Crazy Effective Growth Hacks for Your Next Content Marketing Campaign

Posted on April 12, 2018April 13, 2018 by Hasel Smith

Content is the king. In the era of advanced technology where the entire world is connected via Internet, digital marketing is playing a vital role. Regardless of the industries, offered services and products, no marketing strategy is complete without content marketing campaign.
Let us ask you, doesn’t your marketing strategy gives you a fruitful outcome. If your answer is yes, thumbs up! If not, let us help you mapping the effective growth hacks for your next marketing campaign, so that you do not lag behind the race. It’s high time when you should stop practicing your old tactics and get updated with the trending and effective tactics for content marketing campaign.

Must Follow Hacks for Content Marketing Campaign

1. Upgrade Your User Engagement Activities

Gaming has always been an interactive platform for users. Obviously, we are not suggesting you to establish a new game development company, but you can integrate a few WordPress plugins to make your blog or article engaging.
Yes! Stop scratching your head. WordPress allows gamifying the content by introducing unique user profiles, patches, and achievements. This won’t only bring you immense new users, but
also push existing users to come back again and again.

2. Do Not Hesitate Shouting Loud on Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. This is not the end of the list. There are many more social media channels which are assisting enterprises and small-scale industries to celebrate their growth utmost. Features including Like, Share and Comment are playing a vital role by spreading the word, promoting the new launches and inviting the users to become the part of the customer base. It also helps to get the feedback and opportunity to serve improved services. What else a platform can serve to enlarge the customer base.

3. Maintain the Frequency of Engaging

Though social media platforms are doing great by offering a huge channel to get connected with the world and spreading the message. But it is crucially important to realize and map the frequency of engaging your users. You might not have realized, but the bitter truth is, cluttering the posts and newsfeed can let your users unfollow you. So, do not make a mistake by doing too much of hard work, instead, do a smart work. Yes! How can we forget telling you, not to share the irrelevant content? This will not only let
your customer discontinue following your posts but also it will confuse your customers with your offered services.

4. Play Smart with Your Headlines

What is the first thing, when someone visits your blog? The size of the content or the content type? It is none other than headlines that catch the attention of the reader. Putting little efforts on your headlines can bring a plethora of readers, no matter whatever is the content length and the composition of the content. An attractive and good headline will also help you getting the immense number of subscribers to your blog and ultimately the number of clicks on
your blog.

5. Curate and Curate

A perfect headline, a quality content and amazing visualization are not all you require to boost your content marketing campaign. Curation is the key to drive your content to not hundreds and thousands, but also millions of readers. And, once your content gets popular, you will get returning readers to your blog. If you are worried about where to curate? There is the number of websites that offer you curating the content with easy features.

Summing Up
No matter, you are a newbie or veteran blogger, the above listed five hacks to boost your content marketing campaign will take you to the new heights. So, just pin them and pull up your socks to reach your audience at a new edge.

Social Media Marketing in Today’s World of Business

Posted on April 4, 2018April 13, 2018 by jaymueller8

It’s 2018 and while social media has been in our lives since the mid-1990’s when websites like SixDegrees, and even AOL where members could send instant messages to family and friends across the miles, today’s social media plays a far bigger role than many people in the early days would have even thought possible.

We’ve watched as social media has seemingly taken over how we communicate with others daily. It’s great to be able to click a button on your phone and see what friends and family thousands of miles away are doing at any given time of the day. Even better, social media has grown to have such a hefty presence in our lives that it is now considered one of the best ways for businesses to be able to reach out to their clients.

In today’s world of business, simply having a Facebook page is not going to fly. As a business owner, you cannot merely exist on social media and not be fully invested in your social media marketing. According to Small Biz Trends, more than one out of every three people say they use social media to get more information about a brand or a product offered by a company.

For social networks, the average age range of internet users searching for businesses spans from the age of 16 to 45. As a business owner, failing to maintain a strong online presence can mean you’re going to lose out on customers who are actively searching for what you offer. To see success, you must take the right steps to have a quality social media strategy to make sure your business isn’t looked over when people need a product or service that you have. Social media has become a critical factor in having a successful business today.

So, beyond the obvious, why is social media so important in the business world? Here are ten of the top reasons you need to start marketing with social media now to help guide your business towards the overall success you want to see it achieve.

Customers you never even considered will be able to find you. Let’s say, hypothetically that you own a business that makes hammers. You might push most of your marketing dollars into ads that are geared towards carpenters, handyman contractors or builders. It’s easy to forget that crafty women who make doll furniture with their kids or who love to try DIY projects at home will also need a hammer. So, when you start a good social media marketing campaign, you will be just a few good hashtags away from bringing new customers on board to see your products and buy those items from you. By joining groups on Facebook or tagging various keywords in your Twitter posts, you are increasing your potential to increase your customer base.

When you stay on top of things socially, customers are more apt to buy from you. For instance, let’s say two businesses are in one local area and both businesses sale the same merchandise. Business “A” has no social media presence but they advertise on the radio or in a print newspaper. Their prices are good, and they have typical business hours. Business “B” has social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. They post merchandise sales and maintain a very visible presence online with new posts, replies to customers and great pictures. They even reach out on holidays to wish their customers a nice day. Which company do you think people will trust more? People trust companies who seem to be transparent and who show they care about their customers. Simply having a Facebook page won’t cut it today. You must be proactive and interact with people.

Social media marketing lets you post directly to your targeted audience. Placing links on other pages, in groups or even on other websites is a great way to target the audience you need to see your posts the most. Yes, you absolutely need to post daily or at least every other day on your own business page, but it’s important to mingle online in group settings or branch out to websites like Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon and others where even more people can click your links and see who you are and what you offer.

You can’t beat the ROI on a FREE ad! Yes, hiring a social media marketing agency will cost you monthly in fees to the agency, but the ads that you place on Facebook and other platforms don’t have to cost a dime to place. Your marketing team can come up with the best wording for your ads as well as great photos to make the ads pop to people. Also, even without a team working on your ads, you can always post the things that you want customers to see and promote those by boosting your ads for very little money per day, week or even monthly. When you post an ad however, you need to make sure it is well-written and hiring a good PR team to handle this is the best way to go.

Social media is fun! Whether you’re hopping on the computer during your lunch break or you spend hours every day communicating with people, social media is a great way to stay on top of the world today. It allows you to interact with people to see what demands they have for the products they really want. By doing this, you can easily see what merchandise you can sell and which products you may want to drop.

You do not have to branch out to every social media platform out there. If your target audience primarily uses Facebook or Twitter but they don’t use others, then stick with what works best for you. Be sure to check all avenues out, but over time, drop the ones that you see the least results from.

You can create a loyal customer base when you maintain a strong social media presence and stick with quality social media marketing techniques. You need to respond to questions from people and if someone fusses, respond by being nice to them. Others will see how you talk to your customers and when they see a company go above and beyond what is expected, and the business owner or staff are easy to contact, people tend to stick with them.

Social media marketing allows you to not only reach your customers, but it also lets you see what your competitors are doing. Check the pages of companies who are in the same line of business that you are in and see if they’re running specials, how they interact with people and what people are saying about them. If things are going well for other businesses, take time to see what it is about them that people like, and then take those things and use them to your advantage by doing even better!

