How To Show Up At The Top Of Search Results

Everyone wants their business to show up on the top of Google’s search results, but this is not an easy task. You can have the best product, the cheapest price, and the greatest Facebook ads, but none of these things will get you on the top of the search results page. If you’re seeing your competitors at the top of your Google search results page, you may need to take a look at these tips.

Unfortunately, this is not a one-click solution. Google uses an algorithm that takes over 200 factors into account to determine your site’s search rankings. Although we can’t go through all 200 factors, we can give you a few of the most important that may help bump your search rankings up.

Keywords

The first step in making sure your site is seen is choosing the best keywords. Keywords are the words a user enters in the search box when looking for a specific product or business. You must ensure your keywords match what customers are searching for. You can use Google Analytics to help determine which keywords perform best for your business.

Content

Just as important as the keywords used to get to your site are the words that are on your site. Search engines are smart, and they can distinguish sites that are relevant from those that are not. You need to ensure you have enough information to sufficiently cover your topic, but not so much that it becomes cluttered. Each topic on your site should add value to users and should have its own separate page. If your content is not relevant or valuable, your website may have a high bounce rate. The bounce rate is the number of visitors to your website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Google will see this and will penalize your website for a high bounce rate. Be sure to keep your content relevant and up to date in order to avoid this.

Navigation

Navigation refers to the way visitors move from page to page on your website and also to the links directing visitors to your website.  Your website should be structured in a manner that is easy for search engines to follow. The search engines must index you site to pull relevant content, and tools such as Java can be hard for them to read. We recommend structuring your website using HTML or CSS.  You also want to ensure you have links from other websites that lead back to your site. This shows Google that your website is relevant because other sites are referencing it.

If you’ve optimized all of the above tips and are still having trouble getting your site to show up on the first page of Google, there could be another factor that you can’t control affecting your search rankings. For example, age of a website will directly impact many other factors that Google considers. If your website is fairly new versus a competitor’s website that has been around for years, your website will be lagging in links, content, and traffic numbers. You cannot necessarily control this, but it is something that will develop with age.

We hope these tips have given you a good idea of how to troubleshoot why your search rankings may not be as high as you’d like. If you need further assistance, please contact us today.

How To Make YouTube A Vital Part Of Your Social Strategy

YouTube has become a the go-to destination for video content. With over four billion videos viewed daily, it’s no surprise that marketers are beginning to make YouTube a vital part of their social strategy. YouTube is a valuable asset to your company because videos help SEO and are more likely to go viral compared to a text or image post. But remember, the videos won’t share themselves. Combining YouTube with other social platforms can create a social strategy that cannot be topped, and we’re going to show you how. There are two main aspects to making YouTube a vital part of your social strategy – creating the content and promoting it.

1.      Create content your customers want

Your customers don’t want to see a boring informational video about your latest product, they want unique, innovative videos. When it comes to YouTube, the more creative the better. The video doesn’t even have to relate to your product really. You want an eye-catching video that will make customers click. Showcase your creativity and add a unique twist to your brand. However, we would like to caution you when creating this type of content. Even if the video itself is unrelated to the product, you want to ensure that customers are feeling what you want them to feel and the video comes a full circle to tie into your promotion. The last thing you want to do is leave customers feeling confused by posting a random video with a link to your product at the end. Although the connection between the content and the product doesn’t have to be direct, it does need to correlate in some way or another.

Although stories tend to provoke the best response on YouTube, you have other options as well. Feel free to experiment with the following types of videos:

  • Business intro video: Give your audience a brief introduction to your business. You can put this on your YouTube Channel Trailer to welcome new viewers.
  • Tutorials/Product Demos: Show your viewers how to perform a task using your product
  • Customer Testimonials: Interview a satisfied customer
  • Behind-the-scenes videos: Take your viewers on a tour of your office or workspace, or introduce them to your staff or co-workers
  • Tips and tricks: Share useful insights that will help your prospects
  • Commercials: post your commercials to YouTube for viewers
  • FAQs: Compile a list of frequently asked questions and respond to them via video

2.      Promote that content

Once you’ve created great content, you must get it seen! Some YouTube videos will get enough exposure without outside promotion, but most will need some extra help. If you have a large number of YouTube subscribers or your video becomes highly ranked on YouTube, then you may be able to skip this step. Otherwise, you’ll need to find ways to promote your videos to the desired audience. The easiest way to promote your YouTube videos is to share them on your other social platforms. Be sure to add engaging copy to the video, and a direct link to your YouTube channel. You may want to embed the video directly on your Facebook page, as Facebook videos are rapidly growing in popularity. Another way to promote your YouTube content is to post it on your company website or blog, or to partner with other YouTuber’s to promote each other’s videos. We recommend experimenting with your particular audience and seeing what works best for you.

Don’t get left behind, start creating YouTube content today! If you need assistance in hopping on the YouTube bandwagon, please contact us today.

The Secret To Boosting Your Organic Reach On Facebook

Facebook has become a top social media platform. With 1.71 billion monthly active users, Facebook’s potential for advertisers is endless. Because of Facebook’s popularity, it has also become a big advertising platforms. Brands have seen great success using Facebook. For example, when Wendy’s launched a new burger, their Facebook campaign resulted in 1.7 million total engagements and their page attracted more than 50,000 new Facebook fans.

Facebook Ads give businesses a completely customizable platform that allows ads to be promoted to users across the globe. Although this feature is a great advertising tool, your small business doesn’t want to pay to reach an audience every time you post an ad on Facebook. Your marketing budget would be spent on just Facebook alone! We are here today to give you a few tips on how you can reach more people on Facebook without using paid advertising.

