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Category: Online Marketing

12 Essentials of Home page SEO

Your homepage has a lot of important functions. It is a welcome page to your website and business, plus it is a guide and navigational tool for the content on your site. It also helps build trust and authority, and you can use it to highlight special offers and key messages. What about SEO?

Your homepage plays an important role in the overall optimisation of your website for Google and other search engines. Therefore, homepage SEO is crucial.

Ranking for Your Company Name

It is usually straightforward to rank for your brand name. The exception to this rule is if your company name is a commonly used search term. You will find it more difficult in these circumstances, so you will probably need the help of an experienced SEO company in Auckland.

Homepage SEO Tips

There are a number of SEO steps you can take to optimise the homepage on your website. Here are 12 of the most important.

1. Target Keywords

Identify a small list of keywords to target on your homepage in addition to your company name. The list should include the keywords that best describe what you do or offer.

2. Page Title

To optimise the page title of your homepage, focus on your brand or company name first. You should then include the keywords that are most relevant to your products or service.

Make sure it is user-friendly and readable, though, and is not just written for Google.

3. H1 Tag

To optimise the H1 tag on your homepage, follow these tips:

  • Make sure there is only one H1 tag
  • Include the most important keywords
  • Make sure it is descriptive
  • Include your target location

4. Image Alt Tags

Including image alt tags is important for SEO generally as well as for your homepage. Making the image alt descriptive is essential and you should include keywords where possible.

For your homepage specifically, make sure you add an image alt tag to your logo. You should also have a descriptive filename for your logo, i.e. YourCompany-Logo.png

5. Text

There are many people who believe the best homepages have minimal text. The thought process is that people don’t want to read lots of text, so it is better to keep your homepage clean.

However, a skilled SEO company in Auckland will be able to make your homepage text-rich with relevant keywords while still keeping the page clean and uncluttered. This will help with your SEO effort.

Adding text that explains what your business does is essential.

6. Usability Features

Common usability features are important for the SEO of your home page. This includes best practice usability features like a logo and an easy to use menu so visitors can find what they are looking for. Quick links to your contact and products/services pages are also helpful.

7. CTAs

Strong CTAs will help prevent bounce rate and will improve the user experience as a CTA can help visitors to your website find the answer to their query or a solution to their needs.

8. Meta Description

Your homepage should have a strong meta description that includes your main target keywords. Crucially, make sure this isn’t then the meta description that is used on all other pages of your website. Each page should have a unique meta description.

9. Internal Links

Your homepage should have a focused link strategy to the most important sections of your website. This helps users find what they are looking for and it helps SEO.

10. Social Proof

Building trust with visitors to your website is an important part of SEO. Adding social proof will help with this. Examples include testimonials, case studies, and memberships of recognised organisations.

11. Speed

Website homepages can have a lot of media-rich content that can slow them down. As page load speed is an important part of SEO, make sure your homepage is optimised to make it as fast as possible.

12. Responsive Design

The homepage of your website should look great on all devices, including mobiles. So, it should have a responsive design.

Getting the Most from Your Homepage

Your homepage is not the only page you want to rank in Google. That said, getting it to as high a position as possible for keywords that are important to your business will help you achieve your goals.

What is Keyword Research and Why it is Still Important for SEO in Auckland?

Keyword research is a term you will commonly hear when talking to an SEO company in Auckland. What does it mean, though, and why is keyword research important for your website?

Keyword research is an essential part of SEO and it should be a central component of all SEO strategies.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research takes the guesswork out of SEO. It tells you what people are searching for in relation to your products, services, and industry. It also tells you how many people are searching for the various phrases you identify. This can help you understand the opportunities that are available.

Additionally, it is very difficult to think of all the different permutations that people could use to type a search into the Google search box. All that data is available, however. With keyword research, you will have access to phrases you never thought of.

Why Is Keyword Research Important?

As we can see from above, keyword research lets you find out the phrases that people type into Google when looking for your products or services. It also helps you identify phrases that you could never have guessed.

Why is this important?

To begin with, understanding this information provides you with a starting point for your SEO strategy. After all, if you know the keywords and phrases that people are searching for, you can start using those keywords on your website as well as in other ways that are important for SEO.

There are other advantages to keyword research that takes this even further. These advantages include:

  • Identify trends – keyword research can give you an indication of when people search for certain phrases, helping you identify seasonal trends. It can highlight trends in other areas too, such as geographical trends. People in one part of the country might use different phrases than people in another part. The phrases people type into Google can also vary country by country if you have an international audience.
  • Difficulty – keywords have varying degrees of difficulty. In other words, it is easy to rank on page one of Google for some keywords and very difficult for others. This is usually down to competition. Difficult to rank for keywords will have lots of competition and/or very strong competition, i.e. where you are competing with large, potentially internationally recognised websites. Keywords with a lower level of difficulty will have fewer competitors in general, as well as fewer dominant competitors.
  • Long-tail keywords – some of the most profitable keywords you will identify during keyword research are long-tail keywords. These are keywords that are three words or more. Not only are they often among the best keywords to target, but they are also some of the most difficult to guess. This makes them very hard to identify without keyword research.
  • Competitor insight – a crucial part of keyword research is identifying keywords that your competitors target. Having this information means you can target these keywords directly.
  • Buyer intent – the best SEO experts in Auckland and elsewhere no longer simply identify keywords. Instead, they identify keywords and then determine the intent of each keyword. In other words, the likely intent of a person entering that keyword into a Google search box. The keywords with a buying intent are the most valuable, so they move up the priority list of keywords to target.

Don’t Neglect Keyword Research

Keyword research is not something you should skimp on as it could mean the difference between a successful SEO campaign and one that doesn’t deliver the results you expect. So, don’t ignore keyword research.

Tips to Optimise the Navigation on Your Website

Tips to Optimise the Navigation on Your Website

All websites need both a planned out navigational structure as well as navigational elements, i.e. menus. How do you ensure the navigation on your website is fully optimised? What do you need to do to your website’s navigation to optimise its performance?

The following nine tips are essential to optimise website navigation. The company you use for website design in Auckland will need to be involved in the implementation of some of them but, as it’s your website, you should know the elements and features that should be included.

1. Optimise both the mobile and desktop versions of your site

Never think first about the desktop version of your website’s navigation while leaving the mobile version to last. They are both equally important. In fact, if most of your website traffic accesses your site using a mobile device, you should consider optimising for mobile first.

2. Remember the most important objective of your website’s navigation

There are a lot of business owners whose primary focus when considering their website’s navigation is to showcase all their services, products, and other essential business information. These things are important, of course, but there is something that is even more important.

Your website’s visitors.

The most important objective of your website’s navigation is to ensure visitors can quickly and easily find what they are looking for. You should approach every decision with this in mind.

3. Create a Sitemap

A sitemap plans out the hierarchy of your website’s pages. This usually starts at the top with your home page and then moves down to one and sometimes two levels below. There are two things to remember when it comes to sitemaps:

  • Make sure you create one early in the website design process. Your website designer in Auckland will be able to advise you, but you will need to make the final decision.
  • Don’t go any deeper than two levels below your home page. What does this mean? Imagine the main menu on a website – that is one level. If an item on that menu has a sub-menu, that is the second level. Don’t go lower than that, i.e. sub-menus of sub-menus. If you have a complex website structure and/or lots of content, the tip below will help.

4. Keep drop-down menus as simple as possible

Instead of having sub-menus of sub-menus, create a page. Visitors can navigate to that page from the main menu where they will find the rest of the options and what they are looking for.

5. Add a menu to your footer that includes all the important pages on your website

You should have a footer menu and it should be big. In particular, it should contain links to all the main pages on your website, including those not in your main menu.

6. Make the most important pages on your site the most visual in the menu

This is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find those pages. Remember, though, the second point on this list, i.e. “most important” ideally means most important to visitors.

7. Add breadcrumbs to your website

Breadcrumbs are fantastic UX (user experience) enhancing tools, so make sure you add them as a navigational element.

8. Fix the main menu to the top of the page

Fixing the main menu to the top of the page ensures it stays visible to the visitor as they scroll. This is another UX feature that enhances the experience of visitors and helps them quickly and easily find what they are looking for.

9. Test your menus rather than just assuming they’re okay

Finally, make sure you test your website’s navigation on various devices, including phones and tablets. On phones, it’s important to test on both Android and iOS devices. Getting feedback from users can be invaluable too.

3 Easy Ways to Instantly Impress Facebook Ad Leads

Need to lead with the right foot and bag the perfect client? Here are three easy ways to instantly impress Facebook ad leads.
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When that perfect lead comes through your pipeline, and you want to make sure you’re communicating just how excited you are to work with them, you sometimes need to go that extra mile.
Check the following strategies, they can be helpful for you to land the account without requiring too much effort on your part.
 

3 Easy Ways to Instantly Impress Facebook Ad Leads
Strategy #1: Create mockup ads using their own branding in under 10mins

Nothing shows attention to detail like presenting visuals of where you’re planning on taking them. Unfortunately, not all of us are gifted graphic designers nor have the scope, or resources to drum up something super flash. One easy hack is to use the free Facebook tool Creative Hub, which allows you to mock up ads using their own branding.

Here’s how to use creative hub:

  1. Access Creative Hub from your advertising dashboardor click here
  2. Click on “Create mockup” and select type of ad you’d like to show off
  3. Here you’ll be taken to a set up that resembles ads manager – start building your ad the way you normally would. You can edit out the profile photo so that it’s your clients’ page profile. 

 

Strategy #2 – Create a competitor ad swipe file


It used to be that if you wanted to see the ads other’s were running, you’d have to visit their sites or funnels and get retargeted with them.  But no more, since Cambridge Analytica broke out in 2018 and Facebook tightened up policies it released a Page Transparency tab allowing anyone to see (some of) the active ads being placed by that business.
It then went one step further and created afree library of ads that anyone can use.  If you really want to impress leads, show them that you’ve done your homework.

Strategy #3 – Become a Facebook Marketing Partner

Showing certifications, awards and recognitions for the service you provide is the ultimate, but when you don’t have those on board one thing you may qualify for is to become aFacebook Marketing Partner through their agency program.

The perks of getting approved as a marketing partner aren’t just about the free training, advanced support, and events you get invited to but more than anything it communicates professionalism and experience to your prospective clients.

BONUS TIP: Add a personalised video to your proposals



You can say something as simple as “Hey Steve, so excited to potentially be working with you, I’m excited about being able to potentially help you grow XYZ.  Inside this document, you’ll find more information about the processes we use and the solution you’re getting. If at any time you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out to me.”
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If you found this guide helpful drop us a comment below and tell us any creative ways you’ve been impressing your leads!
Need help growing your Facebook advertising business? Check outthe Definitive Guide to growing a digital marketing business during uncertain times.
How to add polls to your Facebook ad videos

Everything You Need to Know About Social Proof and Your Website

Social proof is a term used to describe certain features on your website. It’s also a marketing tool that has been used unashamedly and successfully for decades. What is it, though, and how can you take advantage of social proof in relation to your website?

Your website designer in Auckland should be aware of social proof features, but you are likely to be involved in putting them together, so it’s important you have an understanding of them too.

What is Social Proof?

Social proof is about giving potential customers increased confidence in your products or services. They get this confidence because they can see that others have used the product or service before and have been happy with the experience, performance, and/or results.

There are lots of different ways to use social proof. Plus, as mentioned before, it’s nothing new in the world of marketing.

Celebrities were endorsing products long before the internet and companies have always used the testimonials of customers. Businesses also regularly use a range of social proof tactics not directly related to websites. Some examples include:

  • Restaurants with people waiting in a queue for a table
  • Golf clubs or similar clubs with a waiting list
  • Manufacturers that develop limited edition products

The thought process that the above is trying to generate is something like:

  • “If it’s good enough to wait on a table or go onto a waiting list, I want it too”
  • “I’ve only got one shot at getting this, and the price may even go up, so I have to act now”

Social Proof and Your Website

Adding social proof features to your website will encourage visitors to get in touch with you or buy your products. Here are the main social proof features you should consider discussing with your website developer in Auckland to have them added to your website:

  • Testimonials – where customers give their views on your products, services, and/or business
  • Reviews and ratings – a popular feature on e-commerce websites selling products as well as on restaurant websites, websites for businesses in the tourism industry, and more
  • Statistics – examples of stats you could mention on your website include the number of customers you have, the number of subscribers to your email list, the number of successfully completed projects, etc
  • Endorsements – from celebrities and other well-known people in your industry that your potential customers know, trust, and respect
  • Case studies – where you go deeper into a project to outline what your customer needed or wanted, how you went about delivering for the customer, and the results achieved
  • Mentions in the media – include the logos of publications where your business has featured
  • Customer logos – include the logos of your customers, particularly well-known companies
  • Professional body membership – including badges and logos from professional bodies that you are a member of can also help
  • Certifications – as with the above, details of certifications you have can also be beneficial
  • Bestseller labels – like the labels you see when shopping on Amazon. They indicate product popularity so give potential customers increased confidence.
  • Customer behaviour features – this is another effective technique used by Amazon and other websites. Examples include “customers also bought” or “customers recommend” features.

As you can see from the above, to make your website a true success, you need to do more than explain what you do and how you do it. You also need to demonstrate social proof to move the visitor closer to making a buying decision.

The Difference Between a Business Website and a Lead Generation Website

There are websites and then there are lead generation websites. Both look different, they have different objectives, and they deliver vastly different results. Understanding this difference and knowing the type of website you want is essential before your website designer in Auckland starts building your site.

Of course, there are other types of website that don’t fall into the two categories that are the subject of this blog. E-commerce websites, news websites, blogs, and more are all examples.

The crucial determining factor is the objective of the website. Here are some examples:

  • Business websites – explains what your business is, what it does, and enhances your brand while also providing contact information
  • E-commerce websites – for selling products online
  • News websites – displaying news articles and building a community of readers to display ads to
  • Blogs – building a community of readers while also establishing the author as a thought leader in their field
  • Booking websites – for businesses in the tourism industry, entertainment industry, and similar industries where the aim is to generate bookings
  • Subscription websites – where the goal is to generate new subscriptions
  • Informational websites – to provide valuable information to visitors
  • Lead generation websites – bring leads into the business that can then flow through pre-determined marketing processes and/or be followed up on by the sales team

Businesses that Benefit from Lead Generation Websites

If you want your website to bring leads into your business, you should choose a lead generation website. If you want people to contact you directly about the products or services you offer, you should choose a lead generation website.