Using social media can help boost your business website SEO and move you up in the search rankings. When you post ads linking to pages on your website, it drives traffic to your pages and will help your site climb up the search pages faster. This means when people do a Google search for companies like yours in your local area, your business will be ranked higher and people will contact you before they contact others.

Social media can increase your response time when customers have a question or concern. For instance, prior to social media, customers could only reach a business during normal operating hours. Thanks to social media, customers can reach out in the evenings or late at night and if you stay on top of things, you can respond quickly to help. People like feeling that a company cares enough to answer their questions even when it is after normal operating hours.

If you work your social media marketing the right way, you can stay active and keep people engaged on various networks and by doing this, you are already a step ahead of your competition. To put things into perspective, social media is here to stay and if you haven’t already, you need to start right now with gaining your following on social media and using it to your advantage to increase your sales and boost your business.

Web Design 101: Three Ways a Responsive and Interactive Website Would Help Your Business

Posted on March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 by John Lupez

“Having an attractive and well-designed website for your business creates opportunity to influence people’s mindset and help you generate more sales” –Author Unknown

In today’s modern age, having an interactive and responsive web design is the pinnacle of contemporary digital marketing.

After all, with a significant fraction of your business prospects lurking on social media websites and on the internet, it would be an immense oversight not to take your business online. Indeed, giving your business an online presence is an avenue for generating more customers and expanding your business. However, it is not enough that you create a website; your website would also need to be responsive as well as interactive. This is where web design comes in as when it comes to a cohesive and seamless experience, a website’s design is paramount. In fact, it has been proven that nothing converts leads to purchases better than interactive web design. In this regard, it would be prudent to partner up with digital marketing services in the Philippines to ensure that you only give the best experience online. After all, what your prospective customers would see on your website reflects on you and your business.

Furthermore, it gives them a glimpse of who you are and what your business is about—a first impression if you may. Interactive web design focuses on other web elements that traffic interacts with (links, buttons, shopping carts, etc.). If your coding is all bungled up, your customer might get linked elsewhere or would not be able to check his or her shopping cart out—potentially causing you to lose business. With this in mind, one can say that an interactive web design is just as important as the design itself. After all, apart from being easy on the eyes, it should be easy to use as well.

In any case, here are the ways a responsive and interactive web design would help your business grow:

Your website can reach a wider audience

Today, having a mere online presence does not make the cut. With more and more people accessing the Internet through their smartphones, it is imperative for you to take that step as well or run the risk of losing potential customers. However, know that desktop use is not going away anytime soon. With this in mind, it is essential that you optimize your website for both desktop and mobile use. Both users should be able to access your website seamlessly and make purchases regardless of what their preferred device is.

Communicate with customers easily

Owing to their immense popularity, social media—regardless of their platform—would already have an app or mobile site. Seeing as majority of your prospective customers are lurking within these social media pages, you should exploit that by incorporating the same convenience onto you website. Have a link that redirects them to your Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts to communicate with them better. Alternatively, you can integrate an application on your website that facilitates communication between you and your customers. Remember, users these days would prefer brands that interact with them as they need engagement.

Your website loads quickly

If you wish to stay on the competitive edge of the digital marketing frontier, your webpage has to load quickly. Think of your users as having the attention span of a goldfish which realistically does not last for nine seconds. They are fickle and easily bored and if you do not make those nine seconds count then they are going to leave and take their business elsewhere. With “elsewhere” being your competitors’ websites. With this in mind, ensure that your load time is quick. With that in conjunction to good SEO, you will have a better traction on your audience.

How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues on WordPress Blog for SEO

Posted on March 20, 2018March 22, 2018 by Brandon Graves

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., have a strict policy against the duplicate content of a WordPress site. These policies should be taken into account by SEO professionals in order to avoid any penalties. Though many believe the default WordPress websites are optimized for search engines, SEO-personnel can still apply various techniques to ensure all the check marks. Similarly, duplicate content on a website can be avoided using proven methods. In this post, we have piled up different methods to remove duplicate content from your website and make it worth indexing.

What is Duplicate Content?

The content that appears on the internet in multiple places is called as Duplicate content. The “place” is the location that can be accessed via a URL (unique website address). If content appears at more than one URL, you’ve got duplicate content on your WordPress website.

Why Should Duplicate Content Be Avoided?

Duplicate content raises three important concerns for search engines

a) Confusion in which version to exclude or include.

b) Confusion in directing the link metrics-whether to link to one page or keep it separate.

c) Confusion in ranking for query results.

For WordPress website owners

The main concern for site owners is ranking and loss of traffic because the visibility of content on multiple URLs confuses search engines, and dilutes the visibility of the duplicate content.

The Reasons for Duplicate Content!

No one intentionally creates the duplicate content, but that doesn’t mean that it is not out there. Here are some of the common ways duplicate content is created:

1) URL variations

Analytics code and click-tracking are the most definite causes of duplicate content issues. Also, the order in which these URL parameters appear can cause duplicate content.

2) WWW vs non-WWW or HTTP vs HTTPs pages

In case, your website has a separate version with and without the www prefix or if you are maintaining different versions of your website (one at HTTP and other at HTTPS), and both the versions are live, you are unintentionally creating duplicate content for your website.

3) Copied or Scraped Content

Content not only includes blogs and articles, but also the product descriptions that you might have copied from another website. This is practiced mostly by e-commerce store owners. If multiple websites are using the same descriptions as provided by the manufacturers, identical content goes up in different locations around the web, thus causing the duplicate content issue.

How to Find Duplicate Content?

a) Go to Google, and type in “site:www.yoursitename.com”, and hit enter. You will get results of all the websites that have similar information as on your website.

b) Your website’s tags and category pages should not be indexed and followed by the search engines.

c) Find images of your blog post or website using Google’s ‘search image’ feature. By clicking on the image, you can see the post or website that contains content similar to yours.

Fixing Image Attachment URL in WordPress

You can use Yoast SEO plugin to fix image attachment URL issues on your WordPress website. This Plugins Permalink setting offer an option “Redirect attachment URLs to a parent post URL”, which can be marked to take care of the image issues. In addition, you can link the images you are uploading directly to the image.

How To Fix Duplicate Content Issues?

a) Replytocom

Google rolled out its Panda version, which impacted many websites with ‘replytocom’ links. Even setting URL parameters for replytocom is not enough to remove the URL instantly. The best way to avoid duplicate content issues is by setting URL parameter as ‘noindex’ in Google Webmaster tool, which will remove the URLs immediately.

b) 301 redirect

Setting up a 301 redirect from the duplicate content to original content can diminish the possibility of duplicate content to a great extent. Besides, it also creates a strong signal of a website.

c) Rel=”canonical”

Using rel=canonical attribute is another way of dealing with the duplicate content on your website. This attribute allows the search engine to treat a specific page as though it is a copy of a particular URL. The content metrics, all the links, and ranking power applied by search engines to that page should ultimately be beneficial to a particular URL. Attach the rel=canonical attribute to the HTML head of all the pages that have duplicate content as well as the portion of “URL of the original page” below should be replaced by the original page.

d) Avoid Content theft

Many people are stealing content from a website and adding it on their website, making it look like the original content which is not true. A person is just allowed to use the headlines or excerpts, but not the whole content, and when someone steals the complete article without your permission, the concern for content theft arises.

