The Latest Features of Google AdWords

Google is continuously updating its services to deliver high quality results to users.
Google has updated so many of its services and added some outstanding features to make them more effective.

In 2012 Google has added some excellent features to its AdWords. Also it has modified some of existing features to help marketers achieve the target in the cost effective way. The aim was to help users get what they are actually looking for.


Display Advertising
In 2010 Google has rebranded its “Content Network” as “Display Network.”
Google’s Display Network has seen immense success in targeting options on millions of websites.
As more and more websites are getting registered with Google Display Network, there are multiple opportunities for an ad’s reach.
The prominent features of Display Advertising are, Topic Targeting, Interest Based Targeting, Placement Targeting, Contextual targeting and the most famous Re-Marketing.

Mobile Device Targeting
The past few years have combined the desktop, laptops and mobile phones.
Almost every smartphone has the basic in-built browser integrated into it.
Keeping these aspects in mind, mobile targeting can be just as effective as normal desktop/laptop targeting.
AdWords allows you (marketers) to create mobile specific campaigns.
It also lets you target users, based on networks along with locations.
AdWords users can target mobile ads that lead to mobile-friendly pages.

Re-Marketing
This feature of Google AdWords was launched in 2010.
Re-marketing is one of the biggest assets of online marketing. It focuses on your existing website traffic.
Re-marketing is cost effective and it draws attention of your target audience.
Remarketing gives you information about the visitors who have visited your website months ago.
To increase traffic, remarketing should not to be overlooked.

Product Listing and Extensions
You can get Product Listing and Product Extensions from your Google Merchant Center account.
These ad formats show the images of relevant products with your ad, which often leads to higher click-through and conversion rates.
You can use these features to promote up-selling and cross-selling of your products.

Automated Rules
Automated Rules was launched in February 2011.
It allows you to efficiently manage your day-to-day account updates.
This includes adjusting ad positions, pausing or enabling ads, or adjusting your bids.
You can automate these things to a certain degree with Automate Rules.
Google allows users to setup to 100 rules as compared to old 10 rule limit.
Also users can undo past changes.
Using this feature properly can save your time managing your account.


Call Extensions
Call Extension is another new feature of AdWords.
This can be used to generate calls (leads).
With Call Extensions, Google assigns a unique phone number to Ads. When some dials it, it redirects to your business phone number.
Google keeps track of it and gives you detailed information about the call data which includes location, call duration, etc. in your AdWords report.

Conclusion
The other AdWords features are Dynamic Search Ads, Google +1 Button for Ads, Display URL in Headline and Instant Review for Ads.  You can significantly use the AdWords features to promote your webpages both directly and indirectly.

Facebook: Hidden Feature You Must Know

Facebook is not only limited to reading news feeds, sharing status updates, playing games and watching videos. It has several other features of most of the people don’t know. Facebook has recently added various useful features. The Facebook Timeline feature is helpful to get familiar with your friends.

Here are some hidden Facebook features that you can customize while keeping your personal information protected.

Facebook user name

Select a custom user name instead of entire e-mail address every time you sign into Facebook. Your user name will direct users to your Facebook profile. You can create user name by signing into account setting. Click on the “username” and provide a custom name. For instance, you use a user name facebook.com/galaxyweblinks. You can only change user name once.

Facebook email

Facebook also provides email feature. You can find email addresses under the Contact Info tab. You can send emails by your public username followed by @facebook.com. This address is for your Facebook conversations and you will notifications every time you receive a new message. You can also send emails without signing into Facebook through your Gmail account.

Events

Events is another great feature that Facebook offers. On Facebook Timeline you can post status update, share photos, videos and create a Life Event. Life Events can include the information about the places you have visited, the colleges you have attended and so on. This feature allows you share your life events with other users.

Add to Favorites

This is not so popular feature of Facebook. Adds to Favorites feature enables you to bookmark your favorite pages, groups and apps etc from the home page. It is located on the left side, under the Newsfeed section, in the drop down list on the left. This feature helps you to filter the content based on your preference.

App Settings

This feature of Facebook allows you to know how many apps you have registered and can interact with. Under account setting tab, you will find the app setting option. You can organize apps such as you can find and add new apps to your profile. Also you can remove the apps you no longer use.

Facebook Archives

Facebook Archives allow you to see the history. Under the language tab you will find an option called, “download a copy of your Facebook data.” This feature enables you to receive a copy of your Facebook data that includes posts, photos, emails and much more.

Prevent your tagged posts

Sometimes your friends tag you in pictures and you don’t want to make it live. Facebook offers a cool feature that asks for your permission before making your tagged picture live. This feature is called ‘Approve.’ Before displaying your tagged image on timeline or newsfeed, it asks for your approval. You will get a notification to approve tags. 

