My Business Listing to share your products and services.
Number Three: Frequently Asked Questions Page
Many small businesses do not take the time to carefully map out their FAQ page. They think it’s a waste of time. However, FAQ content can provide answers to pertinent questions that your customers may have. It’s yet another opportunity to include SEO specific content, thereby increasing your ranking on Google.
Companies like Twitter, YouTube, McDonald’s all have very clean, simple FAQ pages that answer customers’ most commonly asked questions
Think about it this way. A new customer is always going to have questions. Your FAQ page is a primary way to remove any barriers (lack of knowledge) that will prevent your customers from doing business with you. The page needs to be easy to read.
When writing your content, remember to keep in mind that not everyone reads at the same level. This is where the Readability Score comes into play.
Factors such as sentence length, scalability, vocabulary, passive vs. active voice are all things that will either guide your customer to make a decision to work with you, or not.
Pro tip: Readability Score is a reliable plugin that you can use to check to determine what level a reader needs to be to understand your content.
Number Four: Videos
Let’s say you’ve already spent a ton of money on strategizing, producing, and editing videos but it just isn’t getting ranked. What’s going on?
Video SEO is not the same as standard SEO. If you want your videos to rank higher up the SERP (search engine results page) there are key factors to consider such as:
✔️Transcribing your video script
✔️Making shorter videos
✔️Optimizing all video metadata such as titles, subtitles, description, and keywords
✔️Creating high-quality thumbnails
Essentially, if you’ve invested time in producing videos for your business, optimize everything related to it as you would with your content on your website.
Pro tip: use Google Local Guides to share photos and videos! You will activate the power of Google Maps!
Number Five: Tags and Meta
Meta tags are small pieces of text that describe a page’s content. The meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s HTML. Meta tags make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about, whether it’s relevant and rank it accordingly. Unfortunately, this is where most people fail in the Google local SEO.
Your Google My Business description is a great place to add your tags and meta.
What not to do?
If you’re promoting your pizza restaurant, it’s not like you will be able to write “best pizza in Austin pizza near me best deals to buy pizza order pizza 24 hrs coupons pizza”. That will be keyword stuffing and will be completely opposite of the results you want!
Business description guidelines (Google is telling you what to do!)
Published content should highlight what makes your business unique. You can use this field to provide useful information on services and products offered, as well as the mission and history of your business.
This is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd! Don’t take it casually. Hire a copywriter if you need to.
More advice from Google:
You should be upfront and honest about the information provided, focusing on content that is relevant and useful to your customers to understand your business.
Content that’s irrelevant to your business or has no clear association with it isn’t allowed. Refer to our overall guidelines for representing your business on Google.
Content published in this field should not:
✔️Be misleading to users. Do not provide inaccurate or false information about your business or the services and products offered.
✔️Display low-quality, irrelevant, or distracting content. For example, misspellings, gimmicky character use, gibberish, etc.
✔️Focus on special promotions, prices, and offer sale. Examples of content not allowed include, “Everything on sale, -50%” and “Best bagels in town for $5!”
✔️Display links. No links of any type are allowed.
✔️Display offensive or inappropriate content:
The best way to highlight the importance of meta tags is to highlight the Google search process.
When you search on Google you’ll be shown many results. But how do you pick? You pick based on the preview. The preview is written, not from your web page but from your meta description. This is a fundamental aspect of the optimization process. Always think about how can best promote your content so that people feel excited and curious to read it.
Number Six: Optimize Your Google Maps Search With Citations
A citation is simply a record of your NAP, which is your business name, address, and phone #, and in some instances your website URL as well.
Google uses citations as a way to validate your business location. Think of citations as the equivalent of backlinks in organic SEO strategy.
The more authoritative and relevant the citation sources are to your business, the more punch that will give you in boosting your Google Maps rankings.
I also recommend going granular with your citations.
This means finding websites and directories that are either specific to your metro area or targeted to your specific business category.
For example, if I’m a divorce attorney in Austin, then publishing your law firm’s NAP on sources specific to metro Austin and divorce lawyers would help increase the relevance factor and improve your overall location authority.
And the more location authority you have in your business category, the higher you’ll rank in Google Maps.
How do you build location authority?
We think of location authority as synonymous to domain authority.
Domain authority is your ranking power in Google organic search results.
Whereas location authority is your ranking power in Google Maps or Google local search results.
Domain authority is built by doing things like acquiring high-quality backlinks to your domain name or key landing pages within your website.
Location authority is built by distributing your local business data – sometimes referred to as your NAP (business name, address, phone #, and website URL) or your location business citation – across the most authoritative local business directories and resources relative to your business category.
In other words, citation distribution is to location authority as backlinks are to domain authority.
If you want to rank higher in organic search results, you need to build more domain authority.
