How A Consumer Friendly Web Design Can Help Your SEO Efforts

There are some people today who think web design will not have an impact on your SEO score. Many studies show that the opposite is true. Consumers demand the best web design from brands. A brand’s landing page is the first impression it makes to its site visitors. It can make a difference whether or not consumers will choose you or your competitors.

You’re likely thinking about how web design can improve your SEO game. Today, I’ll discuss ways a consumer-first web design can help accomplish your mission. I will also dive into how to achieve a web design that will make you and your consumers proud.

Faster Site Speeds

Search engines view your site speed as an SEO ranking factor. Every second can make or break a decision whether or not consumers do business with your brand. Pages with long load times will more than likely have high bounce rates. High bounce rates signal to search engines that consumers don’t have a good UX on your site. Your page rankings will see a drop as a result of a slow site speed.

According to Load Storm, 25% of site visitors would exit a page that loads longer than 4 seconds. 64% of shoppers from the same study would shop elsewhere in the future resulting from a subpar site UX.

Here are some tools you can use to help enhance your site speed:

Bing Speed Test
Google Page Speed Insights
GT Metrix

Adjusting your pics and videos to the proper size will help make a positive impact in meeting your site speed goals. As site visitors easily access your page, they’ll be more likely to visit you in the future. Search engines will then notice your efforts and reward you with higher page rankings.

Scripts You Can Externalize

Search engines look at your site through what is in an HTML document. If CSS and Javascript are in the doc, they’ll see more code lines and be ahead of your site content. These internal scripts can slow down how search engines crawl your site and cause your UX to decline.

As you code your site, look to place the scripts outside your HTML doc. Adding these measures will help search engines access your site content fast and attract your audience to your page.

Block Pages You Do Not Want Search Engine To Index

You have the option to block pages you don’t want search engines to index. Pages under this category usually add no value to your site and may contain server-side scripts. There are also some site sections where you may have test design projects.

If web bots expose these pages, your site could end up with repeat content and have a weaker content density. They can also cause site visitors to bounce from your page and harm your search rankings. Robots.txt files help you block those bots from getting to those pages. If you have page sections you use as test centers, look to use password protectors. Web Dev platforms like JSP or Wamp Server can also help you resolve web crawl issues on test sites.

Utilizing these tactics help your site to only show content you want your visitors to view. They can go a long way in helping you upgrade your SEO game.

Sites That Adapt To Any Screen Size

Sites that have exceptional UX exist across every screen size and device. Responsive design helps you design your site to auto-scale your content to match the screen size of devices. These adaptable features help users avoid pinching their screens to view site content.

Search engines value sites that are mobile-friendly and responsive to devices (e.g., desktops, mobile phones, tablets). A Digital Examiner study shows that 80% of the world’s top-ranking sites are mobile-friendly. Sites with responsive design will provide your audience with the best experience and grow your SEO efforts over time.

URLs That Are Easier For People To Find Online

Search-friendly URLs have keywords that accurately describe a page’s content and make sites more crawlable by search engine spiders. Here are some examples of URLs for a sandwich shop that offers different types of foods:

sandwichshop.com/menu/low-fat-sandwiches
sandwichshop.com/menu/vegan-sandwiches
sandwichshop.com/menu/veggie-sandwiches
sandwichshop.com/menu/italian-sandwiches

As you choose page URLs, look to avoid the usage of content management tools that use random codes or numbers. The best CMTs give you many ways to customize your URLs to meet your exact needs.

Fresh Content Search Engines Can Read

Authoritative and informative content is a website’s star power that grabs the attention of search engines and consumers. As you build or upgrade your site, check that it has these clear content structures:

Headings
Links
Paragraphs
Subheadings

Sites with little content or poor content structure usually struggle most in search results. You can address these problems by planning in the design stage. If you use images with text, look to use CSS background image replacement tools. For blog posts or guest article writing, save some room for excerpts of recent posts to place on every page. When you make excerpts, look to avoid showing off the whole post, as this can lead to repeat content issues.

Search engines will prioritize fresh content since it means your site is active and engaging to consumers. When your page crawl frequency increases, you’ll be on track to attract the right people to your site. You may even win up gaining new customers in the process.

Web Design That Focuses On People Is The Key To SEO Success

As you put together your web design, look to have your consumers in mind and give them the best UX. People-First web design efforts will help your brand stand out to your audience and boost your SEO game. When you tailor your web design to your consumers, your brand will be on track toward moving up the search results page and having more sales.

What else do you feel is the best way to create a web design that can help your SEO plans? How else does web design play a role in SEO success for brands? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share your thoughts below. Also, feel free to share this blog post online and follow me here or on my social media platforms.

Best Ways To Transform Your Google Business Profile

Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

Are you a small or mid-size business looking to grow your online presence? As you seek methods to enhance your SEO game, look to those that help your brand stand out. By making factors like these a priority, you’ll be able to attract the right people to your website.

The best way to grow your online presence is to select SEO methods that best address your audiences’ needs. When you go with strategies that put people first, you’ll be on a path toward long-term business growth.

You’re probably wondering how adjusting your Google Business Profile (GBP) helps improve your SEO game. Today, we’ll discuss the top ways to help make that happen and how you stand to benefit.

Check That Your Contact Data Is Consistent With Your NAP

One great way to optimize your GBP is to ensure your NAP is correct. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number of your business. Taking this step may be simple, but your business does change over time. Not only that, but you may also have had different addresses in the past.

As you update your information, check to ensure your contact data on other directory sites is consistent with your NAP. By keeping your data consistent and up to date, you can build trust with your audience. Not only that, but you can also grow your rankings in the maps section of the search results.

Select The Right GBP Categories That Best Describe Your Business

Choosing the right GBP category is an important SEO factor as it can impact your local search rankings. For these reasons, make sure to select your categories carefully.

For example, if you have a store that sells coffee, you might consider choosing “coffee shop” as your category. These steps can help those looking for coffee online find your business in the local search results.

If your business does more than one thing, make sure to include subcategories too. For instance, your coffee shop may also sell cupcakes and donuts. In this case, “donut shop” and “cupcake shop” would be your subcategories.

Selecting the proper categories and subcategories helps you attract the right people to your business online. It also plays a crucial role in helping you outrank your competition in the long run.

Fill Out Your GBP Products Section

One of the most visible elements of a GBP profile is the products section. If you have a non-product business, filling out this section can bring you benefits. GBP also allows you to display photos of your service offerings. With your GBP products section, your business can gain visibility from your audience.

Google arranges your products/services photos in a carousel-style design. These features help go a long way in helping you drive more views, calls, and sales. You can categorize and add descriptions, images, and calls to action to these product profiles.

One thing to note is that the final product you enter will be the first to feature on your profile. Before adding products or services, make sure to organize them per your needs. You can also add GIFs as your product image by saving them as a JPEG. With these GBP tools, you can leverage your product section to help attract consumers.