Following plugins can help you improve the website content shelf life and prevent the content theft:

1) Feed Delay

If you haven’t optimized your content for indexing, a robot scrapes it without any attribution link. The Search Engines will see your post as a duplicate post and keeps you below the ranking of your content thief’s blog. Isn’t this is embarrassing and disheartening?

Feed delay is something that saves you from this by delaying the posts from getting added to RSS for the preferred amount of time. You can adjust the timing which will help your content to get indexed.

2) Tynt Insight

By using this plugin, you can get to know when your content or images are getting copied. You can set this plugin up by adding a snippet code on your website. Not only you’ll know the copies content, but it’ll take you to the page of copied content.

3) WordPress SEO by Yoast

This plugin offers you an RSS menu that allows you to include content directly to below and above every post. You can add any content, but if you need to add an attribution link to the RSS feed, a particular link is given. The moment your stolen content republishes, it’ll provide a link to your post and readers will know who the original author is.

4) WP Content Copy Protection

By disabling the right click on a web page, you can prevent the content from getting copied, which is also offered by WP Content Copy Protection plugin. This plugin disables drag and drop option for images, right click and various keyboard commands avoid content theft as much as possible.

What To Do When Someone Copied Your Article!

If you find that someone else has copied your content to rank better in search engine queries, you can take action against the copier. As an example, any piece of content that is copied by someone else and has outranked your post, you can report to Google DMCA, powerful webmaster to lodge content’s theft complaints. Google has a strict policy against anyone copying the content. If a blogspot site is copying the content, it will be removed immediately, and if it is a self-hosted blog or static site, Google stops indexing the content.

Conclusion

Content Duplication issues can impact your search engine ranking negatively, which is why it is suggested that you use a good WordPress theme and the plugins to avoid duplicate content issues on your website. Also, keep the above points in mind when creating content and URLs for your website. The ultimate motive is to make your website unique and valuable to search engines. Feel free to comment with your ideas or ways to address this one of the biggest concerns of SEO.

Author bio:

Brandon Graves is an experienced WordPress designer working with HireWPGeeks (provide the services for converting your website to WordPress) in the USA. He likes to write about the latest updates, plugin reviews, content marketing, WordPress websites SEO etc., Follow him on Facebook to get more updates.

iPhone app development trends that are going to rule 2018

Posted on March 19, 2018March 22, 2018 by Noel

The year 2017 was very good for Apple as the company released multiple models of the iPhone series in that year. According to a report published by the company, around 46 million iPhones are shipped worldwide in the year 2017 which helped Apple to earn a massive profit of several billion dollars and by this Apple has become second largest smartphone vendor in the world.

One of the biggest reason behind the massive success of iPhones is the regular development of the iOS applications. The company adds up new trends in the app development field every year which makes the iPhone stand above the crowd and the technology used in the phones up to date. Here are some iPhone app development trends which are going to rule the market this year.

Cross-platform native app development

Cross-platform smartphone development tools have gained hype in past few years and this year it is expected that the cross-platform native app development platform such as Xamarin and react native are going to rule the app developers because they are better in terms of cost, user interface and performance. Therefore a large number of enterprise apps can be seen this year.

Machine learning with Core ML

Many machine learning models such as Core ML allows the developers to create intelligent apps by writing a very few lines of code. These machine learning models are packed with special features like face tracking, face detection, object tracking, barcode detection etc. the latest machine learning frameworks support iOS 11 but the developers can also choose from some third party machine learning frameworks. This means that we can see many intelligent apps on the market this year.

Augmented reality application development can be seen

After the launch of ARKit by Apple for the iOS developers, the development of augmented reality apps for iPhones has reached new heights. ARKit allows the apps to interact with the real world in a number of ways. The toolkit supports iOS 11 and above. Apple has also provided an AR section in the app stores which make it easy for the users to access the augmented reality apps.

More apps for watches

A few months back, Apple launched the latest version of WatchOS 4 which is faster and responsive in comparison to other watch devices. This year the company is planning to develop more apps which can work with the WatchOS. Earlier the WatchOS supports few health and workout apps but now many apps related to navigation, public transit, tour guide etc. are being developed which is going to change the WatchOS experience this year.

Internet of Things focused apps will come forward

The trend of the internet of things focused applications has started in the year 2015 when we saw multiple IoT related acquisitions around the world. The trend is still running even with more hype. With the increase in IoT related devices in the market, Apple has decided to step into this market this year. The company wants its users to access the maximum number of IoT devices by the iPhones and that’s why the development is going on. We can see many IoT applications this year on our iPhones.

The level of security in the apps will increase this year

Not only for iPhone apps but for all smartphone applications a huge threat is emerging from past few years. The features like 2-factor user authentication which was considered optimum few years back are useless these days. One of the main discussions done at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last year is the development of App Transport Security (ATS). Apple is developing a new and more secure encryption technology which is stronger and more innovative than before. This is a big step by Apple to secure the core of the applications.

These are some trends which can be seen in the iphone app development this year.

Author Bio

Eminent info Web has been working as a great source of solution provider for all the web & app requirements to various clients. In operations since 2007, they have envisioned innovation & creativity in their work. One can always have a look at their work on eminentinfoweb.com and get persuaded to work with them.

Why SMM is important for a Business?

Posted on February 28, 2018February 28, 2018 by Sejal

Social Media Marketing or SMM is a type of online marketing which uses up the social networking sites as a marketing platform. This type of marketing was introduced to generate promotional materials that the users commonly share with their entire network to assist their organization to enhance their exposure to brand promotion and to exceed their reach to the customers. It is basically the use of websites to promote a specific product or service.

The general marketing model

In order to include social networking sites as a key tool for the marketing strategies, different organizations and companies have developed a general model for marketing depending on the websites they’re using. The following are the steps included in this mentioned model.

Selecting the potential social websites that can be used.
Deciding upon a financial plan in regards to recruiting social media brand managers or consultants
To design or modify the organizational development models which will thereby control the social networking sites in favor of the particular company’s market of demand. This also requires the addition of a social media platform to the already existing marketing sector of the company. A news branch can also be added for the same.
The target supply and demand markets need to be chosen wisely.
Also, the promotional products, brands, and services need to be selected along with the target markets.
A few performance measures need to be implemented for processes of evaluating and analyzing.

In the year 2014, over 80% of business professionals had recognized social media to be a predominant sector of their business. An overall 100% increase in sales has been noticed through SMM.

Strategies for engagement

There are basically two types of strategies used for engaging the customers and leads: Passive Approach and Active Approach. Alongside being a strong marketing tool, social media sites can also be a justified way to hear out perspectives from different customers. Blogs and forums are the platforms provided to the public for sharing reviews and referrals of different products and services. The feedbacks can thus be analyzed for further continuation of marketing processes. SMM is thus a cheap yet the most effective form of promotion. It is a perfect instance for choosing smart work over hard work. Unlike traditional market research methods such as surveys which are time-consuming and costly, and which take weeks or even months to analyze, marketers can use social media to obtain real time information about the behaviors of customers. This is the only feasible form of marketing in this fast-paces world. Talking about Active Approach, SMM can also be used for specific audiences in form of customer engagement tools. TV and newspapers also generate advertisers who have a specific targeted audience. However, social media websites can target alcove markets even more precisely. It would be hard for a TV station or paper-based newspaper to provide ads that are this targeted.

