Fanatically Digital

Author: steve

  • Top Social Media Trends of 2017 & How They Impact Your Marketing Strategy

    If you thought social media wasn’t relevant to your marketing or advertising campaign, think again. The social media trends of 2017 have had a massive impact on advertising and marketing strategies.

    The world now uses social media in every aspect of their lives. Facebook has 2 billion monthly users. YouTube is not far behind with 1.5 billion monthly users and WhatsApp has 1.2 billion monthly users as of February 2017.

    Social media marketing is not going anywhere and it’s become even more relevant for marketers and businesses to stay on top of social media trends if they want to continue to scale and increase their customer base.

    Social Media Trends of 2017

    Half of creating and executing an effective marketing plan is staying on top of social media trends. With social media changing rapidly over the years, it can be extremely difficult to stay on top of all the relevant platforms and social media tools.

    The social media trends of 2017 are no different. In 2016, written content such as blogs and tweets were all the rage; this year it’s video content. Some of the other social media trends of 2017 are social messaging (including Chatbots) and influencer marketing.

    I’m going to briefly go over each one of these very important social media trends, as they are sure to be just as relevant in 2018.

    Video Content

    Authenticity is the name of the game when it comes to social media marketing. As a result, consumers have become jaded with the usual static ads.

    Because of this competitiveness, consumers are now searching for something different; they want to know and buy from the person behind the product or as commonly known to marketers, they want to connect with the brand.

    Nearly every social media platform around now has an option for users to create, share and connect using video.

    Video options on Facebook and Instagram have rapidly proliferated during 2017. On Facebook, you now have Facebook Live which allows marketers and brands to live stream directly to their followers.

    This has led people to consume media in a different way. According to this infographic, 80% of people would rather watch a live video than read a blog.

    Not only is it important for brands to create a video in order to connect with their consumers, they also have to invest in quality production and quality content. 67% of viewers say that quality is the most important factor when viewing a video.

    And on top of that other social media platforms have various other ways for you to reach people via video. Instagram has rolled out a live streaming feature and has an option to upload video to your profile picture commonly known as an Instagram story. YouTube has launched a cable package called YouTube TV.

    Not surprisingly, YouTube is set to surpass the viewership that television has.

    Facebook live, Instagram stories, Snapchat, and YouTube has ushered in a new craze for video. The use of video is the new and improved type of content that’s a must-have for any marketing or advertising strategy. Utilizing video content is definitely one of the biggest social media trends of 2017.

    Social Messaging

    Reaching consumers through their email inboxes used to be the best way to build a relationship with them. Now, since email marketing has become so crowded with other marketers, it’s become more difficult to reach people via their inboxes.

    Text messaging or using messenger apps are now the preferred way for millennials to communicate with one another. Millennials are now the largest generation alive in America today so it’s important to follow the trends of these consumers.

    Believe it or not, 9 out of 10 consumers want the ability to communicate with brands via text messaging. However, less than half of consumers have the ability to fulfill this need.

    Utilizing new tools such as Chatbots on Facebook can help your business stay ahead of the curve. Chatbots is an automated conversation that can help you build a relationship with potential consumers without having to actually speak to each one individually.

    Chatbots can allow you to get in front of consumers very easily because it allows you to find your customers right where they’re at; in their phones! Social messaging is definitely another hot social media trend of 2017 that’s not going away anytime soon.

    Influencer Marketing

    Influencer marketing is hot right now and is likely here to stay. What exactly is influencer marketing? According to Forbes, influencer marketing is a non-promotional approach to marketing where brands pay influencers who have large social media followings that consist of the brand’s ideal clients to give their opinion on the brand’s products or services.

    In this way, the brand is promoting their products and/or services in an indirect way which is more effective because the consumers already like, know and trust the influencer reviewing their products which makes the consumers more likely to purchase.

    The Best Way to Stay on Top of the Social Media Trends of 2017

    It is extremely difficult for businesses to stay on top of all the new emerging, yet relevant social media trends. However, it is crucial to know what your consumers are doing and what’s relevant to them in order to keep your business revenue increasing.

    Hiring a specialized team to help you strategize and implement those strategies is crucial to the success of executing your marketing and advertising goals.

    Here at Fanatically Digital, we specialize in content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. We’re experts in creating the type of relevant content that’s going to make your consumers love your brand whether that be in the form of videos, whitepapers, or simple blog posts.

    Our content marketing plan will help target your ideal client and ideas, strategies and tactics to reach and engage them. Read more about our services here and make sure to contact us to learn more about how we can put together a comprehensive plan for your business.

  • 7 Great SEO Solutions to Boost Sales for Businesses

    Do you want to boost sales for your business? With the right SEO solutions, you can increase your site’s visibility in Google, generate leads and win more customers.

    But SEO can be intimidating to a business owner. When you’ve already got plenty on your plate, you might not know where to start when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines.

    In this in-depth post, we’ll dive into what SEO actually means and how you can use it to boost business. Keep reading to learn our best SEO solutions.

    What Is SEO?

    You’ve likely heard the acronym before. It stands for search engine optimization, which is a digital marketing tactic to increase the visibility of a website in a web search engine’s unpaid results. Basically, it’s a way of attracting customers to your website on the Internet.

    By implementing SEO solutions for your website, you’re working to increase your traffic through organic search engine results. Doing this the right way increases both the quality and quantity of traffic your website receives.