Blogging Tips for Insurance Marketers

Blogging is one of the proven ways to promote your business. It is a powerful and effective digital marketing tool. Blogging helps you to drive traffic to your website and generates leads. This is the reason why every business is trying their hands on blogging. If you are running a digital insurance business, you need blogs to promote it. But being in the insurance business, you think that you don’t know much about writing and don’t have ideas to write blogs on. Here are some tips that help you as an insurance marketer to write effective blogs.

Keep your blogs as simple as possible

When you write blogs, you need to keep one thing in mind is that keep it simple. Similar other industries, insurance industry also have different aspects that you want to cover in your blog. But doing so will lead you to write more technical blogs and it will not draw attention of your target audience. Provide them interesting and simple to understand blogs, not a technical guide.

Use bullet points and tips

When you write blogs on insurance industry, your goal is to make insurance appear easily approachable. To accomplish this goal, you can break content into segments, instead of writing in a single piece. Structure your blog posts. If you want to write on a broad topic, you can cut it down into segments and blogs on segmented topics. For instance, if you want to write on ‘Types of insurance’ you can write a series of blogs to explain them.  

Describe terms and avoid jargons

When you are writing for insurance industry, describe the terms first. Don’t assume that users know everything that you are writing about. Complex blog posts can draw attention of target audience away from your insurance business. So, try to avoid jargons and complex words as much as you can. Your blog post should be explanatory enough so that people can easily understand it.

Provide guidance

Insurance business includes providing guidance to your clients on various aspects of insurance. Same you can follow with blogs. Provide guidance on risk management, procedures, policies, investments and much more. You can also guide your clients on how to get financial compensation. You can cover all the topics that you think most of your target audience would want to know about. If your audience gets help from your blogs, they will come back to your blogs in the future as well. It will also help you stay ahead from your competitors. You can establish yourself as an industry expert.

Online insurance marketing should build your online reputation. Blogging can help do all of that for you.

Blogging Tips for Insurance Marketers

Blogging is one of the proven ways to promote your business. It is a powerful and effective digital marketing tool. Blogging helps you to drive traffic to your website and generates leads. This is the reason why every business is trying their hands on blogging. If you are running a digital insurance business, you need blogs to promote it. But being in the insurance business, you think that you don’t know much about writing and don’t have ideas to write blogs on. Here are some tips that help you as an insurance marketer to write effective blogs.

Keep your blogs as simple as possible

When you write blogs, you need to keep one thing in mind is that keep it simple. Similar other industries, insurance industry also have different aspects that you want to cover in your blog. But doing so will lead you to write more technical blogs and it will not draw attention of your target audience. Provide them interesting and simple to understand blogs, not a technical guide.

Use bullet points and tips

When you write blogs on insurance industry, your goal is to make insurance appear easily approachable. To accomplish this goal, you can break content into segments, instead of writing in a single piece. Structure your blog posts. If you want to write on a broad topic, you can cut it down into segments and blogs on segmented topics. For instance, if you want to write on ‘Types of insurance’ you can write a series of blogs to explain them.  

Describe terms and avoid jargons

When you are writing for insurance industry, describe the terms first. Don’t assume that users know everything that you are writing about. Complex blog posts can draw attention of target audience away from your insurance business. So, try to avoid jargons and complex words as much as you can. Your blog post should be explanatory enough so that people can easily understand it.

Provide guidance

Insurance business includes providing guidance to your clients on various aspects of insurance. Same you can follow with blogs. Provide guidance on risk management, procedures, policies, investments and much more. You can also guide your clients on how to get financial compensation. You can cover all the topics that you think most of your target audience would want to know about. If your audience gets help from your blogs, they will come back to your blogs in the future as well. It will also help you stay ahead from your competitors. You can establish yourself as an industry expert.

Online insurance marketing should build your online reputation. Blogging can help do all of that for you.

Blogging Tips for Insurance Marketers

Blogging is one of the proven ways to promote your business. It is a powerful and effective digital marketing tool. Blogging helps you to drive traffic to your website and generates leads. This is the reason why every business is trying their hands on blogging. If you are running a digital insurance business, you need blogs to promote it. But being in the insurance business, you think that you don’t know much about writing and don’t have ideas to write blogs on. Here are some tips that help you as an insurance marketer to write effective blogs.

Keep your blogs as simple as possible

When you write blogs, you need to keep one thing in mind is that keep it simple. Similar other industries, insurance industry also have different aspects that you want to cover in your blog. But doing so will lead you to write more technical blogs and it will not draw attention of your target audience. Provide them interesting and simple to understand blogs, not a technical guide.