Common industries where lead generation websites are effective includes:

  • Construction industry, particularly in the residential sector although all companies in the construction sector can benefit from having a lead generation website
  • Accounting and other providers of professional services
  • Financial industry businesses
  • Real estate and property
  • DIY and home improvement companies including electricians, plumbers, landscape gardeners, HVAC companies, painters, and more
  • Photographers

These are examples of businesses that sell either products or services to customers using their website but where direct contact has to be made for the transaction to take place. If this description fits your business, a lead generation website is the best choice for you.

Features of a Lead Generation Website

The key difference between a standard business website and a lead generation website is the features included on a lead generation website. These are features aimed at encouraging visitors to give you their contact details so you can follow up with them.

If you are using a good website design company in Auckland, they will understand the importance of these features. This includes:

  • Including your contact number on every page in an easy to find location
  • Putting forms on every page
  • Giving visitors a compelling offer that convinces them to become a lead. Examples are a discount, a free consultation, or a free assessment. You could also provide a gated offer. This is where you give the visitor something – a case study, white paper, or tool, for example – in exchange for contact details.
  • Adding social proof such as testimonials
  • Including content that talks to the visitor. This is different from content that explains what your business can do.
  • Using words and phrases that resonate with the visitor and directly address the visitor’s problem or pain point
  • Including trust-building features such as details of professional body memberships, case studies, or client logos
  • Featuring well designed and written calls to action

 

Including the above features – and having lead generation as the primary focus of the website design process – will give you a website that brings more leads into your business and, ultimately, more sales.

The Importance of Testimonials on Your New Website and How to Use Them to Get Leads

Testimonials are a common feature on many modern websites. If you are getting a new website developed, your website designer in Auckland will probably ask you for information on testimonials. Why are testimonials so important, though? Also, how can you optimise testimonials so they help generate leads for your business?

A lot of this comes down to trust.

Trust is an important factor when a potential customer is deciding whether to make a purchase from you. In addition, potential customers want to know you have delivered in the past.

Crucially, this doesn’t just apply when you get to the stage of talking directly to customers. Building trust and proving past success are important to the generation of leads too.

One of the ways you can build this trust and demonstrate past success is through testimonials. In the world of website design and online marketing, this is known as providing social proof.

Testimonials validate the things you say in relation to your capabilities and show you have experience in your specific field.

How to Optimise Testimonials to Generate Leads from Your Website

As with most website elements, there are good examples of testimonials and bad examples. Here are eight tips that will help you optimise the testimonials you include on your site. The goal is to ensure your testimonials help generate leads.

1. Approach Your Best Customers for Testimonials

The customers that use your products/services the most are likely to be those that are getting the most benefit from your business. They are also likely to be the most positive. These are usually the best people to give you a testimonial.

2. Attribute to a Person

Always attribute the testimonial to a person, ideally including their full name. This may not always be possible if your customers are consumers but use full names when you can. Avoid attributing to a company without naming an individual.

3. Make Sure the People Giving You Testimonials Are Relatable

It’s important your potential customers can relate to the people giving you testimonials. Potential customers should see your testimonials as peers who have similar priorities, challenges, measures of success, standards, etc.

4. Use Well-Known Individuals or Companies

If possible, use companies or individuals that your potential customers may be familiar with. This adds credibility.

5. Add Company Names, Positions, and Links

You will add further authenticity to your testimonials by including company names, positions, links to websites, and other information that helps to validate the testimonial as real and genuine.

6. Make Sure Testimonials Are Specific

Testimonials that are specific and highlight real results are much better than those that are vague.

7. Don’t Edit Them Too Much

Testimonials need to sound natural, so don’t over-edit them. They will be more authentic if they sound natural rather than overly polished.

8. Use Video Testimonials

Finally, consider using video testimonials instead of the text variety. A video testimonial has even more weight as well as enhanced credibility and authenticity.

Adding Testimonials to Your Website

It’s worthwhile devoting time to getting good testimonials that you can send to your website developer in Auckland. It’s also helpful if you update your testimonials periodically to keep them fresh and current. Most importantly, having them on your website will be beneficial.

10 Tips to Improve Website Form Conversion Rates

Forms are an important part of your website. They make it easy for visitors to get in contact with you, of course, but they are also an essential part of your lead generation process. Therefore, you should spend time to ensure the forms on your website are as good as they can be.

Below are 10 tips to improve the forms on your website, particularly in relation to enhancing your conversion rate. You may need the help of a website designer in Auckland, but it will be worth going through these optimising steps.

If you are getting a new website designed, make sure you have the below elements in place from the start.

1. Put the Form in the Right Place

This applies to all forms, but it’s particularly important for lead generation forms. The best place to put them is above the fold, i.e. close to the top of the page so users on computers can see the form before they scroll.

2. Include a Compelling Call to Action

Tell your website users what you want them to do and give them a compelling reason for doing so. Examples include “book a free consultation” or “get your free customised analysis”.

3. Keep the Form Short

If your website form asks for lots of information, you will find that people will be unwilling to use it. So, only ask for what you absolutely need.

Also, make as many of the fields as you can optional.

4. Make the Form as Simple to Use as Possible

Practical tips for making your website forms easy to use include:

  • Use colour contrasts to ensure the form is easy to read
  • HTML5 input types make it easy for users to enter information like dates, so incorporate this structure in your forms
  • Avoid using captchas if you can. They are frustrating for users and there are alternative methods for preventing spam.
  • Add predefined options to applicable fields
  • Ensure the user has to type as little as possible

 

5. Add Privacy Information

Give a brief explanation of your approach to privacy and include a link to your privacy policy. After all, you are asking website visitors for their personal information. You need to give them confidence you will respect their privacy and protect their data.

6. Give Users a Clear Message Once their Form is Sent

There is nothing more frustrating than a website that gives you no information after you hit the submit button. Therefore, confirm the form has been successfully sent and explain to the user what happens next.

You should also give the user links to other information or parts of your website they might be interested in.

7. Make Sure the Form is Responsive

Ensure the form is usable on as many devices as possible. The most important devices are computers, mobile phones, and tablets.

8. For Long Forms, Use a Multi-Step Design

Sometimes long forms are necessary. They work best when using a multi-step format rather than putting all the fields on one page. Lots of form fields on a long page will look daunting, so walk users through the process using a stepped approach.

9. On Multi-Step Forms, Include a Progress Bar

Progress bars are a great tool for improving user experience.

10. Split Test to Optimise Results

Finally, split test elements of your form to see which delivers a better conversion rate. A split test involves changing one element on the form and testing it against the original. For example, you might change the call to action, or you might make a field optional that was previously required.

Forms can always be improved. Split testing will give you tangible information to work from.

7 Straightforward Website Design Tips that Will Get Traffic to Your Site

SEO, PPC advertising, and other digital marketing strategies are the primary methods of getting traffic to your website. The goal of your website’s design, on the other hand, is to encourage visitors to convert. That said, there are website design tips that will help bring more traffic to your website.

Before getting started with the seven tips in our list, here is a bonus one – design your website for your audience, not for you. Your website must properly represent your business, of course, but you will get more people to visit it if your audience finds it appealing.

Let’s now get on with the seven website design tips that will get traffic to your website.

1. Optimise Your Content

There are three main aspects to this tip:

  • Make sure you have enough content as a lot of the analysis that Google does on your website is based on text. Therefore, you need enough text on each of your website’s pages to ensure Google knows what they are about.
  • Ensure each page has a main target keyword. You will need to delve into SEO for this point as you will need to know what keywords you should be targeting. It’s important you then use those keywords on the pages of your website.
  • Finally, make sure the text is easy to read. This means making it conversational and friendly while also using everyday language.

2. Ensure Your Content is Properly Structure

There is the right way to add content to a website and there are lots of wrong ways. The right way is to use header tags (in the right order), image alt tags, and, where appropriate, structured markup.

By doing this, you will help Google analyse and understand your site’s pages while also ensuring your website adheres to Google’s recommendations for optimised website design.

3. Make the Website Load Fast

Your website needs to load as fast as possible – it really is as simple as that. An experienced and skilled website developer in Auckland will know how to ensure your website is optimised for speed.

4. Add Social Sharing and Follow Icons

Social sharing and follow icons will increase traffic to your website from social media. They can also help with your social media strategy which, in turn, can benefit your SEO efforts, bringing even more traffic to your website. So, it’s better to have them than to not.

5. Optimise Your Website for All Devices

Your website should be responsive, so it displays properly on all devices. You should also take this a stage further, however, by making sure the website also looks and performs properly on all devices. Even though it is responsive, the responsive functionality might need tweaks to ensure it is as good as possible.

6. Secure Your Website

Getting an SSL certificate for your website will not only protect the data of your visitors, but it will also improve trust levels in your site when it appears in Google search.

7. Add Email List Sign-Up Forms

The final tip on our list is to add email list sign-up forms to your website. You should be continually building your email list to improve your email marketing strategy. After all, email marketing will bring traffic to your website.

Focus on Your Audience

None of the above seven points are complicated or expensive to implement. In addition, they will help make your website more appealing to visitors and they will bring more visitors to your site.

Page Titles: Why They’re Important and How to Write Them

Page titles are a part of your website that need special attention, particularly from an SEO perspective. They need to be formatted properly and written well to ensure you get maximum results. This is because page titles can help improve your rankings in Google and get more people to visit your website.

What is a Page Title?

A page title is a special type of tag on each page of your website. Web browsers, search engines, and social media networks use this tag to get the HTML title of the page.

The tag is <title>.

Importantly, page titles are not the same as the header on the page. Page titles and headers can match, but headers are a different type of tag known as a H1 tag. So, even though you have headers on the pages of your website, you still need to give special attention to page titles.

What Are Page Titles Used For?

Why is it important to write and format your page titles properly? Understanding where and what page titles are used for helps to answer this. There are four main things:

  • Search rankings – page titles are a ranking factor in Google. In other words, Google uses page titles to understand what your page is about and to give it a ranking in search. Page titles are by no means the only ranking factor (there are over 200, in fact), however they are among the most important.
  • Search engine results – Google usually uses page titles on its search results pages. It is the part of a search result that is blue. Therefore, page titles can help get people to click to your website.
  • In web browsers – web browsers also use page titles to label the tab which your website is displayed on.
  • On social media networks – when someone shares your page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or another social media network, the social channel uses the page title in the post.

As you can see, page titles are used in lots of different ways, demonstrating their importance. How do you optimise page titles for SEO, however? Here are the main points you need to know.

Every Page on Your Website Should Have a Unique Title

The most important point is to ensure every page on your website has a unique page title. While it might take time to write unique page titles for every page, particularly if you have a large site, it’s essential you do so.

Page Titles Should be the Right Length

You won’t be penalised by Google if your page titles are too long, plus long page titles can work well when your website is shared on social media.

However, on a search results page, Google usually only displays 50-60 characters. This includes all letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols. Google cuts anything over this, replacing it with “…”.

So, if you want the full page title displayed on search results pages, keep it to 50-60 characters.

Include the Page’s Main Keyword

The main keyword of your page should be in the page title. Don’t overstuff the title with keywords, however. Using it once is enough.

Also, the closer you can get it to the start of the page title, the better.

Make the Page Title Clickable

Finally, you should write page titles for your customers. In other words, make them interesting, compelling, and clickable.

Things that can help with this include using a brand name in the page title (your brand or the brand of a product you are selling) and including your location if you are a local business.

The idea is to attract attention and get people to click.

7 Essential Tips for Effective AdWords Copy

There are lots of elements of your Google AdWords campaign that are important. This includes the copy of your ad. You don’t have much text to work with, though, so how do you make sure you get the right message across while also encouraging potential customers to click on your ad?

Here are some tips:

1. Include Keywords, But Not Too Many

Including keywords in your ad will help improve your quality score which will lower the CPC (cost per click) of your campaign and, ultimately, the cost per conversion. One of the primary reasons for this is that keywords demonstrate to the person doing the Google search that you have an answer to their query.

Remember, however, keyword stuffing (where you include as many keywords in your ad as possible) will have the opposite effect, i.e. it will reduce the effectiveness of your campaign.

2. Be as Specific to the Target Keyword/s As Possible

Your ad copy should relate to the keyword as much as possible. For example, if a person is searching for “exterior painting services”, the copy of your ad should talk about exterior painting rather than painting rooms and other interior parts of a house.

3. Focus on the Perspective of Your Potential Customer

One of the biggest problems with AdWords copy is writing about your business, what you can do, how good your products or services are, the discounts you offer, etc.

People looking at your ads, however, are more interested in their own problems. These are the things you should be talking about in your ad.

Let’s use a painting company as an example again with a user searching for a painter with experience of renovation projects. Instead of the painting company including generic text in their ad talking about their painting expertise, they should start with something like “Need a Painter with Renovation Project Experience?”. This is an example of ad copy that is focused on the customer.

4. Test Multiple Versions

Even experts who manage budgets of millions and write several AdWords ads per day test the copy they write. You should too.

With AdWords, you can run split tests where you have two ads running at the same time to see which one is best.

5. Use Ad Extensions Where Possible

Ad extensions increase the visibility of your ads as well as making it easier for people to find what they are looking for. They can also make it easier for people to contact you.

The ad extensions you should include in your ads are:

  • Sitelinks
  • Callouts
  • Structured Snippets

6. Include a Call to Action

It’s important you include a call to action in your AdWords copy to encourage the user to click. The call to action should be as direct and positive as possible.

7. Use the Word “You”

Finally, make sure you use the word “you” in your ad copy. This will help you talk about your potential customer, what is important to them, how you can help, and how they will benefit from choosing you rather than one of your competitors.

Crafting Effective AdWords Copy

While it takes experience and practice to get right, the above are all essential elements you need in your AdWords ad copy to get the most from your campaigns.

How Adding a Blog to Your Website Will Help You Get Sales

Adding a blog to your website may seem like a daunting task. Even when you get through the technical part of creating a blog section, how are you going to write content to keep it regularly updated?

Add this to the fact that many people find it hard to identify a tangible return on investment from adding a blog to their website. As a result, they don’t.

Even when people do, they don’t know where to look to see how the blog is benefiting their business. The blog section then becomes neglected.

The reality, however, is that adding a blog to your website and keeping it regularly updated will get you sales. Therefore, you will get a return on investment from having a blog on your website.

The Blogging Strategy

Blogs give Google more content to evaluate when looking at your website. The result is that Google will add your website (via the blog page) to the search results pages of more keywords. In addition, many of those keywords will be longtail keywords where people are looking for very specific information. These keywords usually have little competition, so it is easy to rank in a high position.

