A website contains numerous different pages, each with a different goal. This starts with the homepage, but it also includes things like product pages, informational pages, contact pages and much more. Although web design is constantly evolving, most websites are still created with this inherent design. Ideally, the site should be intuitive and guide the user from page to page so they can find the relevant information that they’re searching for.
The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase your search results ranking. Generally, this is geared around Google searches, as they dominate the search engine market. But SEO can work for any search engine because it simply incorporates keywords into your content, and your site ranks based on these keywords and other factors.
When it comes to branding, one of the most important things to remember is that consistency is key. This is true of your brand whether you’re doing social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing or anything else. Branding needs to be consistent and on point to help put your business in the best possible position for sustained success.
Keywords are an intrinsic part of search engine optimization. Even if a site has useful information that someone is intentionally looking for, they will never find it if it doesn’t show up in a search. Users are going to type specific keywords to find relevant information, which is why you need to do keyword analysis to find out both what your audience is searching for and what keywords are most relevant to the topic and information on your site.
As a business owner, one of the most important things you can do is to determine how people are going to look for your goods and services. You know that your products can be beneficial. You know that there’s a market for them, and that they have a very clear value. But you still have to connect the consumers who are looking for those benefits with your products or services.
When it comes to email marketing, few things are as important as the email open rate. You’re not going to get a response from everyone who reads your email, and you certainly need to work on your conversion rate – the rate at which these ads create sales – so that the emails are as productive as possible. But this all starts with simply considering how to get more people to open that email in the first place, giving you a wider potential audience for your increasing conversion rate.
As a business owner, you’re seeking as much social media engagement as you can get. It’s not just about presenting information to your audience. You want them to share your posts, comment on your updates and even contact your company through your social media profile to ask questions or place orders.
Linking is an important part of SEO, but perhaps not in the way that you expect. For a long time, people believed that outbound links to popular sites were better than links to smaller, lesser-known sites. For example, you may consider linking to CNN or Fox News instead of to a local news station. Those other large sites already get a lot of traffic and are very popular and authoritative, so they seem like better options. The thought is that this would increase the search ranking for the page that contained the link.
In a sudden move, Elon Musk has decided to rebrand Twitter. It is now going to be called X. This may be connected to X Corp., the company that Musk used when he originally purchased Twitter. It’s also worth noting that Musk once attempted to re-brand PayPal as X, but he purchased the x.com domain name six years ago, so that he once again has the right to use it.
As the owner of a business that has an online presence, you may feel frustrated with negative online reviews. Maybe it seems like they’re more common than positive reviews. Maybe it feels like most customers are very satisfied with your products and services, but you only hear from the people who are not satisfied.
As the owner of a business that has an online presence, you may feel frustrated with negative online reviews. Maybe it seems like they’re more common than positive reviews. Maybe it feels like most customers are very satisfied with your products and services, but you only hear from the people who are not satisfied.
If you’re considering ways to market your company online, social media marketing is certainly one thing that you’re going to think about. Social media has exploded over the last few decades, and it’s a very easy way to connect with a wide audience. Some networks can connect you with billions of potential viewers. This can be a very valuable way to market your products, connect with your audience, work on your branding and much more.
Social media seemed to rise up to take the internet by storm. It existed for a long time, on the fringes, with online forums and blog sites. But everything changed when Facebook appeared in the early 2000s, spreading across colleges in the United States. Eventually, Facebook was opened up to the general public and you no longer needed a college email to sign up. This helped make it into the most widely
Search engine optimization is a tactic used to draw traffic to your website. Quite simply put, it focuses on the keywords included on that site to get organic traffic. When people run searches for these terms, perhaps seeking out the services and products that a business offers, the page ranks higher because of this SEO process. This generates more traffic, and the small business then has a chance to sell its products or services to those consumers.
The first interaction that many potential customers have with your brand is when they see your logo. They may be testing out a product when they see it printed on the side. They may see the logo on advertisements on TV or on social media. Regardless of where they encounter it, your logo creates that all-important first impression. If that’s a negative impression, it’s going to be very hard to overcome.
Ever since the early days of social media, with sites like MySpace and Friendster, APIs have been used. These are application programming interfaces. They do not create the program on their own. Instead, they allow you to interact with it. For example, Reddit has its own app that you can use on your phone and a website that could be used on a desktop computer.
The world is changing, and nowhere is that more clear than in the tech industry. Lately, search engine leader Google has been trying to downsize the amount of real estate that it owns. Reports claim that the company is going to be selling office space to the tune of 1,400,000 square feet.
When creating content for your social media profiles, the goal is to get your audience to share that content. You certainly want them to learn from it and interact with it on your page. But it is far better for your business if that content gets spread around by members of your audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to go viral, per se, but simply that people who engage with your brand will want to share that content with other people in their network.
The internet is not static. It’s always evolving. It’s changing depending on consumer trends, technological development, devices that are being used and many other factors. This means that those who are attempting to advertise on the internet, or who are trying to drive traffic to their website, need to be aware of how this evolution takes place. They need to know where the consumers are, how people are interacting with the internet and how they can leverage that knowledge for their own success.
Over the years, there has been a major shift to online shopping. During the pandemic, this naturally soared to new heights. While many people are returning to shopping in person, in brick-and-mortar stores, it became very clear that online shopping was going to be a significant part of the future. More and more often, this is where people turn to do research, buy products, communicate with companies and much more.
Creating quality content, naturally, should be at the heart of your SEO efforts. You need to get keywords on your site so that search engines are able to find it. This gives you organic traffic, which then gives you the potential to make sales. It doesn’t matter how good your website is or how great your products are if no one can find the website. Keywords make that possible, along with a lot of other tactics, such as social media marketing or pay-per-click advertising. But keywords are usually where people start.
AI has been changing quickly. With the release of ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI, people gained access to an artificial intelligence that was more powerful than anything that they had used before. It was seen as a large step forward. The development of artificial intelligence has been ongoing for a long time, but it has never before been this useful for consumers.
Websites have become more focused on videos and images in recent years. But it’s important to remember that text is still a critical part of the process. One trend that has begun is that people are more often putting text directly into their images and then uploading those images to their site. The text will be added in Photoshop or a similar program in advance, for instance, and then it will become part of the image itself when the final copy is rendered.
Without traffic, even the best website in the world won’t create any conversions. You could have incredible products at a great price point, but they’re not going to sell if no one knows that they exist. Many businesses in the modern era don’t even have much of a physical presence, if any. They rely entirely on web traffic.
Part of the reason why search engine optimization is so important is that people increasingly shop on their devices. When you’re trying to sell goods and services, this is where the customers are. For many businesses, physical location no longer matters the way that it used to. That’s not to say that there aren’t companies that still rely on foot traffic. But physical visibility has become much less important than online visibility.
An engaging website is critical to your success. It’s not simply enough to have a website, as it used to be in previous decades. Everyone has a website, and people use them all the time. What sets your website apart and makes it successful is how well people actually engage with it and the value that they get from it.
AI content has certainly been in the news a lot lately. This began with the launch of ChatGPT, which is an AI writing tool. Most recently, Google announced that they are releasing their own writing AI, known as Bard. It seems like the future will see many companies creating competing AI services.
Some people act the same on the internet as they do in real life. But many people will change significantly. Studies have found that the internet lowers a person’s inhibitions. This has been termed the “online disinhibition effect.” People will say things that they would never say in real life or act in an overly aggressive manner. For instance, people often use hedge words – like “seems to” or “sometimes” – to try to soften the mood when saying something
If you are doing online marketing, we can help here at Content Customs. One of the benefits of working with us is that we are such a versatile company. The heart of our business often revolves around doing search engine optimization and SEO work. But we can also handle other types of online marketing, such as social media marketing, or setting up pay-per-click advertisement campaigns.
When it comes to search engine optimization, people are often very focused on what they should be doing. They know that they need to get more keywords on their site, for example, or that they want to create links to other pages. They know that they can promote their content through social media to grow their audience. All of this is true, and it certainly is important to focus on the things that you should be doing to try to improve your content and your results.
It may be time to forget everything that you know about SEO. Many people assume that the process is the same year after year, but that’s simply not the case. Often, there will be major changes in any calendar year, especially as Google updates its algorithm. SEO is always reacting to these changes or trying to anticipate how an edge can be created over the competition.
Social media is clearly a way to expand the reach that your brand has and to find a new or larger audience. You can also use it to connect with the audience that you already have, keeping your brand fresh in their minds and even interacting with them to do things like answering questions or telling them about upcoming products. Social media creates this level of interaction in a way that no other type of advertising has in the past.
It sometimes feels like the world becomes a bit smaller every day, and that is especially true when considering connections made on the internet. Even minor brands now have the ability to market themselves all over the world to a vast array of customers. This has allowed major corporations to spread all over the globe, but it also allows small companies to find niche markets in different areas that they may not have been able to discover previously.
