Tag Archives: seo

If Content is King, What Should You Be Looking For in a Writer?

Content is King

The phrase ‘Content is King’ is a recurring internet rage in today’s world. However, it is not a new one. Although Sumner Redstone of Viacom had said it quite some time back, the person whose voice gave it the popularity it has today is none other than the founder and ex-CEO, Bill Gates.

In an essay he wrote way back in 1996, Gates suggested the future dominance of the content in the world of online business. The prophecy did not only prove to be right in the next two decades, but it has more or less changed the entire way marketing is perceived. The content was always in some way or other relevant to businesses online and offline under different names such as copywriting. With the internet taking over most of the marketing agendas of corporations, content is paving the way at present.

But with content becoming the unanimous king, there rises an enormous need for skilled and qualified content writers. There is a recent surge in the demand of content writers, and many aspiring candidates are jumping the bandwagon. However, merely knowing how to write does not make a good writer of content. There are many more criteria that one needs to fulfill to fill the position of a content writer in any organization.

Here are some of the critical points that you should look for when you hire a content writer for your company.

Readability and Expertise

A content writer must have an impeccable command over the language he or she is writing in. Wrong sentence syntax, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation issues are not acceptable in this profession. Moreover, their style of writing should be free-flowing, naturally attractive, and have a positive pull to it which will draw your customer’s attention to your content and engage them in reading it. Therefore, the content writer you hire should not only be useful in writing but should know how to use the power of words for marketing your product or service strategically.

Moreover, the writer’s expertise in a particular field also counts a lot. A great blog writer will not necessarily be equally useful in the product description. Hire your writer according to the specific needs of your business and before you do, ask for a relevant sample of their work. Do not make the mistake of employing a content writer for one kind of position with the expertise of another.

Level of Experience

Experience counts a lot when it comes to the content writing industry. There are many nuances that a writer has to keep in mind while writing for business. Keyword infusion, SEO integration, and maintaining industry relevance of content are some of the essential aspects of a content writer’s job profile. To be able to successfully understand the requirements of your business and execute the rest of the tasks seamlessly, years of experience in the field matters a lot.

Knowledge of Specification

Unless you are hiring for generic blogs and articles, your content writer should be knowledgeable in the field you work in. For example, if you are a pharmaceutical company, then your content writer should have technical know how in the medicinal background. By ensuring this criterion, you make sure that the content you put out for your audience is technically correct and not vague or misleading.

Dedication and enthusiasm

Since content writing has a creative edge to the work, it is essential for the writer to be enthusiastic about new and different projects and have imaginative takes on them. In the same line of thought, they should be also flexible for content corrections and refurbishments, and up for any necessary alterations required. Flexibility is one of the most required traits in a content writer, which stems from a commitment to the work.

Professionalism

Last but definitely not the least, professionalism is a must-have. This is the bare minimum that is expected from any potential employees from their employers, and a position of a content writer should not be any different. The two pillars which determine the professionalism of the writer are authenticity and punctuality. The submitted content must be without any plagiarism and submitted on or before the deadline to be considered valid. The content industry is not a place where either plagiarism or delay of delivery is taken lightly at all.

You can always hire an in-house content writer for your company, but that would not be the wisest economic decision. Outsourcing them or hiring freelancers to do the work for you is a much cheaper affair and also helps keep the extra burden of content curation off from your head. At places like our Dream Logo Design, you are catered to with fresh, unique, and exciting quality content aimed relevantly towards your target audience.

Canonical Tags – Where and When to Use Them

Canonical Tags - Where and When to Use

Canonical tags have been around since 2009, but there are still many confusions about the same among non-technical marketers. In simple words, canonical tags give website owners a way to resolve issues related to duplicate content.

What is a Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is a simple HTML code which defines the main version of the website. It tells search engines as to which page they should index and display in search results. For example, if you have more than one web page that describes same or similar content under different URLs, you can use canonical tags to indicate which version is the main page and needs to be indexed.

How Does a Canonical Tag Look Like?

As mentioned, canonical tags are simple HTML codes that are made of simple syntax. They are placed within the section of a webpage. A canonical sample tag may look like the following:

Importance of Canonical Tag in SEO:

If you have more than one web page with similar contents under different URLs, Google will consider them as a duplicate content. This is something which Google dislikes and is harmful to SEO. Since Google tends to index only one version of the webpage, they are in confusion as to which version of the page they should index. Also, this is directly related to the search engine rank of the webpage because google will not understand which version of the page to rank for different queries.

Mentioned below are the situations when you may consider to implement a canonical tag in your website:

There are many confusions among the SEO experts about the use of canonical tags. There is not a specific strategy which can be considered the best to take. However, mentioned below are some conditions where implementing a canonical tag could be beneficial for overall SEO.