Conclusion

SMM helps any company to get direct reviews or feedbacks from its customers alongside looking more personable. It allows the public to ask questions or even complain about the way they feel about the product. Customer Relationship Management is thus one of the important components of SMM. This became more popular with sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The company and blogger both are responsible for assuring that the incentives provided are transparently disclosed and the posts shall never consist of misleading information.

Author Bio :

Sejal Parmar, is an enthusiastic blogger who has a passion and interest in SEO. She covers topics on SMM, SEO, social media, digital marketing, blogging and much more at Web Ratna!

The Top 3 Ways IoT Technology Will Change The Future Of Marketing

Posted on June 29, 2017June 29, 2017 by Chris G

The Future Of IoT And Big Data

The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered one of the technological innovations which will shape our future. We have seen an explosion of IoT advancements in the past years, everything from managing the temperature in our homes with smart thermostats to tracking your caloric intake and daily steps with fitness trackers. Devices are all around us, and IoT and big data promise to connect these devices to improve your lives.

By connecting our devices, we will be able to leverage shared data across various connections. With all of our devices sharing data point, we will be able to make our data more useful across all aspects of our lives.

Here are the top three ways that IoT will impact the future of marketing for your business!

1. Collect Massive Amounts Of Data To Personalize Marketing

Throughout recent years, companies have started collecting massive amounts of data on their customers to personalize marketing. Whether it is Google collecting data to improve their PPC and remarketing efforts, or various GPS apps collecting your physical location, businesses are going to leverage IoT technology to learn more about their customers.

IoT allows marketers to capture massive amounts of information about their clients. By way of example, for at least 22 years McDonald’s has offered a Monopoly competition where clients peel stickers from products to win prizes. IoT is transforming this old-school game into something more complex.

The company partnered with Piper, a Bluetooth low-energy beacon alternative. It greets clients on their mobiles as they enter the restaurant. Once inside, customers are offered relevant coupons, surveys, and other information. It is great for the consumer since they receive relevant data in real time, but it’s also great for McDonald’s since the company collects lots of information.

2. More Dynamic User Experiences

IoT will allow your customers to get a better understanding of how services and products work. This will be possible because IoT devices will advance to allow customers to engage with your brand quickly and easily. This dynamic experience will further enhance how connected your customers are with you and the ease that it will be to purchase from you in their day-to-day schedule.

Amazon has already started experimenting with this approach with Amazon Dash Buttons. These small buttons allow customers to purchase various products by simply pressing the appropriate Dash Button. As a result, Amazon has seen an increase in returning purchases have continued to secure additional market share.

IoT technology will continue to integrate into the lives of your customers. For example, autonomous cars will connect with other devices, and much like Amazon Dash Buttons, users will be able to engage with various technologies that integrate with your brand messaging. This holistic integration will provide the platform your business will need to stay on the top of mind of your customers.

3. IoT Will Make Everything We Touch Into A Marketing Platform

The future of technology integration into our daily lives will become more ubiquitous in the forthcoming decades. Exactly like we see robust ecosystems in our investigation information on Google and Amazon.com guiding information that is presented, we’ll begin to see marketing applications beyond traditional apparatus and solutions.

The next wave of IoT and big data will be leveraged in self-driving cars. Because Americans spend almost two hours per day journey to and from work, marketers are going to have the ability to engage their customers on a deep level when passengers are freed from the tedious responsibilities of driving. In its place, drivers will be able to be productive and complete jobs during that drive and marketers will be able to integrate their marketing messaging into future autonomous car technology.

Work Smarter together with the Internet of Things

The future of marketing is fast approaching, and if you want your business and commercialization strategy to succeed, then you need to plan how to leverage emerging technology to increase sales.

IoT is one of the most exciting developments that will bring together technology, big data, and the personalized preferences of your customers. This blending of technology and human interaction will allow marketers to use their marketing budget more efficiently, develop more effective marketing campaigns, and increase the bottom line for their business!

–

Author Bio

Chris is a Digital Media Strategy Consultant who helps small business owners grow their business. He is passionate about digital marketing, emerging technologies, and transportation issues.

Are You Ready to Hear the Truth?

Posted on June 23, 2017June 23, 2017 by Natoscia Reynolds

(Guest Post) Because everything you’ve heard about SEO until now have been complete and total lies. Unscrupulous marketers try to convince unsuspecting business owners that search engine optimization is a complete waste of time. But nothing could be further from the truth because SEO is stronger than ever and it’s making a huge comeback in 2017.

We’re not going to attempt to sugarcoat it by any means. It’s been tough ranking websites in the search engines. With all the changes taking place, and searchers switching over to mobile devices more than desktop PCs has made it harder to navigate this difficult landscape. But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible and white hat search engine optimization experts are cleaning up for their clients and delivering top search engine rankings, new customers, and plenty of new business.

Traditionally speaking, business owners are under the impression they have to become some kind of search engine optimization wizard in order to reach the first page of Google. But this is all lies, hype, and nonsense that stupid marketers spout because they’re trying to convince you to pay them to manage your PPC and Facebook ad campaigns. Those methods are never going to be as targeted and effective as first page search engine rankings.

So do yourself a favor and stop believing the lies. Stop listening to marketers trying to dig in your pocket and suck every last penny from your coffers. Learn the truth about SEO and discover 14 reasons why it’s still the king of the castle and the best marketing investment you’ll ever make.

Content and Design Support by OutreachMama

Best WordPress Themes for Conversion Rate Optimization

Posted on June 23, 2017June 23, 2017 by Joanna Morgan

Whatever your reason for creating your website, everything boils down to one thing: conversions.

Ideally, your website should be able to get your visitors to become subscribers, customers or members.

If things are going too slow or worse, not moving at all, it’s highly likely your current theme wasn’t designed for optimizing conversion rates. Thankfully, there are WordPress themes that can help with your conversion rate optimization efforts.

With these WP themes, you won’t have to put in a lot of work. They are, after all, already designed to highlight your content strategically, boost the functionality of your landing pages and bring forth compelling calls to action or CTAs. These are what you need to maximize conversion rates, and the following themes carry them in spades:

Lead Injection

If you want to launch high conversion landing pages fast, the very easy to set up Lead Injection is the WP theme for you. Built with professional marketers, business owners and affiliates in mind, Lead Injection has ready-to-use pre-made layouts, over 800 scalable vector icons that you can customize by color, Slider Revolution, and a popup plugin called leadModal, which is essentially your lead capture form.

Price: $44

OptimizePress

OptimizePress has a well-earned reputation for being an all-in-one solution for websites of all kinds. It offers more than 30 professionally-designed, mobile-responsive page templates. To customize any template, use its user-friendly live editor which allows you to see the changes as you make them. You can add loads of graphics and page elements to any template as well. It also has a membership portal that helps you create restricted-access membership pages.

Price: Starts at $97

Rise

Developed with the help of affiliate marketing expert Zac Johnson, Rise is SEO-ready and loads fast. It boasts of five stylish pre-designed landing pages, an intuitive theme options panel, multiple preset color schemes and backgrounds, a homepage with large opt-in form and focus area, and an automatic page generator, among other things.