Use bullet points and tips

When you write blogs on insurance industry, your goal is to make insurance appear easily approachable. To accomplish this goal, you can break content into segments, instead of writing in a single piece. Structure your blog posts. If you want to write on a broad topic, you can cut it down into segments and blogs on segmented topics. For instance, if you want to write on ‘Types of insurance’ you can write a series of blogs to explain them.  

Describe terms and avoid jargons

When you are writing for insurance industry, describe the terms first. Don’t assume that users know everything that you are writing about. Complex blog posts can draw attention of target audience away from your insurance business. So, try to avoid jargons and complex words as much as you can. Your blog post should be explanatory enough so that people can easily understand it.

Provide guidance

Insurance business includes providing guidance to your clients on various aspects of insurance. Same you can follow with blogs. Provide guidance on risk management, procedures, policies, investments and much more. You can also guide your clients on how to get financial compensation. You can cover all the topics that you think most of your target audience would want to know about. If your audience gets help from your blogs, they will come back to your blogs in the future as well. It will also help you stay ahead from your competitors. You can establish yourself as an industry expert.

Online insurance marketing should build your online reputation. Blogging can help do all of that for you.

Blogging Tips for Insurance Marketers

Blogging is one of the proven ways to promote your business. It is a powerful and effective digital marketing tool. Blogging helps you to drive traffic to your website and generates leads. This is the reason why every business is trying their hands on blogging. If you are running a digital insurance business, you need blogs to promote it. But being in the insurance business, you think that you don’t know much about writing and don’t have ideas to write blogs on. Here are some tips that help you as an insurance marketer to write effective blogs.

Keep your blogs as simple as possible

When you write blogs, you need to keep one thing in mind is that keep it simple. Similar other industries, insurance industry also have different aspects that you want to cover in your blog. But doing so will lead you to write more technical blogs and it will not draw attention of your target audience. Provide them interesting and simple to understand blogs, not a technical guide.

Use bullet points and tips

When you write blogs on insurance industry, your goal is to make insurance appear easily approachable. To accomplish this goal, you can break content into segments, instead of writing in a single piece. Structure your blog posts. If you want to write on a broad topic, you can cut it down into segments and blogs on segmented topics. For instance, if you want to write on ‘Types of insurance’ you can write a series of blogs to explain them.  

Describe terms and avoid jargons

When you are writing for insurance industry, describe the terms first. Don’t assume that users know everything that you are writing about. Complex blog posts can draw attention of target audience away from your insurance business. So, try to avoid jargons and complex words as much as you can. Your blog post should be explanatory enough so that people can easily understand it.

Provide guidance

Insurance business includes providing guidance to your clients on various aspects of insurance. Same you can follow with blogs. Provide guidance on risk management, procedures, policies, investments and much more. You can also guide your clients on how to get financial compensation. You can cover all the topics that you think most of your target audience would want to know about. If your audience gets help from your blogs, they will come back to your blogs in the future as well. It will also help you stay ahead from your competitors. You can establish yourself as an industry expert.

Online insurance marketing should build your online reputation. Blogging can help do all of that for you.

Mobile Apps Every Entrepreneur Should Have

 ‘There is an app for that’ is a common phrase these days. There are various useful apps for almost everything. If you are an entrepreneur, you look for the ways that help you save your time and improve your productivity. So many apps are available for entrepreneurs that you can use to lessen your burden and to improve your efficiency.

Here are some mobile apps that every entrepreneur should have.

Recruiterbox

Recruiterbox is a mobile app to receive and manage job applications that your company gets. This app helps you organize your recruitment procedure. You can create and customize this app as per your recruitment process and track applicants as they go through the process. With this app you can collect all the information about the applicants.

MobileDay

MobileDay is fascinating app for entrepreneurs. It provides one-touch access to conference calls. You can effortlessly get connected with any call with your Android or iPhone device. MobileDay is compatible with any conference call service. It looks through calendar, reminds you about a call, reduces hassle of dialing, and notes down conference details.

Google Wallet

Google Wallet is a smart app that saves your time that you invest in searching for your credit/debit cards. Once you get registered with this app, all you need to do is pick the card you want to use. All of your info gets securely stored on Google's safe servers. If you also provide you with a facility to disable your card, in case it gets lost.

WriteThat.Name

WriteThat.Name is a very useful app for entrepreneurs, as it automatically scans the signatures of people from your email. It extracts their contact information from the emails and merges it with your phonebook and email contacts. If you receive a new email, it saves the contact details and if the person is already in your contact list, it updates the details.