When considering how to optimize your website, it can sometimes be helpful to dig into the psychology behind a Google search. What is the search actually designed to do? What is the person starting that search actually looking for? By carefully considering what their goals are, you can then apply this to your SEO strategy to determine how to optimize your site in a way that aligns with these goals.
If your website suddenly starts getting less traffic than it has been in the past, you’re certainly going to notice the change. You may not have made any alterations on your end, at least that you know of, but something is clearly impacting your numbers. You need to figure out why this is occurring so that you can rectify it or, if it’s a short-term problem, wait for it to resolve itself.
Voice search features have changed the way that people use their devices. These searches can be carried out on a wide variety of devices, which is one reason why they are popular. For instance, voice searches could occur on a cellphone, on a home assistant – Alexa or Google Home, to name just two – on a computer equipped with a microphone and in many other ways. Part of the popularity is just the convenience, especially when using a phone.
Social media changed the way that businesses interact with their customers forever. When social media sites first came on the scene, they were geared around consumers, with sites like MySpace allowing people to connect with their friends. But businesses very quickly got involved, such as music companies with MySpace, and that only expanded once Facebook and other mainstream sites took over. Today, almost every business is going to have a Facebook page and some sort of social media presence. They will use it to do advertising, answer questions, move products and much more.
An effective call to action (CTA) is a very important element to add to your website. It prompts your readers to take a specific action after they examine your content. This varies from industry to industry, of course, but typical examples of actions that people want their readers to take include contacting the business,
You know where you want to take your business in 2023 and beyond. You have dreams of exciting growth and the development of the company over time. You know that these goals are achievable if you can just market your company properly and get your products in front of potential customers. It’s the only thing that’s missing, that’s holding you back from that level of success
It takes time, effort and investment to rank on the first search results page. The old days of the internet, when simply having a website could get you more attention, are over. There are billions of sites and you’re constantly competing against others for placement and rankings. Merely having a website is not going to help because it is what your potential customers already expect. It would certainly be a red flag if you did not have a site, but they’re not impressed just because you do.
Web traffic stems largely from SEO. You put the proper keywords on your website so that someone using those words will quickly find your business in the search rankings and click the resulting link. Certainly, that’s a simplified version, but it outlines the main goal that most business owners have.
It’s sometimes difficult to come up with content that will connect with your customers. Maybe your company has one main product, for instance, and you’re constantly posting about it on your social media channels and running new content on your website. This all helps your position and traffic, but you start to feel like there is nothing left to say.
Do you ever feel like it’s incredibly hard to get positive online reviews, while the negative reviews just pile up? You’re not alone. It has been found that negative events are much more likely to cause people to leave reviews than positive events. Even a single issue can be enough to trigger this negativity bias. Some have said that just one negative interaction is so detrimental that it takes 40 positive interactions to make up for it.
The holiday shopping season is upon us, and it’s important to make sure that your web presence is ready. While it is true that more shoppers will likely buy in person this year than over the last two years, it’s also true that the vast majority of Americans will do at least some online shopping — if not all. After all, one study claimed that around
Your social media profile is essential for your company. It is likely one of the first ways that people are going to get to know what your company does and what you’re all about. When they hear about your products or services, they may first go to your social media profiles to get a better idea of what they should expect. As such, it’s one of the first ways that you will interact with these potential customers.
By its very nature, the tech industry has always changed fair quickly. However, recent shakeups at Twitter and Facebook have been a bit surprising. Many companies use these social media sites to engage with customers, answer questions, promote products, run ads and much more.
Smartphones have existed since 2007, and it’s now been long enough that most people in the United States expect everyone they meet to have a smartphone. It’s true that there are some who still use landlines or older models of cellphones, but they are certainly in the minority.
On sites like YouTube, video ads have long been seen as the most important advertising content, both now and in the future. This isn’t necessarily a new model, but it’s easy to apply to many different types of content. Videos range from unboxing toys to repairing pickup trucks to showcasing songs from the biggest bands in the world.
SEO tactics are based on search rankings, and that typically means writing to address the Google algorithm. This is what determines where pages rank based on the search terms that the user inputs. It’s a complicated process and Google, to protect its intellectual property, does not like to provide specific details.
When you’re looking for new content, SEO services, online ads and much more, you have options. Some people choose to do it themselves. Others go with a professional agency to assist them. And companies that seek these services certainly have different goals.
When choosing keywords to optimize for, you need to first consider how people are going to find your site and what they’re going to expect. If you were looking for a similar site, what words and phrases would you use? You can also check keyword rankings, search density and search volume.
Quality scores have been debated for years, as people wondered if Google checked the overall quality of a site, using that information in search rankings. This does happen, but quality scores are not just used for websites and rankings. They can also be applied to Pay Per Click Ads.
One of the first things that you should do when considering your content strategy is to determine what audience you want to reach. This is a unique factor for all businesses. Some companies market directly to consumers, others need to connect with retailers and still others are interested in reaching other business owners — just to name a few examples.
One of the major benefits of the internet is that it allows you to find a niche market anywhere. In the past, someone who lived in a small town may not have been able to make a living selling art, for instance, because the town just didn’t have enough people to support it. But that same artist can easily make online sales, as long as they can find their target audience.
For many years, online ads have been virtually controlled by two companies: Facebook and Google. This duopoly handled the lion’s share of online marketing, and still does. However, recent reports have shown that things may be changing. Apple is gaining ground and picking up more of the market share, finally making a real push to be a major player in this space.
On the final day of August, it’s clear that we’re moving into the fall and the holiday shopping season that comes with it. Major retailers like Wal-Mart are already putting out toy lists and other material to take advantage of it. Over the next month or two, early shoppers are going to start focusing on getting their purchases in, while even those who aren’t actively shopping will start making lists and considering their options.
Many business owners spend weeks or months constructing the ideal website. They may build it themselves, or they’ll hire a team to do so.
You have probably already heard one of the strongest myths in the business world, that there is no such thing as bad publicity. This cliche has been said so many times that a lot of people believe it to be fact. All you need, they claim, is for people to be talking about your business. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying. It can all help you.
It’s no secret that people’s attention spans are shrinking. It’s unclear exactly how long this has been going on, but the last two decades have been dramatic. If you look at studies from 2000, they found that the average attention span was about 12 seconds long. If you’re already thinking that sounds shorter than you may have expected, it’s worth noting that more recent studies put it at just 8.25 seconds.
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), many people think only about keywords. They want to game the Google algorithm. They’re convinced that all you have to do is figure out the right keywords or the right way to use them, and that’s enough to increase traffic.
There are many different theories about how you should set up your online content to make it impactful. And the truth is that different theories are going to apply in different cases. Content creators who want to get people to read for as long as possible, for instance, will often save the most important information for last.
When the pandemic started two years ago, people took heavily to online shopping. Some of it was just convenience. Businesses were closed and the internet was an easier way to get essential products. Some of it was safety.
It’s frustrating the first time that you see a negative review of your business. Maybe it’s on Facebook, Google, Yelp or some other site. You have worked hard to provide excellent products and services, and the majority of people leave your business feeling happy about what they’ve received.
In the early days of social media, sites would rise and fall rather quickly. MySpace’s peak only lasted for three years, starting in 2005 and running to about 2008.
Search terms used to be based mostly on simplicity. If someone wanted to look for a repair shop in West Virginia, they might search for “car repair West Virginia” or “West Virginia car repair shop.” These short searches contain only what is absolutely necessary.
The tagline for Reddit is that it is the “front page of the internet.” It’s a place where you can find communities — known as subreddits — for just about any subject you can imagine. Want to climb mountains? Looking to learn how to knit?
When your company produces content for social media, you are certainly hoping for interaction. You want people to click on the content and read it. You want them to like that content and boost its popularity. You probably want them to use the content as a way to link back to your main site, which can help you make sales.
Many people start reading an article by skimming it. Say that they typed in the relevant keywords and found a page that looked like it would answer their question or give them the information they’re searching for. But all they really know is that the keywords worked. The site was optimized for those keywords.
There are two extremes when writing content. News sites and sports blogs tend to focus on current events. Breaking news is king, and all of the content is geared around connecting with what readers care about at that specific moment. Topics will become very important for a few weeks or even just a few days, and identifying them can help you capitalize on that traffic.
You believe that your company offers tremendous value to your customers. You have high-quality products, your staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and you always go above and beyond to make sure customers are fully satisfied.
When blogging first became popular, it was more like social media than a professional platform. It was a way for people to keep a journal, write down their thoughts or develop different types of creative works.
When users turn to a search engine, they have a goal in mind. As you create your own site and fill it with content, it can help tremendously to understand the intent that these users have at the moment they type in that search. What are they trying to find?