For keywords that are more competitive, there are things you can do to help you move up the rankings:

  1. Wait – older content typically ranks higher in Google than brand new content. So, wait it out a bit.
  2. Keep it up-to-date – you must keep the content up-to-date, however. This ensures Google knows the blog is not only well-aged but is also fresh. For example, let’s say you write a blog with the title Top 10 tips for Buying a Diamond Engagement Ring. The longer it stays published the better, so long as you go back to it regularly to update it with new information and to remove anything that has become obsolete.
  3. Promote the blog – the next thing you need is links. There are lots of strategies you can use to achieve this, some of which can be quite expensive and/or time-consuming. There are some simple things you can do, however. This includes sharing the blogs you publish on social media as well as in your email marketing campaigns (if you don’t use social media or email marketing, you should consider starting).

How the Above Blogging Strategy Gets You Sales

When you do all the above, your website will:

  • Appear in Google for a greater number of keywords
  • Appear in a higher position for those keywords

Three main things will result from this:

  1. More people will see your brand on Google
  2. More people will visit your website
  3. Your reputation in the industry will be enhanced

This, in turn, will lead to customers thinking of you when they are making a buying decision. After all, they will already have had an interaction with your brand. They could do this immediately after doing the Google search and reading your blog, or it can happen hours, days, weeks, or months later.

It’s a simple equation – more of the right type of person visiting your website will increase your sales.

So, speak to Kiwi Website Design today about getting a blog added to your website or full SEO Services.

Best Email Marketing Tips to Increase Engagement and Subscribers

Many businesses in New Zealand use email marketing to find new sales and leads. You can do the same, but you first need to take steps to build your list of email subscribers. You then need to increase levels of engagement with the emails you send.

Let’s start with how to increase subscribers.

Tips to Increase Subscribers

  • Offer visitors something they will value – one of the best ways to get people to sign up to your email marketing list is to offer them something they will value in return for their email address. An eBook is a good example, particularly if it is on a highly relevant topic. Reports, white papers, and other types of exclusive content will also work.
  • Give subscribers exclusive offers or discounts – you can also give subscribers to your email marketing list a special discount, or you can give them access to exclusive offers.
  • Make the signup process simple – to maximise the numbers of people who sign up to your email marketing list, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Ideally, you should ask for very little information as the more fields you ask visitors to complete, the less likely they are to sign up.
  • Add an option to signup on your contact forms – you should also include a tick box on the content forms on your website.
  • Ask people to sign up – finally, make sure you ask people to signup with a clear call to action.

Also read: Top Reasons Your Website Is Not Ranking

Tips to Increase Engagement

Increasing engagement on your email campaigns means getting subscribers to open the emails you send and then to click on the links.

  • Personalise your newsletter campaigns – you should personalise the emails you send as much as possible. This can include, for example, using the recipient’s name in the subject of the email as well as addressing the person by name in the body of the email.
  • Segment your email marketing campaigns – it is also helpful to segment your subscriber list, so you can send content that has greater relevance. You can segment by location, for example, or by interests.
  • Ensure your emails have fantastic content – subscribers won’t open the emails you send if they are not interested in the content. Therefore, the content of your emails must get their attention.
  • Get the frequency right – sending emails too often will turn people off and will result in them not engaging with your newsletter campaigns. Some will even unsubscribe. On the other hand, you can also send emails too infrequently. Getting the right balance is, therefore, essential.
  • Write catchy subject lines – the first step of getting subscribers to engage with your email marketing campaigns is to get them interested in the email. This mostly comes down to the subject lines you write. They should be compelling, personalised where possible, and interesting.
  • Send a welcome email – the email you are likely to get the most engagement with is the welcome email. It is usually an automated email that your email marketing system sends immediately after a person signs up. This is when the subscriber is most engaged with your brand, so make sure you customise the welcome email and add content that will help turn the subscriber into a customer.

Here is one final bonus tip that will help with both building your subscriber list and increasing engagement – test, measure, and optimise.

5 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate and Increase the Dwell Time on Your Website

Bounce rate is a metric you should be familiar with as it is important to SEO. It is also important to the success of your website as a high bounce rate is often an indicator there is something not right. This isn’t always the case as there are some situations where a high bounce rate is understandable. Most of the time, however, you should take steps to reduce bounce rate as much as possible.

What is Bounce Rate?

Understanding bounce rate is essential before you attempt to implement solutions to reduce it.

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website but then leave after looking at just one page. On most of the pages on your website, this is not a good thing. After all, someone who visits your website and leaves after looking at one page is unlikely to have been interested in what you offer.

Google takes a view that is similar to this too. Specifically, a visitor “bouncing” off a page is an indicator to Google that the person didn’t find what they were looking for. The faster the user bounces, the greater the likelihood this is the case.

How to Decrease Bounce Rate

Speed Optimisation

Users don’t wait around for slow loading pages. In fact, if the page takes longer than a couple of seconds to load, you risk losing the visitor because it is not fast enough.

If this is the case with your website, you should take steps to make it faster. Don’t forget the mobile versions of your pages too, as they should also load fast.

Internal Linking

One of the reasons that people bounce from your pages might be because you don’t give them enough options to stay. Internal linking where you add links to your content on other pages is one solution to this.

It is an essential solution, in fact, if your content includes elements that require more detailed explanation. If you don’t provide an internal link to that explanation, the user will leave your website to find it.

Also read: Backlinks Explained – Everything a Small Business Owner with a Website Needs to Know

Engaging Content

Having content on the page the interests and engages visitors is important too.

If the page is mostly text, you also need to make sure it is readable as large blogs of text and long sentences will put off visitors. This applies even when the content itself is fantastic – if it looks daunting to read, visitors will never know how good it is as they will “bounce” to find an alternative that looks less like a chore.

Adding Media

Following on from the last point, a great way to make your content more engaging is to add media. This includes videos, animations, images, infographics, and more. This gives visitors an alternative to reading text, plus it is often easier to explain a concept, service, or product in a short video than in words.

Target the Right Keywords

As mentioned above, people will bounce from your page if they don’t think it answers their query. This can happen if your content is not good enough, but it can also happen by accident, i.e. your pages appearing on search results for keywords not related to your industry, products, or services.

The solution is to refine your keyword strategy to ensure you target the right ones.

By going through each of the steps above, you will see your bounce rate start to fall.

Everything You Need to Know About Mobile SEO

Smartphones are not just for younger generations anymore. In fact, one of the fastest growing demographics for smartphone and general smart device usage is the 55 – 64 age bracket. In other words, smartphones have taken a serious grip on our society and, for many of us, they are the first things we check when we wake up in the morning, we carry them around with us always, and we use them more and more for day-to-day tasks.

Consequently, smartphones have changed the way we engage with not just each other, but the internet itself. One area where smartphones have had the largest impact is SEO as mobile SEO helps businesses and brands reach potential customers. Therefore, it is not something which can be ignored.

Why is Mobile SEO Important?

Mobile traffic towers over desktop-based traffic. Each day, more people become reliant on smartphones to perform even the most basic of tasks. They are all-encompassing pieces of technology which house our lives. To take advantage of this and reach the people using them, you need to have a mobile SEO strategy.

Google studies have shown that smartphone users have more buying intent than their desktop counterparts – these people are there and waiting, ready to buy, and it is your job to ensure your website is one of the first results they see when performing a Google search.

Many webmasters assume there is no difference between desktop and mobile SEO, however. This is wrong. Yes, desktop SEO tactics do work for mobile SEO in some ways. However, desktop SEO and mobile SEO are not wholly interchangeable, so it is best practice to have two separate SEO strategies.

Google is Beginning to Prioritise Mobile

This year, Google will switch to a mobile-first index, making the importance of mobile SEO clear beyond doubt.

What does this mean? Previously, Google stored the desktop version of your website in its index. Now, however, it will use the mobile version instead. This doesn’t mean it will ignore the desktop version of your site. Instead, it now gives greater priority to the mobile version.

Even if your website is not geared towards a smartphone audience you still need to optimise it for mobile. The most efficient approach is to make your website responsive. If you don’t have a responsive website yet, you should make this your number one digital marketing priority. As a website development and SEO company in Auckland, we can help you do this.

What Does Google See As “Mobile”?

Many people consider smartphones and tablets as mobile devices. However, Google categorises tablets as devices in their own right and does not include them under the “mobile” umbrella.

This means Google only considers smartphones to be mobile devices. This isn’t a hugely important point though, because the idea with SEO is to optimise your website for all devices, not just smartphones – i.e. by making your website responsive.

Mobile SEO – Five Essential Tips

Your website needs to be optimised for mobile so that, regardless of the user’s device, everyone has a positive experience. Mobile SEO mostly relates to your website’s design, structure, and other technical aspects. Here are our five essential mobile SEO tips:

1. Focus on Speed

Google expects websites to load in half a second or less. In addition, research shows that a loading time which exceeds more than two seconds is enough to put off most consumers. Ensuring that your site loads quickly is crucial to ranking highly on both desktop and mobile search results pages. Simple speed optimisations include:

  • Correctly sizing your images
  • Removing unnecessary code
  • Utilising browser caching to store site resource files
  • Reducing the number of redirects on your site

2. Have a Responsive Design

Responsive designs are the way forward for mobile SEO and SEO in general. If you use WordPress or other content management systems, most modern themes come responsive as standard. Also, it is possible optimise existing website designs and themes by adding a few lines of code.

To get the most stable, functional, and visually attractive website, however, you should get a bespoke responsive theme.

The best responsive designs eliminate all flash elements and pop-ups plus they have a design that makes it easy to browse using a finger, reducing the possibility of accidental tapping of elements.

3. Optimise for the Local Area

This applies mostly to businesses that have a localised presence such as a physical premises or offices. If you do operate a physical location, it is important you optimise your website for local searches.

There are two ways to do this: a) include your city/town/region in your site’s content, in page titles, and in page meta descriptions, particularly the homepage; and, b) sign up for Google My Business, a free tool that lets you add important details about your business to Google such as opening hours and contact information.

4. Check for Blocked CSS, JavaScript, and Images

CSS, JavaScript, and images can enhance your website but there used to be a time when mobile devices could not properly support them. As a result, many web developers blocked them for mobile devices. Developers may also have blocked these elements because of mobile data concerns.

Today, however, these elements are crucial for helping Google determine whether you have a responsive site. Therefore, it is worth checking that your website isn’t blocking them, especially if your website has been around for some time.

5. Optimise Page Content

Remember, with mobile devices, you have much less screen space to work with. Also, the layout is different than a desktop as most people browse websites on mobile devices while holding them in a portrait position. In other words, they look at your website vertically rather than horizontally.

This means you should think about the layout of the content on your pages. Long paragraphs of text are a simple example as they could fill up all or most of a mobile screen. This is off-putting for visitors.

So, when writing content and structuring the layout of your website, always think mobile.

Mobile SEO Shouldn’t Be Scary

Many webmasters have been up in arms about Google’s mobile first index. However, mobile devices are the future and it makes sense that you optimise your website for them. Doing so will only deliver benefits, particularly over the long-term.

So, how do you know if you have a mobile optimised website? Here are some questions to ask:

  • Does your website load quickly on mobile when on a mobile network, i.e. not on a Wi-Fi connection?
  • Does your website look good on your phone and on any other phone or tablet you can check it on?
  • Does all the content on your website display on mobile?
  • Do all the features and functions of your website work on mobile?

If you are unsure about any of the above, you should get the help of an SEO agency in Auckland.

8 Common SEO Myths

As e-commerce expands, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is increasingly important for small business owners. If you want to ensure you can compete with your online competitors, it’s important you optimise your website for search engines. If you have little experience in digital marketing or website building, however, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information online. As a leading SEO agency in Auckland, we see this all the time.

After all, there seems to be a million SEO experts on the internet and they often present conflicting information. False information about SEO can damage your website and your brand, so it’s important you approach the process with confidence. That means avoiding the myths that continually pop up on many SEO blogs and sites.

In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the top eight SEO myths to help you navigate away from any basic mistakes.

Myth 1: Keyword Saturation Helps SEO

This is one of the oldest myths in the book. Website owners looking to boost their search engine results often load their content with keywords. While this might seem like a sure-fire way to improve your returns, Google and other search engines can easily spot this technique.

In fact, Google has been using technology to spot keyword saturation for more than ten years. There’s another problem too: not only will keyword saturation damage SEO, it also makes your website appear less legitimate to customers.

So, make sure you spread keywords throughout your content, don’t repeat them too often, and ensure they appear naturally.

Myth 2: Purchased Engagement Improves Rankings

One way to improve your SEO is to increase engagement with your website. In other words, when other websites and blogs link to your site, your credibility improves in the eyes of Google. However, this has created an entire industry dedicated to creating page engagement for clients looking to enhance their stats.

While this can sometimes work in the short-term, using manufactured engagement usually damages your page ranking. Search engines are now better at recognising fake or ‘spammy’ interactions, plus social media sites also work hard to spot fake engagement, penalising companies who engage in the practice.

So, the irony is, real engagement with your company is likely to fall if you use fake engagement.

Myth 3: Site Security is Irrelevant

Several high-profile hacks have made the news in recent times – many large companies have fallen victim to professional hackers looking to exploit personal data and information. If you own a small business, you might not think cybersecurity is applicable to you. Google, however, takes security on the internet very seriously.

While it isn’t one of Google’s core ranking factors at the moment, there’s no doubt security will play a larger role in determining search results in the future.

In addition, some web browsers also notify users when a site is not properly secured. This increases the chance that visitors will abandon your site without any interaction. So, there’s never been a better time to invest in site security.

Myth 4: Loading Your Homepage with Content is Beneficial

There is a lot of conflicting information online about how much content your homepage should include. Many people view their homepage as a segue to other parts of their site. This often results in a small amount of content on the homepage.

However, recent trends indicate homepages should also include optimised keywords and content. In fact, it’s thought most homepages should contain around 2,000 words of high-quality content with related keywords.

This word count also acts as a threshold, however, as loading your homepage with more content than this is unlikely to significantly enhance your SEO.

Even when you have a lot of content on your homepage, you should still link to other areas of your site as internal linking is important to SEO too.

Myth 5: Mobile Optimisation Doesn’t Matter

When SEO first became a thing, all e-commerce took place on traditional computers and laptops. This meant web designers solely focused on building traditional web pages. This has changed as responsiveness is now a key factor in SEO. Responsive websites “respond” to a user’s device, so they display and work properly, including loading quickly.

If you don’t optimise your site for mobile browsing, you will fall behind your competitors. This is because mobile optimisation is now a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm when users search on mobile devices.

Plus, mobile browsing is now more prevalent than traditional browsing. So, optimising for mobile not only improves the ranking of your website’s pages, it also improves user experience.