SignEasy

SignEasy is a way to sign documents without printing or scanning documents easily and quickly. With this app you can sign your documents with your phone. SignEasy saves the time and hassle of scanning and printing documents. You can send signed documents in a timely manner.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a great app for entrepreneurs. It is a place where you can save all of your important documents, files and data in a secured cloud server. It allows you to access your files from your phone, PC and tabs. Google Drives saves data automatically and don’t have to worry about losing it. It is very easy to share data using Google Drive.

There are several other apps that save your time and efforts. You can use them to increase your productivity on the move. 

Google Launches Street View On Google Maps

To make Google Maps more efficient and useful, Google is continuously adding new and useful features it. Google Maps for mobile is a great innovation for people who want to locate a certain place on the move. Google has recently updated its mobile version for Maps. With this new feature you can explore the world at street level. It allows you to access Street View on iOS devices.

Google Maps Street View allows you to view popular landmarks, world’s most popular places, restaurants and navigate a trip virtually. You can virtually visit your hometown, or any place around the world with Google’s Street View. You can also visit Amazon, and browse a gallery to view albums from all over the world.

Google Maps Street View runs on Safari browser on iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad. It offer Street View feature along with the traditional Google Maps design. Google Maps Project Manager Amanda Leicht describes in a Google’s post that “To make Google Maps even more comprehensive, accurate and useful, today we’re making Street View available on mobile browsers.” She further states that, “With access to Street View on your phone, you can use panoramic, street-level imagery to explore and navigate the places around you, even on the go.”

To access Street View you need to touch and hold a specific location on Google Maps to open info window. By touching the Info window, you will see Street View icon. Touch Street View icon to use it.

Navigating the Street View option

-         Pan the map using your finger.

-         To zoom in, drag the Pegman icon in the lower-left corner. Drag it to a certain level in the image to zoom directly to a specific position.

-         To zoom in, double tap with your finger in Street View. To zoom out, single touch with two fingers.

-         To navigate Street View, touch Compass mode in the Google Maps menu. To navigate Street View you need to use your phone itself. To change view you can slant, revolve, spin, pan, or rotate the phone. To exit, touch Compass mode again.

-         To exit Street View, touch Go to map in the Google Maps menu.

Mapping feature requires the Safari browser to run. Google is planning to provide a direct link to access Maps on iOS devices. User can save a bookmark of the page to their device's home screen.

Twitter Introduces User Directory

The world is going bananas over social media networks. This is the reason why Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter continuously updating their features to provide better user-experience. Recently, Twitter has launched a User Directory of names. With the launch of this feature, the micro-blogging site hopes that it will drive traffic to its domain and boost value to advertisers.

The latest Twitter update, User Directory is placed in the footer of its homepage. It has alphabetical collection of Twitter’s users from A to Z. It also collects information about the profiles with non-Latin character names. The link has been to Twitter default homepage (you can see it, when you are not logged in).

To launch this feature, Twitter’s mission is to grab users’ attention who are searching for particular people in search engines. When you start looking for someone in particular using Twitter User Directory, bots start crawling through the directory in order to display more Twitter profiles in search. It brings up results based on your preference.

With Twitter User Directory, you can browse public Twitter profiles. It also includes protected profiles. By clicking through the protected account it will not display Tweets of that person. Twitter keeps the protected users’ information private and protected.

With User Directory, Twitter goes a step ahead to find users profiles and making it easier for major search engines like Google, Bing and others. Twitter’s spokesperson had said that Twitter has launched this directory, to help people find they accounts they are searching for with various search engines.

Google and Bing both have already indexed Twitter pages. So it is a matter of concern for SEO experts that whether this new User Directory will facilitate search engines to find new and non-indexed profiles. Currently Twitter directory has up to five million pages with 500 million user accounts. It means there will be lots of information available in the User Directory and people can find it easily using Twitter.

Twitter is for the people who look for news, information, and conversations. With this new feature Twitter’s aim is to attract more search traffic through directory. Twitter is certainly looking forward to raise its business from advertising. More search engine traffic brings more page views. It simply brings opportunities for display advertising. The more page views mean more users will click on them. 

Essential Elements of Your Website’s Homepage

Your website is the online representative of your business. When users arrive at your website, you get a chance to impress them. Your website gives a clear understanding of your business, who you are, what you offer and why users come back again in the future. A research shows that more than 30% websites lack to provide basic information that a user looks for. This is the reason which leads users to leave a website soon after they land to it.

Your website’s homepage is the place to make good first impression on users. Here are some essential elements that your website’s homepage should have:

Provide contact details

According to a study, around 70% small to mid size business websites don’t provide clear contact information on their website. This is one of the major reasons why visitors leave your website. To build customer trust, provide clear contact details on your website. It should include, phone number, email id, and complete physical address along with zip code. If possible provide a map to locate your office/store.