If you want to rank higher in Google Maps or Google local search results, you need to build more location authority.
Number Seven: Include City Pages in Your Main Navigation
City pages should be incorporated into your site’s navigational structure. For example, create an “Areas we serve” link in the main navigation on your homepage. Or in the “Contact Us” link, include sub-pages to each location.
What is a City Page? 😧
In simple terms, it’s all about opening a page inside your website with /city/. City pages have been a common strategy to improve local SEO rankings. However, there’s a catch! Your page format! Vital Storm has a great template to format city pages! It might be advanced but some of you, but here it is!
Title Tag: keep under 60 characters; give every city page a unique title.
Meta Description: keep under 160 characters, write to encourage someone to click, and do NOT keyword stuff, but do try to use the keyword/city once in logical sentence.
Page Name: example.com/city/
Menu Title: [City]
Title Tag: [Main Service] (Ex: Air Conditioner Repair) + (in/for) [City, State] | [Company Name]
Meta Description: Since [year], [Company] has provided prompt and professional [service] to [City] area residents and business owners.
H1/H2: [City] [Service] (Ex: Expert New York Air Conditioner Repair)
Integrate city pages into your navigation
Integrate city pages into the website’s navigation (service area drop-down, footer navigation, somewhere).
Consider using call tracking and contact form tracking for each city page to help gauge their effectiveness. Consider adding city-specific coupons or special offers.
Do You Think You Need a Google Local SEO Expert?
I get it. This is a lot to wrap your head around. SEO isn’t something that you’re supposed to know when you start a business. It may seem like a lot of work and headache for you, but for us, this is our zone of GENIUS and JOY.
In 45 days, you would be surprised at the results your business will achieve by working with our company. I help business owners just like you who are driven, passionate, and want to provide solutions to their customers.
It may seem like a far reach to rank #1 in Google. We can make it happen together. I would first need to audit your online presence and evaluate your current ranking, and then, set a clear SEO strategy in place.
SEO marketing is in high demand. There is a good chance you heard about it and have been searching for SEO definition, SEO agencies near you, etc. You’ve found me, so I want to honor your time and explain our journey with this amazing marketing strategy called Search Engine Optimization.
I’m in Austin and I’m a forensic marketer. So technically, I can say I run an Austin SEO Agency, but the name won’t be fair. So let’s say I’m not an agency. I’m a consultant, mentor, and lead a team of amazing marketers, on a project-based, to get my clients the success they deserve. That has been the best way for me to avoid paying outrageous overhead and making marketing for small business owners.
We’re Not A Traditional SEO Agency
Many SEO agencies and firms will outsource their work (your website) to third-party providers, mostly in India, at a cheap rate to do subpar optimization. We don’t.
I work with clients that have sensitive compliance requirements and I like to give my client full access to everything I do on their behalf.
You probably have heard horror SEO stories! I’ve heard them too (and see them). A client of mine hired an agency overseas for their SEO work. Months later, they started to get spam emails (hundreds) and hundreds of comments on their Facebook business page that were very inappropriate. Guess why that happened?
When I checked their traffic, I showed them that their website had been shared in sites with restrictive content. And let me tell you one more detail about this client. They were plastic surgeons so their images had sensitive content. Use your imagination and guess where their website had been shared. Did you guess?
Your SEO marketing goal isn’t just about driving website traffic. My plastic surgeon client was seeing growth. But, what kind of growth? This is why I like to clarify how lead my SEO marketing projects.
Special note: if you talk to “the best SEO agency” you should ask them to explain the process they use.
So What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Anyway?
Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes the purchase of paid placement. You want this!
Let’s say you are a Divorce Attorney. One of the free SEO tools is Google search! When you type in Google “causes for divorce in Texas” notice that Google gives you suggestions. Those suggestions are called “long tail keywords” based on the questions people are asking.
How Much SEO Do You Need?
Most clients we help don’t know anything about their rank.
I’ve seen established businesses that, sadly, only have a few keywords and, therefore, don’t have any website traffic coming from Google search or any other search engines.
On the other side, I’ve seen businesses that were having success and all the sudden, their Google analytics show no traffic.
Generally speaking, every business needs to be improving search results, to make sure that they stay in business. Google Search Console is a great place to learn about your website traffic.
My Personal SEO Chaos (Don’t Make The Same Mistakes)
I’ve been in the digital marketing space for over a decade and recently my website traffic fell through the cracks. Not only we lost all the work that at some point we had 1 million hits from it, but we needed to migrate our website with over 100 pages. Painful.
Why did it happen? There was an error on the tagging codes and that created several broken links.
Every website experiences a few broken links now and then, and a few may not destroy your website’s life, but, when all your “tag” pages are landing at the error page, you’re in trouble. In case you’re not familiar with taxonomies and what a “tag” page is, you can learn more about it here.