Myth 6: Content is the Only Thing That Matters

If you’ve read about SEO recently, you probably noticed a commonly used phrase: content is king. While it is true that creating authentic and useful content is one of the best ways to improve consumer engagement, keywords are equally as important. If you create great content that doesn’t include the keywords users search for, they may not be able to find your site.

The key is to use relevant keywords to produce insightful and thoughtful content. You should approach this process comprehensively, optimising each page of your website with keywords.

Myth 7: Investing in Google Ads Will Improve SEO

There are a lot of short-cut myths out there with some business owners looking for an easy route to improve SEO. One of the most common shortcut myths is the idea that purchasing Google Ads will improve your SEO, i.e. if you pay Google, it will reward you with better organic rankings.

While this method might sound plausible in a cut-throat business world, it doesn’t actually work. You can’t use Google Ads as a bribing technique to improve your page ranking.

Google Ads will improve user engagement and increase traffic to your website by targeting visitors that are likely to benefit from your site or product. If you want to improve your ranking in organic search, however, you need to implement an SEO strategy.

Myth 8: Link Building is in the Past

The fact that this myth still does the rounds is quite baffling as link building remains a major Google ranking factor. As mentioned above, though, you shouldn’t try to cheat the process by purchasing backlinks. You’ll achieve the best results if you naturally earn links from authoritative websites. You can do this by creating great content and engaging key individuals and websites in your industry.

Verdict

If you’ve fallen for one of the myths mentioned in this article, you’re not alone as there are plenty of small business owners in the same position. After all, search engine optimisation is a constantly evolving area, not least because Google and other search engines update their algorithms and technology on a regular basis.

Therefore, it’s important you stay aware of the common misconceptions in the industry. If you want to avoid wasting time and money, only use SEO techniques that improve your page rank. While SEO might sound difficult and confusing, avoiding traps is crucial to moving forward successfully.

If Your SEO Agency in Auckland Only Targets Popular Search Terms, It’s Wasting Your Money

When people think about SEO, they often think quantity. This usually means targeting the most popular search terms (keywords) and getting as much traffic to your website as possible. However, a high-quality and results-focused SEO agency in Auckland will not take this approach.

This is because one of the main reasons SEO strategies fail is because they target the most popular search terms. In most cases, this approach doesn’t deliver a return on investment.

Why People Target Popular Keywords

Popular keywords get hundreds or even thousands of searches a day. However, these search terms usually have two things in common:

  • They are very general
  • They are highly competitive

Despite this, many people still want to target these keywords because they are attracted to high volumes of searches. As a result, the most popular search terms often end up in SEO strategies.

There is a better way, though – target keywords that have much fewer daily searches. These are known as long tail keywords.

The Beauty of Long Tail Keywords – Return on Investment

Adopting an SEO strategy that targets keywords that are less popular may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, you probably want to get as many visitors to your website as possible.

Consider this question, though: do you want lots of visitors to your website or do you want to get more sales? For most businesses, the second option is the obvious answer.

Keywords that have fewer daily searches are usually the best way to achieve a boost in sales. One of the reasons for this is they are more specific, i.e. they are used by people when they are closer to a buying decision.

In addition, there is usually less competition when you target long tail keywords. Less competition means it is easier to rank higher on Google search results pages.

Also, long tail keywords usually achieve higher conversion rates, particularly when the keyword indicates buying intent.

Let’s summarise this:

  • Long tail keywords are less competitive – this makes it easier to achieve a high rank in Google
  • Conversion rates are better with long tail keywords – according to some research, long tail keywords have conversion rates that are 2.5 times higher than shorter keywords

A Practical Example

To understand the benefit of long tail keywords, think about the buying journey for your products. Let’s say, for example, you sell bicycles. A woman thinking of buying a new bike might start her research by using the keyword “bikes” in a Google search.

From an SEO perspective, “bikes” is a popular search term so will have a lot of daily searches. However, it will also be very competitive with major retailers and international bike brands appearing on the search results page, making it hard to rank in a high position.

In addition, even if you do manage to get a high ranking in Google for “bikes”, a click from this woman is unlikely to result in a sale as she doesn’t know what she wants yet.

From this initial search, the woman decides she wants to by an urban/commuter/all-rounder bike from one of the leading brands. So, she starts doing Google searches to help her find a bike that appeals to her:

  • “women’s urban bikes”
  • “women’s bike brands”
  • “women’s commuter bikes”
  • “women’s all-rounder bikes”

These search terms are long tail so will have less competition than the keyword “bikes”. They will also have fewer daily searches, but the keywords are more specific, i.e. the woman is getting closer to making a buying decision.

She is not there yet, though. While doing these searches, however, she discovers the bike brand Liv and decides she wants to buy the Liv Rove 2. So, she goes back to Google with a new set of searches:

  • “Liv Rove 2 stockists”
  • “Liv Rove 2 in Auckland”
  • “Liv Rove 2 price”
  • “Liv Rove 2 offers”
  • “buy Liv Rove 2 in Auckland”

These search terms have more words than the list above, so they are likely to have even fewer daily searches. However, they are also very specific and indicate a strong buying intent, i.e. the woman is ready now to make a purchase.

So, in this example of a woman buying a bike, it is better to rank well for the last set of keywords than the main keyword in this industry, “bikes”. After all, the websites that rank highly for the last set of keywords are likely to get the sale.

The second batch of keywords is important too, though. This is because you can start building up brand awareness with the woman, as well as demonstrating your knowledge of the industry. For example, you could have a page on your website with the subject Women’s Commuter Bikes which gives details of the different styles, features, and brands of this type of bike.

Then, when the woman does the more specific search, she will already be familiar with your brand when she sees your website on a search results page.

Most Google Searches Are Long Tail

Here is a fact you might not be aware of – 70 percent of searches on Google involve long tail keywords. That’s right, high-volume keywords like “bikes” make up only 30 percent of all searches on Google.

Other research shows that over 96 percent of searches are for keywords that get less 50 searches per month.

What does this mean? While your competitors chase the highly competitive short keywords, you should concentrate on the huge volumes of people who are searching for long tail keywords in your industry every day.

What You Should Do Now

If you look after SEO in-house in your business, you should incorporate long tail keywords into your strategy. If you use an SEO agency in Auckland (or are in the process of selecting one), you should make sure it includes long tail keywords in the strategy it implements for your business.

What should that strategy look like? There are four important steps:

  1. Identify the keywords you will target – the first step is to research long tail keywords that people do use and that have buying intent. These are the ones you should be interested in.
  2. Research the keywords – the next step involves checking the pages that currently rank for your target keywords. Your objective is to make your page better than those that are already ranking.
  3. Create the best content on the internet – you then need to create a page focused on each long tail keyword. You must optimise it for the keyword, but it should also be better than any other page currently ranking on page one of Google.
  4. Promote your page – finally, promote your newly created page on social media, your blog, via email marketing, and by any other method you can use. You want the page to be read by as many people as possible in the hope they will link to it.

The most important thing is to stop wasting money focusing too heavily on one or two-word keywords just because they get a high search volume. By focusing on conversions instead, your SEO agency in Auckland will get better results.

A Short Introduction to Links and their Importance to SEO

Links can appear almost anywhere. They are the things that connect website pages together and help you get from one website or piece of content to another. So, you will have links on your website that connect to other internal pages, as well as links to external, third-party websites.

The main focus of this article, however, is third-party websites linking to yours. What is the importance of this to SEO and how much emphasis should you place on getting other websites to give you a link?

Links perform two main functions in Google and other search engines – they help Google understand the relevance of your website as well as its popularity and trustworthiness.

What Is Your Web Page About?

Let’s look at the first function above – relevance. Google uses a computer programme to analyse all the websites and web pages on the internet. This is known as the Google algorithm. As its job is to provide answers to people conducting searches, it is not enough for Google to know what web pages exist. It is not enough for Google to know what is on those pages either.

Instead, when Google’s bot crawls your website and all the other sites in the world, it needs to understand what the page is about. For example, it must be able to tell the difference between a web page that talks about eagles (the bird), the Eagles (the band), or even the Eagles (the American Football team).

Google uses lots of factors to help it achieve this, but one of the most important is links. So, a website about eagles is likely to have links to and from other websites about eagles, birds, and related topics. The same applies to the Eagles the band and the Eagles the American Football team.

It’s a Popularity Vote

While understanding relevance is critical, the most important function of links is to help Google understand the popularity of a web page. So, a link acts like a vote for a website. This means, in very simplistic terms, the more votes (links) you have, the better.

The theory Google works from is that people link to the content they think best matches the message or information they want to present.

Google doesn’t just look at the number of links a website has, however, as the source of links is also important. Google uses the source of a link to determine the authority of a website. Again, it does this by using the knowledge and actions of real people. Specifically, it assumes (probably correctly) that people prefer to link to websites they trust.

Taking this a stage further, links from websites that Google believes are trustworthy are much more valuable to your website’s SEO than links from low-quality, spammy websites.

More on Popularity

There is more than one type of popularity, however. After all, if Google’s analysis of links focused exclusively on the volume of links a website has, websites like Wikipedia would appear at the top of just about every search results page.

Instead, there are three main types of popularity in Google:

  • Global – this applies to the big sites on the internet. Wikipedia is one of them but there are many others including the big e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay.
  • Local – links can also show you are popular locally. For example, a plumber that operates in Auckland would struggle to get the same amount of links as a major US brand that has multiple operations in multiple cities. Google knows, however, that a Kiwi homeowner is not interested in plumbers in New Jersey whenever they are dealing with a burst pipe in their Auckland home. So, it doesn’t matter how many links the US company has. Instead, Google assesses local popularity to decide which local plumber’s websites to include on its search results pages.
  • Niche – sometimes niche popularity is important too. This applies to non-local businesses as well as blogs and other websites that have a wider audience than the local area. Links help Google understand how popular a website is within its niche.

What is Anchor Text and Why is it Important?

Most links you see on web pages are words or phrases highlighted in blue which you can click on. Those words or phrases are anchor text and they are much more user-friendly than a URL.

Best practices for anchor text are to use words and phrases that relate to the page being linked to and that fit naturally on the page. You should avoid generic phrases like “click here”.

Obviously, you can control the anchor text on your own website, but you have limited control when other websites link to you. Where it is possible to make a suggestion on anchor text, however, follow the best practices above.

The Value of Trusted Websites

Google has to deal with huge volumes of low-quality, spammy, and often fraudulent content on the internet when it is delivering search results to its users. It does this by measuring trust . In other words, there are a collection of websites on the internet that Google trusts.

This could be popular and authoritative websites like those mentioned earlier. It can also be websites from particular types of domain. Government websites and university websites are two good examples. The same also applies to some non-profit organisations.

Links Don’t Age Well

The power of a link to your website will not last forever. In fact, its value decreases over time. Therefore, it is important you continue to generate new links. Ways you can achieve this is by updating previously published content, re-purposing content in another format, and publishing regular new content.

What About Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Channels?

One of the easiest ways to get a link to your website is via social media. After all, you control what is posted to your Facebook business page or Twitter account. Do these links help with SEO?

Google and other search engines treat links on social media differently to standard links found on other websites. That said, most SEO experts believe links on social media are one of the factors Google uses when determining its rankings. It is not possible to know how much importance it places on these links, but they are worth getting, not least because they may directly generate traffic from the social media channel.

Blackhat Link Building and Why You Should Avoid It

As soon as website owners and dubious digital marketing operations realised links were important to Google, they started to fake them. Examples of this include setting up link farms, link neighbourhoods, or offering to buy or sell links. In other words, any tactic that involves getting a link unnaturally.

This type of link building is one of the main features of blackhat SEO, so is something you should avoid completely. Google and other search engines are getting much better at identifying such practices and they are ruthless with websites that get caught.

While you might see improved rankings and increased traffic to your website for a short period of time as a result of blackhat SEO and link building, the best you can hope for over the medium and long-term is a drop in your rankings. Even worse, you could be dumped to the very end of Google’s search results (i.e. hundreds of pages deep) or you could be kicked off completely.

Trying to cheat the system simply isn’t worth it.

The only way to get links that will give you consistent and safe results is to create great content on a regular basis that earns you natural links. Of course, there are strategies you can use to hustle this process along – an SEO agency in Auckland can help you implement such a strategy. Doing it the right way, however, is the only way.

How to Minimise Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

If you sell products directly on your website, you will have a shopping cart abandonment rate. Unfortunately, shopping cart abandonment is a fact of e-commerce websites. This doesn’t mean you have to accept your current level of abandonment.

In fact, there is quite a lot you can do to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates. They are all cost-effective, and they will all help you increase sales.

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment is when a visitor to your website adds items to a shopping cart but then does not fully complete the purchase. They could abandon the purchase immediately after they put the items in the cart or they could abandon it at any stage up to the point of giving final confirmation.

There are many reasons for visitors abandoning shopping carts. They include not feeling the website is secure, being surprised by an additional price, or becoming frustrated with a complicated checkout process.

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

  • Add SSL encryption to your website. More and more people are now familiar with what this shopping cart abandonment rate, plus their website browser often tells them whether or not the website they are visiting is secure.
  • Make the checkout process on your website as simple as possible. One of the best ways to do this is to go through the process yourself using both a computer and a mobile device. You should also get someone you trust from outside your business to go through the process and give you honest feedback.
  • Ensure the pages on your website load fast. Even though the visitor is in the checkout process and is in the frame of mind to make a purchase, they will quickly go somewhere else if your pages take too long to load.
  • Include delivery and other added costs upfront. This is one of the most important tips as forcing customers to get into the checkout process before you give them a delivery price results in a bad user experience. It also increases your shopping cart abandonment rate.
  • Offer guarantees, such as money back guarantees, to make the purchase feel less risky to the customer.
  • Don’t force people making a purchase on your website to register an account. You might like them to register an account for various reasons, but this additional layer in the checkout process often leads to a higher shopping cart abandonment rate. Therefore, give visitors the option of checking out as a guest.
  • Add a call to action to your shopping cart to remind and encourage visitors to complete the checkout process.
  • Add multiple ways to pay to stop visitors from abandoning the shopping cart because they can’t pay using the method you require.
  • Adding a progress indicator is a simple but effective method of showing the visitor how much more they have to do to complete the checkout process. This clarity will keep them engaged for longer.
  • Add trust logos such as Verified by Visa, Norton Secured, MasterCard SecureCode, etc.
  • Analyse how visitors progress through your checkout process, paying particular attention to stages where they drop out. You can get this information from Google Analytics and it can help you identify areas for improvement.
  • This final tip accepts the fact that even when you do all the above, you will still have visitors who abandon their shopping carts. These may not be completely lost, however, if you use remarketing advertising campaigns to win them back.