It’s clear to you that having a high bounce rate is a detriment to your business, making it an important metric to watch. It simply means that a lot of people land on that specific page and then leave quickly without ever navigating to another page. If they have very low dwell times, meaning that they leave the site in seconds after landing, you’re losing out on a lot of potential traffic.
Any business can benefit from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on any stage, whether they are doing business internationally or domestically. The biggest corporations in the world use it regularly to drive traffic and sales. However, there is evidence that local businesses can especially see positive results from SEO that has been done properly.
You can use your social media presence in a lot of different ways, but they all need to stay true to your brand identity. This is why it’s important that you have a clear picture in advance of what you want that brand to be.
If your site’s content was lacking or nonexistent and you recently added new pages or new content on existing pages, that’s a great move for your business. The content on your site helps people find the site through organic traffic, it answers their questions and it helps to create conversions. It’s one of the most powerful tools that you have. However, people often make the assumption that they’re set for good once they have this premium content.
A call to action (CTA) is an important part of your content in many industries. You don’t just want to provide information to the reader. You also want them to take some specific action. Perhaps the content tells them about a certain product and you want to invite them to make a purchase. Maybe the content talks about the services your company provides and you just want to ask them to contact you for more details.
Most websites that you visit make rather liberal use of subheadings. You may have found this curious, at least from an SEO perspective. If search engine optimization is about getting keywords on the page, does it really matter where you put them? Wouldn’t it be just as effective if you added a huge block of unbroken text, as long as it had the right keywords?
Most websites that you visit make rather liberal use of subheadings. You may have found this curious, at least from an SEO perspective. If search engine optimization is about getting keywords on the page, does it really matter where you put them? Wouldn’t it be just as effective if you added a huge block of unbroken text, as long as it had the right keywords?
As you research how to get more traffic to your website, you’ve probably run into people talking about organic traffic. They note that you can use search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your rankings and get more organic traffic, which helps your site grow.
When users turn to a search engine, they have a goal in mind. As you create your own site and fill it with content, it can help tremendously to understand the intent that these users have at the moment they type in that search. What are they trying to find?
Have you ever thought about letting an AI write your website? Artificial intelligence has been used in many different areas, and AI writing is the newest area where it has begun to pick up steam. People have used these systems to write everything from computer code to novels.
As marketing strategies continue to evolve, entrepreneurs are looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve. One technique emerging as a growing trend is incorporating video content into marketing plans.
Back in the days when mobile phone users had to pay for every single text that they sent or received, sometimes paying 25 cents each time, text-based marketing was fairly pointless. If anything, people getting these messages would just be frustrated with the brand because now they were being actively charged to look at a marketing message. Even if they liked the product, they wouldn’t like that method of learning about it, so conversions weren’t as likely.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be done, in part, through the use of optimized content on your website. You can use it to add relevant keywords and optimize your content for both the search engines themselves and for the visitors who find your site through those engines. This means having a focus on useful content that provides information and answers questions, it means linking to pages on your main site to get conversions and it means using the keywords with which people are going to search when looking for your goods and services.
Many types of technology rise and fall. Consider sites like MySpace or Xanga, which had their day and then faded from the public eye. It’s a common issue with social media. As useful as sites like Facebook are for advertising purposes, there are already those who are wary about the future since younger generations are using Facebook less often. This doesn’t mean social media marketing will disappear, of course.
It’s clear that most people tend to use search engines fairly frequently. However, the internet isn’t the same today as it was 10 years ago, or even five. There are many options, many potential uses and many ways that people connect with friends, family members, brands and local businesses. You need to consider this from every angle, considering the use of social media, smartphones, voice assistants and much more.
Email marketing has been around for decades. After all, the first email was sent more than 50 years ago, in 1971. By the 1990s, it was being used for plenty of marketing campaigns. Audio and video content didn’t come along until much later, and things like social media have only gained their current level of popularity over the past decade or so. There has been a lot of time for change and innovation.
Television ads do have their uses. Much of the time, they focus on creating brand awareness. Few people see an ad for a car and head over to the dealership to drive one. But, when someone needs a new car, they’re more likely to think of one that they’ve seen on TV many times before. The goal of the campaign is to make that person think of the brand first, not to immediately sell them the car.
Sitemaps aren’t required for websites to be found by every search engine. However, they’re highly encouraged for websites, regardless of the niche. A sitemap is like a blueprint or a map that enables search engines to crawl and index your website pages more efficiently, no matter the size. It tells search engines which of your web pages are the most important and how they relate to one another.
Google and Apple have long been two of the largest tech companies in the United States, and there are some ways in which they overlap. They both sell phones and laptops, for instance, and they both have virtual assistants that show up on their devices. But there has long been one way that they don’t compete: Google is focused on search engines, and Apple has never really gotten into that realm.
It used to be that simply having a website was nearly a guarantee that you could increase your reach and your sales. But that era of the internet is long gone. A site is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. It’s expected. Every business has one, so you don’t stand apart simply by creating your own.
Social media marketing has, in some ways, encroached on email marketing, but it has certainly not replaced it. People often view social media much differently; they’re often willing to browse without clicking ads, or they’re focused on their interactions with friends on the app, so they don’t pay attention to the ads.
Christmas is almost here, but that doesn’t mean that shoppers are ready. Many of them tend to put it off. In one study, roughly 79% of those polled said they would do shopping in the final two weeks before the holiday, having put everything off until the last possible second.
People have always supported brands that they trust more than those that they don’t, but studies have found this is more important in the modern day than it has ever been before.
Posting content on social media is certainly a good way to build up your brand and attract new readers who can connect with that content. Not only is social media an easy platform to use, but you literally have billions of potential readers
Posting content on social media is certainly a good way to build up your brand and attract new readers who can connect with that content. Not only is social media an easy platform to use, but you literally have billions of potential readers
Posting content on social media is certainly a good way to build up your brand and attract new readers who can connect with that content. Not only is social media an easy platform to use, but you literally have billions of potential readers
COVID-19 changed the world in 2020. As the United States began to shut down in March of that year, people didn’t know how long it would last. By the time Christmas rolled around, things were only getting worse and many stores were closed. People wanted to stay home and shop.
When you think of someone who is running a Google search — or using any other search engine — you probably think of someone sitting at a computer and typing on a keyboard.
Many websites have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to give readers quick answers to questions that are often received. In many ways, this page is a benefit to your company or to you as the main communications operator for the company. If you’re answering the same question by email every day, it takes a lot of time and energy. Putting it on the FAQ isn’t always going to solve that, as many people may overlook it and ask anyway, but you can at least reduce the amount of time you spend on a singular issue.
It’s clear that there is an inherent value in having content that people want to share. This is especially true in social media marketing. Creating content is just one step in the chain. If you can get users to share it for you, they’re essentially doing your work for free.
Generally, when people talk about choosing keywords for a website, what they’re really talking about is choosing keyword phrases. With a few exceptions, singular keywords are just too general.
When you run a search on any engine, such as Google, you likely assume that no one else really takes the time to look at it. It’s stored in your search history on your device, but you don’t think any outside parties are going to look at it or connect it with you specifically.
It has been shown many times that blogging is an excellent way to increase organic traffic and page rank. Blog posts help you generate consistent content, they allow you to add keywords on a regular basis and you can use them to answer questions and address issues that your readers are interested in.
Like everything, SEO evolves over time. It changes. Some of this is inherent to the practice itself; i.e., people learn more effective ways to do things and update their tactics. Some of it is due to the shifting algorithms.
You’ve likely seen predictive text suggestions or autocomplete suggestions when running a search. In some cases, these just make it faster and easier to type what you were going to type anyway.
We know well that having a blog attached to your site can do wonders for your SEO. There are plenty of stories of people doubling or tripling their organic traffic — or more. While you do need on-site SEO as well, one of the fastest ways to increase your ranking and make your SEO more effective is to consistently blog about the search terms your audience is looking for.
Google searches in 2021 are often framed around questions, phrases and other uses of “natural language” to get a result. In other words, users aren’t typing in keyword strings. They’re quickly writing out phrases or asking complete sentences as they search for an answer.
You may have heard rumors that Facebook usage is declining. This is especially common with younger users, who may favor other types of social media. After all, Facebook has been around for going on two decades now, so it is hardly the trendy new site that it once was.
It’s common for business owners to assume that content that works is going to work forever. Once product pages and landing pages have been written, you’re tempted to just check that job off of the list and forget about it. But running a successful website and having a strong web presence doesn’t work this way.
If you ever wonder how it’s possible to choose keywords that users are going to search for, consider the fact that the majority of searches are just repeats. In fact, some estimates state that merely 20% of searches, or one out of every five, are actually new.
Page speed measures how quickly a web browser can load all the elements of a page such as images, videos and text. It affects how much revenue your website generates, which is directly related to the website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Having your web content go viral can bring in a ton of attention for your brand, but you don’t need to have that type of success to have a major impact. Any content that people share is highly beneficial. It’s far more likely that their connections on social media will interact with that content than if they come across it in any other fashion. The personal endorsement from someone whom they know makes all the difference in the world.