Google is all about providing a user-friendly experience, which includes protecting users against websites with broken links.
Broken links are not the only factor that can affect your SEO.
✔️Tags
✔️Description of your content “meta description”
✔️Post type
✔️Duplicate content (cannibalization)
✔️Speed
✔️Readability
✔️Headlines
✔️And many other factors!
After I went through that nightmare I promised myself to always pay attention to Google Analytics. Now I’m there almost daily.
My before and after! From a 100% bounce rate to 35% in 3 months.
A big shout out to the amazing Julia McCoy from Expresswriters.com. I’ve learned so much from Julia. Please follow her and take her courses. She’s amazing! I recommend starting with her Write Blog.
A Poor Website Is A Poor Reflection Of Your Business (And Not Having One, Too)
Remember when websites were like a collage of links? I’ve done thousands of digital strategy assessments and the main focus is the website. Without a powerful website, there’s no point of building a social media channel. I mean, you could, but people will take you more serious if you have a professional website.
If improving your website appearance and visibility is your goal, you’re not alone.
Social media, websites, email, SEO, videos, and content are the most popular digital marketing channels and tactics with small businesses, according to recent research from The Manifest.
The report was based on data from a survey of 529 people who own or work for small businesses in the United States.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents say their business engages in social media marketing; the same proportion also use a website to market their firm.
Some 57% of small businesses engage in email marketing, 49% in SEO, 34% in video marketing, and 32% in other types of content marketing.
As a forensic digital marketing strategist, I recommend to integrate your online marketing efforts with SEO. Trust me, it’s not that complicated.
There Are 3 Main Types Of Seo That An Seo Strategist Can Focus On:
On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content that’s “on the page,” and how to optimize that content to help boost the website’s ranking for specific keywords.
Off-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the links that are directing to the website from elsewhere on the internet. The number of “backlinks,” and the publishers carrying those links, that link to your website helps you build trust in the eyes of a search engine. This causes your website to rank higher as a result.
Technical SEO: This SEO focuses on a website’s architecture, examining the backend of that website to see how each webpage is “technically” set up. Google cares as much about the code of a website as it does its content, making this specialty quite important to a website’s search engine ranking.
SEO Services We Provide
Like I mentioned in the beginning, I’m not a traditional SEO agency. I’m a consultant and a digital marketing nerd. All the work you see (except for correcting my grammar because I speak English with a Spanish accent and I’m bilingual) is my work.
I lead a team of SEO experts who can do the ninja work. But, before talking with the team, I create your digital marketing strategy, integrating SEO and social media marketing. The main deliverable of my strategy session is a Visibility Method. A blueprint that allows business owners to have a plan to market their business the right way.
Overview of the SEO tools we use
1- Keyword Magic Tool
We use paid keyword research tools, because it’s just a premium service we do for our clients. There are free SEO tools, but they are more like a one-time use. Having a list of keywords that feeds you opportunities it’s gold.
2- Keyword Planner
Google has a keyword planner, but the one I use it’s 100% for SEO, so it integrates with other SEO tools (and PPC too). Plus I have even more data – all in one place, which makes it easy for us to scale.
It takes me a few hours to work on a strategy and send you a keyword planner. This is great if you’re creating, for example, a sales page, or a course.
We start with a list of 100 keywords and draft content to target those, 25 keywords at a time. It takes about 2 months to index 50 words.
Our SEO system monitors performance and gives us alerts of opportunities.
3- Content Marketing Analysis
I see marketing from a holistic perspective, instead of tactical. Gone are the days of claiming “the secret to get clients from a funnel”. Consumers are educated and they rather do their research before making a commitment. Especially when it comes to hiring a professional at a high price value.
What is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of content that is relevant, consistent, and valuable, which is aimed at both attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, and ultimately driving profitable customer action.
The keywords are “valuable,” “relevant,” and “consistent.”
Content marketing isn’t a tactic you do once and it’s done. Instead, it’s a process that requires a strategy and a series of repeatable steps to build results over time.
The content you create – whether for blogs, social media, etc. – needs to have relevance, value, and consistency to win readers.
Why Most Marketers Prefer Content Marketing?
Another great thing about content marketing is that people prefer it over paid advertising.
A study from WP Engine found that 66% of consumers preferred to read content directly from their favorite brands. In contrast, one in five people use ad blockers all the time, every day, according to a Kantar Media study.
Ads are annoying. Content is useful.
First Steps To A Successful Content Marketing Strategy
We are here to learn about SEO so I won’t get too technical about content marketing. Most of my clients understand their duty to create amazing content. However, they don’t know if their ideas are amazing enough and they don’t have access to professional marketing tools.