Use Photos To Help Your Cause

Google also provides you with many options for photos you can include for your GBP. Here is a list of photo types you can add as you put together or update your profile:

360-degree view
Indoor pics
Outdoor pics

Businesses with photos receive 42% more driving direction requests to their location than those without them. They also receive 35% more clicks to their websites. These findings are according to research Google has done over the years.

The best photo practice is to include at least three pics from each of these business aspects:

Employees
Products
Services you perform

By following these measures, you can increase your web presence and get online searchers to explore your business further.

Write A Compelling Business Description

You can also optimize your Google Business Profile by writing a rational business description. On your profile, Google gives you a max of 750 characters to describe your business. One thing you want to avoid including there is sales jargon. It can potentially alienate your audience and go against Google’s rules.

Here are some things you can include in your GBP business description:

Company mission and vision
History
Products and services
What makes your business unique?

With a top-tier business description, you can give your audience the best details about your business. They also would be more likely to look into your business further.

Keep Your GBP Q&A Section Up To Date

You can also improve your SEO game by optimizing your GBP Q&A section. Google gives you the option to create a question and answer vault within your profile. They do this to ensure the answers consumers receive are the ones you want them to.

As with many portions of your GMB, consumers can contribute and control how others view your business online. To provide people with the right questions and answers, use the consumer data that comes up in your Insights section.

By adding the best questions and responding to them, you’ll have more control over the narrative. You’ll also ensure that people will perceive your business better.

Post Regularly From Your GBP

Keeping in touch with your audience is a prime SEO factor. Posts that originate from your GBP are pretty much mini-blogs. They provide your audience with important information along with updates from your business.

Below are two key benefits of how posting from your GBP can improve your SEO efforts:

Posting Boosts Your Keywords And Phrases

As you post from your profile regularly, you can boost your primary and halo keywords you want to rank for to Google’s algorithms. Over time, they build up your association with your goods and services. With these measures, you can reach the right people and influence consideration for your business.

Posting Drives Up Engagement

Google also evaluates engagement when it comes to SEO factors. They measure how much you engage with your profile.

As you provide your audience with regular updates via posts, you can drive up your engagement levels. The more you engage with your GBP, the more likely Google will reward you.

With top-quality posts, you’ll achieve better search rankings and more customers.

Check On Your Online Reviews

Review signals are another prime factor when it comes to SEO. They also influence whether people will do business with you or your competitors.

Research shows that 89% of people check online reviews before setting foot in a specific business. 84% of those consumers also trust online reviews as much as their peers. Also, 31% of them will do business with those that have great reviews.

If your business receives a bad review, that doesn’t mean doom for your business. When this happens, look to address the consumers’ concerns and work towards solutions that best address their pain points. With these approaches, consumers are more likely to view your business positively. They may even turn around to upgrade their rating to a positive review.

When it comes to reviews, make sure to also be proactive in requesting reviews. As they leave a positive review, make sure to thank them. With a people-first approach like this, you’ll be on track to gain the trust of your potential customers.

Choose People-First Approaches when Updating Your Google Business Profile

As you update your GBP, look to SEO methods that engage your audience and tell the best story about your brand. With these people-first methods, you’ll drive engagement and be on track toward building long-term consumer relations. By focusing on the needs of people, you’ll be on a path toward strategic growth for your brand.

What else do you feel is the best way to optimize your Google Business Profile? Which other SEO methods can also help you build trust with your consumers and drive business growth? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Six Website Optimization Tips To Help Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

As we’re now in the second half of 2021, we’ve seen many events occur that affect consumers and brands alike. That’s especially the case when it comes to the Digital Marketing industry. This makes improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts that much important going forward.

Today, we’ll discuss a few website optimization tips that will help increase your search engine rankings. In the end, you’ll gain a better idea of how your brand can compete in a fast-evolving online world.

Improve Your Site Speed

Site speed is a key factor that determines the success of brands online. With every second it takes for your page to load, the number of people bouncing from your page increases too. This will cause your overall page ranking to suffer a drastic drop.

For this reason, you’ll want to make addressing your page speed a top priority. To test your site speed, there are free online services that can help you optimize your page. Below are some great examples of these types of services.

Google Page Speed Insights
GT Metrix
Pingdom Tools
WebPage Tests

With a faster website speed, you’ll stand to gain more visitors and increase your overall page rankings.

Make Sure Your Site Is Readable And To The Point

Always keep your audience in mind when writing website content. Strive to write it in a way most people understand. To attract their interest, make your key points right at the beginning. Use headings and subheadings to explain the topic without having to read further. This helps guide readers into reading information that’s most essential to their research.

Another writing tactic you should use is what’s called the Inverted Pyramid Method for best SEO results. To attract the interest of readers, make your key points right at the beginning. This helps entice the readers to read more about what you have to offer. If they can find value by scanning the text, they’ll be more likely to consider your brand.

It’s also best to use transition words like “less than” to compare and “thus” to conclude. This will help you make your points while bringing clarity to your audience.

Utilize Top Quality Outbound Links

Outbound links are another crucial SEO factor to keep in mind. When making claims, it’s always a great idea to back them up. For that reason, make sure that you link your claims to trustworthy sites. Here are two great tips to follow when using outbound links.

Make sure the target site is of high authority.
Use facts that have been published within the past 12 months.

By taking these steps, you’ll be able to gain credibility with your audience.

Use The Right Keywords For Your Website

Gone are the days where you could pick any random keyword, write a 500-word article, and rank for that keyword the next day. SEO has since gone through so many changes due to many algorithm updates by search engines.

That’s why researching the intent of your target audience has become a crucial need. This will help you determine which long-tail keywords work best at bringing those people to your website. Here are some examples of keyword research tools that can help assist you in your keyword research.

Ubersuggest
Moz
SEMRush
Ahrefs

The key here is to think about how your audience would search for a keyword. Also, think about what kinds of content they seek to find on a page. When using these tools, start by typing in a broad keyword. They’ll provide you with a list of keyword suggestions you can use to attract a specific audience.

Repeat this step over again as you create more website content. Aim to write top-quality articles that provide others with as much information on the topic as possible.

Use The E-A-T Method

Another great way to ensure you’re developing high-quality content is to use the E-A-T method. This stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

Expertise

Expertise refers to the high knowledge and skills a content creator has in a particular field. For YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) topics, formal expertise is a must. An example of this type of topic is providing medical advice to others.

As for Non-YMYL topics, it all comes down to one’s everyday expertise. For example, someone on a support page sharing their experience of recovering from an injury counts as that. Expertise is a crucial part of developing content that provides value to others.

Authoritativeness

This refers to the reputation of the content creator. When others see a website or an individual as their go-to source for information, that is authority. A great example of this is people searching for symptoms on WebMD. Due to WebMD’s credibility over time, people see them as their primary source for medical information.