Recommended:

5 Reasons Your Google AdWords Campaigns Are Not Delivering a Return on Investment

Are your AdWords campaigns failing to get clicks? Do your campaigns get clicks but those clicks don’t result in any sales? Are you paying too much for clicks or do you have to set your bid too high to ensure you appear in one of the top positions? Are you not getting a good enough return on investment from your AdWords spend?

We understand the frustration of each of these scenarios. After all, the pay-per-click model of AdWords appears so promising on the surface, i.e. you only pay when your ad successfully achieves a click. Of course, the reality is not as simple as that.

Here are five reasons why your Google AdWords campaigns are not delivering a good enough return on investment to make them worthwhile.

1. Your Keyword Strategy is Wrong

Getting the keyword strategy right in your AdWords campaign is crucial. This means selecting keywords that have buying intent. You must also analyse the competition to decide whether it is worthwhile targeting a specific keyword. For example, the competition might be too high making it difficult to get a return.

In addition, you must also include negative keywords. Negative keywords ensure Google sends the right traffic to your website by not showing your ad on search results pages that are not relevant.

2. Your Ad Text Is Not Compelling

Writing the text of a Google AdWords ad is a crucial part of setting up your campaign. There are a lot of things you need to think about, however. Firstly, you must ensure you follow Google’s AdWords’ policies. There are also character restrictions you must follow.

Google Adwords

In addition, your ad text must achieve three crucial objectives:

  • It must demonstrate to the user that you potentially have the answer to their query
  • It must win the user’s trust
  • It must have a compelling enough message to make the user click on your ad instead of one of the other options on the page

If your ad text doesn’t do all three of these things, you won’t get the results you should.

3. You Don’t Have an Effective Landing Page

Of course, getting a click on your ad is only part of the process of making an AdWords campaign successful. You also must convert that click into a sale. That is the job of your landing page.

The first mistake people often make is using the homepage of their website as the landing page. In fact, in most situations, existing website pages do not typically make effective landing pages.

The best approach is to design a specific landing page for the AdWords campaign, focusing on the user, answering all their questions, and giving them a reason to purchase right away.

4. You Don’t Analyse, Test, and Optimise

Even the most experienced AdWords professionals will analyse the performance of the campaigns they run, making adjustments to improve results. It is also important to run tests, including split tests, to optimise every aspect of the campaign. If you are not doing this, your return on investment will not be as good as it could be.

5. You Don’t Use an AdWords Expert

In theory, anyone can set up a Google AdWords account and launch an advertising campaign. This is because Google makes the process of doing so as easy to follow as possible.

However, optimising a campaign, making it profitable, and maximising return on investment requires specialist expertise. You can get this if you spend time gaining the experience and achieving certified Google Partner status. If you can’t do this, however, you should consider getting AdWords experts to run your campaigns.

Even when you factor their costs in, you will get a better return on investment than running a campaign that is not optimised.

Why Trying to Rank Number 1 in Google is a Waste of Time, and What You Should Do Instead

Ranking number one in Google for targeted keywords has always been tough, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. In fact, it is so difficult now it is simply not worth the time, effort, and money. You won’t get a return on investment, particularly if the keyword has a lot of competition.

This is an unusual concept for many people to understand, whether you are a digital marketing expert or not. After all, appearing at the top of Google has been the goal of businesses online for more than a decade.

We are focused on ROI, though – getting a tangible return for the money, time, and effort you spend on digital marketing activities. On that basis, chasing the number one spot in Google is not worth it.

First, let’s look at why and then we can look at what you should do instead.

Content Overload

Firstly, you need to post lots of content. In simple terms, websites in the same industry or niche as you that post more content will usually get a higher position in Google.

What does lots of content translate to, though? According to HubSpot, it is 11 or more blog posts per month. That’s more than two per week which is more than most small and medium-sized businesses can achieve.

Remember also they must be high-quality blog posts. Throwing up a couple of hundred words promoting something about your business or rehashing something that has appeared somewhere else is not going to cut it.

You need longer, unique, informative, and useful blog posts three or more times a week. As already mentioned, that is a bar that is too high for most businesses. Can you really afford to spend so much time writing content when you have customers to service and other aspects of your business to run?

Link Crazy

Another key element to ranking number one in Google is backlinks. You need thousands of them to rank for most of the important keywords. Not only that, the backlinks must come from high-authority websites and there must be multiple domains.

Unless you’re willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on building this backlink profile for your target keywords, you are unlikely to get enough to get you to number one.

Established Competition

In addition to the above two points, you are probably competing with an established competitor. They will already have content that Google knows people like and it will have backlinks. For many keywords, that head start is too much to come back from.

Advanced Tools

Click-Through-Rates are Underwhelming

Even if you manage to deal with the content, link, and established competition issues, the results you get from ranking number one in Google might not give you a good enough return on investment.

After all, just 66% of search queries get a click, and most experts believe that number continues to fall.

Why is this happening? There are two main reasons:

  • Cluttered search result pages – on a search results page, people often have to wade through PPC ads, Google Shopping results, social results, news results, video results, and more. All too often, the organic search results, including the number one position, get lost in the mix.
  • Google often gives the answer – for many keywords, Google tries to give the answer to the user’s query right on the search results page, negating the need for the user to click through to your website.

Google algorithm

Moving Target

Finally, Google constantly changes the way its algorithm works.

So, let’s assume you find a way to deal with the above issues, you get to number one, and you’re getting traffic. Google then changes the algorithm in a way that drops you out of the number one position. In this situation, the fortunes in time and money you have spent getting to number one are for nothing.

In other words, it doesn’t make sense:

  • Investing when the odds are so stacked against you
  • Achieving number one spot when you might not get the results you hoped for
  • Investing so much in a third-party platform that you have zero control over

 

What You Should Do Instead

You should focus on results, not traffic.

Getting to number one in Google is about maximising traffic. Focusing on results is about maximising profit which makes much more business sense.

There are lots of ways you can do this including:

  • Google ads
  • Lead generation or conversion ads on Facebook
  • Creating lead magnets – downloads you offer in return for a website visitor’s email address

 

You should also focus on how your web pages look on search results pages instead of their position.

This means optimising the page title of each page as well as the meta description – the two-line summary you see under the headline of each listing on Google’s search results pages. Both of these should encourage the user to click on your website instead of one of the other options.

Focusing on results IS worth your money and time, and will deliver a much better ROI than trying to get to Google’s number one spots.

Uncovering the Lies So-Called SEO Experts Tell

Lies So-Called SEO Experts Tell You

So, you’ve received an email or seen an ad from someone calling themselves an SEO expert telling you how much they can help your business. Maybe you are searching for SEO services and see similar claims on websites. How can you tell which claims are real and what are downright lies? Below are the main lies that so-called SEO experts use to get your business.

Lie 1: “I’ll get you to the first page of Google” or “I’ll get you to number one in Google”

Google and only Google knows where it will rank websites. There isn’t any SEO professional in the world, expert or otherwise, who can predict with accuracy what they will achieve. This particularly applies to long-term results and competitive industries.

Lie 2: “I can rank any industry and any product”

Nope, this isn’t true either. The world of Google search for some industries is incredibly competitive. If you are in one of those industries you will be up against competitors with huge SEO and marketing budgets. Their size, reputation, and industry authority alone is likely to be more appealing to Google than your website, and there is little any SEO expert can do about that.

Lie 3: “SEO is the only digital marketing strategy you need”

Again, not true. Even before SEO, honest and successful marketing strategists would advise the use of multiple marketing channels to get the best results. This applies in the digital world as much as the offline world. Also, Google is a business. It wants you to spend money on advertising – SEO is not the only show in town.

Lie 4: “SEO is complex”

Usually so-called SEO experts say this because they don’t want to explain what they are really doing with your money. This is normally because they are not doing very much and/or what they are doing is unethical. Of course, SEO is not easy, but anyone willing to spend a couple of hours reading the basics will have sufficient knowledge to understand an SEO strategy. If the person you’re speaking to won’t give you details because it’s “too complex”, go somewhere else.

Lie 5: “I understand Google’s algorithm”

Unless they work in Google, this isn’t true. Even SEO’s foremost authorities openly say they do not know exactly how the algorithm works. When a one-man-band operating from a small office in Auckland says he does, you can safely assume it’s not true.

Lie 6: “Getting lots of links is all you need to rank”

Links are good, but only good quality ones. Link building should be a natural process that happens consistently over time. Link spamming to get you “lots of links” will only result in a Google penalty.

SEO expert

Lie 7: “Some duplicate content is okay”

Google representatives have said repeatedly that the algorithm doesn’t like duplicate content. It is never okay.

Lie 8: “Everything is about keywords”

Like links, keywords are important, but they are not everything. Keyword stuffing, focussing only on keywords, and using keywords in an unnatural way will not get you anywhere – and may also get you a penalty.

Lie 9: “Quantity is better than quality”

Quality links and quality content is always beat than quantity. Remember, one of Google’s main pieces of advice when thinking about SEO is that you should focus on user experience. That means quality wins every time.

Getting the Right SEO Help

Getting someone to do SEO for your website is not always easy. The first step, however, is to avoid anyone who tells any of the above lies.

Why Your Google AdWords Ads Aren’t Making You Money Plus Steps to Take to Improve Them

Running a Google AdWords campaign can be a frustrating process. After all, you can see loads of ads when you do a search for your targeted keywords, so somebody must be making money. Also, if you read about digital marketing you will know that many businesses achieve significant returns on investment from AdWords. Why, then, are your campaigns not making you money?

In the list below you will find some of the main causes of AdWords failure. The most important thing to remember, however, is that AdWords is not as simple as it looks.

AdWords Knowledge is Power

Of course, it is correct to say that almost anyone can set up an AdWords campaign, and you can complete the process quickly. The process, however, is misleading.

The real key to success is not completing the form on the AdWords’ interface to launch your campaign. Instead, real AdWords success comes from digging much deeper into the process and understanding how Google works. When you do this, you can get better positions for your ads, higher click through rates, and improved conversions. You can also lower your costs.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? It often means getting help from a company with a proven track record of AdWords success. Working with an AdWords professional is also often the fastest way to improve ROI.

Eight Common Reasons Why AdWords Campaigns Fail

  1. Failing to optimize – many people, including some who provide AdWords management services, operate a “set and forget” approach to AdWords campaigns. In other words, they don’t regularly check the performance of keywords, bids, audiences, and more to make improvements. Optimization is absolutely essential to the success of an AdWords campaign, however.
  2. Using too many broad keywords – broad keywords often result in irrelevant clicks. This brings traffic to your website but it is not traffic that will ever convert. That is bad enough on its own but those irrelevant clicks can also damage the performance of your overall campaign. This is because while the user that clicks is irrelevant to you, your website can also be irrelevant to them. That means they have a bad user experience which Google does not like. Reducing the number of broad keywords or making the keywords phrase match or exact match are the solutions.
  3. Not using negative keywords – another method of reducing the number of irrelevant clicks you get on your ads is to use negative keywords. Negative keywords are an option when setting up an AdWords campaign, though, so many people don’t use them. If you don’t, this could be one of the reasons your ads don’t make money.
  4. Not focusing on click through rate (CTR) – all AdWords metrics are important, but CTR is one of the most crucial to a successful campaign. Of course, a higher CTR means more traffic to your website but it is also important for the position of your ads. Remember, Google is a business so it wants users to click on its ads to make it money. Therefore, it puts the ads it thinks will get the most clicks in the best positions on search results pages. If you have a good CTR rate, you will increase the chances that this will be you.
  5. Not including unique selling points in ad text – the text you use in your ads must give users a reason to click on them rather than one of the other ads they can see. This means you need a unique selling point. This could be discount or price related, but it can also be about quality of service, more customer benefits, or another reason that makes your ad stand out and makes the user want to find out more.
  6. Not using keywords in the ad text – keywords help you target the right audience to get relevant traffic, but they can also help users understand what your ad is about and how you can potentially help them. You should, therefore, include keywords in your ad text.
  7. Not split testing – one of the most important split tests to perform in AdWords campaigns is the ads themselves. You should have multiple versions running to see which performs better. This should be a constant process too, as just because one ad performs better than another doesn’t mean you can’t come up with something that performs even better again. You should always tweak, change, and try new ideas, testing different variations of your ads against others.
  8. You have a website that doesn’t convert – getting a click on your ads is only part of the process of making money from an AdWords campaign. This is because you must also convert that click into a customer. This means having a website that converts. If yours doesn’t, you will have to make changes which typically means getting help from a reputable website design company.

While these are the most common, there are other reasons why AdWords campaigns fail. This demonstrates how complex the process can be. It is possible to find success, however, by getting the help you need and/or taking steps to optimize and improve your campaigns.

12 Ways to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate

Getting traffic is only one part of making your website successful, and it is not even the most important. Maximising your conversion rate is where you should focus most of your efforts. Here are 12 ways you can boost your website conversion rate.

1. Create Urgency

Your objective is to get visitors to your website to convert now. If they leave to think about it, they won’t come back. Creating urgency is a great way to encourage visitors to take immediate action. There are several ways of doing this including mentioning stock numbers or making the offer time limited. You can even add a countdown timer to your pages to make the urgency more real.

2. Optimise Forms

The forms on your website should be quick and easy to complete. This particularly applies to email opt-in forms – the more fields you ask visitors to complete, the less likely they will be to give you their email address.

3. Optimise the Checkout Process

Make sure your checkout process is intuitive and fast to prevent customers from starting it but not finishing it. It also helps to make your checkout look secure.

4. Add an Exit Popup

Exit popups are an excellent way of making a final pitch to your visitors before they leave your website. Depending on the conversion you want to achieve, they can significantly increase your conversion rate. The offer you make should be compelling plus you should follow the above points – make it time limited and optimise any forms you use.

5. Take Away Risk

Another effective way of increasing conversion rates is to remove doubt or worry from the minds of your visitors. You can do this by offering a guarantee – a 100 percent money back guarantee will be the most effective. Another tactic is to offer a free trial.

6. Add Testimonials

Nobody wants to be the first to try something so it is important you show customers your experience and standards of service through testimonials. Testimonials should be relatable to the customer and should not only be genuine but should also look genuine too.

7. Focus Above the Fold

The area of your website above the fold is the part of the screen that you can see without scrolling. This is where you should put your conversion elements including offers, buttons, and forms.

8. Keep Designs Simple and Distraction-Free

Simple designs often get the most conversions. There are a number of reasons for this including the fact that flashy designs do not help visitors make a buying decision. You should also remove all unnecessary distractions.