Hubspot has a blog idea generator that brings many creative options. I use it sometimes, when I’m trying to get inspiration for captions or headlines. But for my SEO projects, our SEO software comes with their own idea generator tool.
The bottom line: we do our social media management using SEO practices, so you share content that actually adds value to your community. It’s the key to stand out from the crowd.
4- SEO Writing Assistant
The SEO writing assistant is honestly my favorite. I know exactly what I need to say to rank the article, while I’m writing. For example, to write this article, my target keyword amount was 1,958. This means that I need to write over that number if I want to have a shot to get visible. I also need to keep a readability score under 62 so this helps me to use plain language (great because I could get technical). Then the writing assistant uses the keywords suggested by the writing templates and adds suggestions and examples.
For those who are writers, having this framework will help tremendously.
What If You’re Not A Writer?
You can outsource that to us! I have access to amazing writers with amazing writing packages that will make your life very easy! A professional blog post can be less than a $100.
Need me to produce great content for you? Schedule a call with me to discuss your writing needs.
Need me to produce great content for you? Schedule a call with me to discuss your writing needs.
5- Marketing Calendar
The tools discussed above have been more related to content marketing using SEO best practices. Our SEO project will have on-page SEO and this means optimizing (SEOing) your content that has been published already.
We take those SEO tasks with the ideas to produce in the future and create a calendar with the actionable steps.
6- On Page SEO Tracker
Like I mentioned above, on-Page SEO means optimizing (SEOing) your content that has been published already. In some cases, we get clients who consult us before building their website (this is a great idea) so they don’t waste time.
Our software has a tracker and makes the on-page SEO work doable. It can even be combined with Trello.
You’re probably wondering who does this work? It depends. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all. Typically, big organizations have a marketing team that can handle this work. Once I share the findings and filter them (not all the findings are relevant), their team execute.
If they don’t have a marketing team, we filter the actionable steps and create a project. I have SEO experts on my team who can execute these “monkey work”. I call this “monkey work” because it’s not high-level strategy. It’s more about meta tags, fixing headlines, paragraphs, etc.
So that’s pretty much the foundation of SEO. Obviously, it’s not a one-step deal. It requires love and care! So let’s discuss how does this look.
7- Organic Traffic Insights
Monitor your traffic and look for trends and opportunities. This is for sure high-level strategy. Typically my clients like me to “call the shots”. And I have to say, I’m very assertive in predicting the readers behavior.
8- Lead Generation Optimizer
Once we have healthy keywords and healthy traffic it’s time for a change! What? Starting again?
Yes.
Your website traffic will be analyzed using complex tools to decode your path to turn your web visitors into clients. I’m at that level with 2 organizations and it is amazing. I must confess, I’m jealous! I wish I had taken SEO more seriously before! Don’t you?
At lead generation optimization means landing pages and call to actions. But for now, don’t worry about it! Let’s concentrate on the fundamentals!
9- Social Media Strategy And Implementation
You probably thought that I’m a social media manager, ha!
No.
It’s way more than that.
I hope you can see it! It’s more of a big-picture strategy. It’s like me going for a trial, without having to deal with the judicial system! It’s heaven to me! Digesting the facts, formulating a theory to present my winning formula, and winning!
We have an amazing team of marketing experts who can take care of your social marketing heavy lifting.
10- Accountability
I won’t be surprised if by now you’re overwhelmed just by reading this. I don’t blame you. Here is the reality: leave this work in the hands of people who truly LOVE doing this nerdy work. Lead your marketing activities like a CEO, instead of doing everything yourself.
I do all of this myself because this is therapy (and I don’t watch tv!).
What results can you expect?
The graphic below is my website- after the massive fail. I needed to start ALL OVER. Look how we are quickly moving up, all with relevant keywords to attract the right traffic. For some industries, 400 keywords are ok to win their competitors. My industry is highly competitive, so I need to work a bit more strategically.
Notice how:
✔️ SEO has a compound effect. It means that once you dominate a set of keywords and take the next set of keywords, all the traffic gets combined and this creates momentum, unlike other online marketing methods that, if you stop them, they stop working. For example, Google Ads or Facebook Ads. If I stop the ad, then the traffic stops.
✔️ SEO, in my opinion, it’s like creating a passive income, by having a sales force called “Google searches” working for you, driving people your way.
How do we get things done:
Onboarding
✔️Once you’re an active client, we schedule your VIP Session. This is a 4-hr session and can be done in a day or in 2 separate meetings.
✔️We get familiar with your business model and draft a strategy to grow your business.
✔️We use several tools to help our clients to have a clear vision of how they want to grow their business and what are the strategic key steps. Very often, we find that business owners are spending a lot of time in non-productive activities. We analyze all aspects of your business.