The pandemic closed businesses and kept people home in many parts of the United States last year, and online shopping saw a huge and predictable boom as a result. While many companies floundered, places like Amazon had to hire more drivers and workers to make all of their deliveries on time.
When people think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), they often want to know how to update their site to get more traffic. They assume that it’s a quick fix. If they take the right steps and add some new links or keywords in the right places, then their site will be optimized and traffic will increase indefinitely.
One issue with social media marketing is that people often find their return on investment (ROI) harder to measure than they’d like. Sure, if someone clicks through an ad and makes a purchase, you know it works.
Your goals with content marketing are many. They start with driving more traffic to your site. Beyond that, you also want to make sales or conversions, you want to uphold your brand and you want to answer customers’ questions and provide them with the information that they need.
Predictive text is what Google uses to guess what you’re going to search for, often starting from the time you type in the very first letter. An “F” may give you the auto-fill option for Facebook, for instance, while a “W” may offer suggestions like “weather” or “Wal-Mart.”
Many people think of the internet as something that will always be there. Yes, specific websites may crash or go down from time to time, and it can be frustrating, but the internet as a whole is considered stable. Until Tuesday. That’s when a relatively small error led to a major crash taking a huge portion of the internet offline.
You have a comprehensive site with dozens of landing pages, scores of main pages and category pages, and hundreds of weekly blog posts aimed at increasing traffic and SEO.
Google has been working on an operating system called Fuchsia for a few years now. It has been tested on a Pixelbook, for instance, but that was back in 2018 — now three years ago.
Back when people used to consult the phone book when finding new businesses and services, some companies opted for names that would make them more visible. For instance, there are companies with names like “Aardvark Construction.”
From the perspective of running your website and trying to get consistent traffic, the Google updates can be frustrating. Just when you feel like you have it all figured out, they change something.
There was a time when social media was seen as a bonus or a benefit for businesses. People were interested in learning how to use this new, emerging technology to help their companies thrive.
During the pandemic over the past year-plus, life has shifted. People who previously went to the office began working remotely, doing everything online. People who used to go out for entertainment — to the movies, for instance — started finding entertainment online.
The smartphone changed how we think of computers. In the past, a computer was a dedicated device that did little else and that had to be wired into the network to access the internet.
It’s clear that marketing is never going to be the same. The internet has changed everything, and that change is here to stay. Rather than clinging to older ideas that may be outdated and may no longer work, companies need to accept this new reality and find out how they can leverage it for greater success.
The case between Google and Oracle has centered around Google’s use of lines of code that were originally written for Oracle. Google used the code to develop the Android operating system and has argued that it is not a violation of Oracle’s copyright because the code, which allows for communication between devices and software, was available for fair use.
You must have an effective call to action (CTA) to get the most out of your content. You know what you want the reader to do, and many will naturally take that action anyway — they’ll read about your product, appreciate the advantages and then order.
Most companies looking to get more business on the internet know they need high-quality, regularly published content. And when it comes to creating a content strategy, writing various types of content, tracking the results and adjusting the plan, a professional content team usually gets the best results.
Are you an impulse buyer? If so, you know how it feels to see a new product that immediately grabs your attention. You may just see one ad or spot the item in person, while walking around the store, and know that you have to have it.
Throughout human history, technology has changed slowly. If you were able to take a person from 1000 A.D. and put them into 1200 A.D., they’d be fine. They’d recognize everything and feel that the world was similar to the one they’d left.
Targeted ads are everywhere. Do one Google search for a new guitar, and all you see are guitar ads for the next few weeks. It may not even matter if you bought the guitar.
It’s easy to understand that social media carries a lot of power and can open doors. Companies used to need to do extensive research to see what their customers liked, how old they were, what they spent money on, etc.
The right type of SEO is crucial to your success and the success of your site. The internet is not the Wild West that it used to be, where it often seemed like everything and anything could be done to get more traffic.
Your site’s bounce rate is important. This is the measure of how many people come to your site and then almost instantly leave. While it may be more encouraging to study positive numbers, such as your overall traffic or an increase in sales, you really want to seek to improve your negative numbers to enhance your site on the whole.
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in 1994, thanks in large part to a quarter of a million dollars from his parents, he had no idea how huge it would get. In the decades to come, Amazon single-handedly changed the way people shop.
Record-breaking numbers may be on the way for tech companies that run online ads, reports claim, as the numbers for the final quarter of last year are about to be released. These include giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook, though they also include numerous smaller companies.
We often say things like “the internet changed the world” and yet still think about a world where we have to sit down at a computer and open up a browser to use it. To some degree, smartphones have changed this, but not entirely.
Don’t think of online reviews as something extra for consumers, a small piece of the puzzle that they use when deciding what to buy. The truth is that they’re far more important than that.
Google is often thought of by end consumers as its own company, but it is actually owned by Alphabet. This is important since workers at Alphabet have recently decided to unionize, and this could have an impact on how Google runs its own operations moving forward.
Not all online audiences have the same reading level, nor should you expect them to. This is why it’s so important to understand not just the goals you have for your content, but for whom that content is being written.
A small business in the rural United States is no longer confined to their immediate area. For non-perishable sales, companies can easily connect with buyers all over the globe.
We are a society that is so interconnected and dependent on the internet that it’s easy to imagine that our favorite services will always be there exactly when we need them. In fact, having anything else be true could be highly detrimental to a lot of businesses and individuals.
The human population is moving toward an astounding 8 billion people and should get there in just two years. By that time, the number of voice search assistants, which is currently over 4.2 billion, is projected to hit the same mark.
Have you ever wondered if the difference between making a conversion on your website and not making one is simply due to the words that you choose in your copy? If conversions — i.e., making a sale or getting someone to pay for a service — are your ultimate goal, you need to know how to give yourself the edge.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complex and always changing and shifting with updates to the various algorithms — most notably, those used by Google. It also provides a bit of a different experience than other types of marketing, in that the return you see isn’t always immediate.
You have a lot of things to consider when crafting your website content. How does it fit with your brand? What is your main goal? How can you address SEO? What information is your audience looking for? It can almost feel overwhelming.
Reviews are massively important for online sales. A buyer on Amazon, for instance, may not even click on a product with less than four stars, much less read the reviews to find out if they seem legitimate. The fact that the product got some negative reviews is enough to push them into looking elsewhere.
When you tell someone to search for something online, what do you say? Odds are you have frequently muttered some variation of “Just Google it.” You may have even used it to define your own actions. For instance, you could say “I Googled the weather this morning and it looks like it’s going to snow.”
Off-page search engine optimization (SEO) is all about the tactics that you do outside of your website, including social media marketing and link building. With the latter, you maximize your efforts to acquire high-quality backlinks, which play a significant role in building your domain authority and helping your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
You started using social media before you even owned a business, as a simple way to keep in touch with your friends. Now that you run your own company, though, it’s impossible to deny the potential that it gives you.
You have a stunning website. It showcases your products, it answers some of the questions people have, it includes a call-to-action to create sales and it helps establish your brand’s identity. You’re about ready to launch the site. There’s just one thing left to do: create a contact page.
Google and Oracle have been at odds for a decade, and it all centers around the use of computer code. When Google created the operating system for its Android line of phones — one of the most popular phones, along with Apple’s iPhone series — they used part of a coding language called Java.
For many online marketing divisions, the click-through rate (CTR) may be the most important measure of success. Getting that search result in front of people is just the first step.
A new documentary called “The Social Dilemma” has been making waves lately. It relies largely on interviews with tech insiders who have worked for companies like Facebook and Google.
Local shopping has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, there has been a spike in online shopping, specifically centered around Amazon. But it has also changed the way people shop locally. Instead of going to stores or restaurants to browse and make purchases, people have started looking for what they want online.
Every kind of business needs to have a solid marketing plan to be successful in its industry. With that said, if you’re an HVAC contractor or if you own an HVAC business, you also need to have good marketing. Customers won’t just be coming to your doorstep, begging for your services.
It’s easy to get pulled into the trap of thinking of search engines like Google as nothing more than computer systems that you need to appease with your content. You start thinking exclusively about statistics and numbers: how many keywords to use, how to break them up, what the ideal word count looks like, where you should put your links, etc.
There are two ways that most people think about web content: the overall message and the specific keywords. In some cases, the message takes priority. The content is designed to answer questions and engage readers. Getting the right message out, and keeping it on-brand, is the critical part of the process.
How many times have you searched for the same thing on Google? Odds are, you’ve done it a lot. Maybe you use Google to get the local news or weather and, rather than using an app or the related links, you just search “local weather” or “local news” every morning. Maybe you tend to shop for the same types of products, so you’re always browsing for them, and that means making the same searches.