9. Personalise

Your conversion rate will improve the more personal you can make your content. You can do this through the copy on your website, plus you can use tools that geotarget your visitors. Geotargeting involves dynamically showing personalised content to your visitors based on their location. You should also personalise your emails as much as possible, particularly including the recipient’s name.

10. Use Dedicated Landing Pages

If you run PPC campaigns, you should use dedicated landing pages.

11. Remarketing

Remarketing helps you win back the people who visit your website but don’t convert. Assuming they plan to make a purchase from someone, remarketing helps increase the chances that it will be you.

12. Test and Measure

You firstly need to measure your website’s conversion rate then you should test all the strategies you use to see what works so you can make refinements.

Finally, treat conversion rate optimisation as an ongoing process that you continuously work to improve.

Increase Your Traffic by Getting Your Website Added to Google News

Google News generates billions of clicks to publisher websites every month. Just think: what if you could get just a few thousand of those clicks to your website?

It would be great, wouldn’t it, but what if you are not a publisher or a news organisation? The truth is this in itself does not exclude you from inclusion in Google News. Whatever type of website you have, you can get into this high-potential Google platform if you follow the right steps and think the right way.

It takes daily effort, but if you believe Google News traffic is potentially beneficial to your business, you can do it. Here’s how.

You Must Publish News

There are several things you should consider when planning how to get your website included in Google News. In fact, Google itself publishes a long article on how to maximise your chances. At the top of the list, however, is you must publish news.

What does that mean, though? Here are some general guidelines:

Cover recent events – news organisations publish stories covering recent events. Generally, this excludes opinion articles, advice articles (like this one), or information articles (like reporting on the weather). In addition, while evergreen content is great for general SEO, it won’t work on Google News.

Publish original stories – copying content published by others will not work on Google News. This doesn’t mean you can’t write a story about a topic covered elsewhere. Instead, you must find your own angle, add new information, or move the story along in some way.

Write objectively – good news reporting is balanced so you should keep your articles as objective as possible.

Write the story well – this includes straightforward standards like getting the spelling and grammar correct. You should also structure your article like a news article. This means giving the main details of the story in the first paragraph and generally structuring the article throughout by giving the most important information first. As you might expect, there are lots of other standards you should learn to help you write good news articles including using an active voice and writing in the present tense. A good starting point to learn these standards is the Associated Press style guide.

Publish regularly – news organisations publish stories regularly so you should too. This means aiming for at least two per day.

Other Factors to Consider

If you feel you can meet the above requirements, here are some other things you should consider before applying for inclusion in Google News. They will increase your chances of approval and also help to maximise your traffic once your links start appearing.

Be honest and transparent with your readers – firstly, don’t mislead your readers about who is behind your website. You should also publish online and offline contact details, i.e. email addresses as well as a physical address and phone number.

Build credibility as an author – publish on websites other than your own to build up your author profile.

Follow the technical guidelines – this includes making sure the URLs of your stories are unique and permanent. Your articles must also be in HTML, i.e. Google News doesn’t index PDF documents or JavaScript content.

Write good headlines – include keywords and make sure the headline is informative to readers.

Make your website mobile responsive – this will help improve the visibility of your stories in Google News searches on mobile devices.

Once you have all the above in place, and you have checked your content does not breach any of Google’s general guidelines, you can apply to have your website included in Google News.

How To Promote Your Blog for Free

According to an article in the New York Times titled Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest, approximately 95% of blogs fail due to a lack of readership.

Luckily, I have grown one of my blogs into 50,000+ monthly visitors. I have tried every method on the internet and am still exploring more. However, I want to let you know that it didn’t happen overnight and it took a lot of testing, failing, and starting all over again.

This article contains unique and practical ways to promote a blog and get traffic. I hope this guide will help you unleash the true potential of your blog.

Article Frequency

One of the best ways to get traffic is by publishing more articles. Research from HubSpot shows that a website that publishes 16+ articles a month will get more traffic than a website that publishes five articles a month.

Even the popular internet marketer and blogger Neil Patel has revealed that his traffic grew from 46,134 to 59,787 when he increased the article frequency on his site from one to two articles per week.

It is proven in research that publishing more articles will always result in more traffic. Therefore, increase your article frequency today and you will see a significant increase in traffic – guaranteed.

Longer Content

Research by serpIQ shows that Google ranks content that has 2,000 words better than content with fewer words.

This is another reason why Neil Patel’s articles get lots of traffic – he writes detailed articles. His average article ranges from 4,000 to 8,000 words.

Email List

Email is one of the top sources of traffic for most blogs. If you haven’t started building an email list, you should start now. Go to Mail Chimp and start building subscribers.

Guest Blog

Another proven method to grow traffic is by writing for other people’s blogs. For instance, you can choose a blog which is bigger than yours and write an article for it. The other blog will probably have a bio section as part of the guest post where you can include a link to your website. This can bring a lot of traffic.

Search Engines

Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the number one source of traffic for most established blogs. So, it is extremely important to follow good SEO practices on your website and optimise each article for a specific keyword.

Comment on Other Blogs

The right comment on a highly authoritative blog can send you lots of traffic. You should identify the top blogs in your niche and start interacting and commenting on them on a regular basis. This will get the blogger and members of his/her community to notice you and visit your blog, leading to more traffic to your website. You might even get a link or an invitation to guest blog out of your efforts.

Develop a Blogger Outreach Plan

Many bloggers fail to get traffic because they take a passive approach to blogging. If you simply publish your article, rest, and then wait for the traffic to come, nothing will happen.

For every article you publish, make sure you have a solid blogger outreach plan. To do this, compile a list of dozens of relevant bloggers that you can email your article to, asking them to share it or link to it. This article is a good place to learn how to do blogger outreach.

It is recommended you follow all these points to guarantee the success of your blog. Other methods can also contribute to more growth.

How to make an effective Facebook ad?

I assume you are already running a Facebook ad and want to take it to the next level. Facebook ads are very profitable and there are numerous ways to make them effective.

Everyone can run Facebook ads today as they are easy to setup. Just write a few words and upload an image and you are good to go. However, if you want to run a Facebook ad effectively then this simple approach won’t work for you.

In this article, I will show you how to create an effective Facebook ad.

  1. Ad Headline
    The Ad headline is the first thing that people will notice. It’s important you grab your audience’s attention from the first look at your ad.
    According to a recent study, 70% of people only read the headline of content shared with them on Facebook before sharing it themselves.
    Sometimes, headlines are so interesting that people share it before even reading the content. So, headlines can make a huge difference in the CTR and CPC of your Facebook Ads.
    To write attractive headlines, follow these three best practices:

    1. Be clear and to the point
    2. Use words such as “Get” and “Try”
    3. Clearly explain the benefits of your product or service

  2. Target Audience
    Targeting is the most important factor when creating a successful Facebook ad. You can make a highly attractive ad but it will not work unless it reaches the right audience. The secret to targeting is making the audience narrow. You should never use a broad audience unless you are a multinational company like Coca Cola or Toyota.
  3. Align Your Ad
    The content in your Facebook Ad should be aligned with the content of the link attached to it. In this way, people will get what you promise them on the ad. Secondly, you will get a high CTR which means you will pay less while reaching a larger audience. This also increases your conversion rate.
  4. Test One Ad at a Time
    It is recommended you run one ad at a time for testing. For example, take one ad, duplicate it, and then make changes such as giving it a new headline. When you run one ad at a time you can test which performs better.
  5. Experiment with Ad Placement
    Experiment with different ad placements instead of selecting all placements. Then, test your ad to see which placements work well. For instance, try the news feed then go for right column ads – you can even try an Instagram ad placement. Also, check mobile and desktop placements separately. This technique will allow you to control your budget and reach a more precise target audience.
    There are different ways to optimise your Facebook ads. You should experiment with different headlines, audiences, placements, and more to improve the results from your Facebook advertising.

10 Ways To Build Quality Backlinks

Link building has become one of the most important practices for better SEO performance. Backlinks are like votes of popularity for your website to search engines. The higher the quality of the links and the more of them you have, the greater ranking potential your web pages will have.

According to a recent survey by Moz, 37% of business owners spend $10,000 to $50,000 per month on link building. That’s how important it is.

Backlink quality is measured from the source the link comes from. One of the important factors is that your backlink is inserted with proper content. Otherwise, it will look like spam.

For example, a backlink to a tech blog would have great value if the link is inserted in an article that gives tech information. That would be a credible backlink with good contextual relevancy.

The other variable that determines the quality of a backlink is the authority of the link’s source. Google puts a measure of authority on all websites, ranging from 0-10. It is called PageRank, or PR for short. So, a website with a PR7 (high authority) offers greater link value – or link juice – than a PR1 (low authority) website.

Building quality backlinks for SEO involves a combination of utilising high authority link sources and sources that offer some degree of contextual relevancy. This is the foundation of SEO link building best practice. Read this blog post for good SEO practices to get you started.

Here are 10 techniques to create high-quality backlinks for search engine optimisation:

Blogging: Create and maintain a blog that is a separate domain from your money site (the web site receiving the links). Build the blog around a niche topic that relates to your money site and frequently publish content with backlinks integrated into the blog post’s copy.

Guest blogging: Guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks on higher authority blogs. This takes some effort as you must find good blogs, contact the blog owners, and inquire about writing a blog post for their blog.

RSS feed: Have an RSS feed on your blog. Doing this is free and easy to set up. An RSS feed is advantageous as it allows people to syndicate your content to generate greater interest and increase the popularity of your blog. This can then result in others providing attribution links back to your pages.

Press releases: Write and distribute press releases regularly. The key here is to publish your press releases through distribution sites that allow you to add backlinks in the copy, as well as other sites that offer great coverage and authority.

Create case studies: Writing a case study about a client who has succeeded through your services will not only display credibility in your company but also generate interest from the client. Quality clients will often link back to your website out of respect for your solid PR stunt.

Link to other relevant blogs: Often, linking to other related blogs can generate link reciprocity. In other words, some blog owners are likely to return the favour. In some cases, you may want to make it known that you are linking to their blog as not all blog owners check their backlinks.

Create visual content: Consider diversifying from text to visual content such as images, infographics, charts, and cartoons. Not only will these techniques attract readers, but they will also earn and retain backlinks.

Social sharing widgets: Social sharing widgets on your web pages and blog posts – like Twitter’s “tweet this” or Facebook’s “like this” – can go a long way to propagating your content and generating link popularity.

Write reviews: When you give a positive review of a company or a piece of content (like a book), chances are the author or website owner will link back to your website.

Offer free tools: If you have skills in a particular service or niche, create and offer free tools and resources. This is one of the best ways to attract new business and quality backlinks.

We hope these ten link building techniques will get you on your way to generating quality links to start raising your rankings in search engines. If you find it difficult to do this, you may need to hire a backlink building service.

How to Rank Higher for a Keyword

Everyone wants their website to rank higher in Google’s search results. Although it is not easy to get to the top unless you are Wikipedia or the BBC, it is still possible. You can do it if you stay consistent and take it seriously.

In this article, we will look at eight steps to rank higher for a keyword in Google’s search engine.

Step 1: Basics
The most important thing is you need a strong website which follows SEO good practice and has external links. Secondly, it is useful to have an audience on social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, where you can share content.

Step 2: Keyword Research
You probably know what keywords you want to target but it is best to check the facts using keywords tools to see the search volume for the keyword as well as the competition before you finalise your keywords for targeting.

It is best to choose a keyword which is relevant to your business model and has an average search volume.

Step 3: Competition
After choosing a target keyword for your website, do a search on Google to see your competitor’s websites. Check the following:

  • The domains and URLs – how many domains and URLs have the exact keyword?
  • The titles – how do the title tags incorporate the keyword?
  • The type of content – do they have product pages, blog posts, videos, etc?
  • The authority of those sites – use third-party SEO analysers to check the domain age and source of backlinks.

In order to beat your competitors, you need to do better than them. Therefore, try to do more and better on your website.

Step 4: Long Tail Keywords
It is recommended you target long tail keywords as they are easier for searchers to find. Try to be more specific and keep one page for one specific keyword.

Step 5: Content
The next part of the plan is to make sure you have quality content on your website. Quality with quantity will do the job. Plan your keywords on each page including on blog posts, product pages, and videos.

Step 6: Optimise the Keyword on Every Page
Optimise your content while you create it. Use the targeted keyword in the page title, headline, body text, URL, meta description, meta keywords, and even in image titles and alt attributes.

Step 7: Promote
When your website is all set, it is time to promote it. Share your content on social media pages and use social buttons on your website to make it easy for readers to share.

You should also build links to your content – strong links makes it easy for Google to crawl.

Step 8: Analyse
Use free third-party SEO analysers to make sure your website follows all good SEO practices. Find out which points are missed and which sections need improvement. You should also check keyword rankings manually. Use analytics tools to see which keywords are performing well and which keywords need improvement.

This process is time-consuming and requires patience and constant improvement. There are no shortcuts but, whatever your business is, you can make this work for you.

How you can grow web traffic without SEO

If you don’t have much budget but are looking for new ways to drive traffic other than SEO, email marketing, social media, or guest posting, then this article is for you.

In this article, I will show you how to drive targeted traffic and reach thousands of people for free via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, twisted guest blogging, and by partnering with others.

Kindle Select 90-Day Traffic Plan
Do you know that self-published books now represent 31% of e-book sales in the Amazon Kindle Store? Before the emergence of the Amazon Kindle Store and other similar online bookstores, you needed thousands of dollars and the help of a large publishing house to get a book published. This is now changed as anyone can publish a book within a day. In addition, this technique can be used to drive traffic to your website or blog.

When you publish your Kindle book, you can enrol the book in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select Program. This makes your book exclusive to the Kindle Store for 90 days. Amazon also includes it in the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library where thousands of targeted readers can borrow it for free. Furthermore, you can run a free promotion for a paid e-book for five days.

To drive traffic to your website through your Kindle book you can place a link directly inside the book. Another way of getting traffic is using free giveaways.

Twisted Guest Blogging
This is a unique approach that is very different from typical guest blogging – this is the reason it is given the title “twisted”.

According to Neil Patel, one blogger recorded a 203% increase in traffic growth in 2013 when his guest posts were featured on high-traffic and relevant blogs.

So, how did that blogger get thousands of people to read his guest post? Here are the three steps he followed for guest posting:

  • Research blogs with social influence
  • Checking the top-ranking websites
  • Pitch them one by one

The objective is to get featured by one of the blogs after it accepts your guest post.

