7 SEO Website Design Tips for 2019

With over 1.5 billion live websites in the world, it has never been more important that your website has excellent SEO. With so much competition online, you need to make sure that people can find your website fast, and it ranks well on Google searches.

But search engines are constantly changing, as are people’s online habits. So how do you make sure your website is fully optimized for the year ahead?

Only by having a clear SEO website design strategy will you ensure that your site goes from strength to strength this year.

Incorporating SEO into all aspects of your website may seem like a daunting task. However, if you follow our seven website design tips for 2019 you can stay ahead of the competition.

1. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly

There are many things to consider when you are designing a website.

The layout and look of your site are very important. With many users spending only a few seconds on the first landing page, first impressions can make a huge difference.

In 2018 around 60% of internet usage was done on mobile devices. This is a figure that has been steadily rising over the past few years and looks set to continue to rise in 2019. Therefore if your content is not designed for mobile, you will be at a disadvantage, and it could harm your SEO rankings.

Mobile internet users are five times more likely to leave a website if it is not designed for their screen size. If this is the case then your bounce rate will increase. Encouraging users to spend more time on your website is good for your Google analytics, and good for your business.

Many web design platforms such as WordPress allow you to view your website as it would appear on different screen sizes. Google also has a useful mobile-friendly test, to help you check the mobile optimization of your site.

2. Get In The Snippets

Google is always changing and updating the way it displays search engine results pages (SERPs). One of its latest trends is the use of featured “snippets”.

Snippets are a paragraph excerpt from the featured website, that is displayed at the top of the SERP above the regular results.

Often snippets are displayed in response to a question that the user has typed into the search engine. The snippet will give the answer to the question, reducing the number of clicks the user has to make.

These snippets are basically the top spot for search results. In order to get your site listed as a featured snippet, it will already need to be on the first page of Google results.

Think about which questions a user would enter into Google that could bring up your site. Make sure you have content that answers the question directly and prioritize those keywords.

Spend some time looking at which websites regularly make it into the snippets in your industry. Are there some lessons you can learn from them?

It may take time for your website to earn a place in the top spot, but it is a great thing to aim for and you can treat it as an SEO strategy goal.

3. Get To Grips With Video SEO

Another of Google’s new features is the introduction of a video carousel.

Previously, video search results were displayed as three thumbnails at the top of SERPs. Going forward, Google is replacing those with a carousel of far more videos that a user can scroll through to view excerpts.

This means that far more video results can get a place on the top spot.

YouTube videos rank higher than any other video content on Google searches. So combined with the new carousel format, you should think about using YouTube SEO.

Creating YouTube videos can increase traffic to your site, and reach a whole new audience.

Think about what video content would be appropriate for your site, and would answer users queries. How-To videos are often very popular and would stand a good chance of getting on the carousel.

Make sure you use keywords in the title of your video and in the description, so the Google bots can find you.

4. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is usually what people are referring to when they talk about SEO. It is the strategy that a website owner uses to make sure their content is more likely to be picked up by search engines.

An on-page optimization strategy would involve:

Researching relevant keywords and topics for your site.
Including keywords and secondary keywords throughout the content.
Using title tags and meta-description tags for pictures and media.
Including internal links to other pages on your site.

On-page optimization is the core of your SEO website design. Without on-page optimization, your site will not rank highly, so it is important to get this right.

When you are designing your website, think about the user experience. How a user would navigate a website is also how search engines crawl over them. If it is hard to navigate for a user, it will not do well with the search engines either.

5. Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization is the marketing and promotion of your website through link building and social media mentions. This increases the credibility and authority of your website, brings more traffic, and increases your SEO ranking.

There are a few ways you can start link building to enhance your off-page optimization. You can guest post on other blogs, get your site listed in directories and product pages.

You can also consider contacting the authors of relevant, authoritative websites and blogs and arrange a link exchange. This would have the double whammy effect of bringing traffic to your site and increasing your authority within the industry.

When link building, it is important that you always use keyword rich anchor text for the link. This will increase the chance of the search engines picking out the link.

6. Optimize For Voice Search

When you are working out your SEO website design strategy, you need to stay on top of the online trends.

By 2020, it is estimated that 50% of all searches will be voice searches. This is due to the increase in popularity of voice-search enabled digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. Therefore making sure you are optimized for voice searching in 2020 is very important.

One of the main things to remember when optimizing for voices searches is that voice users phrase things differently from text searchers. So when you are optimizing your site to answer users’ questions, think about the phrasing.

For example, a text searcher may type in “George Clooney movies”, whereas a voice searcher would say “what movies has George Clooney starred in?”. So when you are writing your content, include some of this conversational style in your content. Use questions as hooks in your blog posts, so voice searches will find them.

Voice users are also more likely to ask follow up questions that lead on from the initial search terms. Including pages such as an FAQ list will help your optimization in this respect.

7. Keep Your Content Fresh

Search engines do not like stale content.

A website that has not been updated in a long time will not have a good SEO ranking. A stale website is also more likely to have a high bounce rate, as users are turned off by a site that does not look fresh.

It is generally good practice to keep your site updated anyway. Regularly checking each page will also help you keep on top of things like broken links. But the freshness of your website is super important when it comes to SEO.

You may think that some pages on your site are evergreen and do not need updating. For example contact details or customer service guarantees. However, even if there has not been a factual change that needs updating, just freshening up the page will enhance your SEO.

If you have a blog on your site, never leave it too long between posts. A user landing on your site seeing the last blog post was written six months ago will automatically find your site less credible.

Writing fresh blog posts also gives you the opportunity to use more keywords and links and media content. All of which will help enhance your SEO.

You can also go back over old blog posts and update links to things like statistics or news articles. Writing updates for blog posts can also give you the opportunity to include internal links to older posts.

Get Help With Your SEO Website Design

So those are seven SEO website design tips that will help your website stay on top in 2019.

Always monitor the latest Google trends and ask yourself if your website is making the most of developments such as voice searching.

Never neglect the basics of good SEO practice, and remember those keywords and links.

Always think about the user experience of your website. Don’t spend all of your time on the backend of your site. Do some of your own Google searches and see how your website performs.

Finally, always make sure your website content is fresh and looks great no matter what size the screen.

If you would like help with your SEO strategy or would like to find out more about our web design services, don’t hesitate to get in touch today.

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How to Convert Social Media Leads Into Sales

You could have billions of followers on your social media platforms, but if those leads are converting into sales, your bottom line isn’t going to move.

It’s a surprisingly common problem for businesses. They focus so much on getting social media followers that they miss the fact that followers alone won’t help.

Social media conversion isn’t something that happens by accident. To the contrary, there are various strategies that you should be putting into place that will help you do just that.

This guide will help you start taking those followers and turning them into loyal customers.

What is Social Media Conversion?

Before we dive in, let’s take a moment to define social media conversion. What we mean by that is using social media platforms to convert strangers into customers. There are a few steps in between, however.