When people first start thinking about search engine optimization (SEO), they tend to concentrate on visibility. The site needs to rank higher in the search results so that more people can find it. The traffic numbers are too low. They want more clicks. These are all valid concerns and they are definitely the focal point of a lot of SEO efforts.
Did you know that Google was storing your audio recordings? If not, the news that they’ve stopped may come as a surprise to you on many levels. The company doesn’t want to stop collecting this important information, but they have stopped doing it automatically. Instead, to get people to opt into the program, they’re giving every user the option and explaining what the storing process means and why it happens.
Ask most people who are interested in SEO what their goals are, and they’ll tell you that they want to rank higher on the search results. They may care about sites like Bing or Yahoo, but they’re generally focused on Google, the industry leader. They may state something about how most people never click beyond the first page of search results and so they want to get to that first page.
When you rank higher in search results, you get more clicks. Ideally, many of those people will stay on your website. Some of them, however, are going to quickly leave and return to the search results page. This is known as “bouncing” and it’s a problem because it often signifies that your site did not give them what they were looking for.
Have you ever been creating a hyperlink when you realized that the page you were linking to was massive and full of information? You were just using one single quote, but you had to link to the page as a whole. You knew that would make it confusing for the reader. Well, Google’s Chrome browser has taken that problem head on, utilizing a new extension that gives you the ability to pick out a fragment of text and create a unique link to that fragment.
Have you been thinking about revamping your website, updating your SEO or running an online ad campaign? Maybe you just aren’t sure when to start or if it even matters whether or not you act quickly. You know it’s something you want to do eventually, but you’re not feeling much urgency and you’ve been putting it off.
When trying to create effective web content, you need to think about more than simply what information that content provides to the reader. You also have to carefully consider formatting and layout questions. Ultimately, quality content is a must, but you can make it more effective if you understand how to set it up and how that layout can impact the reader.
Do you ever feel like everything you do is being tracked and recorded without your knowledge? It’s definitely a concern for some users, especially since most people have their phones on them at all times. Those phones can track location data and find out exactly where you’ve been, and when. Many Google users likely don’t even realize that location data is being tracked.
The amount of time people have spent online in the past few weeks has likely never been higher. It’s one of the natural reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. People are working from home and doing their entire jobs online. Others are communicating with loved ones through video calls. Still others are buying almost everything they want and need on the internet to avoid going to stores or even going outside.
While many businesses have ground to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic, others have attempted to shift and adapt. For many, this means working from home as much as possible. It will be interesting to see how many workers continue to do this after the disease has run its course, but, for now, it is clear that many of them are changing tactics.
Social media absolutely gives you marketing opportunities and unique chances to get your products and services in front of your potential customers. You can show products to people who have already bought them in the past, making repeat sales, and you can branch out into new areas by marketing to those who have shown an interest in related products, services, interests, hobbies and much more.
Two of the biggest platforms for ads these days are Google and Facebook. They may operate in different spheres — search results and a social media — but these are two places where people tend to flock and they’re the kings of online marketing. That’s not going to change, but they are seeing a recent drop in ad spending as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to get worse by the day.
It’s not the way that anyone would have wanted it, but online shopping has seen a massive surge lately. COVID-19, often called coronavirus, has forced people to stay home to slow down the outbreak. Many are allowed to work from home, and others have professions where they simply cannot go to work at all; for instance, gyms, bars, restaurants and many other places were closed by the government in Michigan and other states.
The internet offers seemingly limitless possibilities for marketing and contacting potential consumers. A company in any part of the country can connect with customers and clients all over the world. With smartphones and social media, people spend more time on the internet than ever before. Gone are the days when it was a fringe interest; it’s so mainstream that it takes over many areas of our lives.
People often feel like Facebook keeps the mic open on their phone and listens in on their conversations. How else can you explain the targeted ads? They assume that their smartphone is always listening to what they have to say, pulling information from the conversations they have, and sending them ads based on what they talk about.
One of the big worries that people have with a call to action is simply that they’re going to annoy the reader and actively push them away from making a purchase. In fact, some business owners specifically do not use them on these grounds. They don’t want to seem pushy. However, since studies have found that calls to action do work and do increase sales, it’s time to shift that perspective.
If you have ever used a site like Pinterest, you’re familiar with the concept of the rather similar Google Collections. Users can create their own collections of content, which they can then browse whenever they would like to do so. Pinterest does this with images, but Google Collections takes things a step farther and allows people to collect links, images, map locations, articles and much more.
Facebook has more users than any other social media platform. As a company, it also owns some of the other major platforms — like Instagram — and so there’s nearly a monopoly at the top. If you use social media at all, odds are you use a platform created by or owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
Getting traffic to your site is only half of the battle. You also need to keep people on the site, make conversions and make sales. This is why quality content, rather than keyword spamming, is so important. You need the type of site that not just ranks highly, but that offers information and that keeps people on the page.
The beauty of targeted ads is that they can focus directly on people who have already expressed an interest in that type of product or service. This can lead to a rise in conversion rates, even when the total amount of people who see the ad shrinks. You do not waste time and resources putting the ad in front of a lot of people who have no interest and would never make a purchase — no matter how good that ad is. Instead, you show it to those who really appreciate it and, often, you just have to convert them to your specific product.
You know that online marketing is important. You want to increase your digital footprint, improve your page rank, create fresh content that your audience enjoys, increase sharing on social media, manage your online reputation, and much more. What you don’t know is exactly how you should approach these tasks.
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is a crucial marketing strategy that you should employ for your business. The process entails boosting your brand’s online visibility by appearing as one of the top websites that answer your target customers’ queries on search engines like Google and Bing.
When you start researching content creation, you get a lot of advice to create more content or that the frequency with which you post new content is key. These things are, without a doubt, important parts of your strategy. How you reach your readers and how often you reach them matters. However, do not let this focus push you to overlook yet another key factor: the type of content your readers actually want to read.
Reviews are a huge part of the online shopping experience. For many potential buyers, they are the difference between making a purchase or not. Unlike a brick and mortar store, shoppers cannot have any contact with the items before buying them. They also know that returns tend to be a bit more complicated.
Google Trends is a simple way of tracking interest in a topic over time. You can use the pre-selected times that Google suggests or you can put in a custom time range. What you learn can help you understand what topics and terms your audience is most interested in.
This has been highlighted lately with the move from 2019 to 2020. Google released some decade-based search information to show how things have changed over time.
Social media started long before Facebook in the early 2000s, but Mark Zuckerberg’s launch really defined the space. More than anything, it gave it stability. Before that, sites like MySpace and Xanga had risen and fallen. Users had turned to forums, chat rooms and other forms of communication, but they were never mainstream.
If you check your Google rankings and you don’t like where you’re sitting, it’s natural to decide that you need more content. First and foremost, you want to provide something fresh and valuable that readers will click on. Beyond that, you want to get more keywords onto the site in an organic way that shows Google how valuable your site is. That’s what helps you rank higher.
When people set out for any type of event that requires planning, they tend not to want any surprises. This fundamental desire drives a lot of search traffic because it helps to determine what they search for and why they need to find it. Google itself notes that people have a “low tolerance for surprises” whether they’re planning a dinner date or a month-long vacation.
Although “Googling” is now synonymous with searching for information, Google is far from the only search platform
For many businesses, the goal of a platform like Instagram is exposure. You may not make direct sales off of a post about a product or a service, but you can generally reach people who are interested in what you offer. You create more brand awareness, and you can get direct followers whom you can interact with in the future.
Today, advanced machine learning helps businesses of all shapes and sizes improve how they reach and interact with customers. By examining users’ online behavior, preferences and other data, these tools help marketing teams tailor ad campaigns for maximum effect. Facebook recently debuted a new feature which capitalizes on this unique capability.
For many businesses, developing creative ideas for fresh content on a routine basis can quickly become a resource-consuming chore. With the sheer volume of articles, blogs and landing pages hitting the web each day, how can a startup hope to craft unique and appealing content to attract readers?
What is the first thing you look for when it is time to buy a new product or service? If you are looking online, odds are that reading reviews is right at the top of your list. In fact, it may become the driving force behind your entire purchasing decision. While we have always known that reviews were important and make an impact, new studies have shown that people trust them far more than many realize.
As video content becomes more popular and accessible among users, industry leaders such as YouTube continually seek new avenues to enhance the user experience. In a recent announcement, YouTube discussed a forthcoming overhaul of its homepage for desktop users as well as consumers accessing videos via iPad and Android tablets.
Successful companies often keep their logos forever, relying on decades of branding, but Facebook has recently decided to buck that trend. The social media giant announced a brand new logo instead of the lowercase “f” that it used for so long. The new logo is simple, just “FACEBOOK” in all caps.
Today, startups pour extensive resources into chasing the latest search trends and SEO tactics. While this strategy can yield benefits, it fails to account for the vital role evergreen content has in promoting a brand’s growth. Evergreen content, which remains fresh and relevant year-round, can be easily repurposed for a wide range of benefits.