Provide images

Images reflect your business. If you are selling home decorative, your website should include a high-quality image of one of the items that you sell. Some websites fail to provide relevant images and therefore users leave your website. Be thoughtful when you display images. Choose the most relevant/appropriate image of your product to encourage visitors to visit further pages of your website.

Provide clear navigation and links

Website’s navigation is another factor that you should consider. Your website’s homepage should have a clear navigation scheme and links to direct visitors from one page to another. Buttons should clearly indicate what a certain webpage contains. Your website’s navigation and links should help customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Make sure your website doesn’t have any broken links as it stop visitors to complete their orders.

Online registration forms

Online registrations forms help you build users database. You can use users contact details to send regular newsletters, offers and coupons. Sending regular offers and discounts in your emails/newsletters is another great way to bring your visitors to your website. Some business websites provide special discounts and reward points to their regular customers. Provide email/newsletter signup forms on the front page of your website to inform your customers about special offers and discounts.

Social media buttons

Social media network is a place where you can get in touch with your customers. Provide clear links on the front page of your website to encourage visitors to join you on social media networks. Provide clear and identifiable Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn icon on the front page of your website.

Along with these points, one basic thing that you should always keep in mind is to build customers trust. Most online business-customers relationships are based on trust. You can build customer trust by providing all of the above information on the front page of your website. 

Google Vs Bing: Who Wins the Search Engine War?

The war continues between the two major search engines, Google and Bing. Some people say that Bing is better than Google. While others claim that they get more accurate results on Google. Microsoft has initiated a campaign, called “BingItOn” to convince people that Bing provides more relevant and accurate results than Google. You can conduct a comparison test on your own at BingItOn.com. When it comes to find out which search engine is better you can consider the following points:

Advantages of Google

Both Google and Bing are continuously updating their algorithms to provide better search engine results. Whereas Bing has recently made changes to provide the best possible search result, Google is still efficient enough to provide quality results to a specific search query. Google provides all the information related to a search query including all the data and figures.

Both Google and Bing offer search as you type feature. It displays relevant search queries as you start typing into the search box. Google’s search as you type feature tend to provide more accurate and relevant search options quickly than Bing.

Google’s add on services such as Google Maps, Shopping, Google+, Google Drive and Google Reader work great at providing valuable information to searchers. Bing also offers similar add-on services but Bing’s internal integration is not completely implemented as Google.

Advantages of Bing

Bing’s biggest advantage is that its social integrations are stronger than Google. Bing has contracted both Facebook and Twitter to provide more social data than Google. Whereas, Google still relies on its less-used social network, Google+. Bing integrates social suggestion from Facebook and Twitter to SERPs.

Bing’s attractive result pages are more appealing than Google. Its visual appearance attracts more users. Similar to Google, Bing also offers services like Bing Image search, videos, news, translator, maps and much more to provide quality results to users.

Bing also offers additional features as you can access Facebook from Bing bar. Install Bing on your desktop to conduct quick searches.

Both Google and Bing provide almost similar results, but everyone has their own preference to use their favorite search engine. The war between these two major search engines will continue in the future as well. It’s up to you which search engine you prefer. You can use both and find out which one provides more accurate and related results to your search query. You can compare results from both search engines to find answers to your question. Happy Searching!

Essentials of Social Media Marketing

When you run a digital marketing campaign, you expect quick results. But achieving desired result is not an easy task. It takes a lot of time and efforts to attain your goal. Today’s online marketing trends include various effective techniques and social media marketing is one of 

the essentials that you cannot miss.

According to a report, around 72% of marketers are using social media for lead generation. The study indicates that there are various stages of social media development process. Every brand has to go through it to start generating ROI. It was also found that lead generation using social media requires time and efforts.

Here are some tips to leverage your digital marketing campaign through social media:

Speak and be human, not robot

On social media networks it is essential to personally interact with your community. Your community wants to hear from you not from robots or your company logo. Mingle with your community and follow your audience. Research and share interesting content at regular intervals. You can also schedule your updates and track your social media activities.

Key Takeaway: Appoint a dedicated team member to interact with your fans.

Research

Conduct a research about your audience before launching a digital marketing campaign. As it is important to identify who your target audience is? You can find your target audience on online forums and blogs. If you know your target audience, you can design your campaign more effectively. You can create relevant content and share engaging status updates with them.

Key Takeaway: Research and find at least one person (target audience) and engage him/her.

Keep engaging

Only launching a social media marketing campaign, cannot guarantee you success. If you don’t connect with your audience, they will forget you. When your audience reaches you, respond to them. Answer to their queries, and thank them to sharing your content. Share insightful information with them. Don’t end up conversation abruptly.

Key Takeaway: Follow your audience, talk to them and engage them to develop your brand advocates.