Price: $49

Solopreneur

Solopreneur is SEO-optimized, mobile friendly, fully translatable, and has a lightweight code that lowers bounce rates and makes your site load faster. Easy on the eyes with a clutter-free design, Solopreneur also offers two landing pages with a heavy emphasis on calls to action.

Price: $59

Permatex

With a design that’s bolder, sharper and more creative than most themes out there, Permatex will grab the attention of visitors and boost conversions. When you get Permatex, you get 350+ font icons, strategically-placed headlines, two homepage versions, an Ajax contact form that links easily to an autoresponder via Mailchimp, jQuery effects, tons of custom shortcodes, and a host of other impressive features.

Price: $39

Luxe

With the white space-heavy, minimal design of the Luxe WP theme, the products and the content you offer on your website get much of the spotlight. Completely mobile responsive, the fast-loading Luxe comes with five stylish pre-designed landing pages, a homepage with a focus area and a large opt-in form, multiple preset color schemes, an intuitive theme options panel, and a page generator.

Price: $49

Launchkit

With all the tools that Launchkit offers, conversions are bound to happen faster. Aside from its stunning design, Launchkit also provides over 30 custom page builder elements, three header types, smooth parallax effects, seven footer types, a Visual Composer and even a child theme.

Price: $59

Landlr

Like all good WP themes, Landlr is 100% responsive and flexible. An easy-to-set-up one-page theme, Landlr is perfect for beginners, who will find the shortcodes for buttons, columns, drop caps, and tabs very useful. It also boasts of 4 preset color schemes and a Slider Revolution plugin that helps you make great page transition effects and video embeds.

Price: $44

Startuply

Startuply is a conversion-focused theme that offers loads of features. It provides 10+ Home and Coming Soon page templates, seven different homepage layouts geared towards helping you get a ton of signups, a Visual Composer, and a powerful admin panel that allows you to customize everything from the menu appearance to scrolling options. It also has 10 different opt-in form pages, and a form manager that will help you design and control all of them.

Scalia

Trendy and features-packed, Scalia offers a versatility that is a cut above your average WP theme. Whatever your niche, you can be sure that Scalia, which offers five unique looks for your site, can give your website a design that will transform it into a high-converting one. It boasts, among other things, of over 150 ready-to-use templates, eight blog styles, 400+ font icons, built-in mega-menus, Visual Composer, gallery and portfolio layouts. This mobile responsive and Retina-ready theme also gives you the option to create a one-page website.

Price: $59

Landing

Landing can help you create landing pages quickly with its tool-rich drag-and-drop page builder. You will also love the 25+ pre-built templates it provides, including ones for eCommerce, event websites, apps, marketing companies as well as personal pages. SEO-ready, Landing is also speed-optimized and has WooCommerce integration and Mailchimp integration.

Price: $49

Divi

Divi by Elegant Themes is another theme includes a drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to create unique, effective and mobile-responsive landing pages rather easily. Creating pages is even easier with its 20+ different pre-made page layouts. It also has templates for e-commerce sites, image galleries, portfolios, and product pages. You’ll need to buy a membership to Elegant Themes so you can access Divi and—depending on the membership level you get—it other WordPress themes and plugins.

Price: $89/year

Meminz

Meminz is a simple theme geared towards the creation of one-page sites that software downloads and app websites usually require. When you buy Meminz, you get six visually impressive landing page templates that focus on getting readers to sign up. It also includes a visual composer, shortcodes for accordions, tabs and the like.

Price: $44

Benchmark

Benchmark specializes in one-page landing pages. It offers several powerful design features, including 13 color schemes, two different body layouts, nine hero layouts, and three navbar layouts. With this theme, your calls to action get much attention courtesy of the callout text and hero image areas. The fully responsive Benchmark also gives you 700+ Google fonts, WooCommerce support, mega menus and 30 shortcodes, among other things.

Price: $59

Superior

Tested and proven SEO configurations are built into Superior, a fully responsive WP theme that also offers a ton of short codes. With Superior, your website gets an awesome front end look as it uses a mixture of CSS3 and JavaScript in its design. Multiple sub-page templates help keep users actively engaged.

If conversions are a priority for your website, investing in any of the above themes could help you inch closer to your goals.

Device-friendly SEO

Posted on February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 by Raul Harman

After a lot of speculation, but also some advance warnings from Google, mobile-friendliness became a ranking signal. This created quite a stir across the digital landscape, but SEOs weren’t too surprised. The spectacular rise of mobile devices made such a scenario a logic step forward for the webmaster community. The new algorithms update means that mobile ready websites’ rankings are boosted, while desktop-oriented pages are demoted for mobile searchers. It is clear that multi-platform usability is the future of online experience, and that future is now.

Going mobile: The ultimate goal of the algorithm update is to improve the online experience
e of mobile users. A lot has been said about hidden agendas, but we are not paying heed to speculation here. Yes, mobile rankings of many websites dropped after April, 21. But, it is already common knowledge that websites must be created to the search engine’s preferences. Furthermore, Google aims to enable users to find the answer to their search query on the first SERP. Now, mobile-friendly update affects only mobile searches, but brace yourself. As of this year, desktop searches are falling behind mobile ones, for the first time in history.

Bouncing: People searching web from a smartphone or a tablet most often leave the page in frustration if they need to do a whole lot of zooming, pinching and scrolling. This increases your bounce rates and sends a negative signal to the omnipresent deity of the digital realm, the Google. If a visitor abandons the site shortly after arriving, then it suggests that your structure or content is not adequate or relevant. Many eCommerce websites experienced a sudden decrease in internet traffic, which knocked down the revenues as well.

Real-time individualism: Another thing to note is that the mobile update is a global overhaul that applies to individual pages, not whole websites. This is good news for those who have only some segments of the site that is not optimized for mobile devices. An algorithm also works in real-time, which means that benefits from making your website mobile-friendly can be felt right away. Google bots crawl your pages in order to determine how well-optimized they are, and then the algorithm kicks in.

Tests and trials: This, of course, works both ways, but you can use mobile-friendly tests to see how each page stands. These tools even provide recommendations on how to optimize it for mobile users. Depending on the foundations, you might have to do some simple tweaks or a site-wide overhaul. Some adjustments require advanced skills, which is why I teamed up with the digital agency from Sydney to do it right. There are also handy tools that enable you to measure the amount of traffic affected by the global update.

How to respond: A proper answer to the new developments is to embrace the responsive design. Google has made it obvious that this is their preferred solution for mobile optimization. It is used to automatically format the web design and adjust the content to fit the screen size of the device being used to browse. Optimizers and designers can retain the content on the same URL, so no need for additional website version. This also means less work for Google bots in analyzing the web content. Hence, the mighty gatekeeper sees this as a win-win scenario. Actually, the responsive website design might even work as a part of your website’s branding development, as it can help boost your innovative graphic and design solutions.

Starting from scratch: In some cases, a separate mobile version of the site is a way to go. However, this does mean investing more time and resources in two SEO campaigns. Creating a mobile-friendly version of the already optimized site involves the optimization that starts from scratch. Also, authority accumulated on two sites is not shared, which is a disadvantage in terms of backlinks and social media shares. In any case, Google recognizes which site is tailored to desktop searches and which for mobile browsing.