Your web content serves a few purposes, from drawing search traffic to establishing a ranking order to providing useful information to the reader. All of these things naturally intersect. For instance, fresh and useful content will attract more eyes and keep people on the site longer, helping to establish your site as an authority and increase your ranking.
Google just announced a major update to its search algorithm which could take the SEO world by storm. Known as BERT, or Bidirectional Representations from Transformers, it is a state-of-the-art search tool backed by advanced machine learning. By applying BERT to search queries, Google aims to help users find information faster and more efficiently.
Over the years, web searches have changed and shifted dynamically. Computers shrank. Desktops arrived in every home. Laptops flooded college campuses. Phones started connecting to the internet, then smartphones changed things so dramatically that some people stopped using computers entirely.
With shoppers already on the hunt for the hottest holiday gifts, tis’ the season for startups and small businesses to tune up their holiday marketing strategies. Capturing consumer interest during this critical time of year often requires an intimate understanding of customer desires and emerging trends.
Don’t assume your website is done being built just because it went live. Maybe you put a lot of time into considering your content. Your goal was to create a site that could basically run itself successfully for years to come. If that’s your mindset, it’s time to turn it around. The truth is that, as with any other part of your company, you can always be improving.
Although it is hard to believe, the annual holiday shopping season is just around the corner. Small businesses hoping to boost sales during this time should waste no time planning a holiday marketing campaign. Fortunately, Facebook is ready to assist SMBs with a range of new marketing tools.
When considering keyword strategies, most people simply want to rank as highly as possible for the most common, popular keywords within their industry. If you run a hotel, for instance, you may consider words like hotel, motel, lodging, accommodations and the like. These are considered fairly broad keywords, and you can find them within every industry.
Owning and operating a startup or small business can be a time-consuming and stressful endeavor. However, based on recent reporting from Google, small businesses are currently enjoying unprecedented levels of support from consumers.
Google’s report, titled Small Business Search Trends in 2019, not only delivers some eye-opening statistics about the popularity of local businesses, but also examines current customer search trends.
Linking is a big part of your SEO strategy. Search engines can both see and acknowledge the links you put on your site, along with links to your site from other sources. While it sees them all, it only acknowledges or recognizes the dofollow links. For those links with the added nofollow tag, it ignores the link.
Marketing to consumers who are increasingly focused on bite-sized, visual content often requires skill, patience and
Excuse the pun, but you’re worried about selling yourself short. In your efforts to reach your audience and educate readers, you want to go in depth. You want to put as much information as possible out there. You want to answer all of their questions and work hard to sell them on your goods and services. You wonder if there’s any way to use short content, or if everything needs to be the size of a chapter in your favorite novel.
The season of giving came a bit early this year for small business owners and site development teams. Based on recent news posted to Google’s Blog, the company listened carefully to user feedback and devised an update to radically improve access to site performance data.
Under the current system, results stemming from adjustments to site content, marketing campaigns and advertising strategies would not be available for several days, at best.
It’s almost like Google does not care about leaks when it comes to their phones. There were a ton of them for the Google Pixel 3. There may be even more for the upcoming Pixel 4. Is this all part of the marketing plan? People have asked why the company does not keep a tighter grip on secrecy, but maybe the tech giant wants the information to get out early.
Today’s online consumers, especially those in the younger, tech-savvy generation, flock to visually appealing web page
Apple once again captured the headlines and the attention of users eager to take advantage of the next generation of iPhone technology. Their recently announced iPhone 11 not only delivers a variety of upgrades over its predecessor, but also arrives at an attractive price point sure to turn heads.
Measuring an eCommerce website’s performance in today’s information-rich online marketplace is a daunting task
When you are creating marketing copy with a call to action, the ultimate, final goal is not always some general concept like brand awareness or spreading the word about a new idea. Sometimes, you’re trying to directly sell to the reader. You’re trying to get a conversion. That’s not to say that copy for brand awareness won’t work; it can, and it does.
Google, in an ongoing effort to get inside the minds of modern consumers, recently conducted an in-depth study that unearthed some surprising data about shopper behavior. In this study, Google experts surveyed nearly 25,000 shoppers across 10 separate countries to determine the type of data they used when making purchase-related decisions.
When did you sign up for Facebook? If it was any time in the last 15 years — the site launched in 2004, though it was very restrictive at the time — then you probably saw the simple logo on the signup page. The page read “Sign Up” in large letters, and then had a small slogan below that read: “It’s free and always will be.” Always. It’s something that many users have taken in stride.
Modern search engines utilize complex algorithms to help determine where a site ranks on search engine results pages. These sophisticated algorithms consider hundreds of unique factors when determining where your pages fall in the final rack and stack. While it may not be realistic to tackle each of these factors, devoting time and attention to three key elements can help yield significant results.
There are readers who want to delve into every article they read, approaching each new page the same way they’d approach a good book. They read thoroughly and completely, giving the page their full attention. However, it is far more common in today’s fast-paced, mobile-oriented world for readers to simply skim (or scan) the content. In some cases, all they do is scan for a few moments and then move on.
In today’s increasingly crowded online marketplace, many startups struggle to find effective tactics to grow a robust
Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. For a website that started in a dorm room and targeted college students, its growth over the last decade and a half has been tremendous. Today, that means that an incredible amount of content gets uploaded every day. People add new photos, write new status updates, run ad campaigns, create new groups and much more.
Discovering and implementing tactics to secure a competitive edge in today’s ever-shifting online marketplace presents
When you create content, one key element is writing information that those in your target audience are actively searching for. They may never have heard of your company, your products or your services, but they already have information they’re seeking and questions they want to ask. That’s where they’re going to start their search efforts.
As today’s teens, college students and young adults abandon traditional social media sites such as Facebook, newer, more popular platforms stand ready to benefit. Snapchat, in particular, is an agile, wildly popular social media platform that younger users appear to turn to in record numbers.
Undoubtedly, one of the most important things about online marketing is simply knowing your audience. Where you reach out to them and how you do it depends entirely on whom you are trying to reach. A terrific ad campaign can fall flat if it is improperly targeted. This importance became very clear in a new interview run by CNBC, in which teens talked about how they use — and don’t use — social media.
Many modern SMBs endlessly pursue content focused on the latest trends, top-ranking news stories and other trending topics in an attempt to attract users and boost site traffic. Unfortunately, this endless cycle of chasing what is “new” not only requires a significant investment in time and energy, it yields content which remains relevant and attractive to users for only a short time.
Showcasing positive user reviews of products and services is a critical element of success in today’s online marketplace. Unfortunately, many SMBs attempted to game the system by purchasing or crafting fake positive user reviews from overseas “review farms” to mislead consumers.
To combat this practice, Google’s introduced an update to target and remove this misleading information.
Google and Amazon continue to fight for prime position on the net, trying to draw as many advertising dollars as they can. In recent reports, many companies have started spending less on Google ads and more on Amazon ads, finding that consumers often go straight to the source. Rather than searching for a product on Google, they know they want to buy it online and just go straight to Amazon, the sales giant where they are most likely to make that purchase anyway.
In the American business world, the government has a fair amount of control in situations that involve monopolies, as they want to keep the free market open to competition. A monopoly would theoretically remove all choice from the consumer, thus allowing companies to raise prices or otherwise take advantage of their customers.
AdSense is the major player in online advertising, as the Google-powered platform makes it simple to get ads in front of numerous eyes. Over the years, it has shifted to become even more focused on mobile devices. Reports from Google indicate that more than 1 out of every 3 people who use AdSense to create ads do it with their mobile devices.
Social media is often branded as a way to connect with friends and family members. While it does that, the reality is that it’s also one of the main ways that people interact with companies and brands. The level of contact is unprecedented. In the past, people thought of corporations as these distant entities that they could never really connect with at all.
Google and Amazon are two of the biggest tech companies, always striving to make that next innovation and corner the market. While they do compete regularly, it’s a bit of a complex relationship since the two have opportunities to overlap. Google can help to run ads for Amazon products and direct traffic, for instance, while Amazon can sell Google-branded products and create sales.
Google’s Diversity update, launched last month, intentionally limits the total number of listings in search engine results pages (SERPs) to two per domain. This means that only two pages from the same site may appear in a SERP when a user searches for a particular keyword string.
Based on a recent study conducted by Searchmetrics, it appears that the change is working as Google intended.
Are YouTube videos a major part of your online marketing campaign? Video content is powerful, especially considering
Small businesses are more reliant on marketing than ever before in history. Without marketing, they would have little means of setting themselves apart from competitors. Marketing is an endeavor that is largely driven by creativity – pouring more money into it is not guaranteed to bring better results.