Raters check authority through independent sources like reviews, expert recommendations, and references. As you create content, you always want to make authoritativeness a key part of your plans.

Trustworthiness

What this talks about is the legitimacy and transparency of the content creator. Raters look at three main things as they evaluate trustworthiness.

Content accuracy
Content information
Proper citation of trustworthy sources

These three pieces are crucial as you create content for your website. After all, trust is a major factor in helping you attract your ideal audience.

The E-A-T method goes a long way in helping build your online presence and growing your search engine rankings. It also helps you avoid any surprises that may come from any Google Core Updates.

Show Users And Search Engines Your Website Is Secure And Consistent

Website security and consistency are both major page ranking factors you’ll need to take note of. That’s why it’s crucial to follow these steps to ensure the best results.

Maintain Consistent Contact Data

Ensuring consistent contact data across local directory sites helps build trust with your audience. When using Google My Business (GMB), always include your name, address, and phone number (NAP). You should also check to make sure your business listings are consistent with your GMB listings. This helps go a long way in helping you rank high in the maps section of the search results.

Stay Up To Date With Security Updates

You always want to stay up to date with security updates. This fixes loopholes in systems to ensure secure site data. It also keeps your site from being exploited.

If you must delay any updates, make sure to set up a time that works best for you. Just be sure to perform the updates as soon as possible.

Use HTTPS

Utilizing HTTPS can also help keep your website secure. It uses the SSL/TLS protocol to protect data so that attackers can’t compromise it. This helps make HTTPS-protected sites more trustworthy in the eyes of a user.

When you demonstrate consistency and solid security practices, search engines will reward you for it.

People Focused Website Practices Lead You To The Best Results

Website optimization strategies that focus on giving your audience a top-tier experience will drive the best SEO results. It’s also important to make your information quick and easy for them to find. That way, you’ll be able to advance your cause positively and increase your search engine rankings ten-fold.

What else do you feel is key to helping increase search engine rankings over time? How do you feel these tips will help translate towards growth for brands? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.

Four Tips To Using Local SEO To Increase Your Online Presence

Ski Lift In Aspen — Photo by Chase Baker On Unsplash

Are you a local small business or an eCommerce brand looking to move up the search engine results page (SERPs)? Whatever the case, you’ve come to the right place. Today’s consumers are searching online for products or services that can best fulfill their pain points or needs. That’s why it’s vital that you make Local SEO a part of your online marketing plans.

Today, I’ll discuss four tips on how to grow your online presence and attract your ideal consumer via Local SEO.

Make Use Of Local Link Building Tactics

Link signals like domain authority are among Google’s top-ranking factors. Local SEO will require these kinds of tactics, as does SEO overall. That’s why linking domains should be geared more towards your target location.

A great way to achieve this is to target top authority sites in your area. Let’s say that you’re a local shop in Aspen, CO, that sells skiing gear and offers ski lessons to beginners. You could target local tourist sites as a potential linking partner. When you gain valuable backlinks from sites like these, you’ll be on a path towards gaining credibility with search engines. You’ll also be on track towards growing your brand.

Use Long-Tail Keywords Within Your Content

If you’re a small to mid-size brand, it’s highly likely you’ll be competing against big brands for short-tail, broad keywords. That’s why you need to work on using long-tail keywords as you create content. These types of keywords are long and more specific that people use as they get closer to making a purchase. They don’t yield as much web traffic, but they’ll help attract the right audience to your site.

Using short-tail keywords like jersey is more competitive and won’t help you reach your target audience. For best results, use keywords like women’s Denver Broncos football jersey. These keywords are more detailed about what type of product you’re selling. This helps you gain more targeted traffic and will help increase your conversion rate.

When seeking to attract your audience, do these two things.

Seek quality over quantity when it comes to online traffic.
Use long-tail keywords to attract your ideal audience.

This will help you lead to long-term success with your Local SEO efforts and help grow your brand.

Build On Your Brand’s Reputation Management

Review signals are a key player in your local search rankings. That’s why you need to respond to reviews, good or bad, in a timely manner. It’s not the end for your brand if you receive a bad review. It all comes down to how your brand responds to adversity.

That’s why you should be attentive to the consumers’ concerns and work towards solutions that best resolve their pain points. Consumers will be more likely to think highly of your brand, and they may even change their rating to a good review.

Ensure Your NAP Is Consistent Across The Web

Search engines assess citation signals such as your brand’s NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency in local search results. This means that you’ll need your information to be on major citation sites like these below.

Google My Business
Yelp
Bing
Social Media Sites

You also need to take steps to ensure your brand’s NAP is consistent across all sites. Check for any misspellings, address, and phone number differences. Also, keep track to ensure that there are no duplicate listings. If there are any, work to resolve them promptly to improve your Local SEO efforts.

Make Local SEO Part Of Your Digital Marketing Plans

When it comes to Local SEO, always put the needs of people first before anything else. Make sure you take these steps to ensure that your content is easy to find, consistent, and reputable. This will help attract your ideal consumer and earn you respect from the search engines. In the end, you’ll be setting your brand up for long-term growth.

What else do you feel is key to using Local SEO to increase your online presence? How do you feel these tips will help translate towards growth for your business? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.

What You Need To Know About The June 2021 Google Core Update

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Once again, change has come to the Digital Marketing world. What this means is that Google has launched another algorithm update. During this week, Google launched what is called the June 2021 Google Core Update. This comes as SEOs have been awaiting an update since the one that occurred last December.

There already have been reports that some sites are going through website traffic gains and losses. Some sites gained up to 125% in traffic, while others lost up to 70%. At the same time, they cautiously await what will occur in the July Update.

You’re likely wondering what this is all about and what this means for SMBs, mid sized brands, and enterprise firms. Today, we’ll discuss exactly that and what your brand can do to get ahead of these core updates.

What Does A Google Core Update Do?

Each day, Google makes a few changes to help improve the search experience for their users. Some are noticeable while some are not, but it helps them improve over time. With that said, there are several instances during the year where Google makes broad, significant changes to its search algorithm. These types of big changes are what are known as Core Updates.

Core Updates are made to ensure that Google is doing its part to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers. Google works to confirm these updates since they produce notable effects like drops or gains in some sites.

They do this to ensure that sites going through drops don’t try to fix the wrong things. These changes are all about how Google is working to improve how they assess content overall. Big changes like these can cause pages that were not rewarded properly in the past to perform better.

What This Means For Brands Like Yours

You’re likely wondering what this means for brands small to big. It all comes down to providing top-tier content for your audience that provides unique value. That’s how you help brands as yours get ahead of these Core Updates. Here are some questions for you to answer on how you can improve your content.