Share, share, share

Don’t engage your audience using automated messages, sales pitch or event invitations. Audience doesn’t want to get such messages regularly. Instead share your success stories, client testimonials or a video of your conference call. Offer your audience something that they expect such as free downloads, or a product sample or discount coupons.

Key Takeaway: Get together with your team members to get some creative ideas to share interesting content with your audience.

Social media is an incredible marketing tool to meet new people and to get connected with them. Create long term social relationships and try to take them to the next level. 

Tips to Make Your Photos Search Engine Friendly

In order to achieve high search engine ranking, every element of your website play an important role. Search engines consider various factors such as content quality, website design, navigation, load time, videos and images to rank a website. Attractive and high quality images not only attract users, but they attract search engines as well. Proper image attributes can make your images search engine friendly.

Search engines have an entirely different method to see images. Search engine bots can’t see your images until you describe them. Here are some methods to make your images search engine friendly:

File naming

Your images should have a descriptive file name including target keywords. Search engines can read and index file names. You can implement relevant target keywords to name an image. For instance, if you run a bakery shop and want to add cake image on your homepage. You can name the image as “wedding-cake.” You should use hyphens instead of underscores, it can cause search engines to overlook your image.

Alt text

A very nice looking image of your wedding cake will not be found in the search result if you fail to name it. Alt text attribute, this is another important part of image optimization. It helps search engines crawl and index your image. The alt text should also include relevant keywords. Usually search engines prefer longtail keyword phases over short.

Title tags

There are various opportunities for you to make your images search engine friendly. Title of your image is definitely beneficial for your SEO activity. It is a technique to get your image indexed by search engines. Add relevant keywords that you may have used in the file name, and alt text.

Captions

Photo captioning is beneficial in two ways. First, it improves your image’s visibility in SERPs.  Second, it informs your visitors about a webpage, blog or images as they scan through your website. Image captioning is a part of your image optimization process. Follow standard rules of English while add captions to your images.

Above image optimization tips will improve your website’s ranking as well as increase traffic to your website. 

Learn SEO or Hire an Outside SEO?

The aim of every online business is to improve their online presence and visibility in the search results. Search engine optimization is the process that helps you achieve high search engine rankings. It also increases your online presence. If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of SERPs, it will not draw user’s attention.

Users on the web conduct searches online before making any acquisition. They want to know every single detail about your products and services. It is essential for companies to go for search engine optimization to get noticed by users.

How can you learn SEO?
SEO activities are not as difficult as they seem to be. There are many online tools and services available that will help you initiate your SEO program. You can implement them in the process to improve your online presence. Nothing will guarantee you success, but trial and error method will be helpful for you. You have to put constant efforts in your program. As SEO is on-going and it is essential to be aware of latest trends and updates of search engines.

Internet is very vast and there are lots of choices for you to select the one from. You can even obtain a specific SEO service. You can either hire a professional SEO team or a skilled person in your firm can take care of your ranking requirements. Big firms can hire outside SEO services. Small to midsized firms look for cost effective SEO firms or they try to handle their SEO requirements on their own. No matter what your requirements and budget are, there are many firms available online that offer affordable services.

If you are planning to handle your SEO requirements you are own create a SEO friendly website. It will lessen up loads of your burdens. You can optimize your website’s content for SEO like, keyword rich domain name, URLs and links. Implement target keywords in your web content, provide relevant and useful information.

If you have an up and running website, you need professionals who can optimize your on-page content for SEO. Sometimes you need to get it redesigned to make your website search engine friendly.

Return on investment

You can never expect instant and direct results from your search engine optimization process. SEO program will increase your online presence and drive traffic to your website. The more traffic you get the chances of lead generation and conversion will increase. SEO is a continuous process. If at some point you stop your SEO activities, it will become more difficult to get going again. It requires expertise and efforts of doing right things at the right time.

Every online website needs search engine optimization to stay ahead in the competition. No matter if you hire a professional SEO firm or you take care of your SEO requirements. Your mission is to achieve high rankings. Professional SEO firms have years of experience and they are experts in the field.

Identifying the Value of White Hat SEO

When you search for SEO services online, you will find that many companies claim to deliver results quickly and at affordable prices. As a client, it becomes very difficult for you to choose the one which provides steady and quality results. Internet is such a vast platform where you get millions of options. There are thousands of SEO firms that offer services at variable cost. But remember SEO is all about “you get what you pay for.”

If at all you encounter a firm claiming they will do everything to make your website achieve top ranking, their approach maybe unethical. They can be Black Hat SEO firms. Often times most SEO firms guarantee that they will fulfill all your ranking requirements at bargain prices. Just because they are offering you SEO services at affordable prices, cannot guarantee you success. Sometimes you need to hire another SEO firm to fix the problems created by that SEO firm.