Duplicate Content:

Duplicate content is the most common situation when you should use a canonical tag. It is essential to use a canonical tag to define the main version of the page when you have more than one web page with duplicate content. Defining the main version of the webpage by using a canonical tag ensures that google takes the right page to index and the correct version of the page comes up in the search engine rank.

Similar Content:

Sometimes, you may have a web page with the same but slightly different content under different URLs. For example, if you have an eCommerce store, you may have pages with products that are similar but may have slight differences between them. Most SEO experts would suggest a canonical tag in this type of situation to make sure Google has a clear idea as to what is the main product page. Google will give full SEO value to the main product page. This will help you rank better for the main product page.

URL Parameters:

This is another important situation when you need to use a canonical tag. Marketers often create URL parameters for a particular webpage for tracking purposes. This helps them to track campaign performance for each URL parameters easily. This is an easy way to track your web page performance when the same page is being used in different types of marketing campaigns. However, this may create a severe problem regarding SEO like Google, and other search engines consider them as the duplicate version of the main page. The only way to clear the confusions for search engines is to tell them which version to index by using a canonical tag.

You can also add a canonical tag to every page of your website regardless of whether they have a known duplicate or not. This is specifically helpful when you have many different ways to reach your URL. For example, if your webpage can be reached by using both the HTTPS and Non-HTTPS version, you can add a canonical tag to both of them to let search engines know that both the pages are individual and this is the versions that search engines should index and show in search results.

How to Use Canonical Tags?

As mentioned earlier, the best and the easiest way to add canonical tag is to insert HTML code within the section of your duplicate page. However, if you have a WordPress website, you can install the Yoast SEO plugin that adds self-referencing canonical URLs to each page automatically. You can set the custom canonical tag by using the ‘advanced’ section on each page on your WordPress website.

Similar to the WordPress, if you have an eCommerce store and you are using Shopify, it adds a self-referencing canonical URL by default. However, you can set custom canonical URL by editing the template directly.

According to Google, you should not include your non-canonical URLs in sitemaps. Therefore, you should only list your canonical URLs in your sitemap.

10 Critical SEO Checklist Items for Website Design & Development

SEO

The website developer may not be as knowledgeable as an SEO expert when it comes to creating a website that does well in the search engine. Although website development needs a set of technical skills, many different factors should be implemented to make your website SEO friendly. The only way you can ensure that you have incorporated the best SEO practices for your website is to follow a standard checklist. These points are essential SEO recommendations that a newly developed website must have from an SEO perspective.

Mentioned below are the 10 critical SEO checklist items for website design & development.

Checklist #1: Am I Building a Mobile Friendly Website?

The first thing the developers should keep in mind is that the site should perform well in all mobile devices. When it comes to design a mobile-friendly website, developers mainly consider following standard development techniques by using a responsive CSS stylesheet. However, some developers prefer to build a separate mobile subdomain. Although there is nothing wrong in creating a subdomain for the mobile version of your website, it is undoubtedly going to make your SEO difficult. This is because Google will consider the mobile subdomain as a separate web property, which will make specific SEO tasks more difficult.

Checklist #2: Is My Robots.txt File Correct?

There are times when the developer feels it necessary to block a specific part of the website or even the entire domain before it goes online. Usually, this is done by using a disallow command in the robots.txt file. This is normal, but the problem arrives when the developers forget to remove the disallow command even after when the site becomes live. It is essential to upload a correct robot.txt file once the site is live. The developer should always make sure that there is no disallow directive in the robots.txt site unless the client purposively asks the same. Using a Disallow: / command in the robots.txt means you are telling search engines not to crawl your website, which can be a significant mistake in SEO.

Checklist #3: Am I Using Correct HTML?

Sometimes, common HTML errors can become a significant problem regarding the site’s average loading speed and result in the poor rendering of the website on various platforms. Since Google now considers site loading speed as one of the most common ranking factors, having a slow site causes issues with site performance regarding keyword ranking. It is recommended that your website uses only W3C valid code. Although W3C validation is not mandatory for classification, it can indirectly affect your keyword ranking. Better coding can also help Google understand your website structure better and improves user experience.

Checklist #4: Am I Optimizing the Images Correctly?

Image optimization is one of the most common factors when it comes to improving your site’s average loading speed and is an important SEO parameter. You may use a high-quality massive image to give a stunning look to your website, but it increases the load time of the website. There is no harm in using a high-quality image on your site if the image is compressed correctly. Image compression guarantees that the quality of the image remains the same, but the image becomes lighter.

Checklist#5: Do the Images Contain Alt Attributes?

Image alt attribution is another essential part of image optimization. Alt attribution is used to tell the search engines about the context of the image. It is necessary to use the best keywords as image Alt tags to get the most of SEO benefits.

Checklist#6: Is the Analytic Code Implemented?