Does your headline provide a helpful and accurate summary of your content?
Do your subtitles describe each section of your content well?
Does your content provide unique or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is your content written by someone who knows the topic at hand well?
Is your content free from spelling and/or grammatical errors?
Does your content pass the Readability Test (a score of 60 or better)?
Does your website provide a seamless user experience across all devices?
Is your content within the appropriate keyword usage percentage (0.5%-3%)?
Does your content provide original value that helps contrast your site from similar sites?
Is your content made to focus on the needs of others or to please search engines?
Is this the kind of page that you would share with a friend?

You also should consider doing an audit of the pages that were most affected by the core updates. You’ll want to pay close attention to how they fare against these questions. This helps you figure out which areas you’ll need to address to maintain and grow your online presence.

What Can Your Brand Do To Ensure That Your Content Is Top-Tier?

It all comes down to delivering content that addresses your audiences’ pain points and points them in the right direction. To make that happen, you’ll need to use what is called the “EAT” Method. This stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

You’re probably now thinking about what these three parts of this method are all about. Read on, and I’ll tell you all about it.

Expertise

This refers to the high skill level or knowledge the content reader has in a certain field. For YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) topics, such as medical advice, formal expertise is a must. As for Non-YMYL topics, it comes down to showing everyday expertise. For example, someone on a support page sharing their experience on how he/she beat cancer counts as that. Expertise is a big part of creating top-tier content.

Authoritativeness

As for this part of the “EAT” method, this refers to the reputation of the content creator. When others see a person or a website as their go-to source for information, that is authority. A prime example of this is people searching for symptoms and treatments on WebMD. Raters check for authority through independent sources like these.

Reviews
Expert advice
References

This is surely something to keep in mind as you create website content.

Trustworthiness

This crucial piece of the “EAT” method talks about the legitimacy and transparency of the content creator. Rates look at many key things as they evaluate trustworthiness.

Content information
Content accuracy
Proper citation of trustworthy sources

These three pieces are crucial as you create content for your website. After all, trust is a major factor in helping you attract the right people to your website.

The “EAT” method goes a long way in helping you ensure that your content is of top quality. To add to that, it helps avoid surprises or negative results from core updates like this one.

Always Put People Over Search Engines To Help Grow Your Online Presence

As you seek ways to overcome any core updates from search engines, always keep your audience in mind. Create content that speaks their mind, addresses their pain points, and inspires them to take action. In other words, seek to please people instead of just trying to please search engines.

To achieve this, ask yourself the hard questions on how you can improve your content. Afterward, use the “EAT” method to help guide your content creation efforts. When you take a People-First approach, you’ll be well on your way towards being ahead of core updates. Most importantly, you’ll grow your online presence, and eventually, your brand overall.

What else do you feel is essential in helping brands get ahead of core updates? Which steps should brands take to ensure that they’re producing top-tier content? Questions. Comments. Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Aaron’s Top Nine Digital Marketing Trends For 2021

Without question, so much has happened this past year. Many of these events have drastically altered the Digital Marketing landscape. From changing consumer habits due to the pandemic to Google updates, those changes are surely here to stay. What worked early last year may not work today. The same could be said when working with different types of clients.

With that being said, Digital Marketers should take note and work to adjust to these changes. In Digital Marketing, it’s all about adapting to constant change and being flexible in changing your online outreach strategy. When it comes to trends, there are nine trends we as Digital Marketers need to get ahead of. Let’s take a look at these, shall we?

Voice And Visual Search

Today’s consumers are looking for easier ways to find what they’re looking for online. At the same time, they’re also looking for more convenient ways to do that as well. They would really love it if they didn’t have to type or leave their couch. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that voice search has become more important by the day.

The same can be said about visual search. The infamous saying that ‘a picture means a thousand words’ has become truer today than it has in the past. When it comes to visuals, marketers need to focus on image alt-text and sitemaps to ensure success. As for voice, they need to focus more on conversational keywords as opposed to computer text. For more tips about optimizing for voice search, check out my previous blog post here.

Experience Marketing

Experience Marketing (EM) has also become an evolving trend to look out for in 2021. This talks about how customers define how businesses respond to them and not vice versa. Every customer touch point – online reviews, web chats, surveys – turns into opportunities to discover vital insights to enhance the customer experience (CX).

That’s why you want to go further than just traditional feedback methods than just metrics like the Customer Effort Score (CES). While these do tell you how happy customers are, it doesn’t tell you what to do with that information. EM does that via these three ways.

It deepens the reach of data mining across customer reviews and survey responses.
It develops insights in seconds via machine learning.
It alerts the right people and uncovered patterns in customer data.

This helps teams to move quickly and make more informed choices on how to improve that CX.

User Generated Content (UGC)

When it comes to content, online consumers are much likely to trust that of regular folks than they do traditional advertising. Consumers today crave experiences with brands that are enjoyable and inspire them to take action. They also want proof before they buy and want to make sure that they’re making the right choice.

UGC helps build communities, relates to regular folks, and allows brands to meet their customers where they’re at. On top of that, it goes a long way in helping brands generate lots of content. UGC not only helps provide that social proof brands. It also helps build relationships with customers. With that said, brands should consider making UGC part of their online marketing strategy.

Reputation Management

With what has happened during this past year, It has become increasingly important to manage your reputation online. Whether you get good or bad reviews, you always want to respond to them promptly. It’s not a deal-breaker for potential customers if your brand gets a bad review. It all comes down to how you respond to it. The best way to respond is by showing that you’re committed to resolving their situation

One thing you should never do is try to game the system by creating fake reviews. That never ends well as customers look to multiple review sites to ensure that a certain brand is legit. Customers also check to ensure that brands will positively advance their cause. The best way forward is to listen to the customers’ concerns and work towards a solution that best benefits them. By going this route, they’ll view you more favorably and you’ll be more likely to end with a great review.

Personalization

In today’s online world, people prefer brands that best relate to them and are more human. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from you if you provide them a personalized experience. That same HubSpot study also states that 99% of marketers say that personalization helps advance customer relations.

Whether you’re starting an email marketing campaign or creating web content, you must keep these stats in mind. Work to tailor that content to better meet the specific needs of online consumers. Also, don’t be afraid to share your story. After all, people love stories that speak their minds and make them feel that your brand relates to them.

That’s why you want your content to be relatable to your audience and not just about your brand. That’s how you’ll be able to stand out amongst the crowd online and gain good-paying customers.

User Experience (UX)

Without a doubt, it’s vital to give your online audience an excellent user experience (UX). This means that you need to do several things to make that happen.

Make Sure That Your Website Is Up To Speed

Site speed is a key factor when it comes to consumers choosing to stay or leave a site. Each second matters in this case. If your site takes too long to load, people will leave your site for your competition. That’s why you need to work to make sure that your site is up to speed. The GTmetrix Speed Test is a great tool to use to check your site speed and will give you details on how to do so.

Make Sure That Your Website Is Seamless Across Devices

You always want to make sure that your site is easy to navigate across all devices whether it’s mobile, desktop, or tablet. This means that you need to do these three things to make that happen.