    Acquiring quality traffic means that people are coming to your site because you offer what they’re looking for. When you have the right people coming to your site, you’ll definitely want to increase the quantity of that traffic. That’s where organic traffic – meaning traffic that you don’t have to pay for – comes into play.

    SEO Solutions to Boost Sales

    If you don’t know where to start, here are 7 SEO solutions to implement into your strategy.

    1. User Experience

    The best place to start with SEO is to optimize your website for a friendly user experience. Search engines determine your site’s ranking by your website architecture, meaning how easy it is to navigate your site and how long it takes the site to load. URL structure and page coding are the biggest things the search engines look for.

    If your site is laid out well, users will have a better experience and stay on it longer. Search engines take into account how quickly visitors leave your site or how often they take action on your site. When users can’t easily find what they’re looking for, they’ll be quick to leave.

    Ideally, your site should point users to take action. Direct them to make an online purchase, send you an email or visit other pages on your site.

    2. Keyword Research

    The way you attract the right audience to your website is by using the right keywords that they will be searching for. What words and phrases that customers type into Google or Bing’s search box are called keywords and keyword phrases. To rank higher in the search engines, you need to incorporate the keywords into your web content and site tags.

    It’s important to understand your customers’ needs to find the right keywords. You’ll always need to research what keywords your competition ranks for. Use a free tool like Google Keyword Planner to perform keyword research.

    When incorporating keywords into your website, you must do it wisely and naturally. The search engines know when they’re being tricked, and will rank your site accordingly. Use keywords in places where they make sense, and incorporate them into our photo tags, page titles, headers and written content.

    3. Content Marketing

    Providing excellent content is one of the best SEO solutions to boost business. The right content drives customers to make a purchase, visit a landing page and enter their email address.

    Your web content covers everything from testimonials and blog posts to videos and photos. The text and images should be appealing and attractive, describing in clear detail what your business is about. Make your content relevant to your target audience to make your site more discoverable by search engines.

    4. Link Building

    An SEO solution to gaining more organic traffic to your site is to have other influential sites linking back to yours. This helps you gain publicity and drive traffic to your site.

    Start by sharing links to your website on your social media channels. Use your site links in your marketing emails as well. Reach out to other website owners to include links to your website where it is relevant.

    5. Publicity

    Generate traffic to your website by gaining publicity and awareness for your business. Do this by getting bloggers and other online influencers to talk about your product or service. They will ultimately provide authoritative backlinks that drive users to your site.

    6. Social Media Promotion

    If you use social media correctly, you can drive more quality traffic to your website. With more people clicking links to your site from social media, search engines will be able to index your site pages quicker.

    Include all of your company’s details – name, address, phone number, hours of operation – on your social media channels. This signals to the search engines that the contact information on your website and social media sites are a legitimate match, giving you a boost in rankings.

    7. Analytics

    Check your website analytics often to measure the results of your SEO solutions. Google Analytics will help you see where your traffic is coming from and how users are interacting with the content on your site. This tool can help you see if people are using your keywords and keyword phrases to find your site.

    Through Google Analytics, you can also see how many people are finding your site through Facebook, Pinterest or other social platforms. The reports also show you how much time people are spending on your site. This valuable information can help you adjust your SEO tactics to fit your target audience.

    Implementing SEO Solutions

    SEO is a great way to generate leads and boost sales in business. With these 7 SEO solutions, you’ll have an effective strategy in place to gain more organic traffic to your business’s website.

    If the process still seems overwhelming or you simply don’t have the time to do it, check out our SEO services.

    Contact us today to learn how we can help you increase your online presence while you tend to your strengths within your business.

  • Business to Business Sales & Website Strategy

    We all like to think that we, or at least our functions, are critical to the success of our company. In fact, our roles should be, or the roles should not exist. The question many companies face is one of emphasis; where do we put our budgets.

    Companies that have a long history of direct or premise sales teams often put a great deal of weight on the impact of an independent sales department. And in many industries, that is still valid. The question the companies need to answer for digital marketing, first and foremost, is what role the website plays in the overall sales strategy?

    Understanding the role of the website is pivotal to developing the site’s strategy and how you engage in SEO and digital advertising.

    Websites and the sales process

    Websites As Sales Support

    When sales departments focus on networking, cold calling and relationship development, they develop prospect lists the old fashion way. They are pounding the pavement, hitting the phones, and shaking hands.

    The role of the website tends to be in support of the sales efforts. It often becomes the repository of product information, technical specs, and event presentations. It is a place that salespeople can direct prospects to for more information and even walk them through materials. The material is not gated (no email or form submission required), it is made to be easily accessible.

    This type of site can help with SEO, but the intent is not lead generation. The purpose of the site it to help salespeople close business. The site content is written in a way to help buyers understand the product more deeply, understand the company better, and move forward in the sales process. Writing content for this type of user is quite different than writing content for people just entering the market.

    Websites as Lead Generators

    Even for heavy industry clients, websites are becoming a source of valuable leads. By using tools like Pardot or Adobe Marketing Cloud, companies can set up their websites to quantify and qualify lead quality. When the prospect submits her information or request for more information from the company, good lead scoring schemas can help prioritize and direct the lead to give it the appropriate attention.

    When writing content for a site intended for lead generation, then you are writing for people toward the top of the purchase funnel. The content is often less about the details of a product than about the applications of it, categorical content, and attributes that may be searched for by potential buyers.  This is a very different way to approach website content.