Most people will follow this path to becoming customers:

Strangers. These are people that have never heard of you or your product.
Prospects. They have discovered you on social media and read your posts because they are interested in your business.
Leads. Now, they have connected with you in some way, whether they’ve given you their email address or reached out to you by phone.
Customers. You were able to close the sale and they bought something from you.
Promoters. A satisfied customer will take this extra step and promote your business to other people, helping you quickly drive even more conversions.

Once you’ve implemented social media practices that help you reach a large audience, you can start converting those prospects and leads into customers.

Lead Magnets

If you’re not already using lead magnets with social media, it’s time to start. A lead magnet is something you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact information.

Think about what your audience wants or needs, and offer it to them for free. You may also consider offering discounts for your business. Keep trying different things until you find something that converts well.

Here’s a list of some lead magnets you can try:

Checklist
Product sample
Cost calculator
Planner
Tutorial
eBook
Guide
Printable
Exclusive content
Webinar
Local event ticket giveaways
Contest

It’s important to get an email address or a phone number from your prospects. That gives you the ability to reach out to them personally, which is vital for closing the sale and turning them into customers.

Calls-To-Action

To get information from lead magnets, you always need to have a clear call-to-action (CTA). The more simple and clear the process is, the more likely you are to get good leads. Make what you want from them as clear as what you’re offering.

Imagine you had two forms in front of you. Each one will get you the same free product. One of the forms is only asking for your first name and email address. The other is asking for your full name, home address, phone number, job title, company name, and email address.

Which one would you fill out?

If you’re like most people, you’d fill out the shorter form that only wants a couple of pieces of information from you. Keep that in mind while creating lead magnets since a long or complicated CTA is the most common reason people abandon the process.

That goes for every CTA throughout the sales process. You want every step to be as simple and easy as possible. In fact, over 20% of people abandon their shopping cart in online stores because of the length of the process.

Keep in mind that you’re not the only business in your industry. If your process is too complicated, it’s easy for someone to go somewhere else to get what they want. Set yourself apart with easy processes to see sales soar.

Lead Magnet Testing

Once you’ve got a few ideas for lead magnets, start experimenting. You want to find something that converts well, or else there’s no point in having it. To do that, you’ll need to do some testing.

You can do this in a couple different ways. You can use one lead magnet with different types of posts and see how well it converts based on how it’s promoted, or you can use a couple different lead magnets in similar types of posts to compare the lead magnets themselves.

It’s easy to get caught up with this part, so try not to focus too much on perfecting your lead magnets. Just find something that works well, and stick with that as long as it keeps working well.

Part of the testing is analyzing. After all, if you don’t analyze the data, you won’t know which lead magnets are converting well. We love using Google Analytics which can help you figure out what you’re doing wrong and right.

Nurturing Social Media Leads

Now that you have a growing list of email addresses or phone numbers, it’s time to start nurturing those leads. Today, people want to connect with businesses before they buy from them.

When you start communicating with your leads, make it all about them. Ask them what they need and find out what they’re looking for. Show that you recognize they’re a real person and that you actually care about them.

Imagine being out on a blind date, and the first thing the other person does is propose. Would you say yes? Probably not. Now, imagine that person got to know you and you got to know them over a period of months before they proposed. Then would you say yes? Probably!

You need to treat your social media leads the same way you would a first date. Introduce yourself to them and find out more about them. They want to know that you’re compatible before they agree to buy anything from you.

Providing Value

In everything that you do, whether it’s social media posts or email marketing, you want to provide value. That means giving information to your prospects and leads that is useful, helpful, or beneficial in some way.

Before you create a post or piece of content, ask yourself these questions to see if it’s providing value:

What will the customer learn from this?
How will this help my readers?
What problem is this addressing?
Will this solve that problem?
Am I providing a new insight into this problem?
Am I only promoting my own products or services?

The main goal for anything you create should be to address a problem your target audience has and to help them solve it. In most cases, that should involve your services, but it may be best to tell them how to do something themselves.

If all you do is talk about what you’re trying to sell to people, it’s a huge turn-off, and you’ll be seen as an overly-pushy salesperson. But, if you show that you care about meeting your audience’s needs in whatever way possible, they will trust you and be more likely to buy from you.

Knowing Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who you’re reaching out to, it will be impossible to do anything else we’ve already talked about. You need to know who’s in your target audience if you’re going to reach them.

Start by looking at your current customer base. What do they have in common? This will help you narrow down who you’re targeting since there are VERY few businesses that can honestly say everybody fits into their target audience.

Here are the most important things to know about your target audience:

Age
Gender
Location
Wage bracket
Job/industry
Personal or business goals
Personal or business problems

The way you’d target a six-figure-income, 50-year-old businessman looking to expand his business overseas would be vastly different from a jobless 19-year-old woman in college who wants to be an artist.

Buyer Personas

One way to really make your target audience come alive is to create a buyer persona. That way, you’re not writing content or posting to social media for a vague group of people that may be interested in your product. You’re doing it for people that have faces, names, wants, and goals.

Put some time into creating several buyer personas that you can keep going back to. You can even find stock photos online to put faces to your buyer personas. Use the characteristics listed above regarding your target audience to give each persona an age, a job, goals, etc.

These will help you with all of your business decisions. Every time you get stuck, you can go back to these and figure out what they want and need from you. Then, help to solve their problems.

Your Next Step

We’ve just given you a ton of information on social media conversion, from creating great lead magnets and simplifying the buying process to learning about your target audience and creating buyer personas.

Now you’re probably wondering what to do with all of this information. We recommend implementing all of these strategies and more one at a time.

If you want some expert guidance, then check out our digital consulting service. We will help you evaluate what you’re currently doing and create a personalized step-by-step implementation plan for your social media marketing.

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Key Takeaways from Tampa Bay Startup Week 2019

Tampa Bay’s hipster heights Public Market, Armature Works opened their doors for the Tampa Bay startup week. The facility was filled with the hustle and bustle of entrepreneurs and various companies eager to learn. Just recently, I had the opportunity to network and learn so many things on scaling business by attending the 2019 Synapse Summit. However, this event was free and open to the public. Imagine that, this event was basically CEO’s and influencers giving away free advice to the Tampa Bay Area. There were panelists that wanted to help out those who are starting up their companies. They talked all about their failures and successes of starting up their brands. Here are a few of the talks I had the pleasure of getting free advice from.

How to Handle a Crisis

As many of you have figured out, a crisis can happen anywhere, including within our company. Well guess what, they do not have to happen all the time. You may be asking, how often should a company practice a crisis? The answer, it should be brought up weekly and you should include all employees regarding the handling of a crisis.

Did you receive any bad review which led your brand to a crisis? Here are a few tips on how to address those reviews:

When receiving a bad review:

Address the person who left the review then ask for a DM. Let’s be real, it is 2019 and most people will reply on social media compared to an email.
Reach out to google and see about getting the review taken down if it goes against the Google standards of ethic.
In general, be empathic with people. by doing so, you can change the relationship to a positive one after the crisis.
Be honest during the crisis and back peddle if needed. No one likes being left in the dark. Just let your customer or client know what went wrong.
Make sure to have a written statement.
After the crisis, learn from it instead of moving on right away.
Is there a way for your brand to recover? For ideas of how crises were handled, check Google, LinkedIn & Wall Street Journal. There are a plethora of brands facing crisis at the very moment.