Use responsive design to allow your website to adjust to the screen size of the device being used.
Make your content easy to see.
Ensure that site users don’t have to pinch to zoom in.

By keeping these steps in mind, you’ll help ensure that the UX of your site will be very good.

Content That Is Easy To Consume

In this day in age, people are always on the go. With that said, making your content scannable and easy to read is vital. This means work to create content that is easy to read via a standard reading level. You must have a Flesch Reading Ease Score between 60 and 79 to achieve success. To go the extra mile, aim for a score of 80 or higher.

The Ease Calculator helps check your score and guides you while you write your content. Grammarly also helps you make your content easy to read for your readers. It also helps you catch mistakes you thought you’d never make.

Here are some tips below on how to make your content easy to read.

Make your paragraphs no more than 3 to 5 sentences long.
Divide your content with sub-headers and make sure your H3 headers are below the H2 ones.
Add bullet points as needed.

Also, use the Inverted Pyramid writing style. This is where you put your key points at the beginning and then work to entice readers to read more. With this method, your readers will be able to better scan your content text and be able to derive value. This makes it more likely that they’ll take the actions that you want them to take.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing will be even bigger this year compared to last year. As mentioned earlier, today’s consumers look to brands that are authentic, human, and can relate to them. Study shows that 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than they do corporate ads or celebrities. That’s why brands should take note of this and make influencer marketing part of their plans.

When considering influencers to partner with, go for those who would best relate to your brand. It can be tempting to court macro-influencers like baseball players but that might not work for your brand. If you’re a smaller brand, you should consider micro-influencers. They may have a smaller following but they are cheaper and would do best at relating to your audience. All this is vital to keep in mind when considering influencer marketing.

Link-Building

Link-building is an essential part of any brand’s Digital Marketing plans. With that said, it will only work if you don’t cut corners and actually use this practice to build relationships. One thing you never want to do is to seek links that are not relevant to your brand’s cause. You also don’t want to buy links either. Those type of Black-Hat SEO tactics makes you look spammy and loses you credibility with your audience.

The best way forward is to seek links with others who will best benefit your brand’s cause. It will help you build trust with your audience and gain credibility with the search engines. Once again, Quality over Quantity is the way to go with link-building as is the case in other marketing situations. It will be a win-win scenario for both you and your linking partner thanks to your disciplined approach to seeking high-quality links.

Consumer-First Strategies Help Transform Your Brand For The Better

There’s no doubt that putting the needs of your valued consumers front and center is key to success. It will also help you overcome these fast-changing trends and help you stand out amongst the online crowd. This will also help you in your quest in helping your brand become that next great story. With that said, keep these nine trends in mind and you’ll help transform your business for the better.

What other Digital Marketing trends should brands keep an eye out on in today’s online world? What other strategies should brands adapt to grow their online presence and ensure success? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this article and share your thoughts below.

How Voice Search Is Emerging And How To Use It To Advance Your Brand Online

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Without question, we have seen many changes occur in the Digital Marketing landscape this past year. From major events to fast-changing consumer trends, it can be a challenge for brands of all sizes to keep up. One major trend in Digital Marketing that has been emerging is Voice Search.

Voice search has been on the rise this past year. In fact, 40% of internet users in the US along with a third of its population use voice search. That is expected to rise in a big way in the near future. For brands big and small, this makes voice search crucial to helping them increase their online presence. That way, they’ll be able to keep up with fast-changing consumer trends and be able to reach their ideal consumer.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss a few ways how your brand can use voice search to advance your cause. In the end, you’ll be ahead of the game when it comes to fast-changing online trends. Let us explore them, shall we?

Use Conversational Language For Your Content

When it comes to search results, searchers want results that are quick and immediate. Google understands this and has taken steps to improve its search experience. This rings even more true for voice search. With voice search, Google has made direct answers their top priority.

Voice search results are prompt and to the point. At the same time, voice search keywords tend to be longer and more conversational compared to text search. When we use text search, we might type “pocket flashlights” or “recipe for chocolate cookies.” With voice, we might ask “How do I make chocolate chip cookies?”

To have success with voice search, you want to use conversational language in your content as opposed to computer language. When using language that’s more natural, there is a better chance at matching and appearing in search results. That’s why it’s crucial to research the intent of searchers to better understand how they ask verbal queries.

You always want to study the query and conversational styles of the searchers. Likewise, take the time to learn what question keywords or types of questions are being used and asked the most. This helps give you a better idea of what type of answers are the best fit for these query types. By addressing these areas, you’ll gain valuable data-driven insights that’ll help you know what people want via voice search.

Make Use Of Long-Tail Keywords

As mentioned in the previous section, voice search queries tend to be longer. This is where long-tail keywords come into play. With long-tail keywords, they are less competitive and give your content a better chance at getting seen by the right people. On top of that, they give you a better chance at achieving higher conversion rates. It sure makes a huge difference compared to shorter and more competitive phrases.

The best strategy at using long-tail keywords in your long-form content is by using them in the title. You can also use H2 headers with those long-tail keywords in the body text in a clear and concise manner. This helps your content at performing well in voice search rankings.

Make Your Content Readable

Something that gets overlooked a lot is content readability. With people constantly on the go these days, making your content scannable and easy to read is basically a must. This means that you need to create content that is precise and readable via a standard reading level.

You want to achieve a Flesch Reading Ease Score of at least 60 or 70. If you really want to achieve high-quality readability, then aim for a score of 80 or higher. The Ease Calculator here is a great tool that checks your score and helps guide you in writing your content. Grammarly is also a great tool to help you improve your readability and catches mistakes you never thought you’d make.

There are other things to also consider when writing content for voice search. You want to strive for short paragraphs (3-5 sentences long), divide your content with subheaders, and add bullet points as needed. You also want to use the Inverted Pyramid writing style. This means put your key points in the first paragraph and work to gauge readers’ interest as they read along. If readers can derive value by scanning the content text, they’ll be enticed to read more.

Using natural language while avoiding excess long words and sentences is key to helping you succeed at voice search.

Ensure That Your Website Is Up To Speed

One thing that is important for voice search but also gets overlooked is website speed. The speed of a page makes a big difference whether people do business with you or not. Websites with longer load times have higher bounce rates than those with faster load times. In other words, you’ll lose out on potential customers if your site takes too long to load. This makes keeping your website up to speed a crucial issue to address.

GTmetrix is a great tool that checks your and helps recommend steps to help improve it. Taking steps to ensure fast page speed is vital in helping your voice search efforts succeed while attracting paying customers.

Make Great Use Of Google My Business (GMB) Listings

When it comes to voice search, people like to use it for local searches often. This makes Local SEO a crucial factor in determining whether you’ll rank for these types of queries. This is where Google My Business (GMB) listings come to light. GMB listings let Google know that your business is located in a specific place. GMB listings are a vital tool for small businesses as they stand to benefit most from Local searches.