    Often, lead generation sites will gate some content. When this is done, companies have to be sure that the content is truly valuable to the buyer. The last thing you want to do is frustrate a person by wasting their time before you even have a chance to speak with them.

    Content for Both Lead Gen SEO  & Sales Support

    With the basic premise of marketing being that you know your audience and cater your message accordingly, you can develop parts of your site for sales support as well as lead generation. Before the time is invested (and money), to cover the spectrum, be sure of two things:

    1. That the sales organization will support and use the tools. Creating a sales support site to which salespeople don’t direct prospects is clearly a waste of resources. The same goes for leads that the sales team does not take seriously. Make sure you have buy-in, particularly if you have a strong cultural leaning one way or the other.
    2. Develop and write for the sections of your site specifically for the target group. Slapping a submit form on a page does not make it a lead gen page. Be sure content, structure, and functions are geared to the audience for whom the section of the site is intended.

    Once you have acceptance from the sales team for your strategy – sales support, lead gen, or both – you can start your website project. Keep the sales team involved as you do this. Salespeople are notoriously focused on the next opportunity. If you are out of site, you will soon be out of mind and you will risk losing their support. Find opportunities to involve them at various points in the process; keep them engaged.

    By determining your website strategy upfront and getting buy-in from the sales team, you’ll find it is easier to develop content and prioritize your SEO strategy and tactics.

  • Top 6 SEO Things To Discuss with WordPress Developers For A New Site

    WordPress is a great CMS. But, if it is not setup properly, there can be a lot of SEO “fixes” that agencies have to do in order to get programs started. By talking with the developers well before they start customizing and developing, you will end up with a site that looks great and is SEO friendly.

    Creating Websites

    It helps to understand that good website creation is a multi-disciplinary project. There are four primary areas of responsibility.

    Business owners, these are not necessarily the legal owners of the company, but the people who are charged with understanding the objectives of the site and the target markets.

    Designers are creative and user experience (UX) specialists who ensure the site looks good, key functions are accessible, and it is easy to navigate.

    Developers are a crucial component from a technical perspective; they do your coding and make sure the site works.

    And SEO is a fourth specialty needed to ensure the site can index properly in search engines.

    One of the strengths and simultaneous weaknesses of WordPress is that it is easy to launch a site without having any of these expertise. With the myriad of templates, novices can launch a halfway decent looking site without knowing anything about design, development, or SEO. But, therein lies the problem.

    If you are launching a website that is intended for more than just a couple hundred visits a month, at the very least, you will want to get a developer who specializes in WordPress. They can ensure your site is setup to scale with the proper plugins and customizations. If you don’t do this, your site may look okay, but it will slow down and some functionality may stop if there is too much traffic. The developers however, may need to be reminded about SEO functionality as you work with them.

    SEO Issues in WordPress

    One of the first things to understand about SEO is that it is not static. A given page will be edited over time (maybe over short or long periods, but it will change). So, when your developer tells you they’ll “SEO the site” when they are developing, don’t stop there. The site must be developed in such a way that you can edit the key SEO areas easily.

    In our experience there are six areas that are frequently overlooked when developing for SEO. Talk with your developer before they start work and be sure they cover the following:

    Title tags

    Title tags provide the content that the search engines typically show on the first line of the search results. It is also the first level of content indicators for the search engines. What you put in the title tells the search engines the subject matter of the page. All things flow from this.

    Meta Descriptions

    This is a block of text that the search engines usually display in the search results right below the title and URL. While the search engines don’t use this for ranking, it is your “sales” message to the searchers… why they should click on the SERP for your page.

    We cover more about the SEO of these areas here. These are really your first pitch (and perhaps only pitch) to prospects using Google, Bing, Yahoo! or other engines. You will find yourself changing the Meta Description and Title to increase clicks, experimenting with different messages and calls to action.

    If you don’t designate these tags, the engines will populate the SERPs dynamically, giving you no control. Our favorite plugin for this part of SEO is Yoast. Have your developer install the plugin.

    H1 Tags

    This is a big one. The H1 tag, like the title tag, provides another indicator to the search engines as to the subject matter they should expect. For many WP templates, the Page Name is pulled into the page and make the H1 tag. We like this.

    Here is Where H1 Tags Go Wrong.

    We see sites with no H1 tags and we see sites with multiple H1 tags on a page. There should be only one (1) H1 tag per page.

    No H1 tag and you miss an opportunity. More than one, and you confuse the content indicators.

    When developers create or edit templates, they either don’t pull in the Page Name as an H1 (they’ll use “Strong” or custom CSS), or they use H1 in the template in multiple places. Sometimes the default style of the H1 looks good as a section title, so they use it there.

    Have your developer use the H1 tag only once on a page and implement in a way that you can easily edit it. The Page Name is a good field to use for editing this.

    Image Alt Attributes

    Images are a great way to enhance the content on your web pages. But, search engines are not great at determining the content of images. So, each image tag has an “alt” attribute. This is simply a description of what is in the image. It is a great way to provide more signals to the search engines about the subject matter on the page and to improve image search results.

    When customizing WordPress, developers often forget to pull in the alt attribute that is entered when you first upload an image to the media library. Be sure images that are programmatically set have the alt attribute as well. (For images that you add manually, you can add the alt attribute to the tag.)

    Navigation Menus

    WordPress has a great menu functionality built into it. It provides the ability to create and edit multiple menus, changing anchor text, links, ordering, and menu placement on the site. When you work with a developer, you may unwittingly request functionality that causes them to bypass the native menu functionality in WordPress. Be sure you will always have control of the menus.