Google’s Dragonfly project has been incredibly controversial since the public first learned that it existed. The project
Networking giant LinkedIn recently launched a full-scale rebranding campaign to incorporate more warmth, humanity
At some point, it feels like companies and platforms in different technology spaces are bound to overlap. They begin to compete with each other. Regardless of their goals when they launched, they start to work toward the same spaces and the same ways to attract new users, new eyes and new traffic.
In a recent fiery announcement, Mozilla Firefox went on the offensive to point fingers at several search engine giants claiming that they intentionally bury enhanced privacy settings. Firefox contends that most users lack the knowledge to understand or reach advanced security features in browsers.
With social media marketing and online marketing in general, you’re trying to create communication between the company
In an uncharacteristic move for the search engine giant, Google recently took to social media to give users a heads up on the launch of a major search algorithm update. The update, termed the June 2019 Core Update, is the second such major system overhaul of the year and appears poised to shake up the SEO landscape.
In 2018, Google rolled out the Duplex AI system. The goal was to give customers a new, easier way to make reservations and connect with companies online, even if those companies did not have the systems in place themselves. Duplex was designed as a “human-sounding AI” that had the power to call businesses for these customers.
It is no secret that today’s netizens rely heavily, some almost exclusively, on mobile access to site content. Ensuring an optimized experience for these users not only helps deliver smoother access but often translates to more meaningful interactions and expanded growth opportunities for SMBs.
When you say that you’re interested in social media marketing, what you really mean is Facebook marketing. At least, that’s true in most cases. Facebook is a juggernaut, the clear social media leader, and it’s been that way for a decade.
Why is this? Why did social media sites in the past rise and fall, but Facebook seems to be here to stay?
Passion, more than any other quality, fuels today’s small businesses. While it is an essential quality, it is only one small fraction of the equation that yields success in the modern marketplace. To reach today’s consumers, startups must deliver exceptional products and services, and offer positive user experiences backed by a viable marketing plan.
Search algorithms over the years have focused on keywords. Often, the way people search most effectively does not at all mimic how they would talk if they were speaking to another person. The terms feel clumsy and unnatural. They work for a computer, which is going through the keywords and matching content, but you end up typing — or, with the recent focus on voice searches, saying — things that don’t reflect real speech patterns.
Facebook has to walk a fine line when it comes to brand interaction and more “traditional” social media, which aims at connecting people. Clearly, users start on the platform because they want to connect with other users and they value that experience. To some degree, they’re also fine with connecting with brands and advertising content, especially when it focuses on their interests.
The value of high-caliber original content just keeps going up. In one of the most recent moves, Facebook has decided to update the algorithm that drives videos on the site. With these changes, they’re going to do more to promote original content, at the expense of the repeated content that keeps making the rounds with different accounts.
Facebook’s annual meeting of the minds, F8, recently wrapped up after two days of intense tech-centric discussions which brought developers, entrepreneurs and innovators together in one forum. In the F8 keynote speech, Mark Zuckerberg highlighted exciting enhancements ahead to boost the eCommerce functions of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp platform.
When you use Google services and devices, the company saves a lot of data about the way you use them, including your location data and your web searches. You can go in and delete some of this manually, and there are ways to turn the features off so that they will not automatically save. However, many people don’t do this, don’t know how to do it, or plan to do it and then forget to actually take the time to log in and make the changes.
In a recent blog post, Microsoft discussed the need for a new approach to address today’s evolving online advertising space. Much like Google’s focus on enhancing user experiences through innovation, Microsoft sees the value in helping startups craft genuine connections to consumers that go beyond antiquated marketing messages.
When you consider the business side of social media, a lot of emphasis still falls on the traditional model of trying to get advertisements in front of viewers. How many users will see your ads? What are the click-through rates? What are the conversion rates? These are important questions to ask, and online advertising is a powerful tool.
Earning a positive, four- or five-star, review from customers is not easy in today’s highly competitive business environment. However, startups that crack the code on earning superior customer satisfaction ratings may soon be in a unique position to highlight these positive user reviews in new ways to help attract clients.
Like it or not, you can do a lot of things online simply by speaking to your phone, your computer or another voice-controlled device. It’s changing the way people carry out internet searches, do online shopping, listen to music and much more. And, while the premier program is arguably Amazon’s Alexa, it seems like everyone in the tech industry wants to have their own voice assistant.
In today’s competitive marketplace, building trust with new clients is essential to creating future growth opportunities.
Have you ever felt like it was too hard to really run Google searches based on the date? A lot of your automatic results come up with the most recent articles. That’s fine if you’re looking for breaking news or something else of that nature, but what if you’re doing research and you need something older?
In 2018, in an ongoing effort to enhance user experiences and decrease user abandonment rates, Google made page loading speed a ranking factor. They recognized that today’s online consumers do not have the luxury of spending valuable time waiting for large image files, multiple plug-ins or site redirects to load.
Facebook got out of the news game over a year ago. They did not abandon it altogether, but they cut out the trending topics on the sidebar and limited the amount of news they put in front of users. Now, founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be thinking about changing course and adding news into the equation again.
Each day, businesses generate and host massive volumes of new content designed to attract the interest of new clients. As a startup, carving your space in this saturated digital marketplace can appear intimidating on the surface. How can you best reach your intended audience?
Although many online marketers devote time to the latest tricks to boost SEO, there is no substitute for a time-honored, common senses content development strategy.
You listen to a great podcast at work, but it’s on someone else’s phone. It really sticks with you, and you want to tell other people about it later. The only problem is that you have no idea how to find it. You don’t know the name of the host, the show or the episode. You do not know when it was recorded or when it aired.
Traditional question-and-answer-based searching is rapidly giving way to more advanced models incorporating
You use Facebook to talk to customers and clients. It’s an easy way to answer questions, provide support, gather feedback and generally promote your brand. Not only do you comment on posts and engage them in public, but you allow them to send you chat messages when they have more in-depth issues or simply need to check on the status of a project.
In late 2018, Google announced the pending termination of Google+ services after an internal audit unearthed a myriad of data privacy concerns, security risks and more. Based on this study, Google discovered that the service was no longer meeting users’ needs and set an April 2019 retirement date.
An online marketing plan must take a comprehensive approach. The more ways you connect with potential customers, the more inclusive your marketing is and the more productive those efforts can be. In the past, we’ve discussed some of the major focus areas, such as mobile-oriented SEO and the value of voice search.
Today’s consumers eagerly seek concise, engaging content when searching for products and services, interacting via social
Do you ever feel like the big downfall of social media is that it’s all too open and exposed? The internet used to be far more of an anonymous experience, but now it seems like everyone is can see everything and nothing is really all that private. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has some big plans for what he considers the future of social media as a whole, and they involve focusing on privacy and encrypted messages.
Protecting the integrity of the information on social media sites continues to be a hot-button issue. Recently, Facebook broke new ground in this arena by filing a lawsuit accusing four Chinese companies of generating and selling fraudulent likes, followers and more.
Although the lawsuit addresses Facebook specifically, the accused overseas businesses allegedly violated terms of use for other popular services including Amazon, Apple, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter.
In 2018, Google announced that they would be taking their private .dev domain and opening it up to the public. They made that announcement at the Chrome Dev Summit, and it really didn’t generate much buzz with all of the other news coming out at the same time. They had also just announced VisBug and Web.dev.
An overwhelming majority of today’s customers interact with your small business via mobile devices. Therefore, optimizing
Your search engine optimization tactics likely focus almost extensively on Google. It’s a natural move for most businesses, as Google has the biggest market share. After all, some reports credit Google with as much as 90 percent of organic traffic. Even if you debate that exact statistic — it can differ depending on the study and the year — it is still clear that Google is the industry leader.
According to the New York Times, last month, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg allegedly set in motion plans to fully integrate messaging functions of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Although the three apps are projected to remain fully independent, the planned technical integration will allow the 2.6 billion combined users to connect and communicate across all three platforms seamlessly.
LinkedIn’s recently published comprehensive guide to social media management is a must-read resource for startups
The internet is such a massive part of our day-to-day life in 2019 that it’s easy to forget just how new it really is. You don’t even have to go back a few decades to find a world in which the internet itself was considered something of an information and technology revolution. People knew it had potential, but your average American had no idea how it worked, had very little experience and honestly did not understand how it could change their lives.
Google’s recent release of a series of best practices targeted toward optimizing the Google Ads experience is an essential step for any SMB hoping to stay ahead of the competition. Google delivers this powerful optimization data via an easily interpreted score which allows startups to view, sort and apply recommendations to boost performance.
Timely, accurate and candid customer feedback is an invaluable resource for small businesses looking to continually improve
As part of an ongoing effort to improve user experiences, YouTube recently announced plans to enhance its existing video recommendation process. Under current criteria, users scanning through lists of recommended videos often encounter intentionally misleading content. These videos, despite large numbers of views on YouTube, often contain blatantly false claims, inflammatory content or promote products and services in misleading ways.