Analytic tracking code is another important factor regarding website SEO. It is also essential that the developer adds properly search console and Google Analytic code to check the health and track the traffic of the website. Apart from the Google search console and Analytic tool, you can use many other tools that are available online.

Checklist #7: Is the Server Using GZip Compression?

GZip compression is an essential element that lets the server compress files for faster network transfers. This type of compression makes sure that your web server provides smaller file sizes, which load faster for your website users. Enabling GZip compression is standard practice and can be considered an important SEO Checklist Item for Website Design & Development.

Checklist #8: Did I Upload a Sitemap.xml?

A sitemap is important for SEO as it tells search boats how to crawl a website easily. Sitemap file contains all the URLs of the website, and this is the most important thing that search engine crawler first sees in the website. The website crawling process becomes more comfortable when you if you put all your website links in one destination i.e., XML sitemap.

Checklist #9: Have I Fixed the Redirection Issue?

If overlooked by the site developer, there could be lots of redirection errors on a website. Some of the common redirection errors are 301, 302, 404, and many more. The best you can do in this regard is to review these issues by using an online tool and ask the developer to fix the same on a priority basis.

Checklist #10: Am I using Meta Title and Description?

Perhaps, the most important tags that affect your site’s SEO directly are the Meta Title and Meta Description tags. Title tags are important as it tells the search engine what your site is about. The Meta Title and Meta Description also appear in the search engine result page, so it’s very much important to optimize the same.

Helping You To Do Keyword Research – A Guide

Keyword Research

It is not anymore essential to persuade you top know the eminence of the keywords in the ranking process so is the most impactful factor for the marketing success. While Google keeps the marketers on toes by rolling out updates in the algorithm, keyword research is the only optimizing process that is constant.

Here are some interesting observation and guidelines that would help you out in process which will in order benefit the complete SEO. You can find many of such online articles it’s not that they are wrong but there is no universal rule of doing keyword research.

  • It varies on the basis of the following points:
  • The website authority, content type, pages so on
  • Your target and goals (branding, visibility, traffic, sales)
  • The budget, resources, and target-time
  • The industry type and competitive scenario

So it sometimes becomes difficult to follow the guidelines for all the projects. Let’s start to evaluate an approach.

Start with seed keywords
Seed keywords are the basis of the keyword research. They make your niche and gives you the correct idea of the competitors. When you want to improve your business visibility online, seed keywords is simple as writing about the products your own and think how other users would search for the specific product you want to promote. For example, you want to launch Gizmo accessories. The simple keywords that would generally come to your mind can be:

  • Gizmo accessories
  • gadgets by Gizmo
  • Gizmo add-ons

You might be thinking it is so simple, right? But while you about to start an affiliate website, and you are not sure about which niche or what products to promote? This can be daunting but these two approaches mentioned below can be guiding

‘Monetization first’ approach
Begin with using available monetization methods. Choose a product or any offer that you think is proper, then think of the searches that a user can use in the query on Google. You can take the example of Amazon, it has a strong affiliate program, so you only need to browse through till you get a matching category that you are interested to promote. Then review the product type or the product that you use and check whether you can go for the affiliate.

‘Niche down’ approach
You can begin with broad keywords and sort niche down till you find an interesting opportunity. For this approach, you should consider longer yet specific keywords.

Create some keyword ideas
Though you have the seed keywords but its only the pick of keyword research process. Then you have to create a vast list of relevant keyword ideas along with you get an in-depth understanding of your niche.

Use keyword research tools
Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list. And you are done with the final list of the most relevant keywords for your venture.

Ensure prominent web presence with professional digital marketing

digital marketing

Many businesses still think that having a high-quality website alone is sufficient to do well online. They are mistaken and that too, big time, because quality websites have a very limited role to play on the internet. Such websites only help take the business online and their clout does not work beyond that. So, what next? What should a business do to maximize their online presence? Simply put, your business needs to market itself. It needs to advertise its services and products across channels on the internet. It also has to find ways to reach to more users online and convey their brand messages to them.

All this becomes important because digital content is increasingly growing in usages and popularity. People or users are always online these days and from socializing to sharing to buying – they are doing most of their work in the digital space. This is something businesses should take note of and therefore devise a suitable marketing strategy to tap into the digital activities of users.

This is where digital marketing is needed to make users aware of your business and also to take your products or services to them. In essence, businesses need to hire experts to devise a suitable and channel-specific marketing strategy to realize their goals.

Such experts understand the pulse of digital marketing and they are often the master of boosting the digital footprint of brands from across industry verticals.

They have a superior understanding of marketing tools such as SEO, SMO, PPC and display Ads. They know how to leverage both, organic and paid advertising to boost traffic to your website. They plan, devise, implement and execute marketing strategies suitable for different channels and avenues in the digital space. These experts strive to boost the visibility of your website and its ranking in search engines. They help your business reach to more users on the internet.