    XML Sitemaps

    Sitemaps are lists of the pages on your site. They also have other information about relative page priority, update frequency, and other metadata. This is a good way to keep search engines up to date on site content.

    WordPress does not automatically create sitemaps. But, the Yoast SEO plugin mentioned above can do this, as well as other plugins. Just be sure that if you have two plugins installed that are capable of creating the XML Sitemap, only one is actually doing so.

    If you work with your developer to ensure you have flexibility to edit these key areas, you will be able to optimize your pages easily and quickly. While not exhaustive, this list provides a good starting point for creating a WordPress site that you can get to index and rank with the search engines.

  • Writing for SEO

    We have long known that search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! have moved beyond the single keyword. Semantic search has been part of the dialogue for quite a while now. But what does that mean for good SEO page content? Well, it means good content got more complicated, yet still logical.

    Google has said, for years, that we should write for the users, not the search engines. At the beginning (15+ years ago), that was difficult. When search engines rewarded keyword stuffing and single-term focused page content, they put good SEO in direct opposition to quality writing. With semantic search, that changed.

    Write Naturally

    When we speak about a topic, we rarely use the same word too repetitively. For most topics there are multiple ways to refer to the subjects, and we tend to pepper our speech with these variations. When writing for almost anything other than SEO, our natural tendency is to also vary the way we reference ideas, items, or people. This same approach is critical for creating content on the web site; it reads better and is better for organic search.

    If you are not sure where to start, think back to how we learned to write papers in grammar school. We started with an outline, and worked our way to an essay or report by working through the elements of the outline. For the search engines, a page on your website is structured in exactly the same way.

    Logical Content Structure

    Every page starts with an overarching topic. This topic can then be divided into subtopics that help explain or elaborate on the overall content theme.

    In school, we created outlines. In HTML structure, we use Title and H tags.

    1. Title:   Only 1. Main theme, content area
    2. <h1>:  Only 1. Different words, same theme as Title
      1. <h2>: sub header
      2. <h2>: sub header
        1. <h3>: sub header
        2. <h3>: sub header
      3. <h2>: sub header
        1. <h3>:sub header
        2. <h3>: sub header
          1. <h4>: sub header

    The html Title and H tags are not something you see as a reader, but you do see the content. These tags “wrap” the content so the search engines can see the structure of your page.

    For each H tag header or subheader, we write content directly related to the topic. A small paragraph can be sufficient, but there should be enough content to make your point.

    What if a single subheader has a lot of content unto itself? This is not uncommon, and usually indicates that you have another theme to explore. In these cases, you write a small bit of content for this page, and link to a new page that elaborates on the sub-topic as it’s main theme.

    As an example, if your content is about employee productivity, many of the subtopics are worthy of their own pages. Worker productivity increases with training or improved morale. Certainly these are proper subtopics to productivity as well as worthy of their own pages.

    So, how much subtopic material should be on this page? This is where your qualitative assessment must come into play. As a reader, if you begin to wonder if the topic is about productivity or about employee morale, then you’ve diluted the primary topic too much with subtopic content. There is no magic formula, so use your judgement or ask others to review the article.

    Creating Quality Content

    You have your outline, and you’ve created decent blocks of content, but you’re not done yet. The search engines are grading your content on several levels, and one of them is quality of writing.

    No one is looking for Pulitzer level writing, but you have to have the basics covered. Google is able to assess spelling and grammar in page content. While we can’t say how much weight is given, and how “wrong” it can be before it’s a problem, Google has indicated that the quality of the writing is part of the overall page assessment.

    Let’s face it, what the search engines are asking from us is that we create relevant content that users can easily consume. Their algorithms are simply now aligning to the goals that they’ve been articulating for the past 15+ years.

  • 10 Successful Google PPC Tips All Digital Marketers Should Know

    Mishandling your digital marketing is a great way to waste money.

    Digital marketing is fast becoming the most important advertising stream. But many businesses still undervalue it or make mistakes in the execution.

    If you’re using Google PPC, you want every advantage over your competitors. That’s why we’ve put together 10 tips for the successful PPC marketer.

    Smart Keywords

    Keywords are still a major player in effective online advertising.

    To make the most of Google PPC, your keywords need to be tailored to your target audience. This ensures maximum traffic to your site while minimizing clicks from uninterested customers.

    Plan your keywords based on trends and previous ad campaigns. You might not be able to zero in your ideal keywords until after a few campaigns. But if you can learn something every time, you’ll be able to laser-focus on the important ones.

    Your keywords might have a lot of overlap with similar terms. Consider whether to use match types to filter out irrelevant clicks. This might result in fewer impressions, but it’s no loss if those impressions would’ve been wasted. Focus on the clicks that matter.

    Negative Keywords

    Negative keywords can be just as important as positives.

    Negative keywords are vital to disambiguate your service from similar options or even brands with similar names. One of the quickest ways to find your negative keywords is to search your keywords.

    You’ll probably receive a lot of results that aren’t relevant to your service. These should form the basis for your negative keywords. Use these to cut down on wasted clicks and maximize your ROI.

    Landing page

    Having a strong landing page is vital to making the most of Google PPC.

    If your ads are landing visitors but you aren’t receiving anything for it, you’re just wasting money. Your landing page needs to be eye-catching, simple, and easy to use.

    Your landing page should be 100% relevant to your keywords. It also needs to be tightly targeted at your audience. You don’t want your landing page to attract the general public. Focus your efforts!