When using GMB listings, always include your name, address, and phone number (NAP) in it. On top of that, make sure that your business listings are consistent with your GMB listings. This is key in helping improve your standing in the voice search results. It’s also advised that you add posts with special deals and updates to help your brand stand out. If you don’t have a GMB listing, then take these steps in order to get top-notch results right away.

Ensure That Your Website Is Built To Handle Mobile

A voice search ranking factor that is perhaps the most vital today is the mobile-friendliness of websites. Today, mobile takes up a majority of our voice search and overall search queries. That’s why it’s vital that you work to deliver your users a top-notch mobile user experience (UX).

The best UX is one that is seamless across all devices (mobile, tablet, desktop). That’s why you should opt for your website to be of Responsive Design. This means work to design your site so that it scales your content automatically to match your device’s screen size. Also, run a test to ensure your site can handle mobile. This tool will also give you advice on how to improve your site to be more friendly to mobile.

Without question, mobile will be important both now and in the future. The same goes for voice search so making your site a mobile-friendly one should be in your plans. This crucial step is a voice search SEO best practice that will help set you up for future online success.

Voice Search Ready Websites Help Bring Your Brand Online Success

Without question, voice search will be a huge deal going forward. With that said, it’s vital that brands take measures like these to help advance their cause online. It’ll help ensure that they continue their success of reaching their audience online and help grow their business over time. By taking steps to optimize for voice search, you’ll be ahead of the game in meeting those fast-changing consumer trends. In the end, your brand shall stand out amongst the crowd and turn site visitors into paying customers.

What do you feel is key in helping a brand’s voice search efforts succeed? What other voice search tips do you feel will attract people to one’s website and inspire them to take action? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.

How To Make Your Brand Stand Out Via Email Marketing

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So, you thought email marketing is dead? Well, you’re in for a big surprise there. If anything, email marketing is now stronger than ever. With that said, there have been changes over the years when it comes to email marketing. That has a lot to do with the preferences of online consumers. These days, people want to see something of worth to them when they open up to read their latest email.

With the right plan in place, email marketing can help make your brand grow in a big way. That’s why I write this blog post today. Today, I share with you ways on how you can use email marketing to help grow your brand. Let’s begin, shall we?

Give Your Audience A Personalized Email Experience

One thing you need to do to have success with email marketing is to give your audience a personalized experience. This means that you need to take time to learn every detail about your target audience. This is a crucial starting point for any Digital Marketing campaign. Every consumer is different so sending everyone the same email is not ideal. With that said, taking a targeted approach makes the most sense.

A great way to accomplish that is by email list segmentation. This lets you divide your email list into smaller but more targeted groups. This goes a long way in targeting consumers based on their individual preferences. For instance, your brand sells movies. You can ask your customers what kinds of movies they’re into. Your list would look something like horror, action, cartoons, Mexican telenovelas, etc.

You can also segment your list by demographics, geographic location, and buyer persona to help your emails be more relevant. Looking at survey results, email activity and purchase cycle can also help accomplish that too. 88% of users say that they’re more likely to respond favorably to an email if it’s tailored towards them. By connecting at their interest level and giving them high-quality content, you will be on your way towards success.

Avoid Excess Sales Jargon That Turns Consumers Off

It’s also important to know what not to do with your email marketing plans. You never want to use excess sales jargon when sending out emails. Nothing turns a potential customer off than bombarding them with emails that push them into a sale. They will tune you out if that happens and will lead to them hitting the unsubscribe button.

You always want to strive to use emails to build relationships over time. Once you’ve done that, then you can use sales emails once in a while. In the end, strive for a more balanced approach of non-sales and sales emails. This will help make your email marketing practices a success while attracting new customers.

Make Your Headlines Grab The Attention Of Your Readers

Headlines are crucial in helping attract the attention of your readers if done correctly. To attract their attention, you need to be short and to the point while describing what your email is about. The proper length for an email subject line is six to ten words as evidenced by a Retention Science study. That same study found that a subject line in that range had a 21% email open rate. Anything more or less had a lower open rate.

You also need to connect with your audience in a personable and authentic manner. Emails with personality tend to get liked or shared more. Also, don’t be afraid to use emojis in your subject line but don’t go overboard with them either. To go the extra step, talk to your audience and ask if they want to be addressed by their name or a nickname. Of course, do keep an eye out on any name or initial misspellings, and don’t use their name in excess.

One last piece of advice about email headlines is to make use of questions and numbers in them from time to time. They tend to give you a higher click-through rate (CTR) if done in a way that gauges the readers’ attention. These email headline tips will help go a long way in enticing people to open your email and read more.

Make Your Emails Scannable And Easy To Read

People these days are on the go which means their time is limited in getting to read their emails. This is why working to make your emails scannable and easy to read is crucial. Your email structure needs to have plenty of white space.

Work to shorten paragraphs (3 to 5 sentences), use subheadings to divide your content, and add bullet points when necessary. In your body, work to use the Inverted Pyramid writing style. This is where you put your key points in the first paragraph and work to draw readers’ interest. If readers can derive value from email content by scanning the text, then they would be enticed to read more. A top-notch reader experience will help lead to increased sales in the long run.

A/B Test Your Emails To Improve Campaign Performance

One crucial tip that will help improve your email marketing performance is by doing an A/B Test. A/B Testing or Split Testing is where you split your audience in two to find out which email version performs best. This will help you better understand which type of email content resonates best with your audience.

You can increase the open rate with the right subject line and the CTR when changing your email copy after testing. There are several things below you can test that can help improve your email marketing campaign performance.

Welcome email opening
Subject line
Day of the week
Time of the day in which email is sent
Pop-up opt-in forms
Name of sender

Taking steps to make your emails better will help go a long way in helping enhance that email experience. It’ll make it more likely that your readers will be inspired to take the actions you desire.

Have A Top-Notch Landing Page For Your Email Campaign

Lastly, you want to have a landing page that best matches the message conveyed in your email. Like with email headlines, you want to have strong headlines that entice the visitor to read further. The same thing goes with subheadings. Make sure it gives you the best preview for the accompanying content and best supports your headline.

You also want to have a supporting image or video that addresses the landing page purpose within a minute. Also, you need to have social proof on your page such as reviews, testimonials, and trust seals. This will help remove any trust issues site visitors may have. It also helps give them a positive and consistent experience from beginning to end.

One important tip to keep in mind is to stay on the same topic as your email. Be careful not to dilute it with other topics or offers. This will help prevent any confusion or concerns that your visitors may encounter. With landing pages that follow through with the promises in your email message, you’ll help turn those readers into customers.

People-Focused Email Marketing Helps Brands Succeed

Without a doubt, striving for a people-focused approach to email marketing will help grow your brand. It all comes down to learning every detail about your consumers and following it up with a personalized, high-quality experience. Taking these steps above will help go a long way in improving your email marketing strategies. In the end, it’ll be worthwhile when you convert readers into paying customers while growing your brand for the better.