After the crisis has occurred, use as many resources as possible to see about not having another crisis in the future. For starters, here is a book on how to handle a crisis.

Keys to Startup & Leadership Success

There are a few things every leader should ask themselves and be aware of –

Self-awareness:

Awareness of your emotions.
Insights into their impact on your performance and that of others.
Honesty in your positive and negative biases.
Accurate self-assessment.
Who are we?
Why do we exist?
What do we stand for?
Where do we see ourselves going?
How are we going to get there?
What drives our economic engine?

By answering these questions, you will already be ahead of the game compared to those who are just starting out and are at a loss of where to begin their journey of starting up their brand.

Vision:

What is our overriding focus for the future?

Having a vision is very important because this will allow you and your brand to stay focused on the one reason you worked so hard to get where you are today. Don’t be afraid to tell your team or have a sticky note on your desk reminding yourself every day the vision of your brand/company is trying to accomplish. The moment you forget what your vision is, everything can crumble and all those hours and hard work you and your team have put in, will go to the wayside.

Setting priorities:

This graph will help you organize all your ideas and tasks so you can focus on what is important for you as a leader. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to draw this graph out in my head to organize and prioritize emails, tasks and other day-to-day things that come up.

Setting priorities

Setting your priorities can give you a clearer mind and will almost give your workflow a kick start making your job easier. As previously mentioned, “work smarter, not harder.”

When you are starting out with your brand it is extremely important to have a presence on social

Creating Effective Video Content for Social Media

In order to have effective content, it requires that you have the proper mindset. Here are a few ways to help get to that mindset:

Do not think about what will work in likes, shares, views, etc.
The individual truth is what will work
Just be YOU – If you are the one behind the video-sharing the content, just act natural. By doing so, the viewers can acknowledge that you and your content are authentic.

Creating content:

Curiosity – Create content that leaves your viewers with a curious mind (does it get them to ask what’s next?).
Props – Use small or big items in your video to grab your audience attention. It could even be a blowup flamingo just something that will grab the attention you want.
Environment – Find the top 10 most interesting places in the city you will be shooting your video in. Pick one of those places and use it as a backdrop for your video. Your viewers will most likely be more engaged with your content.
Success in social media is more than followers but the interactions.
When posting on social media, do something that makes you and your brand stand out. It can be as simple as creating a hashtag specific to your brand. Once you have created one, stick with it and use it constantly. There are three things that make up mindful posting. These are 1.Competition 2.Repitition 3. Connection. This brings me to the important things every business needs when it comes down to their website and social.

The 5 videos every business needs to survive

Visual Business cards
Customer testimonials
Facebook live videos – Live videos are more engaging than just a Facebook post or an Instagram story. Be engaging as possible with your audience. Not only can you earn more trust, but it will show you care what your viewers say about you and your brand.
Sales Videos
Internal training

By having these 5 things, trust is earned from your client and customers.

Lastly, it is important that your brand is thriving and in order to do so, you have to make sure the nuts and bolts are well oiled and are not rusting. You may have guessed what I am referring to, if you guessed yourself, then you are correct. It is vital that as an owner or entrepreneur stays healthy mentally and physically.

20k Steps to 10x Growth: How to Stay Healthy During the Hustle

Being an entrepreneur or a startup can be draining and can take a lot out of you. In order to have a thriving business, self-health is the most important. Here are a few takeaways on how to remain healthy during the hustle.

Schedule everything – Managing rapid growth can be overwhelming at times. Scheduling things will help manage that.
Block time off in your calendar for the important things in your life such as the gym, yoga, dr appointments or picking your child up from school. Make time for yourself a priority.
Work smarter not harder. No one could have said it better then Warren Buffet, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted it a long time ago.” We can learn from the hard work while at the same time enjoy the hard work of others.

In today’s society, it may be hard to do with everything and everyone being on the go. Make sure to take time and step away from it all and enjoy all your hard work. That being said, I made sure to take a step away from my normal hustle each day and take the time during the week to attend the Tampa Bay Startup. I blocked time off my calendar to gain the knowledge of those who have successfully failed as well as those who have succeeded. If you happen to see a Startup week in your city, I would highly encourage you to attend. I hope you were able to come away with a few tips from reading this.

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Digital Neighbor Takes on Synapse Summit 2019

Walking into Tampa Bay’s second Synapse Summit was nothing but buzzing entrepreneurs and coffee stands filled with early bird risers. Connections were ready to be made. As soon as you stepped foot in Amalie Arena there were local vendors on either side with the latest swag ready to be handed out. The arena was filled with leaders, entrepreneurs, startups, Vice Presidents, and more established businesses ready to learn and scale their business.

The summit had multiple lectures on relevant topics regarding the new age of digital. All these lectures had many coming away with one thing: the future of digital is here. There were probably over 100 lectures every day. I found myself wanting to attend all of the lectures, unfortunately, I could only be in one place at a time, so I was limited to a handful throughout the day. Each of the lectures were in different parts of the arena, so you had to set aside extra time to find where the lecture of your choice was going to be held. Luckily, most of the lectures I attended were in the same area, so I did not get too lost.

Here are a few things I took away from some of the lectures and wanted to share those gold nuggets of information with you.

How to Leverage Your Network Session

One of the many lectures we had the pleasure of listening to was on the topic of, How to Leverage Your Network. Here are some of the takeaways from that lecture.

The power of networking can change your life – No matter what age you are, you are always meeting someone new. Using the words like “Please” and “thanks” can actually make you stand out. Just being nice in general can be the starting point of a new connection.
Stand out – When meeting someone new, make sure to stand out. It can be anything, your speech, a super colorful tie, a joke you told or even something as crazy socks.
Follow up after 24 hours – You just put all that effort in someone trying to remember you so do not let them forget you. If you swapped business cards, then follow up with a friendly email. Something as simple as saying, “Hi _____ nice meeting you at ____ loved hearing about what you do and your business. Let me know if you ever have any questions about _____ I will be glad to help. Good luck with your business! Kind regards _____.” Add them on LinkedIn. If they have social on their business card, follow them on social.

By now, you should be the master at meeting new people and your network has now expanded by many.

Designing a Winning Company Culture Session

In order to have a winning culture, you need to expose it. Exposing it can be as simple as taking a picture you and your coworker (with their approval) and posting it to social with #bestcoworkeraward or taking a picture of a social event that takes place within your company and posting that to social. However, with the digital world taking off just about anyone can work from home nowadays. So having a company culture can be very difficult if people have different schedules and you don’t interact with them face-to-face. Just know that it can be done! If you can deliver energy over the phone and/or an email then you will receive some sort of energy back. The more you can put forth into your company and be invested in growth and making connections, then that will happen. Always keep in mind that there is a real person sitting behind the email you just got. It was not a robot who sent that. Just be personable. Culture is all about people, so if you can relate to another person then you all already on the right track of paving the way to having a great company culture.

The Future of Advertising

Here are some of the key takeaways.

