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Day 12: Blog, blog and blog

07/05/202112/04/2015 by scmarketing

The importance of blogging for your SEO strategy

A lot of website owners are sceptical of having a “blog” page as they believe a blog is something for teenagers.

You should forget this misconception as a blog is probably the most important page to ensure you get noticed among the rest of your competition.

Remember, you can always call it “news”, “what’s new”, or whatever you wish.

You don’t have to spend long writing the articles, they can just be short snappy updates, posted one or two times a week. Obviously the more you do the better results you will have, but as long as they have all the right content, they will work magic for your site’s performance.

Here are 4 reasons why you need to blog:

• Drive traffic to your website

• Increase your SEO/ SERP

• Position your brand as an industry leader

• Develop better customer relationships

Drive traffic to your website:

Your blog gives you the opportunity to create relevant content for your customers. Use this as a marketing tactic to drive traffic back to your website.

Make the blog on your website the foundation for all of your social media platforms.

Your business might be on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, LinkedIn, or anywhere else. Post links – with relevant visuals – of your blog articles to your social sites. Give your social followers a reason to click through to your website.

Additionally, post inbound links directly in your blog articles, to drive traffic to specific landing pages of your website.

Increase your SEO/ SERP:

Blogs increase your SEO. Fresh content is still a key to beating your competitors in the search engine results page.

Use keywords in your articles. List out the keywords, topics, and categories you want your business to be found with. Use these words, and related expressions when writing your posts.

Of course, whether you actively seek these out or not, blogging regularly about your business, industry, product or customer lifestyle will naturally increase your search keywords. Being intent about your words will only increase results.

Keywords and topics on your website are a significant way in which Google (and other search engines) find your site for these searched words.

Position your brand as an industry leader:

Well written articles demonstrate your company as an industry leader. By posting topics which resonate with your market and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills for your business, service or product too.

If you are a retailer, for example, write blog posts about your products. Your customers will get to know you as the knowledge source for the products they want.

If you are B2B, post articulate, well researched articles about your service. Become the hub, or the place to be, for your industry.

You are building trust, too. The more you can show that you are well-versed in your field, the more likely your consumerr will trust you to supply what they need.

Your customers additionally benefit from learning via the information you provide them.

Develop better customer relationships:

Blogs provide another source to deepen the connection with your customer. By connecting directly on your website, your clients are able to get to know your business or product from the comfort of your online home base.

Use this. Again, build trust by being a source of information. Consumers like to be informed, and appreciate that you are the one teaching them.

Additionally, just as on your other social sites, respond to comments and interact with your consumer. If they have questions about a product you are writing about, respond to them directly on your website. Unlike many social sites, a blog is generally searchable on your site for some time. Your website comments last longer than on a Twitter response or Facebook post. Other customers will see your interactions too.

Content marketing agency

Talk to us about your content marketing needs and we’ll ensure that the best combination of channels and tactics are utilised to make you stand out from the crowd. A reliable digital marketing agency in Croydon, Smart Cow will be glad to answer any further questions.

Day 11: Using analytics to track your SEO progress

08/03/202111/24/2015 by scmarketing

SEO has many different aspects to it, from targeting specific Keywords in Content marketing, to utilising your social media to build links and share great content. But how do you really know what’s working?

Analytics is key to understanding the progress of your SEO strategy. It can show you amazing specific data from the number of clicks you’re receiving to your website, bounce rate, returning and new visitors and much, much more!

There are many different analytics tools out there, our favourites and the ones we recommend are:

Google Analytics
Google Webmasters
Sitebeam
Moz
Hootsuite

Using these tools will enable you to have a wide range of data so that you can identify the areas that you’ll need to improve and things you’re doing well.

If you have a small budget you don’t need to worry about paying for the pro versions as you can get brilliant information from the free analytics tools.

Social Media analytics

Facebook has built in insights that you can view if you’re the admin of your business page. This shows you things such as growth in likes to your page, amount of engagement, reach for your posts and visits to your page.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t have on-site analytics, but there is a fantastic tool that shows you engagement rate, link clicks, retweets, favourites and replies. It also allows you to see your followers’ growth, top interests, location and gender of your followers.