5 Essential Components of a Great eCommerce Site

Posted on February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 by catherine vanvonno

At one point or another, as an eCommerce business owner you may have thought to yourself “what makes a great ecommerce website?”

While the case is not that you do not have any idea on how websites work, it is mostly because creating your brand’s site is an overwhelming undertaking. In fact, you may have a mental list of your inspirations & which components of these sites you will implement.

Still, there is a nagging voice in your head that says “it will still not work out”. The cure? Start with the basics.

Your Brand Elements

Humans, by nature, are visual creatures. We recognize & remember identities by what we see. For this, be sure that you have a working logo & tagline for use in your site.

Your logo is the symbol that represents your brand as a whole. Your tagline, is an encapsulation of your brand’s promise & offers. When visitors come to your site, you have that one shot to introduce what you are about. So do not miss out on these two.

Safety shopping guarantee

At the end of the day money is money. No matter how good your products and pages are if your payment gateway is a wack no one will attempt to do business with you.

Employ major payment modes such as Paypal, credit & debit cards, gift vouchers & cash on delivery arrangements. Being widely used for eCommerce transactions these payment modes come with the assurance of secured & safety shopping.

MOBILE NUMBER AND ONLINE CHATS

It is easy to do business with brand that are easy to get in touch with.

Make sure your contact details especially your phone number & email address are highly visible throughout your website. Indicating your stores contact number is important not just technically but for legal matters as well.

Provide your customers as many routes as you can to get in touch with you. At a certain point, a 1-800 will be a good investment. However, if you are not on that level yet, a live chat support form can be your best bet.

Keeping your lines open will not only help you deal apeace “mad” customers in real time. Being readily available will also keep the doors of opportunity open for you. You just can’t tell where you next bulk orders will come through.

Social Media Links

20% of successful purchases online are from surfing through social media sites. This is because people seek public approval and confirmation.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr are the best platforms to use if you want public exposure and market. As simple clicks can showcase our products online, people who are please can share, like and refer you.

Social media is the great equalizer among brands in the internet. It enables you to study your market & how you can best reach out to them. It also allows you to study your competitors so you can show them up.

Deals, offers & promos

Most of the time people can decide whether they like a website or not with just a snap of a hand. That is why it is crucial to get their attention and interest just few seconds after they entered your site.

Get your latest deals, offers & promos on strategic places all over your site.

For example, you can have a panel for your “free shipping announcement” on your front page. You may also have an invitation to your newsletter above the fold.

Alluring promises and unique prices stimulate visitors to spend, spend and spend. In general, designs also makes a big contribution to this strategy’s success. Positioning eye catching banner designs with jaw-dropping discounts makes sense all the time. NO FAIL.

And that’s it! I hope the tips above will help you make your ecommerce website develop and improve with great potential.

Establish Your Online Presence Using Social Media

Posted on December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 by Vishal Khandelwal

Social media has a huge reach. It betters your chances of building customer loyalty. There is no denying the fact that social media practices are quite important for a business that wishes to reach out to larger audience segment. As Facebook and Twitter combined has approximately 1 billion combined users, you would be certainly losing out on an enormously huge section of potential customers. Thankfully, it is really easy to use social media and by using the correct strategies, you can establish a solid online presence.

Study Your Audience Well

As you establish your presence and build an audience, you will slowly get to know who they are and what they expect from you. By making use of different tools, you would be able to gauge the performance of each post. You will notice that whenever you will post an informative and quality blog with a good quality photo, it would be perceived well and will even engage the consumers more. At the end your goal is to engage the audience and sound logical to them all the time.

Stick To Only A Handful Of Sites

You should stick to a few really popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and give the other lesser popular networks like LinkedIn and Pinterest, a miss. Though LinkedIn and Pinterest are also quite known, but you really don’t need to waste your time on these two sites. Spend majority of your time on Facebook and Twitter as focus on these two major sites are going to give you the major business. On these two sites, the click rate is immense. You just need to setup an account on these two channels and connect with your fans. Make sure you update your pages regularly and connect with your fans from time to time. You need to ensure that you are always on your fan’s newsfeed.

Photography

Photos have the potential to catch attention of people more than links or updates. They can make your content stand out and are easily taken in by users of social media. Clear and concise images can portray your company in the most professional manner. It is a fact that profiles that have photos are much well-taken when compared to written updates.

Keep the Content Fresh

In order to keep your audience engaged, you should post fresh content regularly. Have a new subject-matter to write on each week. If you will keep on discussing only one topic each week over and again, you are sure to lose audience engagement. Therefore, it is significant to post on a new topic each week and keep your social media channels fresh and lively. Encourage audience to give their opinions and reactions. Light-hearted, funny posts are a refreshing break every once in a while. This is definitely going to boost your online presence. Just post regularly and enjoy posting content.

Give Credit Wherever Required

If you wish to keep your customers engaged, you should post content that is focused on your industry. When you are sharing something that has been shared by someone else, it is best to add a credit at the end. Never steal or copy someone’s work and take its credit. Whenever you post an article written by someone else, give a credit and mention the author. However not a lot of companies practice this, which is wrong.

Giveaways

If you want to be noticed on social media platforms, you should opt for giveaways. Start giving out some freebies, which is sure to earn you some loyal customer base. Get your fans involved in some sort of competition and set prize money for the same. Fans will start talking about your company once you will come into the limelight with the help of giveaways. The key is engagement.

Design An Awesome Website

You might think that what is the link between your social media handles and your website? Well, every online business needs a platform which connects all social media accounts, blogs, and alike. Social media is powerful but it alone doesn’t get everything solved. At such a time a website comes to your rescue. Design a professional looking website that links all your social media channels on a single platform. Provide link of your social media channels at the bottom of your website so that all visitors can get access to all the information.

Start Blogging

As soon as any new product is being launched by your company, it needs to be blogged about. You can launch your own blog and even guest post on blogs of others as a guest. In case you don’t really have the time to blog yourself, you can hire an expert writer for that.

If you want your stint with social media to pay well, you should come out of your comfort zone and interact with the customer base actively. Just follow the discussed points and see your online reputation soar higher.

Author

Vishal is the founder of WebyGeeks, a digital marketing and premier search engine company offering SEO, web design, web development and PPC services. Vishal has wide knowledge and 7 years of experience in the field of search engine optimization, ppc campaigns, internet marketing, conversion optimization and web development.

Unique New Twist Using Geo-Targeting For More Mobile Marketing Customers

Posted on October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 by trumpia

Everyone has heard of geo-targeting, but how about adding a unique new twist to your geo-targeted campaigns? OK, sit down and get ready for a big aha moment! How about combining geo-targeting, Facebook and Facebook’s new feature Place Tips while immediately engaging your new found traffic via geocaching by encouraging them to join the fun with their mobile devices built-in capabilities and enablers in exchange for a prize, discount or a free something or other?

OK, we realize that was not enough information to give you the promised aha moment. So let us explain exactly how you go about using this bizarre new geo-targeting twist to immediately grab your customer’s attention and have them instantly engage with you.

Let’s go over the steps and then it will make a little more sense.