- Make sure the things you put out are worth the time and attention others will give you.
- Social media is a two-way street today – The audience is no longer the target. Instead, they are helping to get the message out. This is being done by their friend groups and what they post and reshare with their friends.
- User or consumer have to see themselves in the ads – The moment a user or consumer can see themselves in your ad then it will be applicable and they can relate.
- Consumers are the new age marketers – A prime example of this would be an influencer such as Kylie Jenner sharing a product then #ad at the bottom of her post. Casey Nesitat is another example. He uses his videos to market products he was given by subscribers as well as paid companies.

The future may be about fewer interruptions and more about entertainment – Netflix has already started with this. Anytime you participate in a paid subscription you have fewer ads. However, for Netflix, there are multiple ad placements in shows. If you are listening to music on Spotify and then an ad gets interrupted, you are instantly annoyed. All those paid subscriptions incorporate entrainment into the advertisements.

Day 2 of Synapse Summit just as much of a success as the first day. This time I knew my way around the arena

The lectures that Digital Neighbor attended had such good information that we decided we had to share it with you all.

The Way We Work is Being Transformed by Technology Session

Technology has transformed so much in that past few years. Every day there is something new for digital markets to learn. There is an augmented workforce that has new digital and technologies.

There are 3 dimensions changing the future of work

Work – How work gets done.
Workforce – Who is doing the work (Ex. Robots).
Workplace – What work looks like today.

So many people can work from home and even on the go. We live in an age where we are always connected so we can get work done. Meetings can be held through phone calls and even FaceTime. Since we are always connected we have found that we can get robots to do the work for us so we can double up on the amount of work we have and get more things done within a days work.

Lastly here is another lecture we found to be very helpful within the world of digital.

5 Must do’s to market your brand in an omnichannel digital landscape

In today’s digital world it can be very overwhelming and competitive. Here are 5 strategies to help you get on top and lead the way for your brand:

Make your content king – Content is important and so is your brand.
Take a data-driven approach – Data makes you credible and will earn the trust from others.
Personalize the process – Adding a personal touch to your brand will help your audience engage with you.
Provide value to social media – Social media is not going away so be active and present.
Think mobile first– Most people today are connected to a smartphone or tablet. If your brand is not compatible with mobile you will not get far.

Key Takeaways

I hope these tips were helpful for you. I definitely learned so much at the 2019 Synapse Summit. Making new connections and learning to scale your business can be applied anytime in your career. Networking is a great start to scale your business. I currently have a mountain of business cards on my desk from all the people I met at the Summit. Investing time in yourself to grow and learn will help by growing your business. Hope to see you next year at the 2020 Synapse Summit!

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How to Write More Actionable Blog Content

When polled, 84% of millennials don’t trust traditional advertising

Content marketing is a strategy adopted by businesses to gain and retain customers. With content marketing, the business provides news and information that may be relevant to their customers.

When done right, the customers return for more information, purchase goods or services, and raise the SEO ranking of the website.

Discussed below are some tips for creating actionable content.

1. Gain Trust

Gaining trust in an online world can seem impossible. Business is all about relationships, so before you can write anything, your audience needs to trust you.

Your content should focus on meeting the needs of your audience and solving their problems, not tricking them into purchasing a product. Building trust with people always leads to organic rewards.

2. Share Your Story

Your story is the strongest message you will ever carry to your audience. People are looking for authenticity in a business. The power of a clear and compelling content will build trust faster than any list of features on your product.

Businesses often forget their audience has feelings. People want to connect with you in a personal way. Go ahead and share your struggles and how you got to where you are now.

3. Make Honest Promises

Everyone hates click-bait, so keep your titles enticing yet honest. Lying in any way to your audience will be detrimental to your business, and people can see right through false claims.

You should always be able to deliver on any claims that you make in your content. Exaggerated promises turn people off. They would rather have a step by step plan to improve their situation.

4. Plan For The Long-Term

When an author writes a book series, they get more sales from the older installments than they do from the new book.

The same sort of thing happens to businesses that use content marketing. Even if the new posts are popular, it’s your existing content that will give you more overall traffic.

If you don’t have a long-term plan for where you’re going, its time to figure that out.

5. Keep It Evergreen

Certain kinds of content have an expiration date. If you’re a movie critic or a book reviewer, you know the things you’re talking about are only going to be popular for a limited window of time.

However, even if you’re trying to keep up with current events, it’s important to focus on creating content that will remain viable.

While your review of the latest blockbuster won’t generate a lot of traffic once it’s out of theaters, a top 10 list of the best/worst films in a genre has staying power.

6. De-Clutter Your Content

Nothing turns people off faster than cluttered-looking content. You might have the greatest blog post on a topic or the most amazing video, but if your audience is getting interrupted every half-dozen seconds by an ad, they’re going to walk away.

Make sure your content is smooth and easy to digest, in addition to being good.

7. Analyze Your Existing Content

Analyze your content to see which topics are consistently used and which are not. Then try to determine which content converts the best among the historical posts.

Optimize towards those types of posts as they convert better.

Next, you should build a new type of post focused on calls to action. That could include signing up for an email list, downloading software, a white paper or other materials.

It could also be a call to direct call to buy the product. Then, using analytics, test to see which post does best and focus on those in the future.

8. Use Pop-Ups

Pop-ups that request the visitor enter contact information are effective for generating a lot of leads and a large mailing list. Those persons with mild interest will fill out the form. You can then store the information in an MySQL database for further data mining.

Additionally, you can ask visitors to provide additional information after they click out of the landing page. These pop-ups get valuable information from visitors that want to ensure that you recognize their needs.

Landing pages can even have more visible outreach in the forms of a human marketer using language, movement, and expression to sell the product or service.

You can implement this with a video that immediately runs on the page or an image that is inlaid into the HTML or Javascript on the page.

9. Search Engine Optimization

You can optimize your content for the exact keywords and search terms that are most likely to convert to sales. This effort takes trial and error.

A good clue is to see which search terms are the most expensive in their category. You can then write content emphasizing those concepts, keywords, and search terms.

Do your research when it comes to keywords.

It is important that you do your research to see what keywords people are using when they are searching online.

Not only should you use single word keywords, you should use longer keywords because that is how people search. They usually search for phrases instead of one basic keyword.

However, think about your topic, not just the keywords. Too many writers try to stuff as many keywords as possible into each blog. Not only can this make it hard to read, but it will turn off your readers. They will go to another blog that is easier to read.

The search engines will see that people are not staying on your website, so they will send them to other ones. They monitor how long people stay on your website because it is a sign about how good the information is.

10. Links Are Very Important

While you may not want to use links in case your readers decide to leave your website and not come back, the truth is that blogs with links rank higher on search engines.

When putting links in your blogs, make sure that you include both internal and external. With internal links, you should send readers to other blogs on your website that can give them more information.

External links are links to other websites. Make sure that you don’t send anyone to the website of your competition.

11. Power Up Your Headlines

Whether headlines catch people’s attention, entertain, or summarize, they are the first thing readers see before deciding whether to read articles.

Headlines are an important component in your search engine optimization efforts.