In additional, only experts understand which channel or platform needs more focus and where your business should be promoted the most. They share engaging and entertaining content to your target audience in different digital channels to boost their awareness about your business and catch their attention. From images to videos to graphics to infographics – they leverage every element to reach to the target audience and stir their imagination. They run marketing campaigns in different social channels so that unique demographics can be tapped into. They get customer post reviews about your products and share their good experiences with your.

More so, digital marketing experts help you deliver measurable results so that you can know all those visits, clicks, conversions, impressions, click-through-rates etc. your marketing campaigns generate. They boost your presence and visibility in every popular digital channel, which helps a great deal in brand building. Only doing this will help your business target a right audience and realize its goals in a timely and desired manner. So, trust only experts and grow your business in an expected manner.

Why, what and how – You need to optimize your website

Website

What is website optimization?

Though website optimization is not an innovative process for the business owners or the clients who are in this field for long. But for the start-ups or the newbies who are new to the online business marketing arena should know the requirement of this professional service. It is completely related to search engine that can increase the business awareness and popularity. What ever service or product you offer irrespective to that, your website has to be optimized. This will enable the website to get naturally listed in the search results.

Why should you have your website optimized?

It is a simple fact that in the hoarded digital market where every company is trying to be superior in presenting the products and services in the most user-friendly way, to get an identification you need to have a well-built website that can suit the search engine parameters to get better visibility. With every brand competing to gain a top position in the Google with 40,000 search query per second and that is constituted by 1.2 trillion searches from around the world every year. It is the only platform that can give your business the proper weightage online. To make your business website best from the user and search engine perspective your site needs to optimized properly.

It is a complex process and there are various parts to optimization that improves the marketing online. Let’s have a look at the integral parts the process includes. There are generally two options that you can opt for SEO or PPC. If you want real recognition and distinctness online both the ways are reliable. The long lasting success can be possible with the professional strategy that will include both in the correct way. Only PPC can’t assure successful if you don’t opt for SEO your website will not be your website will not be listed organically. Website optimization will improve the Google search engine page ranking. And PPC is a paid way that will cost you a fixed amount you have decided for per click in the ad campaign. SEO can be a bit time incurring and but has an impactful result for your business and save money too. The images in the website also gets shown in the search engine results and can be useful in tracking the direct visit. PPC services are always expensive than that of search engine optimization (SEO).

The simple summation of these points will make it much easier for you to understand the benefits of optimization.

  • You can fetch get relevant traffic to your website
  • Better search engine rankings
  • Strong website to promote services
  • Improved business awareness that can lead to more sales
  • Improved credibility among the clients and customers
  • Cost effective

Now, the most important part, How to optimize the website?

Get services from a trusted SEO agency

You can’t do it your self as it requires technical knowledge and expertise. So hire services from a trustable agency that follows White Hat SEO practices and provides quality work to get your website ranking in the top ten search results

Scrutinizing or Analyzing the Website

The optimization begins with the website analysis. To find the areas where the site needs to be modified to get the good results for SEO. The content, titles, header tags, meta title and the other on-page requirements must be checked and after that, it is meticulously followed by off-page work. The bounce rate is also an important parameter.

Optimizing for fetching popularity and direct interaction with consumers

Social media channels are the best way to promote your business in interesting ways for the target audience. As the platforms are hubs of people as most of us stay connected to some of these platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. Proper channelization give you more traffic in less time and replying to queries of the customers directly improves the customer relation and credibility of your brand.

Some smart ways to select the perfect domain for your online business

ONLINE BUSINESS

The name of your domain which signifies the company and the URL has a decisive part to play in terms of search results. This is the place where the online audience will get information about your business, but the domain you select also is responsible to great extends and effects you websites visibility. Now, there are several options than it used to be before and there are some considerations still now that can help you take a wise decision.

As per a report published by ICANN in 2017 there are more than 1,547 top-level domains (TLDS). While you can be assured of getting unlimited options at the same time it doesn’t simply your work of selecting. So check out the points in following section of write-up that can be guiding for the purpose:

Consider the keywords first

Before hurriedly registering to your preferred domain, be patient and brainstorm on few things. Keep the prime 2 to 3 keywords in mind while the starting the choosing process. These phrases or words should simply define what you do or what are you aiming to do. Mix and match the ideas and culminate to result that makes perfect sense. Don’t force your mind – let it be flowing.
An example will make the process clearer to you, like if you are starting an home delivery for grocery then you should think of terms like prompt delivery, fresh products etc.

Try to create it unique

The domain is a main part of your business, so make it sure that it has certain distinctness for your potential audience. A domain that has close similarity to any other contender brand or popular brand is not a wise idea, as this can be confusing. It is also beneficial for SEO purposes.

