Google’s Recent Algorithm update could be killing your SEO efforts.

Google's Recent Algorithm update could be killing your SEO efforts.

Google is known to update its search algorithms multiple times in a year. According to a recent tweet by Google, ‘Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year. As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.’

So, what does this mean for the digital marketers? What happens to your SEO efforts?

Well, some updates can work against you and some might work in your favour. However, primarily, you need to stop looking for a fix. If you talk to any digital expert, he/she will ask you to focus on two fundamental aspects of digital marketing:

  • Quality content
  • Keywords

Despite the large number of updates that Google makes to its search algorithm, the main concept of the search engine is to identify and promote original, genuine and high quality content. Keywords play a major role in ensuring that your content is ranked for the right terms and phrases. Having said this, keeping an eye on the updates is necessary to ensure that your efforts are in the right direction. While broad changes don’t affect websites a lot, focused changes done by Google could require to fine-tune your SEO strategy to ensure that you are not being left behind.

Fresh quality content should be at the top of your list if you are seeking to improve the SEO ranking of your website or blog. Remember, Google ranks pages, not websites. Keep all your webpages updated and remove all outdated and irrelevant content. Google can be your best ally provided you don’t try to outsmart the algorithm.

Let the search engine believe that your website creates quality content and has keywords that are highly relevant to the content. With Google’s focus of providing the best experience to searchers, you will almost always find yourself in a ‘sweet SEO spot’. Good Luck!

A guide to setting your content marketing budget

A guide to setting your content marketing budget

 

We have all heard the term ‘Content is King’. But, how many of us know that way back in 1996, Bill Gates published an essay named ‘Content is King’ which is where this phrase originated from. Today, more than two decades later, content marketing is the focal point of most businesses. Every website is trying to create high quality content with a long term strategy in mind. Content promotion to the target audience involves many aspects like keyword position, SEO, etc. Cost is a big factor in marketing content and needs to be budgeted meticulously.

Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. In order to craft a successful content marketing strategy, businesses must focus not only on increasing the overall traffic to the website, but increasing the right kind of traffic; that being the number of visits from real people who have the potential of becoming a customer for your business.

To achieve the desired results, distribution of content through organic efforts like search engine optimization or paid efforts should be deployed. Without being too much of a fence-sitter, both paid and organic have the potential to be used at the same time to great effect. But it ultimately boils down to your business goals and what you intend to achieve with a content marketing strategy.

If you are looking to drive traffic and conversions quickly and money isn’t a constraint, then paid social advertising will be a quick fix. However, if it’s for something that will focus more on your client-customer relationship, organic would be well worth investing in.

In this article, you will get some guidelines to set your content marketing budget:

1. Focus on your organization’s business and size

Is your organization into manufacturing or technology services? You need to understand that each industry has its own content requirements. Focusing on your organization will help you understand the volume of content and the thrust required for a successful content marketing campaign.

Further, if you are a start-up, then your budget can be lesser than a big organization in the same business.

2. Define precise goals

What do you want to achieve with the campaign? Steer clear of generic replies like ‘getting more orders’ or ‘increasing customers’. These can be the ultimate motives behind any marketing activity but for content marketing you need to have more tangible and quantifiable goals. Some such goals can be:

  • Increasing organic traffic to your website
  • Improve search engine rankings
  • Build authority of your website, etc.

These goals will determine your content requirement and marketing needs, thereby giving you an idea about the possible budget.

3. How will you execute the campaign?

Do you have a fulltime resource to work on content marketing? Or, are you planning to employ an agency? Or, freelancers? Consider these options well because each one of these cost money and you will need to plug these costs in to your budget.

These three tips can help you set a content marketing budget especially if you are just starting out. If you already have such a plan running, then you can look at the areas that have given you good and bad results and plan accordingly. Remember, high quality content is king, provided it is marketed well.

3 Powerful Digital Marketing Tools To Boost Customer Loyalty

3 Powerful Digital Marketing Tools To Boost Customer Loyalty

 

Most companies with an online presence still find it challenging to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. Nowadays, it’s not enough to just have a great product; you should also have an ongoing conversation with your customers. Thankfully, an efficient digital marketing strategy can help your business drive customer loyalty. Given below are the top three digital marketing methods that you can employ:

  1. Content marketing

Start with a well-designed website and fill it with informative content relevant to the product. Apart from that, use content marketing strategies to create and distribute content that’s useful for your target audience in the form of articles, blog posts, videos, etc. This way you can establish your company as an expert in your field.

