| Online presence is one of the leading factors in successful business practice across all industries today. Though we’ve been walking the path toward a digitized economy for a decade or two, the pandemic shifted that transition into high gear. Now, if a laundry’s website is hard to find, navigate or even look at, the consequences can be significant. No longer are reputation, print advertising and location the main drivers of business. Online presence, design and visibility are essential elements of an effective prospect outreach strategy. If you’re wondering whether your website is helping or hurting business, here are some questions to ask. In Part 1, we looked at questions about how trustworthy your site looks and if it’s fast enough. This time, we examine questions about the findability and security of your site. CAN PROSPECTS FIND YOUR SITE EASILY? Search engines are the crossroads of the Internet where nearly 93% of all the web traffic flows. When prospects want to find services you supply, they’ll search for it in a search engine and, if your site is search engine optimized (SEO), there’s a good chance you’ll be one of the first choices on the results page. If it’s not, your competitors who are optimized will likely get that lead. • A simple SEO test To get an idea of where you’re at, search for your company’s name in your preferred search engine. If it shows as the first or second result, that’s a good start. Now, search for a product or service you provide like a prospect might. It could say “linen service in (your town or city)” or “uniform rental near me.” If your site is in the top five, that’s great. If not, things could be better. When looking to rank high for certain keywords, it’s important to have content built around those keywords. If they aren’t present on your site, or if the content around them isn’t written well or with SEO principles in mind, you will have a hard time ranking well enough to be seen. Read more: Is Your Website Helping or Hurting Business? |
| The key to running a successful business is enticing customers and clients to do business with you. So whether you’re scrambling to lure customers back during a global pandemic or expanding your markets during “normal” business times, the question is, How do you do that? What are the best ways to get customers to come to your store, website, restaurant, office, etc.? We all know the answer: it’s marketing. But marketing is not a simple process. There are various practices, tactics, and strategies that are part of an overall marketing plan—and they are constantly evolving. It can make formulating a marketing plan for your small business overwhelming. To help simplify the process, there is one marketing method that has maintained its claim to fame. Email marketing still promises to deliver the highest ROI of all marketing channels—$42 back for every dollar you spend. That’s not to say email as an industry, and your approach to it, isn’t evolving—it is, or it should be. As Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber, a leading email marketing solution for small businesses, says, “The most effective [email] marketing strategies adapt, grow, and innovate.” AWeber recently released its 2020 Small Business Marketing Email Marketing Statistics Report, featuring insights from small business owners and industry experts. These are the techniques that are working for other small business owners. See if they’ll work for you as well. While email marketing can boast about its effective ROI, not all small businesses are using it. According to the report, 66% of businesses surveyed say they use email marketing to “promote their businesses or communicate with leads and/or customers.” Read more: Email Marketing: Still The Most Powerful Tool To Take Your Business To The Next Level |
| As an SEO agency, you already know the role that keyword research plays in understanding the business opportunities of your clients and how to gather hundreds and hundreds of keywords for your SEO campaign. But how do you go from a large list of keywords to an articulated, coherent, data-driven set that ensures you’ve zeroed in on the objective and know where you’re heading? Jumping straight to execution, crunching tactics and tasks might work in the short-term, but without a well-defined strategy in place, the risk of wasting client resources and, ultimately, trust is high. And you’ll know a strategy is good when you trust it to leverage your performance and generate results for your clients while ticking all the following boxes: Having a diagnosis which details the challenge to be solved. This helps you narrow your focus to a clear, simple problem that your client faces. Deciding on a guiding policy that defines the approach you follow for solving the problem. Developing a set of coherent actions: the tactics you’ll use, step by step, in accordance with your approach to get the best results and solve the problem. This logical structure, called the kernel of strategy, can help your SEO agency at every stage of campaign development, but for the scope of this article, we’ll be looking at how to refine the guiding policy by avoiding common keyword strategy pitfalls. Let’s take them one by one, so you discover new ways to get the most out of your keyword list and set yourself up for success: Pitfall #1 You include branded keywords in the mix Branded organic traffic is not SEO traffic. The navigational keywords related to your client’s website or other websites (even competitors) won’t be valuable for your SEO campaign, as you can’t directly influence them. Plus, your client owns all the branded keywords, and they’re using other channels to amplify them (marketing campaigns, advertising, paid search, etc.). You don’t need rank tracking or SEO for that. Mixing the two will muddle your data and will make your client’s position in the search landscape seem better than it actually is — which, in turn, will alter the strategy and your desired objectives. Read more: 5 common pitfalls to avoid so you maximize your keyword strategy’s business impact |