Here are some different ways you can make your headline more reader and search engine friendly:

Make sure your headlines aren’t too long or short. You probably want to keep your headlines within a sweet spot of approximately six words, with engaging words at the beginning and at the end.
Be clever. Here’s some good, basic advice: the most obvious headlines are probably already taken.
Think about different ways of explaining topics while still incorporating some good keywords into your headline.
Create action items. A headline for an article could tell people to do something. This could engage readers and invite them to find out more.
Ask questions. Pique the interest of your readers by asking a question in your headline.
What do readers want to find out, and what do they want to know? What are they searching for, and how does your article address their questions?
Define. Perhaps you are discussing a new topic that is constantly evolving. You may want to define an abstract topic in your headline to inform and to create a level of authority.
Be creative. If you can brainstorm, you can be creative. Think about various words and themes associated with your article topic. How can it be re-imagined, and how can your headline stand out from the rest?
Be direct. If you can manage to create a headline that is direct and different from the rest, then perhaps that is your best route.
Use parentheses, colons, dashes or numbers: People like to speed read with their tech devices. Luckily, grammar provides us with many ways to phrase something.

Create Actionable Content

Your uniqueness gives you the ability to say and create actionable content in a way that no one else can. Your content is the perfect place to let your personality shine through.

People love quirky personalities and strong opinions so don’t hide behind your computer. Your content should reflect your values and nature so your audience can relate and begin a long-term relationship with you.

Never be afraid to give away useful content for free, promote others or ask your audience questions. Building trust with your audience starts with being confident in yourself and your business.

For more digital marketing advice in Tampa, contact us.

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What’s Changed in SEO in 2019

SEO is key to getting your website’s ranking up, without ranking you simply won’t be seen. Using SEO strategies on your blogs, social media and website, you could be missing out. Using SEO best practices 2019 is one of the most effective ways to make sure your customers can find you.

An SEO strategy should always be a part of your big picture marketing strategy. It’s important to remember that your SEO is ever changing. Your rankings can change from day to day, that’s why you need a strong long-term plan.

The best strategies are adjusted to make room for the new practices and algorithm updates. The new SEO practices aren’t rocket science, but if you follow these guidelines then it’ll be a piece of cake.

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

It’s no secret that people are glued to their phones. Actually, around 60 percent of Google searches are done on a phone or tablet. It’s safe to say that number will probably only grow in the years to come.

That’s why Google is making phones the center of their algorithm. Moving forward, the mobile version on your website will be considered the default version.

This means that if you have content that’s hidden on your mobile site, it doesn’t exist to Googles crawlers anymore. Hidden content is anything that the user can’t see right away such as w read more drop down or a widget the only works on a desktop.

Your best bet is to make sure your page is completely responsive on a mobile device. If your webpage is built with a template, you might need to change it. Some templates just weren’t made to be mobile friendly. You might be able to see everything, but the site needs to also run smoothly.

Another change that’s been recently announced is that AdWords is now able to check the responsiveness or your mobile version.

Use Rich Snippets

The rich snippets, or the rich answer box, is the box that pops up what you ask search engines a question. Its called a rich snippet because it’s rich in information and context.

The best way to take advantage of this if to make sure that when you are building out a page that it contains the answer and a question.

For example, in an H tag, you would have “What is a rich Snippet?” then the text following the H tag would answer the question. The quickest way to get featured in the answer box it to make sure your website has all of the information a user would want.

You need to not only have all of the information that a user will need, but it needs to be structured. The more structured your site is the easier it will be for the search engine to crawl your website.

Optimize for Voice Search

The popularity of voice search is growing fast. Think about it with Alexa, Google Home and our phones we tend to ask virtual assistants a lot of questions. So much so that 40 percent of adults do a voice search at least once a day.

Since voice searches are done by verbally asking the question, they tend to be more in depth than a regular search. Think about it, when you type something into a search engine, you simplify it. However, when you verbally ask questions, your language is more conversational.

That changes one major thing, keywords. It’s no longer going to be keyword focused, context is going to be a lot more important.

While this is a new thing there are a few things that we know for sure about how voice search works. Google Home tends to use the rich snippets to find the answer to your questions.

That makes it even more important to have the question and the answers on your website. We suggest you make the answers on your website are as specific as possible.

Enhance Your Page Speed

No one wants to visit a slow website. Search engines understand that too and it’s becoming a bigger factor in your rankings.

If your webpage takes longer then 3 seconds to load 53 percent of people will find their information elsewhere. A slow website might mean that you have too many uncompressed files or images, your first step should be to compress what you can.

The people who visit your website want their information quickly, and the slower your site is the more annoyed your users are going to be.

User Experience Matters

While most of the SEO components are based on an algorithm, your website needs to built around the actual users. You need to keep in mind what the websites main focus is and make sure that the user can accomplish it easily.

Search engines are starting to take this into consideration. Google has RankBrain, it measures how people interact with the results from their searches.

For example, if you search for something, click the top result but the page loads slow or the information that you want isn’t there so you exit out of it. Then you go to the third result and stay on that page for a long time because the content is exactly what you wanted – the RankBrain algorithm will take that into consideration.

RankBrain takes a few things into consideration. How much time people spend on your site and the number of people who click on your website are just a couple of the factors.

RankBrain was already considered to be the Google’s third most important ranking factor, but they have announced that in 2019 it will become even more important.

Make Sure to Use Videos

Videos are starting to take over the internet. In fact, YouTube has become the world’s second largest search engine.

Around 55 percent of a Google searches have at least one video pop up. However, there are a lot of people who will skip Google or another search engine altogether and go right to YouTube.

What’s really great about using videos to help your search ranking is that almost no one is doing it yet. Most marketers don’t want to take the time to upload videos to YouTube. If you start optimizing your content this way, it will be relatively simple to get your videos seen and bring traffic to your website.

Don’t Forget About Links

Link building is hardly new to the world of SEO but in 2019 it is still going to be a part of the SEO best practices 2019. Without quality backlinks, you will never make it to the first page of any search engine.

A backlink is simply an outside website linking back to yours. You want to make sure it has a good domain authority, the better the DA is the more the link is worth to you.

These links are so important because this is how the algorithms figure out if your content is good and trustworthy. If no one is linking to your information, then the crawlers assume that your content or website is not reliable.

There is a direct correlation between having quality links and the amount of traffic your website will get.

Good, Long Form Content

Content is king.

In 2019 this will be even more so. The way people engage with your content will play an even bigger role in your SEO rankings. The algorithms are not looking not only at length of the content but its quality and context as well.

Keyword stuffing isn’t going to skyrocket you to the top of the rankings anymore. You need Quality longe form content that helps the reader in some way. The more in-depth your page can get the better it will be for your SEO.

You want to make sure that the reader has no reason to go anywhere else but your website, this ties back into RankBrain. To be able to cover everything that needs to be covered we suggest you publish content that’s 1,500 – 2,000 words.

Long-form content has proven to do better in search rankings than having shorter, even if you have more of the shorter content.

Know your target market and keep them in mind while curating the content. Who you are aiming to attract will affect the type of content you publish. Also, keep an eye out for user-driven content, this can help you understand what people are looking to read. That way you can create high ranking content easier.

Use SEO Best Practices 2019

The SEO best practices 2019 aren’t hard to implement but they will make a big difference in your visibility.

