Small businesses are fiercely competing to get the attention of potential customers. Consumers are getting past the clutter by speeding television shows, installing ad-blockers for an ad-free experience and customize the settings of their social media feeds.

This makes it important to search for ways to ensure that your small business isn’t ignored. Write messages that your prospective customers will want to read and see. Replace the sales pitch with useful information and market with the aim to allow buyers see your brand’s value.

This, my friend, is what you call content marketing. Content marketing tries to communicate with the customer and create as well as distribute information with the goal to engage a target audience and develop brand awareness. If you’re not fully convinced, here are some reasons why you should consider content marketing now.

Increase Brand Awareness

The success of content marketing relies heavily on consistency. You need to publish new content on a regular basis so you create many opportunities to increase brand awareness. As your potential target market frequently sees your company’s name, they become more familiar and you’ll be their top choice when they need your services.

Creates A Trusted Expert Identity

Now, if there are 9 law firms in a town but only one offers helpful information that teaches the community about the law, criminal cases, and options, that brand will be easily noticeable as the expert. By doing so, a brand is doing its expertise, so potential customers need not ask or research its proficiency. Since this enterprise is helping customers without any fee for this advice, it will also achieve a reputation for being reliable.

Motivates Customers To Take Action

Procrastination is usually common to consumers who make time for a service. However, once a customer gets all his questions answered or relates to a type of story, then that person could finally be encouraged to buy or schedule a service. Remember, more sales are generated if you produce content that helps a customer through the journey.

Gives Advantage Of Social Shares

People are wired to share things they find interesting. Your content and your business could take advantage of social shares if you can produce amazing content that will create a buzz on social media. With this benefit, you can reach customers that you haven’t reached before.

Its Performance Is Simple To Analyze

If you think that content marketing is a one-off process, then you’re wrong. This type of marketing strategy needs constant modifications and adjustment to suit your business needs. Because the metrics are easy to acquire, it’s simple to determine what strategy is working or not. Your business online marketing strategy could become highly efficient at gathering leads and attracting new customers when you constantly adjust your strategy over time.

Leads To A Higher Return On Investment (ROI)

Compared to traditional advertising, content marketing costs 62% less and three times more effective in producing leads. This effectively levels the playing field of businesses in an industry. As expected, your business could be at par with a much bigger one if you can make a well-thought content marketing strategy.

Today, we are living in a digital age and there is a whole new market for your products and services. Traditional methods of marketing like TV ads are no longer the norm to effectively reach out your potential customers. Internet marketing is already becoming the gold standard in marketing and there are plenty of reasons why you need to invest in this new and growing movement.

1.) Customers are going online

Today, nearly 90% of adults in the North American regions are online and they are not just accessing the internet for entertainment. 97% of these online users are using the internet for local shopping. So if you think that customers can’t be found on the world wide web, think again. And if you don’t take advantage of this opportunity right in front of you, you are potentially losing a lot of money from your competition who are already riding the internet marketing bandwagon.

2.) You can measure everything

The great thing about internet marketing is that you can measure everything. While not every interaction in Facebook, or every response in your email or blog post will translate into a viable business, you will always know where you got things wrong, where you miss out and the potential opportunities that you can maximize. Because when your online marketing strategies turn into leads and your leads become buyers, you will know for sure what things you did right.

3.) Your competitors are doing it now

Chances are, some of your competitors already know the potential of internet marketing and if you are not going to invest in this field right away, it would be too late for you to catch with the rest of your competition. If they still aren’t, then this would be a great moment for you to get ahead of everyone else and enjoy a significant advantage. What’s more, going online will also give you the ability to see what the rest of the competition is doing.

4.) Everyone is equal

With traditional marketing, small and medium-size companies have no chance at beating big and already established brands who have almost unlimited resources at their disposal. They can simply pour tons of money on TV, radio, and newspaper ads and hire an army of sales representatives to squash the rest of the would-be competitors like little bugs. With online marketing, the competition is relatively equal making it possible for your company to rise from the bowels of obscurity towards total online dominance and authority. Besides, companies, whether big or small, can have equal access to social media marketing, email marketing, website and content marketing, and nothing is stopping you from toppling your competition.

5.) Impressive ROI

Modern business is without a doubt costly. If you are a small business, it would be difficult for you to source out the necessary capital to keep up with global brands that have significant resources dedicated to generating visibility and traffic. Fortunately, we are now living in a digital age where digital marketing has leveled the field for small business to thrive. For instance, video, which is now becoming a vital part of internet marketing, is cost-effective and easy to launch. Many of today’s internet marketing techniques and strategies are cheap, and you don’t need to have a sizeable budget to compete with the big boys.

Upon opening the official website of your company, whatever is displayed on it will be the foundation of your company’s image. First impressions are important. So it is advisable that you put in the effort to have a good one.

One of the many ways to earn good first impression of your company is the design of your website. How your company’s website is designed will have more to say to prospective clients than words do.

Having said all that, what does it exactly say about your company?

Graphics User Interface (GUI) and Navigation

No visitor, client or user will be happy to do business with your company if you have a poorly made Graphic User Interface (GUI) and navigational keys or tabs on your company website. That’s why it’s best that you keep the design simple but still modern or professional-looking, perceptive, up-to-date with the latest trends and with your target audience, content and goals for the future in mind.

Design and Appearance

Every visitor or client checking your website will always judge you on the appearance of your website’s design before coming to a decision. Although this means they’re judging the book by its cover, the fact that this will be their first impression of your website won’t change. How your website is presented visually, ranging from its color schemes, typeface, style and down to your company logo, will be your key to get positive reactions from your visitors.