A white hat SEO firm will never let your ranking go down. These firms are not afraid of search engines’ algorithm and updates. They follow rules and guidelines of search engines. These firms make sure your website will not be spammed or blocked by search engines due to latest changes in the search engine world.

Black hat SEO can be more appealing.  Remember search engines are well aware of spammers and black hat SEO approaches. Search engines have set some parameters to rank a website. Search engine spiders crawl through website’s content and index it. If search engines identify like duplicate content, or thousands of backlinks in your website, they mark it as spam or assign them lower rankings. If your website doesn’t appear in search results, probably it doesn’t survive anymore.

Your online reputation and popularity is your asset. It takes time to establish your brand name and to increase visibility. It’s important for you to win both search engines’ and users’ trust. If you are looking to hire SEO firm, go for white hat SEO companies. They can be a little costly (than those black hat SEO firms), but they guarantee you long term success. You will end up getting higher rankings, online popularity and huge traffic.

How You Can Improve Conversion from Blogs

Blogging is one of the most important parts of search engine optimization process. If done correctly, it will help not only improve traffic, but also increase conversion. Most of the internet marketers are now trying their hands on blogging to attract more visitors to their sites. But monitoring your blog’s success is equally important to identify whether your blogs are bringing you the amount of traffic and profit that you expect. Here are some tips that you can implement in your blogs to increase traffic and conversions:

Make it relevant and include call to actions

If you are writing blogs for lead generation and conversion, “call to action” should be on the top of your priority list. Also try to provide most relevant and useful information in your blog content. Make sure every blog you write should carry a call to action in it. This is very important to have at least one call to action. This way you can encourage readers to take necessary actions. Try to be interesting and entertaining so that you can engage more readers. The more user centric content you will provide the more chances of lead generation you will have. If readers are interested in what you have to offer you can easily convince them to make acquisitions.

Update call to actions in existing blogs

You can always reuse your most popular blog content. All you need is, to update them with the latest changes. Also update them with relevant call to actions. As these are your most popular blogs and have been successfully converting your target audience. Google Analytics will help you know your most popular blogs. You can include existing offers in them and republish them.

Keep on testing
There are so many things that you need to keep testing to identify which one works great for you. Is your call to action is complicated? Are you using complex/technical language which is hard to understand? Are you using a simple layout for your blogs? You need to constantly test your blogs’ overall performance. With Google Analytics you can find out what needs to be changed and what do readers expect from you.

Optimize blog content

You can also optimize your blog content to increase your online presence. Include anchor text in some of the relevant links. These links will take readers to your eBook or your homepage for detailed information. You can increase conversions and encourage readers to go and visit your site.

Create an email database

You can provide a fill in form and register users for email updates. This way you will get a huge email database. You can use it drive traffic to your site whenever you have discounts or offers on your products. It will also help you bring back your existing customers to your website. It’s important that you include an email opt-in form in your blog post.

Blogging is one of most effective methods to drive traffic and increase conversions. Most of the internet marketers post relevant blogs about their exciting offers, or the new products that they have launched recently. It helps you get lots of backlinks from qualified sources. It helps you increase your search engine rankings.

Facebook’s Insights Tool for Businesses

Facebook has launched an updated version of “Insights” for businesses. This feature will help you get details about your Facebook marketing campaign. This refurbished version has got lots of added features. You can better monitor your Facebook activities for various applications, websites and webpages. Here are some useful features of this Insights tool:
                                               
Metrics

In “Total Likes” you will get exact number of likes. This tells you the number of unique people who likes your page. “Friends of fans” will tell you the number of users is friends with your fans. Other added metrics are, “People Talking About This.” This tells you how many people have talked about your content. It includes likes, comments and share. “Weekly Total Reach” tell you total number of unique users who have read your content in the past seven days.

Key Takeaway: These metrics are helpful in analyzing total number of unique visitors on your Facebook business page. Also it tells you the exact number of people who have viewed your content. This will help you drive more traffic to your website and you have more chances of conversion.

Overview
Facebook Insights provides a graph including, “New Likes,” the number of likes you get during a specific period of time. “Lifetime Likes” tell you the total number of likes you receive in a specific period. “Monthly User Activity” tell you the number of people who have seen your content or have interacted with you in the past 30 days. The graph also provides diagram of “Posts, People Talking About This and Weekly Total Reach.”

Key Takeaway: With this graph you can analyze the number of people who have read your content. The more valuable content you provide the more likes your Facebook page will receive. With quality content you can improve your social media performance. Also you can motivate users to talk about it and share it with others.