Yet another thing to be pondered is in spree to be unique, it should not be something unusual. Like changing the spelling of a generally used words forcefully can be troublesome. For example, when the domain for Flickr.com was decided the founders aimed as Flickr.com instead of Flicker.com and they lost substantial amount of traffic to change to the properly spelled word and redirecting the rest traffic to Flickr.com.

Try to settle for .com

If you are planning for a long term online business then you must go for a .com website. Of course, you have option 301-redirection to get the traffic to the .net or .org websites but owning a .com website is like having a TLD. There are several reasons how it matters to your the web visitors as .com as TLD is most trustworthy.
Keep it easy

If you have a complicated URL that is difficult to type, people will not be interested. Long URLS and hard to spell words frustrates customers.

Make it Memorable

If you want to make your brand popular, faster than word-of-mouth is still a best marketing technique that can work promptly. So make the domain name attractive that is easy to remember. While having a superb website which people can’t remember the name.

Simple tips to construct enticing web content fast

Web Content

One of the most important aspects of online marketing strategies includes quality content creation. It is like the life line of the marketing and it has gained this position since years and has now been proved to be one of the techniques for driving sales in 2017. As per the Content Marketing Institute – it is a type of marketing that includes the content creation and sharing it online through blogs, videos and social media posts. That doesn’t promote the brand directly but is created to intrigue people towards the product or services. From here we can very easily derive that a web content needs to be crafted in a way that highlights the advantages your brand can provide along with providing answers to the question that can come to the minds of the potential customers.

For this we need to understand first, that why do we need a web content?

  • You can provide information that is of the customer’s interest and in order attract them and clients. This will help in creating trust worthiness.
  • If you are offering new or unique product this will help to educate the viewers. The contained content will enable them to get the solution to their requirements through your services or products along with strengthening the relationship with your online readers.
  • It will fetch you website more relevant traffic and visibility.
  • It’s an integral part of inbound marketing strategy. The content should be of good quality and unique.

Some of the tips that should be considered before creating an effectual content:

  • Keep a topic list
  • Maintain a content calendar
  • Before start to write proper research on the topic is essential
  • Construct structure roughly first to maintain the content flow
  • Keep away distractions – like emails, phone calls or social media
  • Work in the most inspiring ambiance – be it outdoors or in a quite office.

Make your content unique rather than being only a type in its category:

Note down the points that strikes your mind anytime about the topic of your web blog. Often we tend to forget some impactful points while sitting and construing while some thoughts keeps on coming in the minds about the write-ups. Keeping record of your thoughts can be easy with a the speech converting to text with the Google’s text transcription services.

Take content ideas from presentations

Many of have to make or work on your presentations that are prepared for various sets of audiences. The slides can help you to get some crucial points to include in the content when the target audience is same. Even you can find some usable insights. Re-purposing the content is also a great and fast way to create a good content in different forms, like a eBook or making it into a blog.

Schedule time to write and set a deadline

If you need to publish one blog post every week for improving the SEO efforts, making a schedule in important. In advance to the date of publishing do the writing check it well and schedule it and for the next too. Having a deadline of schedule for writing will enable you to get time for the writing to be flawless and it you can complete it on time.

Know few onsite common SEO issues that you might make

SEO

SEO is a diverse field and strategy ensures the popularity of the business leading to lead generation. Each website to be optimized requires relevant tweaking in order to be visible in search engine result page. The most crucial part is on-page or onsite SEO, that helps to make the website fit for the search engine. Search engine, mostly Google is the medium where people look for information and other things, so optimization should be done in a way that it will be benefited by the algorithm change Google does to improve the user-experience. It is not only about, inbound marketing, rather the technical side can be managed by the onsite changes but are sometimes overlooked by digital marketers.

Let’s look into the common SEO points that generally gets missed::-

Using Nofollow for URLs

For hiding the pages or the links that are not for the search engine, to prevent indexing thin content containing pages, internal search result pages for A/B test we use “nofollow” tag. But stop doing this as this doesn’t prevent the page to get indexed but hinders the hinders the page rank process of your website. To say it in other words, though the “nofollow” tag doesn’t restrict page rank to pass through a link, still, Google considers all the links on the webpage while deciding what PageRank can be passed. Some of the newbies in this field use “nofollow” in the content in order to stop the indexing but it doesn’t serve the purpose, so don’t do it even for the pages you want not be indexed. Whereas you can use <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”>

Requirement of canonicalization

The canonical tag in HTML is: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com[/]url-a.html”[/]> This helps the search engines that the URL mentioned should be considered as “canon”. Now the question is why will you require this tag? To prohibit the duplicate content from getting indexed. This also may pass the Page Rank to the canonical page, so need to be worried loosing page rank. Some of the conversion optimizers may be unsuccessful, in the A/B test one should use the canonical tag to restrict the alternate page to get indexed. Differences on the product pages, like that are with various color are example of this. Sitewide canonicalization is the better solution for website that have query strings.