Partner with Others
You can place a badge of a company on your website or blog, or share your content with other blogs, in exchange for them driving traffic back to your blog. This approach involves partnering with them. There are many popular blogs that are looking for quality content and if you provide it to them, they will have no issues linking back to your website.

In order to get this partnership, you must consistently reach out to potential websites and blogs. Most probably you will get one yes out of every 10 blogs you hit.

How I Helped One Kiwi Locksmith Company Grow its Business and Increase its Turnover From $40,000 a Year to $500,000 a Year in One Year

Generating enough leads with Google AdWords seems like an uphill battle when keyword bid costs increase daily. For the majority of business owners, it is hard to imagine spending $1 per click, $2 per click, or more. What I have personally experienced is that, 10 years ago, these businesses would happily spend more than $1,000 for half-page ads in local newspapers and the Yellow Pages. By advertising in these publications, there was no way of measuring conversions or seeing what was working and what wasn’t working. However, with digital marketing today, we can see exact user behaviour and what keywords generate more leads and more business. We can even re-target people who visit your website but do not place an enquiry.

Being a Certified Google Partner, I have seen many businesses grow substantially by advertising on Google. At the same time, I have seen even more businesses miss great opportunities because of unknown fears. Some of the most common fears which prevent people from making this big decision are:

  1. What if my competitors click on my ads and waste my money?
  2. What if I don’t get a return on my investment?
  3. What if Google AdWords is rocket science and I just lose my money?

It is simply not possible for your competitors to eat your whole budget by clicking on your ads. Google has already thought of this problem and it considers them as invalid clicks so they don’t count against your ad spend. Secondly, even though Google has made using AdWords simple enough that anyone can set up an AdWords account, to make campaigns effective and get a good return on investment, you must dig very deep into the system. It actually is a science. To rank your ad in the top spots, it is important to consider and work on all Google AdWords’ ranking factors.

Why Google is Google?

Why do you search on Google? Why not Yahoo? Or why not Bing or any other search engine? You use Google because it gives you the most accurate search results.

For example, you are a mobile locksmith company based in Manukau. You want people to see your ad when they search for a locksmith anywhere in the Auckland region. Now, if someone is sitting in Albany, Northshore and searches for a locksmith company, Google automatically shows locksmiths that are near to Albany. Does this mean that a Manuka-based mobile locksmith company can’t do jobs in Albany? They obviously would love to do jobs in Albany as well, but the main challenge is that people in Albany will not see their ads because Google thinks the ads are not relevant because they are based in Manukau. To understand this better, let’s dig a bit deeper into it.

CTR (Click Through Rate)

Google only makes money when people click on ads. When people do not click on ads, Google does not make any money. Now, if someone sitting in Albany looks for a locksmith company, Google’s job is to:

  1. Display the most accurate result because that’s what Google does
  2. Make sure that it displays ads which it thinks people will find interesting and will click on
  3. Not put ads it thinks are irrelevant in the top spots

In the above example, the process is as follows:

  1. The user is based in Albany
  2. He is looking for a locksmith company as he has immediate locksmith needs
  3. If Google displays the ad of a locksmith company based in Manukau, it is highly unlikely the user will click on it
  4. As a result, Google will only waste its real estate by displaying this ad
  5. So, Google would rather display ads which it thinks are more likely to get clicks from the user

How I helped one Kiwi locksmith company increase its turnover from $40,000 a year to $500,000 a year in one year

When a locksmith company came to me it had an old website and a poor AdWords campaign. It was generating $40,000 in revenue annually and was struggling to drive more leads.

The owners wanted to grow their business throughout Auckland and drive more leads that would convert into sales. As a result, the objective was not to just drive traffic but to focus on sales. In order to achieve this goal, I started with the following changes:

  1. I built a new website using the WordPress content management system, making the website responsive and easy to update.
  2. I designed 198 separate landing pages covering 198 suburbs of Auckland. These were for Google AdWords and were tailored to capture leads with easy to use call to action buttons. Each landing page was designed for a specific suburb of Auckland. For example:
  3. I customised a specific landing page for Manukau to its potential customers by writing relevant content.
  4. Each landing page was advertised for one suburb. I made sure it was only visible to that specific suburb by inserting negative keywords. In this way, the ad looked more fitting and appropriate. Hence, the ads got a high CTR for each landing page.
  5. I used creative taglines and text to make the ads stand out from all the other ads on the page.
  6. I manually bided for the ad to achieve the highest visibility with the minimum cost. This saved more than half of the advertising budget of the company.

After implementing everything above, I managed to get first place on Google’s search results pages. You can see in the below screenshots that the locksmith’s ads are at the top for all relevant keyword searches:

Website Ranking

After collecting enough data from Google AdWords, I crafted a potential customer list for remarketing. For people who are not familiar with the term remarketing, it is a campaign designed to target an audience who have already visited your website but may not have placed an enquiry. After implementing these strategies, we produced the following results in the first month:

  • 200% increase in total site traffic
  • 566% increase in enquiries

Today, this locksmith company has increased its turnover from $40,000 a year to $500,000 a year in a period of just 12 months – and it is still growing. The company is now planning to sell franchises in Hamilton and other cities in New Zealand.

What are the best ways to get high quality backlinks?

Backlinks are one of the most important things to consider when we talk about SEO. With the advent of Google, SEO began to gain traction with backlinks becoming a major element of the SEO process. So, without backlinks, you can’t rank higher in Google’s search results. In order to rank higher, you need to get quality links from authority sites.

As building backlinks is a very critical process to the success of SEO, this article will talk about different ways to get quality backlinks for your blog or website.

First and foremost, you need to install the SEO Quake Toolbar. This will help you identify the PR of the page where you will insert a comment with a link to your website. As manual blog commenting can take some time, it’s important to choose your targets wisely.

One of the best tools to get started with is SEO Quake. Simply go to http://www.seoquake.com/ and click the Install button to add it to your browser toolbar.

SEO Quake

Another tool I recommend is Drop My Link. Go to http://dropmylink.com/, enter your target keyword, and hit search.

Drop my link

Check to see which results have enough page-level PR to make posting a comment worth your while. This one looks promising.

Search Page

Now, scroll down to the bottom of the page and see if there’s still an active comment area. It is not recommended that you drop an anchor text link by putting your keyword in the Name field as this has two downsides. Firstly, it sets you up for a Penguin penalty and, secondly, it puts a target on your back as a spammer. Instead, use the name of your site or your own name. Now, glance over the article and add a thoughtful comment.

Post a comment

Remember, just because the blog auto-approves your comment doesn’t mean they won’t moderate them eventually. If you have a natural anchor text link along with an insightful comment, the comment will probably survive. Moreover, you can also use Drop My Link to find .gov blogs that allow comments. Simply repeat the process.

What is On site SEO?

On-site SEO involves optimising web pages to rank higher and gain more traffic in search engines. On-site SEO includes optimising the content and HTML source code of a webpage. Off-site SEO, on the other hand, involves optimising external links.

So, do you want your website SEO optimised to get more traffic from search engines?

If your answer is yes to the above question, you should consider optimising your website.

There are two factors to consider when it comes to optimising a website:

  • On-Site optimisation
  • Off-Site optimisation

Today I will focus only on the on-site element and will share basic information that impacts website optimisation.

The Domain Name
The domain name is an important part of on-site SEO. However, with Google’s EMD update, having an exact match domain name no longer matters a lot in SEO. Nonetheless, the domain name adds credibility and relevancy to your blog. It can help users decide if the blog is the right one to get the information they are searching for or not.

The Meta Description
Another important component of on-site SEO is the meta description. This is a short overview of what the blog is all about. The statement that you input here will be used by search engines to describe your blog. This will also be the short statement that will appear in search results pages.

The meta description can heavily influence the search user’s decision on whether to check out your site or not. This is also used by the search engine crawlers when ranking websites for certain keywords. Therefore, make sure that your target keyword term is present in the meta description.

Web Content
Web content is a key area that greatly matters in on-site optimisation. Quality and uniqueness of the post must be given due focus so each post must be unique. Ideally, it should not be published elsewhere so it is distinct to your site. Aside from that, it should contain highly valuable information and an eye-popping title that effectively grabs attention.

Internal Links
Another factor in on-site SEO is internal links as they must be properly placed. Each page should, ideally, have a link from another page or from the homepage. The internal link structure should also be flawless to ensure visitors can quickly and conveniently find the right pages relevant to their search.

Metatags
Metatags are HTML elements that provide information about a web page for search engines and website visitors. These elements must be placed as tags in thesection of an HTML document.

Anchor Text
The anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the individual page will receive by search engines.

Rick Media Files
Another important component of on-site SEO is rich media files. These are the relevant photos and videos included your web pages. These files further add value to your posts, while the relevancy of the photos and videos can reinforce the search engine’s assessment of the webpage. These files should be properly inserted with alt-tags that are relevant to the main target keyword phrase.

Loading Speed and Bounce Rate

Loading speed and bounce rate have little SEO value but they can add up to give you better page ranking due to enhanced user experience. The loading speed of the webpage can affect bounce rate and it can also cause some visitors to leave if the page loads too slowly.

How You Can Improve your Website Ranking On Google Yourself

Google Ranking

Everyone wants their website to have a better Google search ranking to increase website traffic and enhance visibility. The Google search engine uses various algorithms to rank pages in its search results. Its algorithm is a secret so is not shared by Google, although there are many basic ways to improve your rank in search results. This involves using techniques known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.

SEO takes time and there is no quick solution. If someone tells they will get you fast results then it’s probably a scam. The most important thing you need to make sure is that you have a website that people want to visit. Also, never use black hat techniques that can, at a later stage, be detected by Google as you will end up getting blacklisted.

The following tips can help you increase your website visibility and search ranking:

Tip 1: Keyword Phrases

Keywords

When someone is on a search engine to find your website, they will write a relevant word or phrase – this is called a keyword phrase. Your keyword phrases should appear in your content, ideally in the first paragraph. You should also use words in your articles that people are most likely to use when searching. For instance, what keyword phrase might people use to search for your website? Try this with your potential customers to find the best words for your content. In addition, it is highly recommended you use one key subject per page. Also, avoid irrelevant content completely.

Tip 2: Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the number of keywords used in your content. It is recommended you use natural phrasing. Overusing the keyword to trick the search engine can also get you banned. Your first paragraph should be a strong opening to tell people what your page is about. This practice also helps search engines find your page.

Tip 3: Title of the Page
Giving a descriptive name to the title of your page is essential. The first thing you notice on a search results page is the page titles of the results, so your titles must be related to the topic and appropriate. Best practice is to include the page’s keyword phrase in the title.

Tip 4: Links
Links from other websites to your website determine the PageRank of your website. More links mean a higher PageRank. You can exchange links with other relevant websites or blogs. Furthermore, links to the content on your pages should include keyword phrases in the anchor text.

Tip 5: Social Networking
Promoting your website on social media sites can affect your rank in search as well as bringing more traffic to your website. So, make sure you publish engaging titles and images that link back to your website.

Tip 6: Mobile Friendly
According to The Verge, more than half of Google searches are now done through mobile. If your website is not mobile-friendly, Google will rank you lower in search results pages. Google also indicates onsearch results pages if a website is mobile friendly or not. Therefore, don’t forget to make it responsive.

How to Write Email Subject Lines That Will Increase Your Open Rate By 100%

Email marketing is widely used to reach a larger audience and to maintain returning customers. However, if only a few people open your emails, this strategy might not help you.

Have you have sent emails to your list but only a few of them get opened? If so,you are not alone.

According to Epsilon’s fourth quarter email analysis, the average open rate for emails is only 27.4%. The problem is that in order to get the attention of your customers, you need to write an effective email subject line. Doing this will increase your email open rate by 100%.

You should take the following factors into account to write email subject lines that people will want to open:

A Unique Selling Proposition:
To get the best results from email marketing, you need a unique selling proposition. Ask yourself what makes your product unique and what makes it better than other products on the market. Also, how can you present your product to the right people to get more clicks?

Personalized Emails:
You should always use the recipient’s name when sending emails. This includes using their first name or last name in the subject line instead of “Dear”. This will immediately grab the attention of your customers.

Ask Right Questions:
Always avoid simple yesor no questions in email subject lines as they won’t encourage people to open your email. On the other hand, using open-ended questions will make the recipient more engaged and eager to read further. Some examples of open-ended questions are:

  • “What type of website do you need?”
  • “Where should you invest in 2017?”
  • “Can you tell what problems you’re facing in your business?”

Get the Timing Right:
Another factor that increases open rates is writing a subject line and then sending it at the right time. For example, sending an email at 6:30pm on a Friday evening with the subject line: “Where to Go for Dinner Tonight”. The subject line and timing is just right for people thinking about dinner plans.

Do Tell What’s Inside:
It is best to include a subject line that explains what is inside the email. Examples include “Free E-Book” or “Free Trial”. This works better than a simple subject line because it makes it clear what the recipient will get in the email.

What Is Infographic And How To Double Your Website Traffic With Infographics

So, what is Infographic? According to Wikipedia, infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. In other words, infographics are a way of presenting information that is uncomplicated and easy to read.

You may have seen infographics while surfing the net or on social media. They are simple, easy to understand, and interesting to read. Nowadays, infographics rule the internet. According to Unbounce, the demand for infographics has increased by 800% in the last two years.

Info Graphics

Recent research by WebMD stated that a human brain can register visual information 60,000 times faster than normal text. In addition, 65% of people are visual learners.

Infographics can certainly double your website traffic if you do them right. However, not all infographics go viral. There are some important factors you should take into account when creating infographics for marketing purposes.

The Method You Use
How you visually present the collected data in your infographic is a very important part of the process. You can use graphs or flow charts, for example, but make sure you consider how the audience will perceive the data.

Another important factor is the title you give your infographic. For instance, if the infographic is a how-to,you should title it accordingly.

Use Correct Statistical Data
Your content should be statistically correct or verified from a reliable source. You won’t convince your audience with information based on your personal opinions so don’t base your infographic on them.

Develop a Unique View
Use a unique approach for your infographic. For example, don’t follow the same format your competitors use. Instead, your infographics should have interesting graphics and characters that tell a unique story that is quick to read.

Pick the Right Topic
Choose interesting topics that people will love to read. It is not easy to grab the reader’s attention unless you have a trending topic to talk about. The best way to achieve this is to search for topics on Google Trends to find out what people are talking about.

Create Useful and Shareable Infographics
Creating useful infographics means providing readers with a deep insight into the topic that they can read and understand in short span of time.

According to Buzzsumo, content with images gets the most shares. In addition, infographics are among the most shared content on the internet as people share what they find useful.’