    Think about your landing page layout. Your call to action should be prominent. Your headline should be immediately visible and relevant. Any images you use should be appropriate for your targeted customers.

    Also consider using testimonials and reviews on your landing page. This acts as a trust signifier to your visitors and gives you credibility.

    But don’t obscure your call to action. This is the aspect of your ad campaign that will give you ROI. Give it a prominent place on the page and be specific.

    Attractive CTAs

    If you know what kind of calls to action your competitors are using, you can beat them.

    Offer more attractive CTAs. This could be deeper discounts. Or perhaps a voucher code for subscribing. Use eye-catching figures, like “20% off”. These are easily parsed and trigger the discount-seeking part of the brain. Free trials are also a great way to hook customers.

    Make your call to action simple. If you’re asking for subscribers, only gather the bare minimum information you need. Generally, they should need to make as few clicks as possible to access your service.

    Timed Ads

    Time your ads for your market to catch the most visitors.

    In general, the English-speaking internet is busier in American waking hours. But you’ll want to narrow this down to your target audience where possible.

    If you trade B2B, then 9-5 hours in your country are likely to be the most appropriate. For regular consumers, you’ll need to think about their habits.

    Is your target audience unemployed? In that case, daytime hours could be best. But if they’re working professionals, you’ll want your ads to run on the evening or weekends.

    Use previous campaigns to work out when people are visiting your site. This will give you a good idea of when to schedule them.

    Targeted Locations

    Another way to seek our your primary audience is to target by location.

    If you’re a physical business that relies on foot traffic, you’re wasting money advertising worldwide. You’re more likely to get results targeting your city and other feeder areas.

    Likewise, if you’re a national business like a hauling company, you’ll want to limit your ads to inside the country. This prevents wasted ad revenue. It also makes you more relevant to visitors in your country and may prevent wasted inquiry time.

    Targeted Devices

    Google is now smart enough to know what devices visitors are using.

    Perhaps your service favors a particular device, such as a mobile app. You’re wasting revenue by advertising to desktop PC users. Targeting your ads for devices gives you precision.

    This also reduces traffic from frustrated users who won’t remain on your page. If your target devices aren’t clear, your page could slide down the rankings due to poor visitor retention.

    Ad Extensions

    Ad extensions are a way of tagging more information onto your ad.

    This can maximize Google PPC by giving you more opportunity to engage visitors. It provides them with additional information and makes your ad more helpful.

    Ads with extensions often receive higher priority as they’re seen to have more value. You need every advantage over your competition you can get, so extensions could be a difference maker.

    Using Feedback

    Making use of feedback is the most important part of any marketing campaign.

    You should take on feedback in two ways. Firstly, check what’s working while your campaign is running. You can often make small alterations on the fly to bring in more traffic. Traffic data could tell you which keywords to target, for instance.

    Secondly, there’s the after-action report. Once the campaign is over, take on all the feedback and use it to shape your next ad campaign.

    Google PPC Made Simple

    By following these simple tips, you can get the most out of your Google PPC. Be sure to bookmark this article and use it as a resource when running your campaign. It’s easy to forget a small detail, so treat this like a checklist.

    Be sure to follow our blog for more digital marketing hints and tips.

  • Search Engine Strategies: 8 Tips to Boost Search Rankings

    Every day, you check your page rankings on Google, and every day, you come up a little short of that first page.

    You’ve been optimizing keywords, so what gives?

    Well, guess what? You’re not the only one who knows the importance of keyword optimization. Your competition does too.

    And while keyword optimization can certainly help improve your site’s ranking, it’s only one small piece of the puzzle.

    Search engine algorithms also take into account other factors such as bounce rate, inbound links, outbound links, broken links, user experience, and pages viewed, just to name a few.

    In order to see a big boost in your ranking, you need to be employing other search engine strategies.

    In this article, we’ll take a look at the top 8 tips for boosting your search ranking.

    Tip #1: Create High Quality, Relevant Content

    When it comes to boosting your rankings, getting visitors to your site is only half the battle.

    You also need to get those visitors to stay on your site and browse. This is known as “dwell time.” The longer the dwell time, the higher the ranking.

    So how do you increase dwell time?

    While the right keywords may draw a visitor to your site, content is what makes them stay.

    Nobody cares about keywords unless those keywords are surrounded by actionable, useful content.

    Most of this content will take place in the form of blog posts. Typically, you’ll want your posts to be at least 1,000 words.

    Why so long?

    Longer posts give you the opportunity to include more keywords, more inbound and outbound links, and provide more valuable content. And of course, longer posts take more time to read, which can increase your site’s dwell time.

    Plus, every time someone bookmarks your content to Chrome, it improves your ranking on Google.

    Tip #2: Focus on Link Building

    Google’s let the cat out of the bag: content and links are the two most important factors when it comes to boosting your site’s ranking.

    Your link building strategy should focus on three areas:

    • Inbound links- links created on other sites that link back to you
    • Outbound links- links you create to other websites
    • Broken links- links that don’t work (get rid of them)

    However, you need to make sure you choose your links wisely. A link from a highly-trafficked, authoritative site goes a lot further than a bunch of links from small, unknown sites.

    In order to get these authoritative links, you can pitch to online magazines or news sources or partner with popular blogs. Usually, these partnerships have an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality. They’ll link to your site only if you’ll link to theirs.