Poor URL architecture

This is quite a complex part of optimizing, so don’t be too fast to do it as that can hurt the site rather than benefiting, if not done meticulously. The common problems that arise while structuring the URL are:

In the case of a blog post that is listed in various categories, makes it’s presence in multiple folders, leading to duplicate content problem.

URLs that are only in parent domain is not fit for SEO, the main pages must be listed in further folders to know the page specific category.

404 pages URLs in the folders. When a URL is kept subordinate to the folder, it is obvious that users will think it to be an operational page. It is completely confusing for the visitor, so it is better to keep these pages link in a parent folder.

Easy answers to the questions pertaining to small business optimization

small business

If you are into small business and want some effective guidelines for SEO approach to claim a great visibility and sale. Then you are the right place. In this article, you can find the proper way of optimizing your business specifically for the smaller ones.

Some of the business fail to survive the steep competition in the initial year and some may move out of the arena within five years. It’s not the size of the business, you have to strategize according to the changes happening in the digital marketing world. Marketing, when done with proper techniques has a vital chance of strong web presence, better search engine visibility to make your brand popular among the web audience. Search engines and SEO are important and will continue to be so in future for the business. And here are some of the most usable and effective SEO that can be very effective for small businesses.

The smart way is considering the search engine as referral engine. That is a medium that provides the relevant answers to the queries. To make this possible you have to do all the required tweaking to pertain to the customers’ requirements and needs.

The points to be taken into account for small businesses:-

  • The Website should be light structured, fast loadable and infallibly mobile-friendly.
  • Content should be patterned to give the customers the clear picture of the ‘why should they go for your brand’?
  • A blog with informative content can interest and invite a lot of customers to the website.
  • On-page is the lifeblood of the site, analytically frame the meta title and descriptions.
  • Go for Local SEO practices.
  • Quality link addition with domain authority.
  • Testimonials and portfolios increase the credibility factor for your business.

If you think will SEO work for small business?

One factor that can’t be ignored in search engines are the only platform where people search for new products and services, so this can be an effective way to reach the potential customers. Sometimes it’s the best option as in these cases and in some cases like budget constraints, your are in need of a fast result, ad competition and biggies are the competitors than you progress to the digital marketing traits like PPC advertising. Organic visibility is always requisite, it can be supported with PPC especially if have a long term vision. This can always yield better result promptly than SEO alone.

Now, the next question comes to our mind is how to select a reliable SEO provider?

This becomes a puzzling question often and requires some research work from your end.

  • Look for the positive reviews
  • Get to some depth don’t decide by the face value,
  • Look for the owner of the agency.
  • Check the industries they have worked for.
  • Are they time-tested or not?

After you have proper answers to these points you can select the best SEO agency or services to make your business outshine the other closest contender.

Easy Ways to increase mobile conversion to quality leads

mobile conversion

Some of the simple hacks of mobile conversion optimization to convert those to quality leads and increase the conversion rates. Gone are those days when only having a responsive website could suffice the engage the target audience and resulted in conversion. Present users are much smarter and are more choosy about their experiences. They want it to be customized for their devices. As the complete SEO process helps to get the relevant organic traffic to the website, here we will focus on the factors that can enhance mobile responsiveness. Here are some of the the key steps that can enhance your lead generation process though mobile.

Keep the page design simple

  • Put the required page elements instead of ornamentation, reduce the distractions nearby the main ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) button.
  • Don’t engage your page with too many CTA’s in the page 1 or 2 is proper for desired results. And create them in a way to get it highlighted with the graphical treatments.
  • Create the clickable elements with proper space without jumbling with other features around to be easily understood by the users and reduce the number of involuntary clicks.

Optimize the forms length and the merge the several-step process

1. Make it short and precise which reduces the chances of ambiguity for the users.
2. You can include some takeaways to the left of the form like:

  • Mention the form has two steps
  • Connect to the field which explains that they looking for.
  • Making the CTA prominent and visible with bold color

Offer the opportunity to change device.
Some percentage of the users seems to mobile surfers and desktop shoppers. Do not miss on this chunk of the audience, make it the way they want and try asking them for a shopping cart or website in an email. This can help the users to start the final process from where they left preferably from any device.

Only creating an ’email shopping cart’ button is not enough, not only that, if you guide them to emailing then must provide the reason for it. For example – purchase it after the discussion from the desktop or buy it once you are completed with your work. Around 68% of the mobile surfing’s actually done at home on the bigger screened devices, so that makes it clear that final action is taken occurs though a desktop.

Make the check out process prompt and easier

  • consolidate the billing and shipping process in one page
  • Provide GPS targeting for better location information than entering information by typing
  • Include click to call with phone number.
  • Create an option for the users to to save their account credentials with the log-in which makes the second buy easier.