Remember content is king, and make sure your website is user-friendly. No one wants to with forever for a page to load, and forever in internet time is 3 seconds.

The search engines are tweaking their algorithms to be more in tune with what people actually want to see. So as a rule of thumb, keep your users happy.

If you have any other questions or need more specific advice contact us. We’re more than happy to help.

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Lasting Impressions: 10 Hot Web Design Trends That Will Carry into 2019

What’s the strongest asset your business can have?

Some would argue a healthy company culture, while others would think proper funding and budgeting is key. Another answer that may come up is an impressive, well-optimized website.

Having a fully-functioning website that performs well on search is critical to your company’s success. This is how most customers discover you and it’s what many potential and current users alike use to learn more about your business.

You can’t afford to rush the web design process or create something subpar. You should be doing everything in your power to build an interesting website and make it easy for people to find.

This isn’t as complicated as you might think – and it’s actually pretty simple to do if you understand current web design trends. The following is an in-depth look at the top 10 design trends expected to dominate the internet in 2019.

1. Flat Design

Flat design is all about maintaining a site’s speed and mobile responsiveness without compromising its search performance or the overall user experience. It aims to create clean, engaging visuals while also boosting a site’s optimization performance.

This has become the go-to method for many web designers as the value of mobile-first design has increased. It can only be expected for flat design to continue growing in popularity as mobile search continues to gain popularity.

2. Asymmetrical Elements

Whether a website is displayed on a desktop or a smartphone, it has to be interesting. The use of asymmetrical elements allows designers to keep users on their toes and reel them in from the second they arrive on a landing page.

This is because it’s different than what most people expect. Asymmetrical elements aim to create texture on the screen and divide a page in untraditional ways. They focus on diagonal lines and abstract elements rather than playing it safe with centered, perfectly parallel images.

3. Natural Shapes

Natural shapes and asymmetrical elements go hand in hand. A natural shape is anything that is imperfect by nature; it’s not made of perfect lines and curves but rather a combination of different things to create something that users consider natural.

“Natural” in this sense doesn’t just refer to things found in the earth’s environment like trees, animals, and water. It can also apply to machines and tools. Basically, any shape that outlines a thing or object that people can recognize is a natural shape.

These can be used on homepages and throughout a website to create a more compelling and informative design.

4. Icon Libraries

The key to using natural shapes is to make them the main piece of content on a landing page. They’re meant to be big and kind of “in your face.”

When they’re small and simple, they’re best used as supporting details. One of the best design opportunities to use natural shapes as supporting details is with the creation of an icon library.

Instead of just listing your products/services, create a symbol that represents each of the things you do. Then, use this to represent your product and write a little blurb about it underneath the icon. This is the modern, innovative way to tell users a little more about what you do. It’s sure to catch their eye and create a higher level of interest as they browse through your website.

5. Micro-Animations

Up next on the list of hot web design trends are micro-animations. Think of the heart that pops up on the screen when you like an Instagram post or the way that Gmail’s mail icon loads as the screen is loading.

These are just a few of the many micro-animations you interact with every day. They keep you engaged while the screen is performing an action that you just commanded it to do. They make your user experience feel much more personal and memorable.

If you want to keep users coming back or figure out a more convincing way to make them opt-in, it’s time you start using micro-animations on your website.

6. Moving Backgrounds

There are micro-animations and then there are moving elements that take up an entire screen. Such is the case with moving backgrounds. These are basically videos that are being used to set the stage for a landing page.

Moving backgrounds are replacing single colors and flat images. They’re meant to tell a story from the second that a user lands on a page. These can be used to display all kinds of things including a company’s day to day operations, the way they source their materials, and even the customer experience when using a company’s product or services.

Either way, the point of a moving background is to share a piece of your company’s story. Whatever it is that you choose to share, make sure it’s easy to understand and that the video is short and sweet. As much as you want to get a user’s attention, you still want them to explore other aspects of your website beyond the moving background.

7. Bright Colors

This is a long-time favorite in web design, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. There’s something about bright colors that gets people excited. The use of bold elements is a fun way to express your company’s personality and to make sure you stand out amongst competitors, too.

It shows confidence, the ability to push boundaries, and the willingness to go against the grain. Such qualities are respected by consumers in all industries.

Plus, the use of bright colors can make a user’s experience more entertaining. This is especially helpful if you operate in a “dry” industry like legal services or insurance. Putting bright colors on your website will help users feel better as they research topics that are unfamiliar to them or that they find intimidating.

Be careful to not overdo the use of this web design tool, though.

8. Bold Type

Bold type and bright colors can either blend beautifully or they can be a total disaster. The trick is to find a combination of the two that is elegant and timeless.

Or, you might decide to take a bold approach with one and be more simple with the other. As far as bold type goes, the most important thing to keep in mind is that it still has to be legible. Try to stick to fonts that are made with crisp lines. Typically, the more freehanded and abstract a font gets, the harder it is to read.

9. Chatbots

Another web design trend that’s sure to dominate in 2019 is the use of chatbots. These are one of the newer trending elements, and arguably, one the more effective tools.

Chatbots completely transform your customer service. They help you better connect with users and resolve their issues in a faster, more efficient manner – and that’s just scratching the surface!

Chatbots can also help boost conversions and increase brand loyalty. They show users that you’re approachable and more importantly, that you care about their experience. You can also use chatbots for market research and as a marketing tool.

10. Minimalist Design

Last but not least, minimalist design.

Minimalist design refers to the use of a lot of white space and simple elements. It’s not meant to be in your face or over the top. But, it’s definitely made to impress.

The key to succeeding with a minimalist design is to create a beautiful, memorable website with as little different elements as possible. Every landing page should be simple and to the point, yet somehow have a “wow” factor to it.

Some of the best things that make a minimalist design pop are:

bright colors
asymmetrical layouts
icon libraries

Websites with a minimalist design may also incorporate micro-animations or use icon libraries. Some might even do all of this on a single page – another web design trend that’s gaining momentum as we head into 2019.

Master the Top Web Design Trends of 2019 Today

Why wait until 2019 to upgrade your website? The sooner you start putting these web design trends to use, the faster your website will begin to show better results.

Be careful not to use these design tools at random, though.

You still need to think strategically and plan everything out before you start making changes to your website. This will result in the best-looking, most put-together website possible. It means what you create now has the best chance of creating long-term success for your business.

For help turning all your web design ideas into impressive, high-performing results, click here.

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How to Find Buyers: The Ultimate PPC Cheat Sheet

Organic traffic isn’t the only way to improve conversions.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to compete for organic ranking with larger industry and local leaders. If you can’t crack the first page, mainly the top three, then you’re not getting much organic search traffic.

Fortunately, you’ve got options. Take a few minutes and read through our pay-per-click (PPC) guide to discover how to attract your share of buyers.

You’ll find answers to these questions:

What is PPC advertising?
What are some common PPC terms?
Which sites offer PPC advertising?
What are search and display ads?
What is keyword research?
How do you use match types?
What is targeting?
What is PPC ad copy?
What is conversion rate optimization?
What is off-site remarketing and on-site retargeting?
Where can you find help?