The Design of Your Infographics
Make sure you get your infographic professionally designed. After all, if you have good-quality content but don’t have an attractive design, your infographic will fail. This is often because people will be hesitant to share the infographic. So, it is best to get it designed by a professional graphic designer.

Generating an embed code
Use an embed code generator to make it easy for users to share and embed your infographic. When you do, your infographic will have a link back to your original social media page or website. This will bring you additional traffic.

Conclusion
Infographics definitely increase traffic. It is best to use them to optimize your website for conversions so you generate more leads and sales. You can attach promotional messages with your infographics as well, to market your business.

Social Media Marketing Made Simple

Social Media is one of the world’s fastest growing industries. If you are not taking advantage of social media platforms you might be leaving lots of money on the table. Social media marketing strategies can be complex, however,because of the increase in the number of social media platformsthat are available. Furthermore, growing a social media account requires time and hard work.

Let’s take a look at some of the largest social media platforms, each of which can be used to grow your business and increase sales:

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Snapchat
  • Pinterest
  • Vine
  • Tumblr
  • Medium
  • Quora
  • Periscope

If you want to market your business or website through social media platforms, keep the following points in mind.

Find Your Audience
First and foremost, you must find your target customers. This requires proper research to discover where your customers are most active on social media. You must look if your target audience is made up of Facebook users rather than Twitter users, for example. This will save you energy and time.

Focus on quality, not quantity
The quality of the content you post on social media is very important. If your content is interesting,the user will share the post which will increase your reach. Therefore, it is important to have content your users will love to read and/or content that benefits them in some way. In addition, reposting a link from another website for the sake of keeping your page active will be of no use. Consequently, your content should be unique and compelling so that it gets clicks.

Appeal to Influencers
Influencers on social media play an important role. You should find influencers that appeal to your customer profile, who reflect your business philosophy, and who have a high-quality audience. Connect with these influencers and create a positive relationship with them. If your content and services come across as interesting or show you are an authority on the matter, they could introduce your business to a range of new customers using their social media presence. This kind of exposure is very valuable since you donot have access to this audience on your own.

Be Visible
Don’t post something and then just disappear for a few weeks. Social media audiences have too many choices available and if you’re not visible, you can be cut from their list very easily. Make sure you have a clear calendar set out with a social media plan to publish content and posts on set days and at set times to encourage interaction with your users.

Be Available
When users post queries and requests do not ignore them. Answer comments and messages as soon as possible with a solution or ask for their details so you can contact them immediately. Business pages where queries are ignored are a red flag for many customers who worry that they will be ignored should they make a purchase or order something. How you manage your social media accounts is a reflection on how you manage your business, even if your business runs smoothly and without issue – your users won’t see it that way. Many people turn to social media for reviews and to see how a company handles its customers, so put on a good show.

Be Consistent
Consistency is key

Keeping your posts and messages consistent on social media pages can help you increase engagement with your customers. Moreover, it will help you develop trust with potential customers. For instance, if a customer comes to your Facebook page and sees that you have not posted in a month, they could assume you are out of business or are not a reliable company. In other words, not posting regularly gives a negative impression of your business. Therefore, it is necessary to be consistent and keep your social media page active.

How To Reduce Cost Per Click?

You may be using AdWords already and,given the title of this article, are probably now looking to reduce the cost of your campaigns. When it comes to AdWords, it is easy to set up an account and put it in automatic mode, letting Google do the job for you. However, this may target the wrong audience and, eventually, your whole marketing budget will go in vain.

Automatic Bidding

So, What’s the Solution?
There is no easy solution for lowering cost per click. Even if you intend using AdWords in manual mode, there are so many things you should consider before jumping in to use it via a trial and error method.

That said, finding a lower cost per click (CPC) for the keywords of your AdWords campaigns is a very important step in becoming competitive. However, achieving a lower CPC depends on your industry, product, and location. Here are some tips that, if applied properly, could help you reduce cost per click.

Lower Bids
Lower your bids for keywords that receive a lot of impressions but don’t generate any sales or leads for your business

Increase Bids
Similarly, increase your bids for keywords that convert into sales or bring more customers to your website. This will increase the position of your ads so that, for example, if they were placed in position four they could potentially move to number one, assuming you run your ads on the search network.

One Campaign at a Time
It is better to start with one campaign and manually fill the bids. This can be time-consuming but it will deliver a better campaign result.

Use the Average CPC
The average CPC shows you the exact amount that you spend per click on a keyword. When you enter the bidding section, you must account for your bid manually.

It is important your bid is higher than the average CPC as your bid is the maximum you are prepared to spend on any given click. That said, it is important to set your bid at a level that’s close to the average CPC in your campaign so you can maintain your ad’s ranking or improve its position without spending additional money.

You should also remember you need to run your ads for several days, or even weeks, before deciding which bidding strategy you should adopt.

Use Search Networks Only
The reason behind using only the search network is the display networkgenerates more irrelevant clicks than relevant clicks so you will eventually waste your money.

Before deciding on whether you should go for the display network or not, you should ask yourself if you want to show your ads on irrelevant websites that do not attract your target audience.

So, rather than using display networks, it is better to increase your CPC so your ads send relevant traffic to your website.

You can also check the performance of both the search network and display network by pausing one ad to test the other one.

Include Long Tail Keywords

Long Tail Keyword
It is extremely important to focus on long-tail keywords as, in the beginning, you cannot afford to waste money on generic, headline keywords like “bus”, “engineer”, “car” etc. These are keywords the big brands go for. Big brands may not benefit from long tail keywords as they go for keywords with a bigger reach. However, if you are starting out you cannot compete with the budgets of big brands on headline keywords. Also, remember that long-tail keywords usually generate a high click through rate of relevant clicks which increase the likelihood that you will end up with sales.

Adjust Bids Based on Location, Day and Time
One of the most important factors in achieving good results from AdWords is toadjust your keyword bids based on location, day, and time.

You can implement this trick by monitoring your ad results and then changing the bids. For example, you can increase your bid on ads which are performing better and generating sales while, on the other hand, you can lower the bids for ads which have no sales on aparticular day or at a particular time.

Conclusion
Google AdWords has a huge target audience. You can get sales and even double your revenue in 24 hours if you do things right. That said, it is very difficult for an individual to master all the optimisation techniques when you have a limited amount of time and budget. If this applies to you, you should hire an AdWords consultant to fix everything for you. At Kiwi Website Design, we offer a Google AdWords marketing package so if you are planning to usethe platform, please don’t hesitate to call us or shoot us an email.

Are You Paying Too Much For Google AdWords?

Google Advertising

Every business pays a different cost per click on Google AdWords. You are probably paying much higher than everyone else and still not getting results

We will guide you step-by-step to show you how to reduce Google AdWords’ costs and increase the response rate.

Minimising AdWords costs requires a series of creative, trading, and technical skills.

Creative Skills
You need to be creative to write a compelling and innovative ad that searchers will love to click.

Trading Skills
Trading skills and managing bids are necessary to minimise your cost per click.

Technical Skills
Technical skills are required to effectively organise keywords, bids, ad groups, ad copy, and landing pages.

In offline advertising, specialists complete these tasks. For example, with print and TV adverts, a creative company will design your ad, a trader will find an ad placement and set the timings, and techies will look after production. However, in AdWords, you must do it all.

Most AdWords users develop one of the required skills. Consequently, they use their one strength but neglect the remaining weakness. As a result, they fail to use all the tools available to create high click-through rates and lower costs.

We look at some creative, trading, and technical tips below.

Before we do that, there are two key metrics you should be aware of to measure ad development. They are click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
CTR is a way of measuring the success of an ad campaign by calculating the number of clicks on a specific link.

Quality Score (QS)
Quality Score is based on the relevance of your ad to the search terms you are bidding on and to the relevance of your landing page.

AdWords ads that get high click through rates and have a high Quality Score have a lower cost per click (CPC) and they rank higher on search results pages. Let’s have a look at how you can run a Google AdWords campaign effectively by developing your creative, trading, and techie skills.

Creative Skills
The most important skill you need is the ability to write attractive ad content that matches the keywords you are bidding on.

Trading Skills
This is the skill through which you can maximise your bid success. It involves gaining control of your bids and lowering costs.

There are three types of match keywords you can use to control which searches trigger your ads to appear.

  • Broad match keywords have no punctuation – Keyword
  • Phrase match keywords use quotation marks – “Keyword”
  • Exact match keywords use enclosed square brackets – [keyword]

If your broad match is positive, your ads will be displayed on the maximum number of searches. When using board match, AdWords matches your ads with any search containing your keyword.

Techie Skills
The first thing you must do is organise the groups of keywords you are bidding on. You should also make sure your ads and landing pages match your keywords.

What is an Ad Group?
An ad group is a group of keywords you are bidding on which matches the content of your ad and the landing page.

The last thing you need to remember is to focus on the very specific subject otherwise your ad will not be fruitful.

Summary

To run an efficient AdWords campaign, you need to learn creative, trading, and techie skills. If you can’t manage this, you should hire an expert.

SEO Is So Much Easier Than You Think

What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It involves optimising your website to increase the number of visitors by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results pages of a search engine.

Why is it so important?
SEO is the number one priority when it comes to website publishing. After all, according to Search Engine Journal, 90% of online experiences start with search. If people can’t find your website they can’t read it, use it, or share it with others.

Over the years, SEO tactics have changed with modern strategies that focus on user experience. Before these modern strategies, there were keyword-based optimisation methods and other black-hat practices, although these are now obsolete.

That said, throughout its history, SEO has been a cost-efficient and valuable strategy for website owners.

Is it really difficult?
Website owners who are unfamiliar with the technical side of coding believe Google’s search algorithm is something extremely complex. As a matter of fact, it is complex, but that doesn’t mean you cannot understand it.

Despite the complexity of Google’s search algorithm, it is possible to achieve positive results with simple strategies. The main goal of Google is to provide the best online experience to its users which means giving them appropriate and relevant search results.

Anyone can learn
Google uses complicated techniques to calculate search rankings. In fact, even search experts don’t understand it fully because Google has never published its search algorithm. However, we do know that you must complete two requirements to rank high on a search engine:

  • Providing high-quality content
  • Demonstrating you are an authority

Thankfully, these search engine requirements can be achieved by basic strategies. Today, SEO strategies come in two flavours: onsite and offsite.

Onsite Content
Onsite content involves making sure your website pages, titles, tags, content, and overall structures are optimised for your target keywords.

Another important factor is to include strong headlines and compelling paragraphs on the main pages of your website including the homepage and product pages. On these pages, use words and phrases that explain your business.

In addition, you should implement a blogging strategy as this is a great way to boost your online presence. Write at least one or two blog posts per week about topics related to your business and make sure you engage with your audience.

Offsite/ Inbound Links
Offsite SEO is a little tougher than onsite SEO. Offsite SEO involves building authority. To understand the authority of your website, major search engines look at other websites that link back to yours.

If lots of websites link back to you then Google will think you have good content. This will rank you higher although this has also been the source of many black-hat SEO tactics in the past.

Social and local integrations
Building a social media presence is now considered compulsory in order to attract a bigger audience. So, you should create profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and post regularly to engage with your audience. This will ultimately improve your online reputation.

Challenges of SEO
Basic SEO strategies are easy to adapt. However, you might encounter the following challenges:

Find your audience?
Challenges in finding the right audience occur when you don’t know what type of articles you should write on your blog or what keywords you should include. The best solution is to first describe your business. This will help you find out who your customers are.

Time is money!
SEO is very time-consuming and it is certainly not a one day job. It requires a lot of figurative sweat and blood to implement properly. In addition, you may have other responsibilities and tasks to do along with optimising your website. Remember, you can always hire an SEO company if you can’t manage it yourself.

While SEO is easier than you think, the time-consuming nature of the task means it is not always possible to do it by yourself unless you are able to dedicate time to it.

At Kiwi Website Design, we create websites and provide SEO services using the latest techniques to help increase the online presence of your business.

A Website Designed To Look Good Or Designed To Get Leads?

In today’s fast-paced world, every business or individual has a basic website. Sadly, most of these websites are poorly designed or not focused on lead generation. These types of website are not going to help your business or your reputation.

So, the first question that comes to mind is: should your website focus on design or leads?

My website looks great but I am not generating enough sales

Studies of user behaviour by ImpleMedia have found that first impressions are 94% design-related. So, website design is important but if it is not generating sales or revenue then the design is of no use. We usually hear from customers that they want a fresh look for their website. If that is the only requirement there are many cheap solutions available. However, if you want to invest in a website to boost your business, the website should focus on generating leads and converting sales. For example, avoiding website designs that are too complex as they often turn visitors away. In fact, this is one of the reasons some incredibly good-looking websites fail to deliver sales.

Your website should focus on leads, not design

Investing in a well-designed website that builds interest and converts leads is a great way to boost your business. Therefore, your website must be designed correctly so it attracts more leads for your business.

According to research by Peep Laja, the founder of ConversionXL, it takes about 50 milliseconds for visitors to determine whether they like your website and will stay, or don’t like it and will leave. So, the first impression of your website matters. From the first impression, your visitors should immediately know that what they are looking for is likely to be on your website. In order to do that, let’s take a look at the tactics you can use on your website to get leads:

Offers
Include offers like downloadable eBooks, guides, and checklists on your website. Videos are also a great way to engage customers.

Smart CTAs
Place Calls-To-Action (CTAs) in strategic locations throughout your website. For example, they can be installed as a sidebar ad where the customer can fill out their contact information. This is a great way to generate leads when you have people looking to find out more information about your products or services.

Smart Content
Smart content provides the buyer with relevant content based on their interests or the stage they are at in the buying cycle. Smart content best practice is to move your website to a content management system so you can update the content on a daily basis. Also, writing a blog at least twice a week can help attract more traffic.

Layout
The layout of your website is also critical to generating more leads. The right layout means the correct placement of content. This will help your visitors to concentrate on the areas that will help them the most. Some of the tips that you should keep in mind include:

  • Always keep your message simple and to the point.
  • Place CTAs strategically throughout your site.
  • Place CTAs on all pages.
  • Use social proof like client lists or testimonials.
  • Don’t forget to include graphics where appropriate. Otherwise, your website will bore your visitors.

Landing Pages
Landing pages are the last point of contact before a visitor fills out a form. They should use the same design as the rest of the pages with a few differences. Things you should keep in mind when designing landing pages include:

  • Keep the layout of the landing page simple
  • Don’t include the top navigation to reduce distractions
  • Use short forms to gather contact information
  • Make the form button text more creative than “Submit”. For example, use phrases like “Get Your eBook” or “Free Mock-up”
  • Keep content on the right but keep it short
  • Use appealing visuals