Prepare your marketing material for your geo-targeting campaigns just like you always do.
Include in your marketing verbiage a place where you ask your customer’s to use their mobile device’s built-in capabilities and enablers, such as their camera’s, WiFI or GPS to take a picture of a product, or any other request that fits your particular business model, then ask that customer to email it to you to receive a discount, prize or anything else you want to offer that would make them want to head straight to your place of business to receive their winnings. This is like combining geocaching with geo-targeting and your customers will love it! Pretty genius right!
Login to your Facebook account and proceed to their Place Tips feature.
Setup your Facebook Place Tips campaigns.
Watch your traffic soar!

With this technique, you will not only grab your new customer’s attention, you will also have them immediately engaging with you. Engaging your customers will instantly make them feel like they are a part of something and that in turn will help them develop a quicker loyalty to your brand. Not only that, but this is the type of marketing technique that lends itself well to going viral as people love getting anything for “free” or really winning anything at all for that matter. And once they do, they will want to tell all their friends about whatever it is they just won, which means more free exposure for you and will help you build your brand and your brand’s authority in a big positive way. Additionally, after they have become a regular customer, you could continue to send them “geo-requests” in exchange for more prizes or freebies to keep them coming back for more.

You now have your very own custom geocaching group that has a reason to be loyal to your brand! Geocaching is becoming more and more popular across the country and it’s a great way to create customers who are loyal to your brand. Everyone loves a freebie and everyone loves being a part of something, which is what you have just given your new customers. A freebie and the opportunity to be a part of your new geocaching group. Have fun and enjoy!

Get started and you will soon be well on your way to more mobile traffic, new customers and profits that will exceed even your highest expectations!

Author Biography

Sophorn Chhay

Sophorn is an inbound marketer specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generated sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s SMS and marketing automation solution he helps businesses and organizations communicate effectively with their customers or members. Trumpia is offering a free Mobile Marketing Success Kit so don’t forget to grab your free copy.

12 Tips Related to Brand Signals, Social Signals and SEO

Posted on October 12, 2015October 12, 2015 by Natoscia Reynolds

We ran across this article today over at Forbes and thought we would add our two cents. The article mentioned in part:

Brand signals are huge.

Google and other search engines appear to be valuing brand integrity, measuring something called brand signals. Brand signals are the digital presence that your brand possesses. It could include social buzz around your branded terms, Google+ optimization, mentions in other publications, or your personal brand visibility associated with your brand name. With Google’s Knowledge Graph, brands that are doing it right can get powerful a powerful SERP presence.

And MOZ has an ongoing forum conversation up regarding the topic.

Here are our 12 tips regarding brand signals, social signals and how they can impact your SEO:

1. Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal.

2. Branded Searches: It’s simple: people search for brands. If people search for your site in Google (ie. “Search Marketing Team twitter”, Search Marketing Team + “ranking factors”), Google likely takes this into consideration when determining a brand.

3. Site Has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.

4. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

5. Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.

6. Employees Listed at Linkedin: Rand Fishkin thinks that having Linkedin profiles that say they work for your company is a brand signal.

7. Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction.

8. Brand Mentions on News Sites: Really big brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time. In fact, some brands even have their own Google News feed on the first page.

9. Co-Citations: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

10. Number of RSS Subscribers: Considering that Google owns the popular Feedburner RSS service, it makes sense that they would look at RSS Subscriber data as a popularity/brand signal.

11. Brick and Mortar Location With Google+ Local Listing: Real businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.

12. Website is Tax Paying Business: Moz reports that Google may look at whether or not a site is associated with a tax-paying business.

Google Search Influence Factors

Posted on October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 by Natoscia Reynolds

In this article published a few days ago over at business.com, the author highlighted some of the reasons why we need to do due diligence and track SEO KPIs. The article was very good. We recommend reading it. But what we particularly loved was this snapshot from MOZ on nine factors that can influence Google’s algorithm. We’ve quoted the highlights below…

Inbound Links

Inbound linking is at the top of what Google looks at when they decide where to put your page in the rankings. Is it a real site? Are there real and quality inbound links linking to your domain?

Google wants inbound links to be directed from quality sites that have a good domain authority. We use the Moz bar when we’re looking at sites and if they’ve got a killer domain authority, they make the list for us to go after and ask for links.

Page Level Links

Since page level linking makes up the second highest of the ranking factor according to Moz, it’s time to take a look at your website and blog. You might find that you’re not doing enough linking from page to page on your site or from your site to your blog. You might also not want to link single words, but phrases that make sense to link as well. Don’t just link your company name to your website, link other keywords or phrases as well. And it’s OK to link visitors off of your site, especially if it’s contextual and makes sense to your reader.

Page Level Keywords & Content

Keywords and content at the page level are the third (and still quite a large part) of the Google ranking factor. Assess your site, you might find that on specific pages you would rank higher for one of your “long tail” keywords so go ahead and optimize your URL, Title, Description and content on that page for that specific keyword. Now you can track from that page how you’re performing.

For example, we have an integration with Google Sheets where you can take your Sheets data and create great-looking dashboards … We put the keyword right in the URL and use the keywords in the description and the content. We now rank #8 on the first page for that keyword.

If you haven’t focused on your own SEO, it could be time and it could be the big opportunity you need to move the traffic needle for your own website.

5 Ways to Increase Your Ecommerce Sales

Posted on October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 by Jessica Kane

E-commerce sales have steadily increased over the last few years. In 2015, companies that offer products and services online are expected to earn approximately $1.500 trillion. The figure for 2015 is an increase of more than 20 percent over sales in 2014. The reasons behind the increase are that more customers are using mobile devices at home or at work to order products and services online. E-commerce sites are offering faster, more secure payment options for customers and thousands of major brands worldwide are expanding into international markets. It’s necessary to take crucial steps to be competitive in the online market.

A Well Designed Website

Online shoppers expect a site to load quickly and have the capacity to run on a variety of browsers. If the page doesn’t load fast, or there are broken links, customers will go elsewhere, and you have to make a good impression the minute a buyer navigates to your site. An e-commerce site should be easy to navigate. Some sites allow visitors to choose the browser they prefer, based on their Internet connection. All products should have a designated category and title. If you offer a wide selection, sub-categories should be used. Use a menu bar so customers can find what they’re looking for easily.

Product Selection

Offering unique or unusual products are likely to attract new customers. Provide detailed information about your products. Information about availability, sizes, and colors is important. Customers want to know what makes your products different. For example, if you create one-of-a-kind jewelry, describe the natural materials, gems, and findings in detail. Provide a close-up image of each of your designs with a background that compliments each piece. You may offer a service in which clients may choose the stones, colors or findings used to create their designs.

Special Features

Online customers appreciate extra features, especially if the purchase is a gift. Upsell products everywhere on your website. Add-ons or other incentives encourage customers to buy from your site. If you have an online bookstore, offer special prices on books if a client orders additional books by the same author or offer discounts to students and seniors. Another means of increasing your sales is to provide related items such as a tote bag or a cool bookmark as part of a promotion.

Personalized Service

People like to shop online but don’t like high-pressure sale pitches. Provide personalized, customer service and assist your buyers with purchases in a friendly, courteous manner. Offer a toll-free number to call with questions or concerns and respond promptly. Great service can result in repeat customers.