Make it pictorial

  • If any of the messages can be described in image form, then go for that!. A visual or image is always better conceived on mobile versions than having to read a long text.
  • Icons can be impactful in this respect they look trendy and are more concise. Intuitive icons can be used as can be easily processed.

5 major ‘SEO’ and ‘Content’ trend change that is indispensable to know

SEO

Google has given a tough time to marketers in the past five years. These shifts encompass the new algorithm updates to the mobile-first approach aiming at the same target. That is for proving most relevant and best results to the users. Not only that Google ensures users can get the right result at right time as fast as possible. This leaves the marketers with an option to have similar goals i.e. you have to try to stay ahead with content that has a memorable impact, engages users when the users find the content. It’s high time that you keep up the pace with momentous shifts for the prominent presence and business online. Here are five SEO changes that are requisite to know as we move forward towards the latter part of the year.

Now it’s not only SEO but ‘SEO cum Content’

Neither content singly can assure successful SEO nor can alone SEO efforts can interest audience to engage in your website. Data helps the marketers as guiding principle to understand the potential customers intent in order to create an agile content which is relevant for the consumers leading to successful SEO effort. Here are three simple tricks that can help in creating a successful strategy:

Create the content basing on the data – Use the data in the content that the audience can relate to, in favor of your brand and it enhances the authenticity. Provide insights that will help the users to refer back to for reference.

Foster search, implement social and content marketing techniques – Social contents largely help in gaining brand recognition and direct interaction with the consumers. As well as better content is a good tool to improve search visibility.

Follow the SERP footprint – Create interesting infographics or video content and optimize it for maximum ROI. Provide the answers to general FAQ’s in the content and don’t forget to include the sharing options and the website link.

The shift marks mobile to mobile-first

For a few years, Google made it clear that to be in the digital competition it’s the mobile-first approach that can help. In 2015 mobile searches overshadowed desktop searches, so now mobile optimization is no longer an option but is obligatory. How you can deal with this shift:

Understand the mobile-first approach – Websites that are not mobile friendly lose 68% of traffic which they could have got. Knowing the behavior and intent mobile users and customizing the strategy accordingly can give the best user experience or you are at a loss.

SEO for fast loading – Along with a simple website, easy navigation a mobile website has to be very fast as 53% of users leave the site if it takes more than 3seconds to load (By Google). With best SEO practices like image optimization, Javascript and CSS you can deal with issues successfully.

Use context-based content – The mobile users have a research spree and the information you provide should be restringing and inspiring so that the brand in able to affect their decision and converts to a lead.

Local optimization more specific now (hyperlocal)
Hyperlocal targeting enables you to reach the audience based on their location. A great opportunity to optimize for the local services like “where can I find a restaurant near me” and give extensive relevancy or hyper-relevant.

Voice assistance to overrule text

Though it’s not the right time think that voice search (e,g. Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s Siri and Cortana of Microsoft Windows) has replaced text searches while 25% of mobile search queries are already done with through voice assistance. The trends show that it will keep on rising in the coming years.

From data to machine learning
Google depends on machine learning so marketers you must also pay heed to machine learning to know the user behavior, intent, and interest. You can employ AI and machine learning and determine from the data and matrices for achieving the target.

Conclusion- Informative content, data inclusion together can help in creating a digital strategy that can promise good ROI. By going through the given points above will help you to create an engaging and interesting content making the path to revenue generation.

What’s the most suitable SEO friendly URL structure for WordPress?

SEO

Probably URL optimization is one of the easiest tasks in SEO which you have to do in the beginning while you are using WordPress or any CMS. Now the questions come what is an SEO friendly URL and how it is effective for the site optimization? What type of SEO optimized permalink can be a benefiting factor for the website rank?

Firstly, URL is the structure that provides the web address of the website or a specific webpage as the term basically stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Each web page online has a unique URL and it somewhat depicts the domain.

Example – You are offering an Upholstery services and say you want your company’s name is ABC. A perfect URL will show the website domain of your business offering clearly. So it can be abcupholstry.com. Any other brand offering the same can’t use the same name, this will make it unique.

Now, let’s focus on what’s SEO friendly URL? This actually means the structure of URL should be so constructed that will enable the search engine spiders to know the page location and purpose. It should include the keyword that is main among the set of other keywords. When you have to decide the URL of the other pages than the index or home page, then you can use the particular service related word for the extension.

For example – you want to design the page by highlighting the customized services so the URL that can justify will be – http://www.abcupholstry.com/customized-furniture
Proper optimization can help you to get the best SEO friendly structure for the Website URL. Though there are two parts when you are using WordPress or other CMS. Every post will require an optimized URL for the best impact on the users and the crawlers too. Each page can be segregated in two parts one is the domain and second in location or path to get the page on the website, while no two domain can have the same URL.