What Is PPC?

Pay-per-click advertising is a highly-effective tool that attracts better-converting traffic to predetermined landing pages. PPC works best combined with conversion rate optimization (CRO) and strong copywriting skills.

PPC advertising involves keyword research and lead-targeting to generate search and display ads that deliver qualified traffic. A landing page, specially designed for these leads, finishes the job.

PPC advertising differs from more traditional advertising: there’s no cost for impressions. You only pay when views lead to a click.

Successful PPC campaigns:

Attract new customers
Contribute to the sales funnel
Improve conversion rates
Grow brand awareness

PPC Guide Common Terms

Some terms you should become familiar with include:

AdWords: Google’s free PPC campaign tool.
Bid: the amount that you’re willing to pay for a click from specific keywords or phrases.
Cost per click (CPC): Google calculates CPC using your bid and other factors like competition and landing-page quality. It’s the price you pay when searchers click your ad. It won’t exceed your bid.
Click through rate (CTR): the percentage of all viewers that click your ad.
Conversion Rate: describes the percentage of viewers that clicked your ad and also completed a predetermined action on your page. For example, making a purchase, downloading a white paper or completing a form.
Display network: a collection of over 2 million Google-trusted sites that host display ads.

Sites That Offer PPC

Google is the big dog when it comes to PPC, but other sites provide options, too.

Bing supports PPC advertising and includes Microsoft and Yahoo! sites in its advertising network. Even social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have PPC capabilities.

What Are The Two Main Types Of PPC Advertising?

There are two types of PPC advertising. You should familiarize yourself with both.

They are:

Search advertising
Display network advertising

Search Advertising

Search advertising targets users who enter specific search terms and fit a defined geographic and demographic profile.

For example, a Ford dealership in Tampa would be very interested in searches that include the words new Mustang Tampa. They’d also be interested in searches for 2018 Mustang MSRP if the searcher is within their area.

Search advertising allows a merchant to present predetermined, customized ads for different search possibilities. The ads lead to landing pages specifically designed to convert clicks into customers or leads.

Search ads typically look like organic search results at the top and bottom of the SERP. They have a small tag that identifies them as ads. You can create ads with extensions such as:

Call buttons
Additional page links
Extra text
Location information

Call buttons and location information are excellent tools for local businesses, particularly in the service sectors.

Search advertising results vary by industry, but, on average, produce a two or three percent CTR. When combined with a landing page that converts at least 10 percent of traffic, search ads become an impactful way to drive qualified leads into your sales funnel.

Display Ads And The Display Network

Google’s display network includes over 2 million trusted websites that reach approximately 90 percent of internet users. It includes sites like:

Gmail
Blogger
Google Finance
YouTube

Display ads allow you to reach potential buyers browsing relevant websites, whose profiles indicate that they’re within the buying journey.

Their CTR is lower than search ads, as is their cost. They aren’t as effective as search ads in conversion but hold a high value due to their ability to:

Grow brand awareness
Retarget traffic that has bounced off your page
Provide leads for the top of your sales funnel

Just like search ads, display ads won’t cost anything unless a viewer clicks and visits your landing page.

Keyword Research

Some things never change. Keyword research is still the heart and soul of a robust AdWords or PPC campaign. Keyword research is critical as it impacts:

Cost per click (CPC). If you cast a net too widely, your ad budget depletes with undesirable clicks.
Conversion Rate. Keyword research allows you to target high-converting leads while excluding searches that have a lower likelihood of conversion, helping to minimize bounce rate and remarketing costs.

The goal of any campaign is to maximize conversions while keeping the CPC low. Keyword research is one of the most powerful tools available for this purpose. The major PPC platforms include a keyword research tool.

For example, Google’s AdWords includes a Keyword Planner that provides detailed information about any search term including search volume, competition, cost factors and related keywords.

What Are Match Types And How Do You Use Them?

This is important. When bidding on keywords or phrases, you can select a match type. There are four, and they can drastically impact your performance.

Broad Match

This is the default match type, but be careful. Using broad match casts the largest net; triggering your ad for searches that include misspellings and similar words. Synonyms come into play and context of the search isn’t considered. You’ll attract more traffic with broad match, but your conversion rate will likely be low.

Modified Broad Match

Modifiers give better control by limiting Google’s ability to include searches that it deems to be relevant. Adding a plus sign in front of a keyword tells Google to trigger your ad for that specific word and its close variants, but not synonyms or relevant terms.

As an example, if your broad match keyword terms are transmission repair shop, your ad may trigger when a searcher enters automotive body shop. If this does not fit your advertising strategy, change your match type to modified broad match and place a plus sign in front of keywords: +transmission +repair shop.

With this match type, searches for automotive body shop or similar queries won’t trigger your ad. Google will only display your ad if the words transmission and repair, including their plural forms and common misspellings, are searched.

Modified broad match is a good place to start. It allows you to focus efforts on your business’s specific services while reducing low-converting clicks.

Phrase Match

Phrase match respects word order but allows for additional terms.

An ad mapped to the keywords transmission repair shop triggers when a user searches that exact phrase, but it also triggers if a searcher includes more information, such as transmission repair shop in Clearwater.

Be careful with phrase match. In this example, a searcher who enters transmission repair in Clearwater will not see your ad. Using phrase match with long-tailed keywords is a great way to target buyers in the latter stages of the buyer journey, but don’t make the phrases too long or complicated.

Exact Match

Exact match is very restrictive. Your ad only triggers if the search matches your keyword or phrase exactly, and includes no other words.

Use trial and error to determine the best keywords and match types to use with your campaigns. Become familiar with negative keywords to further refine your keyword groups.

Targeting: PPC Sharpshooting

There’s plenty of fish in the sea, but not all fish are equal. Targeting is a vital and valuable PPC skill.

Not only can you tell Google which types of search queries should trigger your ad, you can also include specific geographic, demographic and chronological parameters. It’s especially helpful for local businesses wanting to zero in on ideal customers.

A searcher that is 100 miles away is less likely to choose your business for their catering needs as one that is 5 miles up the road.
You wouldn’t want your ad clicked by a searcher looking for a tow truck at 3 a.m. if your service day ends at 5 p.m.

Effective targeting delivers better-qualified leads and reduces the risk that a bad lead clicks your ad.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

It takes two to tango. Ineffective landing pages can derail even the best PPC campaigns.

Skilled PPC advertisers play a game of trial and error. Simple copy decisions, like whether to include the price, can have a sizeable effect on your conversion rate. If you’re confident that your PPC strategy is strong, take the time to analyze and adjust your landing page to increase your conversion rate.

CRO is the process of evaluating and optimizing your landing page to be most effective with your PPC strategy.

Off-Site Remarketing

With, on average, 90 percent of clicks leaving your page without converting, it’s a good idea to have a backup plan.

Off-site remarketing involves tracking your unconverted leads through the display network in an attempt to bring them back to your site. It’s a second-chance tactic that allows you to employ a different approach to regain the visitor and close the sale.

Remarketing is a powerful way to add a few percentage points to your conversion rate.

On-Site Retargeting

Ever move your cursor to close a webpage and notice a large popup appear? That’s on-site retargeting. Though not an inherent part of PPC, it’s a key component to improved conversions.