Page posts
This is the most fascinating feature of Facebook Insights. You can find out total number of “Reach” and number of “Engaged Users.” Also the number of people who are “Talking About This?” Now you can analyze the data and get the exact number of people who have gone through your content. Additionally you can filter your post by photo, link, video and status update.

Key Takeaway: With this specific feature you can figure out what type of content works great for you. You can provide similar content to generate more leads. With viral content you can engage more fans. You will receive “likes” on your Facebook business page.

Audience
You can now analyze your audience on your Facebook business page more accurately. This feature tells you the total number of people visited your post and the number of users talking about it. This feature has categories like, gender, age and location. It also tells you the number of people who have found your content and how did they find it.

Key Takeaway: This specific feature is very useful to analyze how many people have visited your content and how many of them have shared it. With this feature you can analyze how often people view your content and what users expect from you.

Additionally Facebook’s Insights enables you to export data in a report form with useful information. You can use this report to analyze your Facebook marketing program.

Improve Your Restaurant’s Ranking With Guest Blogging

Consumers are using web to search any information, be it purchasing a mobile, cars, property or searching for a place to eat. This is the reason why many businesses are going online, including restaurants. Restaurant websites provide complete information about the food they offer, price, contact information and map to locate their nearest outlet in your neighborhood. Restaurant website owners are also including links to their social media profiles to inform their consumers about latest offers and food.

Restaurant owners are also missing to optimize their websites for SEO process. Guest Blogging is one of the effective ways to improve your website’s organic ranking. This is the best way to allow users to find you. They can read other customer’s comments and can get your contact information.

Here some tips to improve your restaurant website’s search engine ranking:

• Find out relevant blogging sites that are beneficial for your business. To find an authoritative blogging site, check page rank of the site.
• Blogs comments are also an indication of site’s popularity and authority. The more reviews a site has, the more frequent visitors it will get. Posting a guest blog on such website, will help you get lots of traffic to your restaurant website.
• Share your blog snippets on social media sites. This is a great way to drive traffic to your website and to increase number quality links. Backlinks and traffic both help to improve ranking of your restaurant website.
• Use a variety of keywords in your post. Specific keywords will help visitors to reach to certain pages of your website. You can find popular keywords and also include demographic location, such as “Thai Restaurant, LA.”
• Explore your niche. Find out what niche your restaurant is currently in. Also keep an eye on your competitors. Find out the topics that they are posting blogs on.
• In your blogs, you can share your knowledge about food, recipes and different cuisines. Try to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Once you have built credibility, it will become easier to attract traffic to your website.

Guest Blogging is a smart way to improve your restaurant website’s search engine ranking. All you need to do is, provide informative and engaging content to traffic consumers and to improve your search engine rankings.

Marketing Automation for B2B Lead Generation

For B2B marketing companies, lead generation is a very important process. Lead generation is a process that helps to convert visitors into customers. This includes collecting visitor’s information such as their email addresses, contact numbers, demographic information etc and to use this information to follow visitors.

Marketing automation is a process of generating leads. It automates the sales process from top to bottom of the sales funnel. It includes collecting information about visitors’ activities on your website through emails,and other social media channels. Website owners can later use this information to promote their activities from their first visit to making acquisitions.

Marketing automation is very popular and useful amongst B2B marketers. It boosts the effectiveness of lead generation efforts through various metrics. It includes number of generated leads, number of quality leads, number of leads passed to the sales team and number of leads accepted by sales.

Marketing automation provides information across different marketing phases such as:

Demand Generation
Demand generation is the most common in B2B marketing. It is a structured sales process that delivers qualified leads to sales team.

Lead management
Lead management is a process to generate, organize and communicate with leads to generate sales.

Lead scoring
Lead scoring is assigning points to qualifying leads to your scoring system. Points are assigned on the basis of specific criteria that you set.

Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is to develop relationship with your leads after they have visited your website.

Lead generation
In this process, websites generate leads on the basis of information provided by visitors during their visit.

Campaign analysis
Campaign analysis is measuring the receptiveness of your campaign by household and customers.

Lead qualification
Lead qualification turns inquiries into sales ready leads.

Sales effectiveness
Sales effectiveness is all about managing customers across the customer lifecycle.

Benefits of marketing automation for B2B marketers:
As a B2B marketer, you can identify the existing buying phase of your website’s visitors. It includes responsiveness, examining and the buying intent of a visitor. You can implement automated and customized campaigns on prospects that have shown a buying interest. On the basis of information gathered from marketing automation process, you can assist your customers throughout their sales lifecycle.

You can get the real time information that will help you track what influences your prospect’s purchasing decision. You can leverage this information to convert your website’s visitors into customers.

Through marketing automation, you will get the ROI metrics and can use it to access marketing effectiveness.