When you update a post the example of a Non- SEO friendly URL is:
www[dot]dreamlogodesign[dot]com/Folder/X1356774/124

And SEO friendly will be:
https://www.dreamlogodesign.com/digital-marketing-services/

Now, when you know how to create an optimized URL, the next obvious question is why it’s significant for SEO?
It enhances user experience
As the user can easily know by reading the URL http://www.abcupholstry.com/customized-furniture that page you have searched provides information about creating customized furniture and the same facility.

Significant SEO ranking factor
Google always improved the algorithm when it comes to URL interpretation and presently every CMS are designed to be able to customize URL to be SEO optimized and it helps in ranking better.

Backlink creation
A study conducted by Backlinko reveals top positioning URLs are those which are shorter. You can use a relevant keyword but stuffing can affect adversely, doubly. It will make the URL long and will provide no clear information to the search engine bot about the page. Maximum 3 words should be included in an SEO friendly URL or up to 2048 characters. Uppercase, lowercase, and spaces are not allowed in the perfect structure. For example – http://www.abcupholstry.com/Customized-Furniture this is the wrong way.
Customization of URL in WordPress:

It’s quite simple, let me explain it in a few steps

  • Go to the settings, permalink settings
  • select the Common Settings
  • write the custom structure you need for your website.
  • And for a published post URL, just go to the small edit button shown under the title and change it in a way that explains the topic.

Few indispensable plugins in WordPress for SEO

SEO

You get your business website completed and you think that all the pages are ready with the desired layout, content and graphics. With all the links placed properly and simple navigation and perfect color graphics that you love looking at it. Let’s think that you have chosen WordPress for your website’s content management system (CMS). That’s a great choice, more if you are new in the web design industry. It’s most simple to create a blog or website through it make it run within no time.

Even if it can be live within few days, as it looks all okay to you, it will be a little tough on your part to know that the site yet to get ‘optimized’. And the fact is that without proper optimization all your effort will not get the desired attention and result online. But there is no reason to worry, you can do it yourself if you don’t want to hire an SEO expert for the job. There are various WordPress plugins that can help you for site optimization and make it perfect for the search engine too.

Here are 5 plugins that can be installed for proper optimization (SEO) of your website.

Yoast SEO
This the most installed plugin used by the WordPress users. It’s very simple and comprehensive for SEO. You don’t have to know a bit of coding moreover, minimum knowledge about search engine optimization (SEO). It enables you to complete a process that contains all the essential elements like meta title, descriptions, XML sitemap and also provides analysis tool.

Google XML Sitemaps
Getting ranked in Google search depends on how fast your website gets indexed. The prime purpose of SEO strategy is to get the compete site indexed by Google which enables it to know what the site is all about. The Google bot must get the correct pages to get it ranked and you can aid the process by adding the Google XML sitemap which is automatically generated by the plugin as soon as you put up the content.

Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
The work is done after you have launched the website but you should check the performance. Without knowing the areas of improvement you cant the required inputs. This plugin allows you to embed an analytics code on the pages of the site for getting the data completely.

WPtouch Mobile Plugin
With the most required thing about your website being mobile-friendly this plugin enables you to make it without investing for prospective developer. You can customize the look without knowledge about coding.

Steps to create a SEO friendly content

SEO

Content was king and remains to be so. You can have a great business website design-wise, visitors may come but soon will move if it has a trashy content. The design of the webpage must support the content display in the best possible way. It’s not only about the web content but all the articles have to be brilliantly crafted to get the desired result. And for SEO, content is the one of the most significant aspects that greatly impacts the search results on the SERP.

Here are few steps that can help you in shaping an impactful SEO content:

# Is the content unique and original
You might be saying about the same topic that has been written about lot of times but yours cant be the same. It has to be unique and original. You can find out facts and interesting details about the topic and write in a way that will be appealing for the visitors. As it’s the content that will fetch engagement and relevant traffic. The point to bear in mind is a copied content will not only serve the purpose but Google can penalize your website. The Panda update primarily focused on the content quality. You can also site the quality resource links in case of a blog content or a article.

# Make the titles attractive

  • The heading has a very crucial role to play. The aspects are various like:
  • The search engine bots will know what the writing is about.
  • Users will make out from it whether to click it or not.
  • Newsletter subscribers also decide through it if they will check the email or not.

Among all this you must see that it has to be SEO friendly. Focus on the placing of the keyword in the title. Try to keep it among the first three words but not forcefully.

# Make the introduction Intriguing
Introduction is starting of the article that can hold the attention of the users as well as the search engines wants to get the information from their to decide whether it’s indexable or not. Your job is to help them by mentioning your keywords in an introduction style paragraph at the beginning of your page. This makes your article Search engine friendly too.