| The global agencies seo services market is expected to grow from $37.84 billion in 2020 to $40.92 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.1%. The market is expected to reach $83.7 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 19.6%. The agencies SEO services market consists of the sales of SEO services and related goods by agencies or companies that provide search engine optimization services for businesses. These establishments are the entities which provide both on premise and cloud-based deployment SEO services and charge their clients based on man-hours, results based, and click based among many other models. Only goods and services traded between entities or sold to end consumers are included. Companies operating in agencies SEO services market are using “Zero-Click Search Results” to increase their appearance in the search results and this is a major trend in the agencies SEO services market. Zero-Click Searches alludes to a search engine results page (SERP) which answers the query directly at the top so that the user doesn’t need to do any further clicks to complete the search. A zero-click search is one that fulfills the search intent at the top of the SERP. According to the Search Engine Journal, 34.4% of all desktop searches result in no click while 62.5% of users never click search result links on mobile. Google presented zero-click searches in March 2020, with the aim to eliminate multiple results that searchers don’t really need and to satisfy the user intent faster. Zero-click searches include database-style searches, dictionary and encyclopedia-style searchers, and map direction style searchers. The agencies SEO services market covered in this report is segmented by service type into online services; offline services. It is also segmented by subscription into monthly; annually and by end-use industry into professional services; IT services; e-commerce; hospitality; recreation; real estate; others. The number of people using smartphones and internet services is increasing rapidly, especially in developing countries and this factor is expected to drive the market for agencies SEO services during the forecast period. For instance, in January 2020, the numbers of smartphone users in the world were 3.50 billion accounting for 45.12% of the world’s population. Read more: Global Agencies SEO Services Market Report 2021: Market is Expected to Reach $83.7 Billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 19.6% |
| Companies have plenty of platforms at their disposal to get their messages to the masses, but email marketing is still one of the most crucial. Emails are a reliable, affordable and efficient way to reach prospects of all types, regardless of their position in the customer journey. To be effective, electronic communications must be deliberate, thought-provoking, and relevant without being overly intrusive or spammy. Email blasts are a commonly used type of content marketing and can be extremely engaging (or irritating, if executed poorly). When planned carefully, these campaigns can provide great ROI (return on investment) without alienating your audience. If you want to learn how to send a compelling email blast to your subscriber base, this guide will set you up for success. What is an email blast? An email blast is a stand-alone email message that you send to your entire contact list, or at least several segments. The goal is to reach as wide of an audience as possible with minimal investment on the front end. Also known as broadcast emails, bulk emails, or mass emails, email blasts are usually independent of targeted campaigns and more urgent in nature. The message within an email blast is usually promotional, such as enticing news about a sale or special. Email newsletters typically fall into the e-blast category as well. Email blasts may also include important news or unexpected updates that you need to communicate quickly. While seemingly innocuous, e-blasts get a bad reputation when executed poorly, so it is important to use them properly. Read more: How to Send an Email Blast (With Examples) |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process where you aim to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search outcomes. When a search engine like Google ranks your website on the first page, you will receive more visibility. This means that you get more visitors, increasing your revenue. If the Seo ranking is high, customers consider your brand as trustworthy. SEO also improves the user’s experience making it easy for clients to interact with your site. Read on to discover why SEO is essential to your business. Visibility and rankings. Users tend to choose the topmost items that search engines display when searching for a product or service online. If you rank high in search engines, the visibility to the potential customers becomes high. If your business receives more visits or views on search engines, the number of customers likely to purchase from your brand becomes high. As such, it is essential to incorporate SEO into your marketing strategy to increase your visibility. Web Traffic. In simple terms, this means that if potential clients cannot find your website, the chances of missing opportunities become high. To increase your organic search engine traffic, consider optimizing your site for SEO. This will, in turn, increase the number of visitors to your site. SEO also allows you to target specific audiences, improving your chances of increased sales. Audience targeting makes your clients feel unique and more willing to buy from you. Trustworthy. If your SEO score is good, you will appear in several search engines. SEO optimization will earn you a positive appeal and increase your visibility. Combined with excellent user experience, these characteristics will earn your trust with potential customers. Customers are more likely to refer a company they trust to their friends and family. Every start-up brand requires referrals to grow. As such, it is essential to create trust with potential clients. Growth. SEO is essential to the development of any business, whether small or already established. As earlier mentioned, if your brand ranks higher on the search engines, the more traffic the brand receives. An SEO-optimized website will attract more traffic, generating more leads. If you satisfy the needs of these customers by providing quality products, you will experience gradual growth. Read more: The importance of SEO in business |