Branding and Professionalism

A good company must have professional branding and advertisement of themselves. This includes the logo of your company, which will be a crucial factor in how you want to convey your motivations and messages to your visitors. It can be either cartoony, artistic, unusual or just plain simple. How you want it to be seen is up to you.

Mobile-friendly

In this modern and technology advanced era, it is very important that you consider the needs and types of devices your audience has. Since people often have their phones close to themselves at all times and surf the net very frequently, you can take advantage of this fact by having a mobile-friendly design for your company website so that it can be easily accessible from across various devices.

Speed and Stability

Whenever a website/page takes too long to load or has errors, you will sometimes get fed up with it and leave for a better one. A slow and unstable website isn’t good for your company or your clients. A good company website must be designed to be fast and stable in the long run. It must be regularly maintained and kept compact. That way, your website can load faster, and lesser time will be wasted.

So, what does your website say about you? Are you an innovative forward-thinking company? Or are you stuck in the past?

Does Social Media really affect SEO? And if it does, what are the possible effects that we need to be aware of so we can tailor our SEO strategies for Social Media? These are essential questions that we need to answer especially with the growing power and influence of Social Media on the world wide web. In this article, we will discuss both the truths as well the misconceptions of Social Media and its effect on SEO.

1.) Facebook and Twitter Posts are not ranking factors

Many people have this misconception that Google indexes all pages on the world wide web. While Google’s reach is unbelievably extensive, the almighty search engine has its limitations. With the number of web pages growing at an exponential rate, Google knows that not all pages that are created possess equal value and some of them are simply useless to searchers. That’s why they designed “Spiders” or crawling bots in their algorithm to help them determine content that provides value to users. The average number of tweet per day is 500 million. If Google is trying to crawl every page in existence, it has to give priority to one thing over another.  With so many tweets created, these will be low down on Google’s list of priorities.

2.) Currently, Facebook and Twitter followers do not equate to better search rankings

Google said that it does NOT use signals from social media like number of followers as a direct ranking factor for search. The reason for this is because Google can’t comprehend the connections and internal signals that social sites have which means they don’t have the confidence to put rankings on them. The problem lies in the volatile nature of social sites. Followers are mainly caused by relationships and this kind of connection can change constantly. Google doesn’t have the time to gauge these changing connections as their spiders only visit sites at a limited time.

So does this mean that you should not put any emphasis in Social Media?

Not at all because while there is still no definite relationship between Social Media and search engine rankings, Social Media can still benefit your business in two important ways such as:

1.)  Social Media drives traffic to your web pages

Social media is a proven means to increase your content distribution to different audiences. When you engage with potential customers on different social media sites, this helps establish your authority and relevance in your niche or industry. And when your posts are linked to your main website, this drives traffic to your page which results in better search engine rankings.

2.) Social Media helps in brand awareness

Being active in social media enhances brand awareness. Facebook and other social media sites are one of the best avenues to reach out to your potential customers and understand what their needs are. Once you understand their needs, you can better relate to them and offer your product or service as solutions. What’s more, you get to promote your company and brand to a wider and more active audience.

So what does this mean? It means that currently Google does not have a definite system in place to gauge Social Media relevance and use it to boost search engine rankings. However, we cannot deny the fact that Social Media plays a crucial role in driving traffic to your website and fostering brand awareness. So if you ask me whether or not Social Media is important, the answer would be a definite YES. Get in touch today for more advice on how to boost your social presence.

2017 is drawing to a close, and there are many things that we need to leave behind in our lives as we welcome the coming year. One of them should be the SEO blunders that we have made in the past. But mistakes happen to everyone, and the most important thing is to learn and grow from them and focus on the things that we can do to improve traffic and search engine rankings. As an early Christmas treat, here are some of the effective strategies that you can employ in your SEO campaign so you can open 2018 with the best SEO blast.

1.) Make Your Site Fast and Mobile Friendly

Providing quality user experience is important if you want Google and other search engines to rank your site better. With that being said, remove any and all unnecessary information on your website, and your visitors will surely be pleased with lightning quick loading pages. And because more and more people are going mobile today, it would also help if you design your site to be mobile friendly. Do these little tweaks, and you will surely find your site in better search engine ranking positions.

2.) Proper Keyword Integration

Any and all pages on your website should be tailored to something specific and a single SEO keyword. In building the content and message of your every webpage, the SEO keywords should be the central theme. So you can bring up your keywords more than once naturally, try creating longer content. Google and other search engines will penalize your website if it feels that you are overstuffing keywords or failing to offer value to visitors.

3.) Create Lots of High-Quality Content

Google loves websites that provide fresh content on a regular basis. But to establish your authority and keep your visitors from leaving your site after a short glance, your content should also be of high quality. High-quality content on your website and shared online will help search engines notice your brand, identify its relevance to users, and rank your website better as a result. With better rankings and quality content that will keep your visitors attached to your website, achieving your business goals online would be easy.

4.) Visual Appeal is Crucial

Visual appeal is becoming crucial in today’s digital age which means integrating SEO optimized images needs to be treated with utmost importance. You may have images in your site but if they are not properly optimized and if they look irritating to the eyes, then you will actually be doing more harm than good. Integrate appealing images that help make the user experience better overall. But don’t put too much images on your website as it may affect the speed of your website. Also, put associated texts on your images so Google can recognize their relevance. Improving the look of your site may not feel like it increases your rankings, but remember that bounce rate is a ranking factor. And the uglier your website, the higher your bounce rate.

5.) Social Media

Many SEO experts are still not completely sure on whether Social Media has any connection with search engine rankings. However, everyone would agree that establishing a solid Social Media presence can help your website a lot in terms of traffic and relevance. Social Media is also a powerful tool in building your brand and authority to an online populace whose internet use has become synonymous with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks.

We’re here to help you improve your rankings in 2018. Get in touch for more information on our SEO service.