    Tip #3: Increase Page Load Speed

    In the world of the internet, waiting a few extra seconds for a page to load is like waiting an eternity.

    If your site’s taking too long to load, users are going to peace out and move on to someone else’s site.

    Not only does this reduce your dwell time, it also increases your bounce rate.

    Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your site, view the landing page, and then leave without viewing anything else. Average bounce rates are somewhere around 50 percent. But no matter where you fall, you should always be looking to lower that number.

    And increasing your page load speed is one of the best ways to do this.

    Here are a few ways you can increase your page load speed:

    • Optimize image sizes
    • Reduce the number of plug-ins
    • Minimize redirects
    • Enable compression
    • Enable browser caching

    Tip #4: Optimize Long-tail Keywords

    Okay, you probably already know the important role keywords play in search engine strategies.

    But, many people are going about their keyword strategy all wrong.

    If you’re a new site, you’re going to have a tough time competing for top keywords. That’s why it’s best to go for long-tail keywords- ones that are three words or more.

    Long-tail keywords have less competition, and therefore, are easier to rank for. Check out Google’s keyword planner to find the best ones for your industry.

    Tip #5: Use Different Multimedia

    Visual content is an excellent way to improve user experience and enrich your written content.

    Videos, slideshows, infographics, and audio files are all great ways to deliver information to users in a unique and engaging format.

    In fact, adding videos to landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80 percent.

    Plus, multimedia also signals to search engines that your site contains quality content. Which, as well all know, is key to boosting your rankings.

    Tip #6: Optimize for Mobile

    Google will penalize your site if it’s not mobile optimized.

    More and more people are conducting searches on their mobile devices these days. And if you’re site isn’t optimized, it will negatively affect user experience.

    Google is all about providing the best user experience, so make sure your site’s optimized so you don’t receive a penalty.

    Tip #7 Update on the Regular

    Boosting your search rankings is a marathon, not a sprint.

    You can’t expect the quality-content you created last year to help you in your rankings this year.

    Google prefers updated, new content over stale, old content. It lets them know that your site is relevant, fresh, and still in the game.

    Plus, popular keywords change over time. You want to make sure you’re always creating content that uses the hottest keywords.

    Tip #8: User-friendly Formatting

    Formatting that is user-friendly can help improve your rankings.

    If your site contains huge walls of text, you’re making a huge mistake.

    You need to break that stuff up so it’s easy for your readers to scan and digest.

    Here are a few other ways to make sure your formatting is user-friendly:

    • Use fonts that are easy-to-read
    • Use bold types and colors only sparingly to call out useful info
    • Use bulleted numbers and lists
    • Break up sections with headings and sub-headings
    • Use short paragraphs- 2-3 sentences is ideal

    Search Engine Strategies Wrap Up

    We hope these search engine strategies helped paint a clear picture for what you need to get done in the coming weeks.

    But, implementing these search engine strategies on your own can be a tough feat. If you’re looking for some help, contact us today.

  • Why Utilizing PPC Media is Key for Your Business

    If you want to grow your business, increase brand recognition, and get a great ROI from your marketing dollars, then PPC media is a great way to go.

    As agency people, we are in the business day to day and sometimes have to remind ourselves that our terminology is not always understood or known. Once in a while, we have to take a step back from our work in digital marketing and start at the beginning. So…

    What is PPC media? It’s a marketing tool called pay per click (PPC) that allows a business to advertise digitally and only pay for that ad when someone clicks on it.

    This simple tool allows you to reach your audience and specify your investment only into your customer leads, or people that are actually interested in your business enough to click on your ad.

    This advertising method is so popular, in fact, that more than 96% of Google’s total revenue comes from paid digital advertising. All that money spent means it works, but it also means there’s a lot of competition out there so you have to do it right.

    In this article, we’re breaking down the benefits of great PPC media and how you can use PPC media to increase your bottom line.

    Why PPC Media Is So Valuable and How to Make the Most of It

    PPC media is a great way to cast a wide net for free, (minus the cost of design), and only pay for the fish you catch.

    If you want your business to succeed, you can’t just rely on a quality product. You have to seek out customers and convince them that your product is better than the competitions. In some cases, you just have to get there before the competition. Here’s how.

    1. It’s Simple

    The world of digital marketing is complicated and can be intimidating.

    Many other content marketing strategies can require a lot of time and effort before the results of increased traffic and more sales are seen. Plus, these results can be very hard to track.

    Thankfully, this is not the case when it comes to PPC media. Especially when you find a great PPC agency to get you ten steps ahead with their years of experience.

    With PPC, you have the ability to target the exact customers you want, through the use of specific keywords.

    It’s a very simple system with easy to track results. This will provide you with valuable data that can help you get to know your target customers and market to them most successfully.

    Since you agree on a set price for each person that clicks, the goal is clear. To profit, you must bring in higher sales dollars per click than you are spending, even though not all of those customers will convert.

    2. It’s Worthwhile

    PPC’s outdated step-sister, CPM (cost per impression) would charge advertisers per view, rather than per click.

    That just means the ad loaded on the site they were viewing. They might not have even looked at it!

    With PPC, you know you’re getting your money’s worth because you only pay when customers engage with your ad by clicking on it.

    This means less money wasted and it puts you a step ahead in the sales funnel.

    Your goal is to draw in customers and then seal the deal by providing an excellent customer experience on the page they click through to.

    3. Pinpoint Your Customer Base

    The digital age has brought advertisers more information about their customers than ever before.