| 2021 will most likely become the year of major changes and drastic breakthroughs in the field of web design. We can already witness exciting color palette solutions and original uses of gradients and duotones, and from this post, you’ll discover the main trends in the color schemes for websites in 2021 that are not to be missed. Keep reading if you want your designs to be fresh and up to date. Top 5 Color Trends to Follow in Web Design So what are the hottest color trends 2021 that every web designer should follow? Dark Mode Dark themes are the latest trend in app design. After Apple had finally released dark mode for iPhones and macOS, it was only a matter of time before it appeared everywhere. Top web design agencies also decided to implement this mode for their solutions. Once they were rare, now dark themes are everywhere. When done well, the dark mode has many advantages. It reduces eye strain, making the nightly online experience much more pleasurable. They are easier to read in low light, like while on the subway or a bus. And they can significantly reduce battery consumption. Gradients Gradients and color filters have been around for a couple of years now and still haven’t lost their popularity among designers. First, color filters started becoming popular because of the Instagram-oriented public mentality, but now they are used to create additional textures and add more depth to basic colors. As for the successful examples, check out Grammarly’s social networks. They use gradients instead of flat colors for their graphics. Read more: Color Trends in Web Design: 2021 Edition |
| It’s true that talks about the demise of email marketing have been going on for quite some time. “Social media is taking over”, “other marketing channels are more efficient” and numerous similar myths have been circling around. The reality however is different! Nobody is pulling the plug on email just yet. Despite the obvious rise of social media in our everyday lives, people still receive emails in their inboxes and they expect it more than ever. The email remains the “king” among digital marketing channels driving a tremendous ROI for businesses. What seems to be dead (or obsolete, to be exact) are the strategies used and the email marketing methodology followed by some businesses! THE TRUTH ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING While email marketing is not something new, it’s still alive and kicking and far from dead according to the numbers. Specifically, according to recent statistics, email is an integral part of our daily online life. The number of global e-mail users in 2020 amounted to four billion and that number is expected to grow to 4.6 billion users in 2025. To put things into perspective, 3.6 billion people used social media in 2020. So, there are more people using email than social media. What’s even more interesting is the fact that the trend towards mobile devices has also affected emails, and almost 50% of total email opens occurred through mobile devices. So, people can effortlessly check their email even away from their PCs. As for the email’s effectiveness as a channel, 47% of marketers agreed that it is the most effective marketing channel, followed by social media marketing (39%), SEO (33%), and content marketing (33%). What’s also changed throughout the years is the affordability and functionality of email marketing services. The market is now full with robust tools with advanced features, while their pricing is affordable even for start-ups and small businesses. Some of the top email newsletter software right now can be found here. Read more: Email Marketing Isn’t Dead, but Old Practices Have Become Obsolete |
| The time for the website promotion might range from several days to months. With manual SEO, the implementation of on-page and off-page optimization tasks could be really tedious. Thus, automated SEO is widely used by many webmasters these days. Owing to SEO automation tools and software, it takes less time and effort for search engine optimization activities. It is sometimes considered that automated SEO could not benefit your website promotion. On the contrary, automatic SEO was believed to be hazardous and even harmful. However, this statement is far from reality because the effect of automated SEO is the opposite. It helps SEO teams to streamline repetitive tasks, which allows dedicating more time to other important SEO activities. What is automatic SEO? The principles of automatic SEO imply the utilization of software to perform daily tasks faster. As a result, effective SEO teams become more productive when using SEO automation tools. Automated SEO considerably reduces the amount of time and resources spent on various SEO activities. Automated processes provide a possibility for webmasters to spend less time on routine daily tasks. While an SEO expert may spend minutes on finding broken links, for instance, an SEO automation tool can accomplish that in seconds. How does automated SEO work? The concept of automated SEO refers to the desktop software and utilities designed to streamline activities dedicated to search engine optimization. Automation tools assist webmasters in repetitive tasks that could be easily systematized. Those are usually related to position tracking, backlink profile analysis, finding broken links, site audit, and reporting. To get the most benefits out of automation, webmasters first need to decide which processes to streamline. Based on that, dedicated SEO automation tools should be selected for facilitating chosen activities. Read more: Importance of automation for your website & SEO team |
| A million different things go into running a business, so it can be alarmingly easy to forget some crucial components. Arguably the most important of these is your website. It might surprise you to learn just how significant your digital presence is and the impact it can have on your audience. Of course, as an eCommerce owner, you already know that a website matters in terms of purchases—without one, your customers wouldn’t be able to buy your products. But what you may not know is the influence it has on consumer assumptions about your brand. There’s a lot more to an eCommerce website than its product page and shopping cart. Here, we will be explaining all of that to you and why effective web design for eCommerce matters. It Is the Store-Front of the Digital Age For better or for worse, the high street is declining in popularity, and the importance of online marketing is increasing. As one Europe digital agency explains, rather than your shop window, customers will be judging your website. It could be the deciding factor between a purchase or a pass. If you want to secure a larger audience, you need to ensure your shop window is looking its best. If a potential client lands on your site and finds the site disappointing, they won’t bother looking at your products or services. Don’t get lax, and don’t let customers slip through your fingers—invest in web design! Read more: The Importance of Effective Web Design for eCommerce |