What do you feel will help make email marketing campaigns a success? What other email marketing tips do you recommend will help attract readers’ interest and inspire them to take action? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.

Eight PPC Tips To Help Grow Your Online Presence In 2021

Another eventful year is now behind us and another has just begun. So many events and changes have occurred this past year. This is especially the case when it comes to the fast-evolving world that is Digital Marketing.

From Google Core Updates to fast-changing consumer trends, having a solid Digital Marketing plan is basically a must. This helps ensure that your audience has high-quality content that best addresses their needs when they most need it. It also helps your brand stand out amongst the vast sea of brands competing for those same customers.

A great way to achieve those things is with a top-notch Pay Per Click (PPC) strategy. PPC is a form of Digital Marketing in which brands pay each time visitors click on their online ad. In other words, you only pay when someone clicks on an ad whether it’s search, display, social, or ad types. These eight PPC tips below will help address the users’ needs and grow your brand’s online presence in 2021. With that said, let’s dive in and find out what PPC can do for brands like yours.

Strive For A High-Quality User Experience (UX)

As I discussed in my previous blog post, a high-quality user experience (UX) for website visitors is a must. First, you need to ensure that your website is up to speed. The longer it takes for your page to load, the higher the bounce rate will be. That means that customers will be lost if your page is slow at loading. That is why taking steps to improve site speed is crucial. Using the GTmetrix tool will test your site speed and gives you details on how to fix on-page issues.

You also want to ensure that your site is easy to navigate. To address this, work to make your content easy to find in the least amount of clicks possible. It’s advised that you limit it to three clicks or less. That helps site visitors find what they’re looking for quickly and helps make their on-site experience that much better.

In addition to all that, you want to ensure that your website is compliant with responsive design. This means that your website needs to smoothly adjust to screen sizes. In other words, the website automatically changes to fit the device in use whether a desktop, tablet, or mobile device. This helps improve that UX greatly to the point where you don’t have to pinch the screen to zoom in. A convenient experience indeed.

Provide A Consistent Experience For Your Site Visitors

Without question, consumers look for consistency when they consider doing business with a brand. This is vital when it comes to PPC campaigns. Not only must your PPC ads be of most relevance to your audience, but there’s also something else to consider. You must also show consistency in each phase of your online campaign. This rings true for landing pages as this is the first thing your audience sees upon clicking your ad.

It’s not enough to just attract people to our website via PPC ads. We must also strive to give them a top-notch landing page experience once they’ve arrived at our page. We sure don’t want our ads to say one thing and for our landing page to say another. That will be a big turn off for potential customers. With that said, here are three steps we can take to ensure our landing page is consistent with our ads.

Make sure that you match your ad text to your main keyword at least.
Match your ad to the right landing page where customers can do what you’ve promised to them.
Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your ad text and keywords.

Following these steps will help ensure a high-quality UX and make it more likely that you’ll gain new customers.

Take Advantage Of New Features

Looking to really make your PPC ads stand out towards the right online consumers? Then making use of the new features and ad extension options should be a big part of your plans. Promotion extensions that are right below your ad title help searchers spot a top-notch deal with a slight glance. They can also help you generate high-quality leads for your brand.

Call extensions are another great option in helping you attract leads. With this type of extension, you can add a phone number without having to use any of the primary copy. It even lets people tap a button to call your business via a mobile device. The best part is that it’s really easy and quick to add so definitely consider this for your PPC ads.

Make Social Media A Part Of Your PPC Marketing Plans

Another crucial avenue in helping your PPC ads succeed is social media. With 84% of people with internet access on social media, making it part of your PPC strategy is vital. Most people are on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn on a daily basis. All age groups, especially young people, make up a big chunk of that audience.

This makes social media an attractive avenue for PPC marketers. In this new year, definitely add social media to your PPC marketing mix to go along with your Google Ads.

Dig Deep In Targeting Your Audience

When we say target your audience, we mean target the RIGHT audience that’s most likely to go with your brand. You always want to be detail-oriented when identifying which audience you’ll be going after. You can specify things like household income or age group to appeal to a specific audience. For ad preferences, you can exclude people that you think may not appeal to your services.

Let’s say that you’re selling super expensive Rolex watches. You might exclude people who make less than $75,000 a year. We say this since they’re less likely to spend big bucks on those kinds of fine items. This is the kind of targeting you should consider for your PPC ads. It will go a long way in attracting the exact audience you’ve been seeking to look into your brand.

Get Ahead Of The Game With Voice Search

Voice search has also become important In this day in age. Half of all online searches are now being initiated by voice. With that said, making voice part of your PPC marketing plan should be one of your top priorities. While paid voice search hasn’t yet made it to the mainstream, it will emerge in the near future. Until that happens, you can be ahead of the game with some high-quality preparation strategies.

There are two great ways to accomplish just that. One great plan is to enhance your website so that it can have a more conversational tone. Since people are more conversational when making voice searches, it’ll significantly improve your chances of attracting the right people. You also should update your FAQ pages on your site with the use of long-tail keywords. These actions will help set you up for success in voice search both now and in the future.

Get Ahead With Visual Search

Visual search is also on the rise and will be expected to see major advances in the near future. Visual search works by using an image as the search query as opposed to just a text search. Let’s say you take a pic of a mini-fridge. What happens after that is the visual search will output the links to buy it. People want results quickly and visual search helps achieve that than typing in something long.

A great way to optimize for visual search is by creating a photo catalog of your products and services. You want to add metadata to each image to ensure that search engines sort it out correctly. For example, a photo of a chrome mini-fridge would have an alt-text like “travel-sized chrome mini-fridge.” Taking these steps will go a long way in helping your brand get ahead of fast-changing paid search trends.

Utilize Re-Marketing In A Personalized Way

Re-Marketing is most commonly used on users once they have left your site. Re-Marketing ads tend to be very personalized which makes them an effective marketing strategy. When you show people ads for things they’ve shopped for before, they tend to have high conversion rates.

When it comes to re-marketing, it all comes down to keeping your brand in the minds of people. It’s no longer just about wooing people who aren’t ready to buy yet. It now mainly comes down to knowing where your prospects are at in the buying cycle. After that, you would create targeted, personalized ads based on where they’re at which helps them decide to convert.

Digging deep to understand your audience goes a long way in helping convert people into paying customers.

Top-Notch PPC Strategies Help Grow Your Brand For The Better

Without question, the online landscape is changing as are the online search habits of consumers. That’s why you need top-notch PPC tips like these to help you get ahead of the game. In the end, you’ll attract the right people to your website and gain loyal, paying customers. Following these steps will no doubt help your brand achieve new heights.

So what are you waiting for? Make PPC marketing a part of your online marketing strategy. It’ll help transform your brand into that next great thing and be a top leader in this fast-changing online world.

What do you feel will help grow your online presence and get people to convert into paying customers in 2021? What other PPC tips do you feel are key in helping your brand succeed? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.