You may be thinking that all of this is a lot of work and will take a lot of time to sort through, but it doesn’t have to. You can set aside 2 or 3 hours a month to work through all the areas, spot the problems and work out a plan as to how you’re going to effectively improve those areas.

SEO agency Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re well placed to offer local businesses digital marketing services and online marketing advice on relevant Local SEO Services and content marketing to help increase presence in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Get in touch to chat about your business goals and how a tailored SEO campaign can help your marketing strategy.

Day 10: Google Places for local searches

08/03/202110/24/2015 by scmarketing

If you’re a business that targets your local audience as potential customers for your products or services, the first basic step to growing your visibility is improving your website’s local visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This is where local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. One of the most simple and effective strategies to increase the reach of your website is to use Google’s website listing service ‘Google Places’. Google Places is a free website listing service which aims to create a detailed database of places all over the globe. It was launched in September 2009 to replace the now defunct Google Local Business Centre. Google specifically describes this service as “a webpage for every place in the world, organising all the relevant information about it.”

What is the impact of Google Places to Local SEO?

Google has released undeniable data about how people consume local information online.

These facts show you just how important local SEO is for your business growth, and website’s ranking, and to keep you on top of the competition, using Google Places can actually boost your websites ranking, therefore giving your business more visibility in the local area. Businesses listed in Google Places are prioritized by Google Search and are displayed at the very top of search engine result pages. For example, if you have a Website Development business in Purley, every time a person searches for “Website Development Purley” or ” Digital marketing agency in croydon” Google prioritises the listings of businesses on that locality, displaying all possible places and establishments that closely matched the query. If you’re unsure as to why SEO is key for your business’ growth, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to explain further.

The Advantage of Google Places for Small Businesses

Employing the use of Google Places is very much recommended for start-ups and small businesses. Even those companies who don’t have websites yet can register and get free online exposure. Google Places only needs to verify your business details through a validation process which would enable your business listing to go live online.

SEO agency Croydon

Get in touch to chat about your business goals and how a tailored SEO campaign can help your marketing strategy.

Day 9: Keywords in Content Marketing

07/05/202109/24/2015 by scmarketing

Getting attention online isn’t something that will just fall into your lap. The first way people will find your site is by searching on a search engine such as Google. If you don’t have the right keywords, you won’t rank well for the key areas you want your website to be noticed for, leaving you basically invisible. This is a clear indicator that using keywords, alongside internal links on your site, is a good way to optimise your site on search engines.

Keywords are important no matter what kind of content marketing you do. Whether it’s your YouTube video, an article you’ve written or your website, keywords will help decide whether you get discovered.

There are two basic principles to Content keywords:

Traffic

Number of people who search these keyword daily

Other sites trying to rank for the same keywords

Competition

Harder to rank for keywords with high traffic

Highly competitive keywords will be harder to rank highly for as big businesses may have already established a firm ranking

Long tail Key words

A regular Keyword may be something like “Shoes” but a long tail keyword would be something like “Red shoes with big heals and no straps” It’s going to be a lot easy to rank for as there will be less competition, but you may see less traffic to your site as not many people will search such a specific phrase.

Finding keywords for your business

This can be quite a tricky process, you need to find keywords that work with your business goals and target the areas you’re looking to promote. But finding out which keywords have the most traffic or competition is information that isn’t widely available, so you can outsource this to another company or download software or use online web applications to do it.

How to target keywords

You may think that jamming your content full of keywords is going to help your site, it will, but only for the short term, as search engines can recognise “keyword stuffing” and will penalise you for this. So to prevent any wrong-doing, you should focus each piece of content around one or two keywords and let your results build up over time.

If you follow this guide and you have a successful keyword strategy, you will notice the extra leads to your site and then possibly more sales, which is after all, the main goal.

Content marketing agency for accountants

As a digital marketing agency in London, Smart Cow Marketing can help your firm stand out online by providing the tailored content marketing strategy your business needs. Book a free consultation.