    Think, for a moment, about the pre-internet world.

    If you wanted to advertise your guitar lesson business, you would be wise to post a flyer in a coffee shop with a popular open mic night.

    Hopefully, the inspired audience members would notice your flyer while waiting for the bathroom, take a tab, and call you up to learn! This might reach a handful of customers a month and bring in healthy business for you.

    In this digitally dominated age, now those “flyers” can be posted on hundreds of places where your client base might gather.

    You can find these “coffee shops” through social media interest pages, keyword searches, and even more specific criteria such as time of day, proximity, and type of device they are using.

    4. Specific Targeting Options

    Expanding further on #3, let’s talk for a moment about keywords.

    With PPC media, you have a lot of control over how your keyword targeting works. With Google AdWords, specifically, you can optimize your PPC media for broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords.

    • Broad match keywords will display your ad for any combination or order of the keywords you choose, plus misspellings, synonyms, and similar searches.

    For example, if your broad match keywords are “noise canceling headphones,” alternate search words such as “sound proof headphones” or “headphones with noise cancel” will still trigger your ad to show up.

    Phrase match keywords will display your ad for any searches that include that specific phrase, even if there are additional words before or after.

    This means the ad will show up so long as your chosen phrase or a similar variation of that phrase is included in the search. For example, if your keyword is “women’s running shoes” the ad will display for a “buy women’s running shoes.” It won’t show up, however, for a “women’s shoes” search since one word in the phrase is missing.

    Exact match keywords are just what they say: exact. The ad will only display for searches that match those keywords exactly or are a close variation with the same meaning.

    Exact keywords are perfect for your business name to ensure customers can find your site when they search it.

    5. Free Brand Recognition

    You may have heard that it takes 7 touches to reach a customer. This is called the Rule of 7, and it refers to the fact that it takes several exposures for a customer to recognize your brand as an authority.

    PPC media is beneficial not just when clicked, but also for building brand awareness and recognition within your specifically targeted customer base.

    For this reason, the displays that don’t generate a click are not wasteful in any way. They don’t cost you, and they are even benefitting you if you have excellently designed PPC campaigns.

    There You Have It!

    Fanatically Digital is here to help you with all of your digital marketing needs.

    Questions? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

  • Ad Spend Trends. How Can Smaller Advertisers Take Advantage?

    Calculating the amount spent on advertising marketing last year is a challenge; most surveys don’t line up. Given this, I don’t spend much time dwelling on the predictions of future ad spend. However, I do look for overall trends that different studies agree upon, and see how smaller advertisers can join in.

    The Overall Direction of Ad Spending

    Across the board, Zenith, MAGNA, and Dentsu Aegis Network have the U.S. Market softening while Eastern Europe and Asia will lead the ad spend increases (as a percentage). The U.S. growth range goes from 1.6% (MAGNA) up to 3.6% (Dentsu Aegis). This follows a pretty strong market in 2016 (election year). Growth for Eastern Europe and Central Asia range from 6.6% to 9.8% and Latin America coming in around 7%.

    Globally, ad growth is expected to range from 3.8% to 4.2%, reflecting the proportionally large influence of the U.S. ad market of about $335B.

    Mobile & Digital Ad Spending; The Trend Continues

    Dentsu Aegis expects digital advertising to overtake television by the end of 2018, and sees mobile advertising accounting for 56% of digital ad spend globally by the end of 2017. Zenith is expecting digital ad spend to outpace television by the end of this year. Either way, the trend of digital growth over the past decade has finally brought us to the point where it becomes the default channel for advertisers.

    As part of this digital expansion, three key segments are expected to see the major growth:
    Video up 32%
    Social up 29%
    Programmatic up 25%

    No longer is television the presumptive channel for advertisers.

    How Can Small & Mid Sized Advertisers Be Part Of The Trends?

    For years agencies and media have been pushing brands to recognize the power of digital for brand building purposes. While larger companies with larger budgets have been able to leverage the brand building capabilities of digital, most smaller to mid-sized advertisers continue to see digital marketing for direct marketing purposes only; lead generation or e-commerce are the two areas they focus on.

    With efficiency improvements in video, social, and programmatic, upper funnel objectives (awareness & consideration) are within reach of most marketers. When leveraging technology and targeting capabilities, advertisers can be part of the expanded digital landscape while working within smaller budgets.

    Video Production Levels

    The combination of video and social creates a unique opportunity for advertisers. Between lower cost video production services and do-it-yourself tools, marketers can create videos that are valuable and even entertaining for the target customers. Online, consumers are not expecting exceptionally high production value; content value is far more important. This isn’t a license to produce junk, but it does mean advertisers won’t have to make the exponentially expensive jump in production quality that was expected a decade ago.

    Efficiency With Ad Targeting

    Targeting technology plays to the benefit of small and mid-sized advertisers. There was a time when you had to pay for exposure to people that will never be in the market for your products or services. While you can never completely eliminate wasted exposures, the technology today allows for fairly precise targeting. Depending on the media channel and partner, you can minimally target geography, demographics, and interest. With programmatic platforms, the technology will ‘learn who is responsive’ to your message, reducing wasted impressions as it gathers more data

    The most challenging part for most advertisers is patience. The idea of tying digital spend directly to revenue has been the cornerstone for online advertising for a long time. Over the past ten years, digital has become a key part of life for nearly everyone in the U.S. Becoming a consistent part of the experience lays the groundwork for your brand to be top of mind when the consumer is ready to enter the market. As a brand marketing channel, the benefits cannot always be tied, dollar for dollar, to the ad spend. However, by applying the latest technology, you can see your investment impact behavior in the short term and sales in the long term.