Eight SEO Tips To Help Grow Your Online Presence In 2021

Happy New Year everyone. 2020 sure has been a rollercoaster year for us all. It also has been a year full of major events. This couldn’t be more true when it comes to the fast-growing landscape that is Digital Marketing.

There was one event towards the end of 2020 that helped set the stage for the future of Digital Marketing. That event was the December 2020 Google Core Update. These updates happen to encourage websites to write content that addresses users’ needs instead of just trying to please search engines. Google and other search engines strive to bring users relevant content and that is what brands need to do too.

A great way to help provide that is via a quality Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. These eight SEO tips will help address the needs of users while helping grow your online presence in 2021. Let’s go over them, shall we?

Avoid Black Hat SEO Tactics

An important lesson to know about SEO is that it is a long-term online strategy. This means that we must never try to trick the search engines in hopes of getting high search rankings. That is what we call Black Hat SEO tactics. Here are some examples of those tactics that you should avoid doing.

Cloaking

This is the practice of showing the search engines a different set of content than what is actually on a site. The actual content turns out to be subpar and gives users a bad experience. That will get you in big trouble with the search engines.

Duplicate Content

This is taking content from others and passing it off as your own in hopes of getting higher search rankings. Search engines will not be kind to sites that duplicate content and will harm you in the end. On top of that, this is plagiarism as we learned in English class.

Irrelevant Links

This is the practice of seeking any link from sites that provide irrelevant content from what your site is about. This will make your site look like spam and that will not go well with the search engines.

Keyword Stuffing

This is where sites use the same phrases nonstop throughout their site in hopes of attracting web traffic. This is spam-like behavior that gives users an unpleasant experience. It will also harm you in the search engine results page (SERP).

Spam Blogging

This is the practice of commenting on other blogs or letting others comment on yours for link juice. Blogging on posts that have nothing to do with your cause makes you look like spam to users. In return, it will cause harm to your search rankings.

In other words, don’t do it. Black Hat SEO will do you no favors in earning trust from users. It can also harm you in the search engine results page and could even get you de-indexed. Always go for White Hat SEO tactics instead to help increase your presence towards the right people.

Seek Quality Links

It is crucial to not seek just any links. You want to focus on links that are most relevant to your brand’s cause. Focusing on getting the right links helps your brand stand out to the right audience in a positive way. It also benefits both you and your linking partner as you’d both benefit from high quality web traffic. When seeking links, always go for Quality over Quantity as you would in other Digital Marketing situations.

Make Use Of Long-Tail Keywords

If you’re looking to increase your conversion rate, then turn to long-tail keywords. Long-Tail Keywords are long, specific keyword phrases that visitors commonly use when closing in on a purchase. According to a study by Neil Patel, using long-tail keywords averages a 36% average conversion rate. This will help go a long way in helping outrank your competition while building up your long-term online presence.

Some great tools to help you uncover long tail keywords include SEM Rush, Answer The Public, and Google Keyword Planner. Tools like those will help you identify keywords that will best help you reach the right audience.

Match User Intent With The Most Relevant Type Of Content

You also want to keep in mind where they’re at in their customer journey. That is why you need to know the three types of user intent below. That way, you’ll know what type of content is most appropriate to develop for that specific audience.

Informational Intent

This is where people look for the ‘I Want To Know’ type of content like FAQs or How-Tos. The goal is to bring in the right kind of users who are not familiar with brands like yours.

Navigational Intent

This is where people search for “I Want To Go” content types such as store locations and customer service information. The end goal here is to provide a great shopping experience and provide top-notch information that best helps customers.

Transactional Intent

This is the type of content that you would encounter at the end of the customer journey. This is where “I Want To Do” content types like Videos and Product Stories appear. The end goal here is to seal the deal with the customer and get them to hit the Buy button.

Keeping the intents of your audience in mind will help you plan which types of content you should develop. By following this step, you’ll help provide your users with a great experience at every step in their customer journey.

Strive For High-Quality User Experience (UX)

A crucial tip in growing your online presence is to give your audience a high-quality UX while on your site. One thing to do is to work to keep your site up to speed. A great way to test your site speed is to use the GTmetrix tool. This will give you details on how you can help improve your site speed.

You also want to make sure that your website is easy for users to navigate. A great way to accomplish that is to make your content be accessible in the least amount of clicks/taps possible. This helps your users find what they’re looking for much quicker.

You also want to ensure that your website is responsive across all devices and that it works well on mobile. With mobile taking up a large percentage of today’s online searches, this is crucial to ensure success in attracting visitors.

Make Your Main Points Clear And To The Point

To attract readers’ interest, you always want to make your key points at the beginning. First, use headings and subheadings that best explain the topic without needing to read further. This will help guide readers into reading information that is essential to their research.

Also, use the Inverted Pyramid writing style for best SEO results. This means work to put your key points in the first paragraph and work to entice readers to read further. Readers will be encouraged to read on if they can find value by scanning the text.

To help make the flow of the text be clear, use transition words. Examples of them include “less than” to compare and “thus” to conclude. No question that they’re helpful in making your points while bringing clarity to your readers.

Utilize The E-A-T Method

A very important tip in helping grow your online presence in 2021 is making use of the E-A-T method. EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. To demonstrate expertise in YMWL (Your Money or Your Life) topics such as medical advice, formal expertise is basically a must. For Non-YMYL topics such as sharing your experience with a disease on a support page, it’s all about demonstrating everyday expertise. Expertise is vital in developing high-quality content.

You also need to demonstrate authoritativeness when developing content. Raters check up on authority via independent sources like reviews and expert recommendations like on WebMD. This sure is something to consider when thinking about what type of content you should create.

People also look to how trustworthy content creators are. They look to things like content accuracy and proper citation of sources. This will go a long way in building trust with the right audience and helps attract them in the end. The E-A-T method will help ensure that your content is high-quality and overcomes any core update that comes along.

Make Voice Search A Big Part Of Your Plans

A growing online trend that we should take note of is voice search. According to a DBS Interactive study, 27% of online users use voice search. Voice search queries tend to be longer so it is a great idea to make use of long-tail keywords. In addition, they tend to be questions so including FAQs for your pages would be a great plan to utilize. Voice search may be small now but it will be a big thing in the future. That is why you want to make it a big part of your online marketing strategy going forward.

A People-First SEO Strategy Grows Your Brand For The Better

There is no question that taking a people-first approach to SEO helps grow your brand’s online presence for the better. In addition, making it easier for your website visitors will make it more likely that they convert into paying customers. When you put the needs of the people first, the search engines will reward your brand greatly in the end. By giving your users a great experience at every step, your brand will be set up for long-term success.

What do you feel is key to growing your online presence in this new year? What other SEO tips do you feel are essential to helping your brand succeed? Questions? Comments? Please feel free to share this blog post and share your thoughts below.