Using exit-intent technology, your page notices when a visitor is about to leave and employs a last-ditch effort to get a conversion.

Ad Copy

Don’t forget; this is still marketing. Merely putting your ad in front of the right eyes isn’t enough. There is limited character space to work with, especially in a search ad. Follow these best practices:

Identify your goals by starting with your call to action (CTA)
Research your competitor’s strategy and improve it
Determine and state why your product or service is unique
Create urgency
Make sure your copy is relevant to the search

Ask For Help

Digital Neighbor believes every business should know how to help themselves in today’s digital marketing world. This PPC guide should get you off on the right foot.

To tackle PPC advertising, practice:

Keyword research
Incrementally lowering CPC
Targeting
Copywriting
A/B testing
Analyzing data

Many businesses choose an external PPC specialist to start, so they can learn the ropes with professionals who create winning strategies. Others don’t have the time to manage the process themselves. We can help.

Whatever your situation, contact us to discuss PPC strategies today.

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7 Ways Link Building Will Supercharge Your SEO: How to Hyperlink

Link building is an important method of building organic traffic to your site. It’s not difficult to learn how to hyperlink for link building though. All it takes is some effort and research. It also takes time and some planning to do it right. Most brands will hire an external agency to handle it. Large brands also have in-house teams to handle SEO. Here are some reasons why link building is great and how to do it!

1. More Traffic To Your Blog

First of all, one of the advantages of link building is to drive more traffic to your website. You can publish as a guest author for another blog, or exchange links. You will notice that in the long run, this will bring more people to your blog.

Exchanging links is a simple matter. All you have to do is contact the author of the blog you’re interested in. You can also contact the editor of the blog or news site. Make your intentions clear, straightforward. Don’t forget to emphasize that the benefits will be mutual. He won’t see it as you taking advantage of his work. If you do it right, both of you will benefit through this transaction.

The more inbound links you have to your blog, the more authority you will have in Google’s eyes. If a lot of blogs are linking to you, it’s a sign of popularity. This will help skyrocket your search rankings if the backlinks are good quality.

2. Higher SEO Rankings On Search Engines

Another advantage of link building is to increase your search ranking. If your site has a lot of inbound links from other sites, this is something Google will look forward to. Especially if the blogs that are linking you have a good page rank.
It is worth taking the trouble to build these kinds of links. In the long run, it can make a difference to your competition.

3. Increase The Informative Nature Of Your Blog

In this blog, I have said several times that to make money on the internet, you need to create a community. Moreover, to do that, you have to provide much information. To increase the knowledge you offer your readers. It’s important to link to other sites, where your followers can find more information.

Usually, they are sites that most of them don’t know about, and you will show them the route by linking to them. They’ll thank you.

4. Increase The Credibility Of Your Blog

Link building also increases the reliability of your website. For your visitors, seeing links to other blogs that link to you means you’re legit. It means your blog is a reliable source of information. A website that’s found beyond the third page of Google isn’t a good choice to use. Instead, people trust results that are within the first page of Google

5. Establishing Connections In Your Community

By building links to other blogs, you can increase the number of people you reach. This by itself is a form of permanent, continuous advertising. It allows you to reach thousands of people you would not otherwise have been able to.

Also, by connecting with thousands of people in your niche, you can become an expert they trust. This will bring you more traffic, and that traffic can become subscribers.

6. Optimize The User Experience

The main goal of a content marketing strategy is to deliver valuable content. Optimize the content you generate for your target audience. Focus on information that is high quality and relevant. Your users should be able to digest the information you share. The better the user experience, the more likely your readers will come back.

7. They Generate Links Within Your Industry

When you link to another site, people can track the link. This is an excellent way to generate links with brands that have authority in their blogs. When you do something nice, people will often reciprocate. Once you start getting more links, it creates a snowball effect.

How To Build Links?

The best way to create links is to create content of the highest quality and novelty. That way, the content will be beneficial and will be in high demand within your industry. You want your content to be shared without you having to ask. Content should naturally be shared within your industry circles.

To help spread your content, you have to be active in all kinds of communities, forums, and social networks. You also have to look at internal and external links.
Internal links are personal links that we place within our own content. We share part of our link juice from the article to the other article. To do so, they must be relevant to each other. External links are those that we receive from other blogs that link to our posts in their content. These are very important because they legitimize our link authority. Be sure to have a strong balance of internal and external links.

Well-developed content, with valuable information and links, is more share-worthy. This helps boost brand recognition and SEO. To enjoy the benefits of link building, here are some things to take note of:

Diversity: try not to let all the links come from the same domain. There should be a practice of variety on the websites you link to your company’s site.
Quality: it is preferable to have a few links, but they are worth it. Google will detect if your website links to poor sites regarding content.
Quantity: in this case, the more links you have, the better for your company’s site. Remember that the quality of these should be your priority when doing link building.

How to Hyperlink For SEO

The color blue works as a reliable visual reference that shows the user that the text is a link. If all the text is the same color, it’s complicated for the user to identify the links. Throw some variations into the text so that links stand out.
Do not put all characters in upper or lower case: mixed links are more analyzable, and users are more used to them. This is applicable for headlines. Links in the body of the text can be all lower case.
Don’t use generic messages. Commands like “read on” or “click here” are too obvious. Users identify and understand links, so there is no need to ask them to click on them. It’s better to provide value and link to a piece of interesting fact.
Do not put images that look like buttons if they are not clickable. Users will try to click on them as soon as they see an image that resembles a button. The worst thing you could have is a button that doesn’t work.
Do not use invented compound words. Jargon is never a good idea for SEO and link building. Try to avoid creating compound words on your own. Users will not be curious and it might drive them away from your site. This can harm your SEO ranking and your link building campaign.
Do not link to the same word more than once. It’s better to differentiate your anchor text in one article. You don’t want to have any repeats because it can be confusing for readers.
Open links on the same window if it’s a logical next step. Do not have it open to a new browser unless it’s a separate topic. When a new window opens, users could feel confusion. Instead, be sure to lead them in a logical flow.
If you have a document or PDF that opens from a link, open it to a new window. The last thing you want is a reader losing their place through a link. Make sure that these documents are able to open up on a new tab.
Adding hover or highlight effects to links is a good thing. It can act as a way for readers to know where they should click.
State when a link leads to a different website. Users assume that all links will take them to a separate page on the same website. Be sure to reference the source in your text.
Do not link to a company name unless they’re well-known. The company name adds unnecessary complexity to the anchor text. Unless the brand is a household name, link to the information instead of the source.
Do not create an anchor text longer than ten words. You don’t need to hyperlink a long sentence. It actually looks less inviting. Choose a short phrase of 2 to 4 words and that should perform better.
Start with keywords. Respecting this rule makes the link text more concise.

Link Building Shouldn’t Have To Be Difficult

Your company and brand deserve a strong SEO strategy. SEO needs to be well-thought out. A link-building campaign can be the catalyst for your online visibility. Instead of approaching this in the dark, hire some help.

Our team can help get you set up with a SEO and link-building campaign that will get results.

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