In creating content for their company website, many small business owners feel torn. On the one hand, they wand to develop a site that’s pleasing to potential customers, and helps them brand themselves effectively. On the other hand, they want to make sure they have all the technical elements in place to find favor with Google’s search algorithms.
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At first blush, understanding the role of online content seems pretty simple. Using search engines like Google, as well as social networks like Facebook and Twitter, consumers search for information, solutions to their problems, and answers to their questions. Your company’s content can and should provide those things; the whole point of creating content is to establish your brand as a potential solution to consumer pain points.
It is often said that, in the digital marketing realm, content is king. Increasingly, it looks like video content may be emperor. Just consider the sheer volume of online video that’s watched every single day—nearly five billion YouTube video views alone, while Facebook and Snapchat get more than 8 billion daily video views between them. The simple truth is that today’s Internet content consumption form of choice is the video—something that marketers would do well to notice.
With algorithmic updates happening regularly, and new SEO strategies making headlines seemingly every day, it’s easy for marketers to get caught up in the rush of what’s new. We can’t let fresh strategies or industry trend distract us completely from the tried-and-true practices that remain at the bedrock of effective marketing, though. One of those practices—not at all flashy, but deeply significant to any effort at successful SEO—is internal content linking.
When consumers need to locate a new business, product, or service, they typically turn to Google. What they find there often determines how and where they spend their hard-earned money. The implication for businesses is that maintaining a robust search engine presence is critical—but it’s not just Google visibility that matters. It’s also important that your brand be portrayed as positively as possible to potential customers and clients. Specifically, it means maintaining a high Google star rating if at all possible.
With so many choices for how to purchase media, it’s important to take the time and understand all of the options available — so at the end of the day you are choosing the best possible way to reach your customers on the path they take to find you, research your inventory, compare you to other options and choose (or don’t choose) you. Even though programmatic has become the dominant way for digital advertisers to purchase media — according to eMarketer 67% of display advertising, 69% of mobile advertising and 56% of digital video advertising was programmatic in 2016 — it’s always valuable to understand what other methods are available to you.
Practicing SEO requires you to make many decisions each day—but the most foundational decision you make is this: Will you engage in white hat SEO practices, or black hat? Or, to put it differently, will you be one of the good guys, or will you choose instead to be an outlaw?
We’re big believers in the power of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to boost brand visibility and to connect with consumers. We’re hardly the only digital marketing agency to think so. With that said, we understand that Google AdWords can be difficult for the PPC novice to understand, let alone optimize. That can be frustrating: we talk to many small business owners who believe AdWords can work for them, but they’re just not sure how.
For many professionals, LinkedIn is a staple of the digital daily diet. As such, you’ve probably noticed that the popular networking site has received a facelift, at least in its desktop iteration—and some of us might say a much-needed one. Though the cosmetic overhaul is pretty evident, there may be some features or tweaks you haven’t noticed yet. Because LinkedIn is significant both for jobseekers and for marketers, these changes are worth reviewing in some detail.
Livestream video has become a huge trend in social media marketing, with platforms like Facebook pushing it more and more aggressively. That push is not without reason, and not without results: Some studies show that Facebook users spend three times longer watching live video than they do pre-recorded fare.