To understand how you can reach a wider audience on Facebook, you must first understand how Facebook shows your ad to people. On Facebook, you can promote a paid ad, or you can promote an ad organically. We will be covering organic ads in this blog post. Organic reach refers to how many people you can reach for free just from posting on your business’ page. Organic reach sounds great, right? Reaching an audience without paying a penny! However, the plethora of content on Facebook has resulted in a decline of organic reach. Because an average of 1,500 posts compete for attention in a user’s news Feed, the organic reach has decreased from 16% of followers to just over 2%. Facebook asserts that there are two major reasons for this decline in organic reach. The first is the sheer volume of content competing for a user’s attention. There is more content on the social site than people can absorb. Therefore, only a limited number of posts are actually seen by users. The second reason for organic reach decline is Facebook’s algorithm. Facebook tries to ensure only the most relevant, high quality content makes it into users’ News Feeds. The algorithm assess thousands of factors to determine which posts are News Feed-worthy and displays only around 300 of the 1,500 choices at any given time.

So how does your business perform well with such a wealth of content on Facebook? Our number one tip on making your content valuable is to post quality content. Post content that your audience will find valuable – something that will make them think, provide information, provide entertainment, etc. Another helpful tip is to add business objectives to your Facebook page, such as increasing brand awareness or driving traffic to your website. In addition, you can see when most of your audience members are online and post during those prime times. In addition to the time you post, another important factor is how often you post. There is no magic number of posts that is optimal for Facebook, but rather this number depends on your brand and your users. You will need to determine the correct posting frequency for your specific campaign. Post too often and you may annoy fans; post too scarcely and your fans may forget about it. It is important to find that perfect number of postings that is right for your specific page and audience.

We hope these tips will help you get the most out of your organic reach on Facebook. If you need additional assistance figuring out how to better optimize you Facebook posts, contact us today!

How To Design A Killer Business Card

Having a small business means you must learn how to function in many roles. You are the owner, the manager, the accountant, and the marketer all in one. When people meet you for the first time, how will they remember you? Making a great first impression is important, but having a killer business card is key. You might think a business card is meaningless in today’s technology-savvy society. However, business cards are a timeless piece of marketing material that actually work. Your business card is not the end-all be-all, but if done effectively it will create a lasting impression on customers that will make them remember you when they need your services. Take a look at our tips for designing a killer business card.

1. There’s two sides for a reason

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a one-sided business card. Sure a two-sided full-color card may cost a bit extra, but it’s worth it to make customers know you didn’t forget to finish the other side of your design. Plus, when you are only working with a 3.5” x 2” space, wouldn’t you want to double that by using both sides of the card? We think YES!

2. Design

Of course the design is important, but did you know your aesthetic choices have actually been proven to make a difference based on human psychology? Spacing, font choice, white space, and colors are all perceived differently in the mind. For example, red displays power, while blue represents peacefulness. Be cautious what customers will interpret about your business based on the design.

3. Content

Just as important as the design of your card is the information on it. Your business card must contain a tagline that quickly explains who you are and what you do. Regardless of your profession or how complicated your job may be, your tagline needs to be a quick, simple explanation of what you do. Your card needs to explain what you do when you first hand it to someone, remind someone who has had the card awhile what you do, or show people who are passed along what you do. All of these functions require a tagline explaining what you do! In addition, you should add basic information about your business. Feel free to include social media icons or links, but be sure to have a nice balance between imagery and text. If you are unsure of what information to put, just stick with the basics: name, website, email address, physical address, and phone number.

These are the basic elements to a great business card. If you need help designing your customized business card, contact us today!

The Scoop On Content Marketing

Content marketing. We’ve all heard of it, but what exactly is it? You’ve made an educated guess about content marketing, but you’re still not sure about the ins and outs. And you’re too embarrassed to ask anyone. This post is for you!

The dictionary definition of content marketing is:

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

The goal of content marketing isn’t to create as many ads as possible – it is to add value to the customer with the goal of encouraging customer behavior. Content marketers create the media people actually want to consume. It is not about selling the product, it is about delivering valuable information to the clients in hopes that they will use their newfound intelligence to purchase your product.

Do not think of content marketing as being a separate entity of your current marketing strategy, but rather intertwined with your current tactics. Content marketing should be involved in most all of your marketing strategies. Social media uses content marketing because it is all about making the audience connect with your brand by delivering relevant information. SEO uses content marketing because search engines look for quality content. PR strategies cover the issues customers care about, blogging delivers relevant content, and many other strategies utilize content marketing as well.

So what are some examples of content marketing?

1. Blogging: The most obvious example of content marketing is creating a blog post. Blogging fits all of the descriptions of content marketing. It delivers valuable, relevant, and consistent content to an audience.

2. Infographics: Infographics are exactly what they sound like – info and graphics. They may include statistics, charts, facts, and timelines. Infographics are extremely useful because they can be easily posted on social media and websites.

3. Videos and podcasts: These are often underutilized because it seems intimidating to create a video, but don’t underestimate your ability! Create a high-quality video that never goes out of style so you can reuse it over the years.

4. Ebooks: These speak for themselves. Lots of information in an easy to access format. Give your customers some valuable insight to make them keep coming back to you every time!

Those are just a few examples of content marketing, but the possibilities are endless. There is no cookie cutter example of what is or isn’t content marketing. The main takeaway is to always remember to add value to your customers. Think like your customers and try to imagine what information would be most useful to them. For more tips, contact us today!