  1. Social media marketing

All businesses today are aware of the importance of social media. However, there’s a difference between trying to do it yourself and employing a clever social media strategist to drive customer engagement. Social media is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and to provide them with relevant information. The real-time nature of the platform also makes it ideal for addressing customer grievances and queries with regards to the product. Research shows that bad customer service is one of the reasons why customers switch brands. Using social media to resolve such issues would ensure that customers stay loyal.

  1. Email and SMS text message marketing

Though unglamorous in nature, email and SMS marketing are very effective when it comes to increasing customer loyalty. This is why websites make a big deal of capturing email, phone numbers, and social media ids at the time of registration.

(a) Email marketing: This is a great way to let your customers know you’re keen on maintaining a relationship with them. Use it to send regular newsletters filled with the latest company or product updates as well as links to your blog. Send them special customer only promotions, discounts and previews of new products or collections before they’re launched.

(b) SMS Text message marketing: Since almost all people own mobile phones nowadays, text message marketing is an ideal way to connect with them instantly. Ensure that you send messages tailored to the requirements of your target audience instead of spamming them with promotional messages. Use it to deliver customer-only discounts, info on flash sales and coupons.

As you can see, with the right digital marketing strategy, you can boost customer loyalty and attract more customers to your business. Therefore consider hiring experts and watch your business grow in leaps and bounds.

Top Reasons Ecommerce Websites Need a Blog

Top Reasons Ecommerce Websites Need a Blog

Ecommerce websites have a direct approach to sales – consumers come to the website to buy products, so the focus is on displaying these products as prominently as possible. While blogs are widely acknowledged to be a great way to creatively present the company’s ideas to its customers, it is understandable that Ecommerce companies think they don’t require it. How will a blog help with sales? Won’t it be distracting the customer from actually looking at the products he came to buy? Is there real value that a blog adds or is it just another trend to follow?

We’re here to give you the complete lowdown on why Ecommerce websites need a blog and the many ways it will benefit them.

  1. To improve SEO ranking

Search engines work in 2 ways – through content crawling and by building an index. This is what allows them to throw up the most relevant results to questions asked by users. Blogs hugely influence your SEO ranking because of the many possibilities it provides – you can include internal links, specific phrases or keywords and a lot of relevant information about a product/topic. This is why when you search for a certain product – after the advertisements, the first few results are almost always a blog discussing the product. Now imagine if your Ecommerce website had blogs, it would show up in the top results, the user would follow the link and eventually be lead to the page where he can buy the product directly. Extremely simple yet effective.

  1. To enhance the visibility of your website

We live in a time when more content is being consumed and shared than ever before. Websites that host think pieces, opinions and blogs create posts that have been shared hundreds of times. This shows that users are more receptive to reading a variety of topics and knowledge really trumps all. When you have a blog that is updated regularly with high quality posts that are relevant and interesting – people will come back to it, subscribe and share on social media portals. . The more you blog, the more visibility you are getting for your website and brand, eventually meeting your targets of increasing sales.

  1. To increase the number of entry points to your site

Having a blog increases the number of pages you have on your site talking about various products. Have you ever read an article on Wikipedia and stopped at just one? The many internal links on each Wiki page leads you down a tunnel of information (until you realize you’re quite far away from where you started). Now think of this while keeping your Ecommerce business in mind: a user clicks on one of the many blogs you have, he then follows the internal links in the blogs until he reaches a product page and then there is a higher possibility of converting it into a sale. If it was a product he was already interested in, reading a quality post on it would persuade him to buy it from your website rather than anywhere else.

  1. It gives your company a voice and makes you relatable

Once a user reads a well-written post about a product on your blog, he will automatically make a positive connection to your brand. The next time he is looking to buy something, chances are high that it is to your website he looks to. A good case in point is what the American Ecommerce website Groupon did. Their blogs were one of the most widely shared because of the witty “Groupon voice” it had cultivated over the years.

We hope this post helped you understand how blogging might be just the tool you need to grow your business further. Keep a lookout for more posts from Tenovia on social media trends and other digital marketing strategies that will help you with your own business.