As you craft your SMB’s marketing game plan, you are likely planning to target product launches, discounts and more around major holiday events like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, etc. But, have you considered your strategy for National Siblings Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day and National Beer Day?
Google quickly realized that the Assistant artificial intelligence program would be a hit when they paired it with smartphones and Google Home devices, and they’ve been working ever since to expand and offer it to even more people. To that end, news recently broke that they’re going to be adding two more core languages: Polish and Arabic.
Investing your business’s precious advertising dollars into market research, link-building strategies, email solicitation campaigns
Search engines never stop evolving. The minute you think you have beaten the system, the system changes. That’s why it’s so important to understand even the smallest changes and what they may mean for your tactics moving forward. You simply cannot afford to get complacent. It never pays off, least of all in the world of SEO.
Although just over a week into 2019, Google is already forging headlong into exciting new online marketing territory. In a recent announcement, Google detailed a wide range of enhanced services added to the popular Manufacturer Center.
Voice search isn’t a fad. It isn’t a trend. It isn’t some new attempt at technological advancement that is going to catch on for a short time and then be forgotten about as users return to more tried-and-true methods. It’s here to stay, and it’s only on the rise.
The lure of social media is simple: connection. In the past, branding efforts focused around building up a brand and culture that people would recognize, but it wasn’t very personal. You did it all at a distance.
Google recently announced the upcoming debut of a new call-to-action extension for TrueView in-stream video ads. The debut of this software extension, slated for January 2019, will coincide with the retirement of the current YouTube call-to-action video overlay.
Every year, Google compiles a key list of search trends and tendencies, which can shed important light on user tactics and changes in search traffic throughout the year.
Although it is hard to believe, we are now sitting firmly in the heart of the 2018 holiday shopping season. Although the finish line is well within sight, your startup or small to medium-size business still has time to capitalize on seasonal marketing tactics to drive your numbers even higher this year.
In the early days of the internet, search engines were still brand new and there was uncertainty about which ones would catch on and how users would interact with the various brands. You had options like AltaVista (1995), Ask Jeeves (1996) and HotBot (1996).
Customers, especially those in the more tech-savvy generations, overwhelmingly desire to purchase goods, research services
Overall traffic means nothing with a low conversion rate. That’s the one key number your analytics need to revolve around. It may mean slightly different things depending on your business model.
As the digital marketplace becomes an increasingly competitive space, it is difficult for many startups and SMBs to determine the best strategies to attract new customers and boost growth opportunities.
Google’s recent announcement discussing the next round of updates for the My Business app presents some exciting news for local startups and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
When it comes to social media, millennials are dialed in. They connect, they communicate, they engage. Social media defines their lives. It’s something many of them feel they have known all their lives, as intrinsic as television or electricity. They use it to replace a host of services and activities: text messages, garage sales, photo albums and more.
Although it is hard to believe, the holidays, and the associated massive uptick in online shopping, are just around the corner. Is your startup, e-commerce site or SMB well poised to capitalize on this period of surging consumer interest and spending?
When deciding what content to put on your site, you always want to have fresh, unique content that does not appear anywhere else on the internet. Duplicate content can result in your site getting penalized by Google, which can lead to indexing and ranking issues.
Google recently announced an expansion of ongoing campaigns to craft a safer, more reliable and, ultimately, more satisfying online user experience. The latest iteration of this campaign focuses on protecting users’ abilities to interact with content without encountering misleading or malicious content.
Is return on investment (ROI) all you really think about when you set up your marketing campaigns? You want traffic, you want conversions and you want sales. A good social media campaign can and will get you all of those things, but remember that you have to go farther.
Google’s recent debut of the intuitive search feed, Discover, for U.S.-based mobile users comes fresh off of the heels of the company’s 20th-anniversary announcement detailing a wide range of future innovations
You know that most people don’t have a lot of time when they search for something on the internet. In our fast-paced modern culture, people expect to put a word or two into Google and get relevant results in a split second. And it usually works. This means the competition for those keywords can be incredibly high.
In today’s highly competitive digital marketing landscape, it pays to maximize the usage of every tool at your disposal to stand out from the competition and drive interest in your business’s products and services
So far, Google has not officially launched a censored search engine for use in China. It may never do so. However, earlier reports that the tech giant was at least testing a search engine seem to be correct.
In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace, attracting new leads and building long-term client relationships
Smartphones have officially taken control of the internet. People use them to search more often than they use desktop or laptop computers. Statistically speaking, it is more likely that a person browsing your site will use a phone to do it than any other device.
With a seemingly never-ending stream of high-profile data breaches, network penetrations and other malicious online
Search engine optimization is one of the keys to your online marketing strategy. It’s critical in today’s competitive market, as necessary now as it used to be for businesses to have prime real estate.
With leading search engine providers heavily focused on enhancing overall user experiences, hosting content
To get your site to rank as highly as you can on Google, the most widely used search engine by a huge margin, you must understand exactly what the algorithm looks for and what factors have the biggest impact.
Although it is hard to believe, Google is now celebrating 20 consecutive years of helping organize and make information accessible for users in an ever-expanding global network.
Effective search engine optimization must cater to Google’s algorithm to achieve a high rank, but that should not mean ignoring the user experience. Over the years, Google has worked hard to analyze search trends and find out what people are truly searching for in order to give them the best results.
Efforts to combat the spread of fake news, misinformation or otherwise false and misleading content online is rapidly becoming a top priority for many social media platforms. Facebook recently announced further efforts to reign in the proliferation of false information by fact-checking images and video, rather than just text.
Preparing to capture consumer interest during the upcoming holiday spending spree requires meticulous planning, focus
From scanning news headlines to checking weather and traffic updates, and shopping online, search engines offer us rapid access to simple data we rely on to make it through each day.
Each day, your clients and potential new leads interact extensively via a wide range of diverse social media sites. Does your small business have a defined strategy to capture and maintain interest across social networking platforms?
Gaining insight into current, seasonal or regional search engine keyword trends is a crucial avenue to attract new clients to your small to medium-sized business.
You know that blogging is a fundamental part of your SEO strategy. It allows you to connect with readers, to keep fresh content on the site and to pull people in with timely information.
Veteran-owned, led or founded businesses received a significant helping hand from Google’s recent announcement discussing
Some of the data that Google uses to improve their search algorithm comes from the feedback of thousands of search quality raters. These raters conduct actual searches and rate the top quality pages according to a publicly available set of guidelines.
One of the biggest challenges businesses face when it comes to content marketing is finding a way to stand out. Considering the sheer amount of content being published every single day, it can be incredibly difficult and potentially very frustrating to create content that sets your company apart, is memorable to readers and ultimately ends up helping you achieve your business goals.
Announced earlier this year, Google’s “Speed Update” is officially beginning its rollout. This means that loading times on mobile will now affect search rankings, especially for the slowest sites.
There are many methods for improving your content over time: creating and adjusting a long-term content plan, studying your analytics and using customer feedback to inform your content, formulating new strategies based on what’s worked for you in the past – just to name a few.
Your content strategy should include specific goals for everything you publish. Consistently creating new, valuable
The benefits of using video in your digital marketing can’t be overstated. As a strategy, video has been a top performer for years, providing companies with unmatched social reach, increased conversions and excellent ROI overall.
Landing pages are an integral part of just about any digital marketing campaign. Whether they’re designed for PPC, email marketing, social media or any other channel you’re trying to leverage,
Content marketing can often seem like an unapproachable strategy that only big businesses can benefit from. With so many advertising and marketing options currently available, why would a local business spend their limited resources on planning, creating and promoting content – especially when the ROI can be difficult to prove?
Whether you’re an experienced content marketer or an employee of a small business asked to begin writing posts for the company blog, there’s one step in the process that creators at any level cannot afford to skip: editing.
Mobile usability has been a Google ranking factor for years, but the algorithm was primarily focused on desktop versions of sites when indexing.
Earlier this month, content marketing firm Buzzsumo released their extensive Content Trends 2018 report, which analyzed
Email marketing, while sometimes considered outdated, has actually been exploding in popularity over the past few years. It remains one of the most effective ways for brands to communicate with customers and promote their content, while also driving traffic, leads and sales.
When Facebook announced in January that it would be overhauling their News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts from family and friends, they stated that “Pages may see their reach…and referral traffic decrease.”
With 89 percent of B2B marketers using content, it’s no wonder that companies are increasingly moving content creation in-house. It makes sense, as in-house content creation can potentially streamline their overall marketing operations.
Content readability should always be in the back of your mind whenever you’re creating a blog post, website copy, product description, email newsletter or any other type of content that’s meant to attract or appeal to a wide audience.
There are many factors that are well-known to contribute to decent Google rankings: quality content, optimized meta
Each year, Content Marketing Institute releases their comprehensive report of Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends
Meta descriptions are one of the most important onpage SEO elements, with webmasters often spending large amounts of time thinking about, researching, and testing different variations to find the most effective description for each page of their site.