Payment and Shipping Options

Customers want payment processors that are easy to use and are more inclined to order products from a merchant if they can make payments with one click. Along with payment options, they want an easy return policy that is in plain english, not jargon and that have a finite policy period. Shipping terms and conditions should be prominently displayed on your site. Customers should know what they have to pay for shipping before they click the payment button. If you offer promotions for holiday items, show the cutoff date for ordering to make sure your customers receive their orders on time.

These are just a few ways that you can increase your ecommerce sales. Make sure that you take full advantage of everything that is available to ensure that your site is always ready for customers and to keep your customers coming back.

Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who has worked in eCommerce for the last five years. She currently writes for Rakuten Super Logistics and recommends them for all your online order fulfillment needs to further your success.

When SEO and SMM Work in Tandem Good Things Happen

Posted on September 30, 2015July 22, 2017 by Natoscia Reynolds

This great article ran over at AdWeek last week and we liked the case study it highlighted enough to quote it here:

Search and social, as more companies are finding out, complement each other quite well.

When Deborah Carver, the content marketing manager at digital marketing agency Nina Hale, was working with a health insurance client, both parties were a little unsure as to how to create content that people would want to click on. Carver spoke about her experiences and offered advice at Brightedge’s Share15 conference this week in San Francisco.

Health insurance is necessary, but isn’t a sexy product or one that could post pictures of cats to boost organic reach, Carver noted at the event:

No one goes, “Ooh, premiums,” I’ll share that! Especially the terms around health insurance. No one’s really looking to share that content. … It’s hard to create content around it.

Utilizing Brightedge’s proprietary Data Cube product, she discovered which search terms were already leading people to the client’s website. She found that they ranked quite high in Google searches for preventative care and family health insurance, among other terms.

So she went about crafting content around these topics, but found that optimizing headlines for Facebook posts aren’t quite the same as optimizing for Google. Carver said that the first question she asked her colleagues, before developing content, was “Would you click on this?” Instead of taking a keyword-heavy approach that Google enjoys, the creative focus was around a catchy image with a short, powerful headline.

The results for the health insurance client were quite positive. Carver said they did use paid social, but the entire campaign cost roughly $1000 — and posts got thousands of views, with hundreds of click-throughs.

Carver has met and discussed extensively with many companies like Yeah Local about how SEO tactics may be similar, but they can’t really be directly applied on Facebook and Twitter:

It’s finding a way to insert that keyword or relevant term in a headline that would still drag people to click, but not that you’d necessarily use for SEO purposes. … You’re still looking at that keyword, but that’s not going to be the best SEO link ever. It’s a balance. It’s more about being as interesting as you can while still using your keyword.

SEO, SMM, Link-Building and How It Improves Business Outreach

Posted on September 22, 2015September 22, 2015 by Natoscia Reynolds

We read a great article today over at itbusinessnet.com and thought we would share the high points with you:

Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to the process of enhancing the visibility or web presence of a website. This can be done by incorporating relevant keywords into the content to optimize the site for search algorithms.

It is a widely known fact that for the success of any business, having a strong customer base is a must, and for that to happen, business owners must spread the word about their business. This is where SEO comes into play to help any business improve their outreach. A search engine optimized website will serve as a powerful medium in communicating with the potential customers and informing them about the products and business strategies.

Through a Long-Term SEO Strategy

Often people focus on short-term results such as using relevant keywords and other techniques just for attracting visitors to their site; however, for business entities to succeed, short-term results are not enough. A business owner must prioritize value above anything else. This means that apart from using relevant keywords, the site must also publish quality content about their business or products. Moreover, the content must also be regularly updated in order to incorporate the latest trending keywords. This will ensure that the popularity of the business does not diminish with time.

Through Link-Building

Link-building is a major part of SEO that help business owners to get better visibility and higher rankings for their websites. For improving the business outreach, one must submit the links of their business website to bloggers so that they can mention the business website in their blogs. Other techniques are to submit the site to directories and paid listings. Other than these, editorial link building is also a great way to improve the popularity of a business; however, for that to happen a business website must also publish informative, quality content so that other bloggers or companies would want to link to the business under consideration.

Through Social Media

In the age of Facebook and Twitter, social media too has become an essential part of SEO strategies. For instance, if a blog post about the business or its product is shared in social media, the popularity will have a positive impact on how search engines rank the business website. This will go a long way in enhancing the exposure of the site, eventually improving the business outreach. Thus, a business must have a robust social networking presence to leverage the maximum popularity for their business.

Great Sources for High Quality Backlinks

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Natoscia Reynolds

We loved this article that ran today over at Entrepreneur.

It highlights several methods we use for getting initial backlinks for a client. The article is nice and concise. Here is a snapshot:

1. The Better Business Bureau
This is a link any local business can acquire, as long as it meets the requirements to be an accredited member of your local BBB. A regular BBB listing doesn’t include an outbound link in the listing, while an accredited one does.

2. Local media
Local media outlets provide an abundant source of link opportunities. Imagine if you owned a local home-security company and your area was experiencing a large enough number of home invasions to warrant a news report. As soon as you see local media pick that story up, you should be contacting them with an offer to provide content for their website and information for their broadcast.

3. Local schools and nonprofits
Local schools and nonprofits often have sponsorship opportunities that highlight all donors on a dedicated page of their website. If you spend a couple of hours searching for these, you can typically uncover amazing link opportunities.

4. Local partners and suppliers
The first thing I do when I work with a local business is to ask for a list of its suppliers. So, a restaurant’s list for example, will often include local produce companies, butchers and supply companies.

5. Local awards and contests
Virtually every local market has “best of” awards, and they are typically handled by local entertainment websites or local magazines and newspapers, which also have online versions. Either way, if your business is awarded “best of,” you are almost guaranteed to earn a link.

Portland SEO: Google’s John Mueller: Avoid Link Building Schemes (Not Link Building Campaigns)

Posted on February 26, 2015February 26, 2015 by Natoscia Reynolds

In a recent Search Engine Roundtable interview, Google’s John Mueller advised against link building … GASP! (In general). That is to say, Mueller reinforced Google’s well-published stance on (ill-advised) Link Schemes.

Here is part of the interview:

In general, I’d try to avoid that.

So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier.

We do use links as part of our algorithm but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.

But… Obviously this statement is not all-encompassing. Because, you guessed it, backlinks are one major component to any site’s ranking (including Google’s). That said, WebProNews published this response from well-known online marketer Ken McGaffin:

That all depends on the type of link building you’re doing. Let’s say I’ve just conducted a great piece of research for a client and my prime objective is to get them media coverage. The research and the accompanying press release was so good that it got coverage in the NYTimes, BBC and many others – good job done!

But my secondary objective is to get links – so AS WELL as conducting the research, and writing the press release, I make sure that the journalist has something to link to, something that his readers will appreciate. That could be:

– an in-depth blog post giving much more detail than the Journalist could give space to
– a presentation or infographic of the results
– a copy of the original research so that readers can check it out.

In this case, I’m doing my client a service in getting PR coverage. But I’m also doing my best to ensure that editorial links and others links will follow. I can only see Google looking positively on my efforts – because of the value it offers. But if all I did was the ‘link building’ part then I’d be doing my client a disservice – and missing some major opportunities. This means that any online marketing/PR initiative is multi-layered – and one of those layers must be link building.

So, legitimate link-building strategies and campaigns are absolutely worth it.