  • How Much Should I Pay For SEO Services?

    I’ve been in the digital market space for 20 years and this question, “how much should I pay for Search Engine Optimization?” is perhaps the hardest to answer. The elements that go into SEO are highly dependent on variables that agencies or SEO service providers need to identify before they can provide a valid estimate. SEO variables can be overt or hidden and defining them is key to establishing a fair price.

    Some of the common variables in SEO

    • Level of Competition
    • State of current website technical issues
    • Current content
    • State of Google’s assessment of site issues (ie, manual actions)
    • Dynamic nature of subject area
    • Internal support level at client
    • Goals and objectives

    There are cases of “unknown” variables. These are things that pop up during our scoping process that do not fall into the “normal” bucket and can have a big impact on the work effort for SEO.

    Ranking for some industries or products can be exceptionally difficult while others have very low barriers to good rankings. Even with all other aspects being equal, the difference in the subject matter can have a significant impact on the effort necessary to get and improve page rankings on the search engines. Until the SEO provider examines the competitive landscape, it is impossible to know what you are up against; are you competing against the little league or pro players? Is it a tough industry? If so, do you have a lot of niche opportunities? Developing a price is heavily dependent on your competitors’ strength in organic search.

    Is the industry dynamic? If the content is developed at a high velocity, then keeping pace in SEO requires more resources. New products, research, news stories, and other related topics can push their way to the top of the SERPS (and your site out). In industries where fresh content is the norm, staying competitive requires new, quality content is added to the website on a regular basis.

    We have seen some great websites come to us that required very little cleanup. But, we have also seen some that require extensive work. In some cases, the base condition of the site was so poor that we didn’t even quote the project, we directed the prospective owner to scope out a complete site rebuild (we don’t handle sites builds of that size, so it was not a self-serving suggestion.) The point is, the condition of the website has a big impact on the cost of SEO, particularly for “setup” fees.

    You should always write content with the intention of helping your target audience. Some sites have great content that needs some adjustment for SEO or needs better sharing activity. On the other hand, we may need to re-write entire pages or even sections of sites to improve their quality as well as their SEO visibility. Depending on the budgets, objectives, and timeframes, the content may be cleaned up all at once, or it may be spread out over months. Either way, the cost for the content clean up has to be covered.

    Sometimes clients have great support for their websites and we only need to pass on the direction. Other times, the clients need us to implement all our recommendations, manage the site, and deal with any technical issues. The more the client relies on us to do this, the more resources we need to commit. It makes no sense to pay an SEO provider for recommendations that are not implemented.

    We usually start the conversation with goals and objectives, as do most ad agencies. This gets us aligned with the client, and it also gives us an idea (along with all else) what resources are needed. Do we want to double the leads in 1 year or in 1 month? Huge difference. It may be the difference between reasonable, difficult, and impossible. If you are shopping for SEO services and you are quoted a firm price prior to a discussion of your goals, be sure to understand what the deliverables are.

    So, clearly, I can not tell you exactly what you should pay for SEO services. But here are some things to expect

    Setup fee

    As I alluded to above, there may be a lot of activities that take place at the beginning of the engagement. For websites that are already well tuned, with analytics properly setup, GSC connected and with little technical cleanup, the setup fee can be nominal, or non-existent. There is setup for keyword tracking and reporting depending on reporting requirements. The extent of effort will depend on the size of the program.

    What is tricky about the setup fee is that the on-going program cannot kick in until the setup is complete and this typically takes 4 – 6 weeks. Since most ongoing activity waits for this, the agency should not be adding setup resources on top of the monthly ongoing to determine the first-month fee. So, be sure that the fee for month one is truly the setup activity and not double dipping.

    Ongoing SEO Activity

    In today’s SEO, content for your site and for guest posting/sharing are some of the most resource intensive. Link building outreach is the second big consumption of resources. The more competitive your niche, the more content and content distribution will be required. This is not a 2 or 3 month activity. It is absolutely ongoing.

    I bring this up because I am often asked if we can reduce the cost after month 4,5, or 6, because the ‘heavy lifting’ is done in the first few months. I’ve heard this referred to as “maintenance mode.” In SEO, there is no such thing as “maintenance mode.” You are either fighting to maintain position, fighting to gain position, or you will lose position.

    SEO price range

    Setup – $0 – $5,000.

    Ongoing – $1,500 – $7,500.

    I’ve seen SEO for less. I’ve worked on programs for less. These are the exception. The client has 100% technical support, has content creation is taken care of in-house, is not in a competitive marketplace…. Every one of the “hard” things is not hard.

    That, or…

    They are paying so little that there will be no traction.

    For more competitive categories, or programs with a lot of rich, quality content development, the upside cost can be much higher. But, these are unusual and are part of larger efforts for big companies.

    Long term SEO

    Many people look at the monthly commitment. This is convenient for cash flow purposes. But, SEO is a long game. Commit to 12 months, things do not happen quickly in SEO. There may be the fluke “big hit”, but that is unusual. I know this is cliche but think in terms of investments, not expenses.

    Pricing estimates for SEO will vary a lot. When an agency or SEO provider is quoting the service, be skeptical if they did not first ask you a lot of questions. If they don’t, they will be surprised in a short time and so will you.